Finished stuff

Finished: The buck pen. The pea chicks. One of them drowned and one just disappeared. I suspect the hawks that have been squealing in the mornings here, but it's just a guess. With raccoons, possums, dogs, coyotes, etc... there's always some predator or the other around to let you know that life is fragile.

Unfinished: The deck project. Fixing the trailer so that we can go pick up compost and such - which means replacing all the rotten boards - basically all of them. When we last put the tractor on it, the wheels crashed through the boards. It's time.

We have made progress this last year, though... finishing the chicken coop, figuring out how to rotate the fields so that the goats have enough to eat all the time, fixing the fencing (but not the long part) so that the goats can't go eat the neighbor's pasture. Buying a livestock guardian dog, buying stuff for Mike's eventual creative works in wood (and cabinetry)... it has been a big year.

Oh! And we bought twenty merlot grape vines (two-year-old vines) to plant in the spring. This will require putting in a new gate on one of the fenced in areas where the previous guys who owned the place had a horse shelter (a lean-to). The whole area is divided in two (not evenly) and is about 20 feet wide and about 100 feet long. We had grown gourds successfully there a few years ago and are now going to make that our vineyard. It only has a foot gate in it right now, so that will have to change and put a gate in large enough to accommodate our tractor and cart.

Right now, I make wine with a mash of black, seedless grapes from the store, with regular yeast and sugar. It works and is probably better than what we've been drinking. I put a balloon on top of the glass jug the mixture is in and when the yeast action is over, the balloon will deflate and it will be ready to rack a few times for clarity and to get the yeasty taste out of it. Then it will be drinkable.

Oh, the cart. It's broke. We just replaced the solenoid and it still didn't work. Advice online says it might be brushes in the starter area (technical term) and those will come via UPS in a few days.

We also ordered a new replacement canning element for our stove. We have three and when we lit this particular one up a few weeks ago, the rods in it sparked and hissed. Time to go.

Just made pea soup and the first batch of fruited sorbets for the year. Low-fat, but higher in cals. However, it IS something sweet and if I had my druthers, I'd probably just eat chocolate.

Who wouldn't?