Thanks everyone who let me know they're praying for my poor neck.  It is feeling a lot better now -- still kinda tender and quirky, but I'm able to function now. 

Saturday we are driving out to Missouri to take a look at a donkey.  My oldest daughter has been wanting a donkey forever and has been faithfully looking at the classifieds for months.  This week there was a two year old jenny (a female donkey) in the paper.  Amber called and talked to the people about it, and the next step is to go see her for ourselves.  It will be fun if it works out.  If not, it should at least be a nice road trip, as long as the weather holds up.  Amber has been reading every donkey book (there aren't many) and article she could find for over a year now.  She is sooooooo excited!

Tomorrow I pick up the hounds from the vet.  I dropped them off today, one to be spayed, and another to be neutered.  I will rest much easier knowing there won't be the possibility of puppies anymore!

Hi everyone,

Pride does indeed come before a fall!  Here I was, feeling rather smug about not having to go to the doctor for strep, and here I am almost unable to MOVE!  Monday morning I woke up with my neck in a funny position.  I did something - don't know what to my poor neck in my sleep - pinched something, pulled something, I don't know what.  All I know is I am in PAIN!!!!!!!!!  Please pray that it will"fix" itself - I sure don't have the money to go to the chiropractor but I'll have to do something - I literally cannot move an inch without excruciating pain zinging up my neck and down through my shoulder.  I had a heat pad on it, then a friend of my said heat was the worst thing I could do, to put a cool pack on instead.  The cool pack made every muscle in my neck and shoulder lock up solid.  ARGH!

What a boring entry title!  The gray morning is keeping me from waking up enough to give it a better one though.

Still working on the to-do list.  Yesterday we got the goat fence taken care of and that was the biggest item on the list so I'm very happy about that.  The goats are even happier than I am since they have a larger area to graze with nice fresh grass to munch.  I got the dogs' yearly boosters taken care of except for the rabies and they are scheduled to go in at 11:00 for those.  In KS you can give your dogs all their shots *except* for rabies - a vet has to do that one.  Today when we're at the vet's office we'll be setting up our two pups for their spay and neuter -- don't need any more of the critters than we already have, no matter how much my oldest daughter wants puppies! 

You can save a good amount of money giving your dogs their vaccinations yourself, especially if you have a puppy that needs its puppy shots every four weeks or if you have quite a few dogs like we do.  I can buy the yearly booster shots at the local co-op for about $6.50 each.  The vet charges $35 to give the same shot.  With five dogs, two of them young-uns who needed their puppy shots over the summer, that adds up to a pretty decent savings!  Giving vaccination shots is super-easy, even for someone who hates needles as much as I do. 

The weather is colder now - no more 60 degree weather.  Yesterday was on the 40's and today looks the same, except for today is very foggy and looks like rain.  I'm sure glad we're done with that fence and don't have to tromp around in the cold and wet today!  Today is a day for hot chocolate, seed catalogs, and graph paper!

JennMarie

Whoohoo!  Three more seed catalogs came in the mail today!  Tonight when I'm done with all my "stuff" I'm going to sit a peruse with a highlighter in hand.

Today was unbelievably warm again -- 60 degrees -- in late December.  Too strange!  The big project for the day was cleaning out the van.  This fall our poor little mini van has been stuffed with bales of hay, straw, lots of feed bags, one of which tore, a large smelly nubian buck, and our year's worth of grain (for us!) that we ordered from the local buying cooperative.  Not to mention it never got totally cleaned out after the farmers' market season and had various baggies, twist-ties, tent weights, and other paraphanalia still stuck in the back.  It was a wreck so we spent the whole afternoon totally emptying it out, washing the interior, vaccuming, beating rugs, stain-spotting the floor, etc...  It looks so nice!  Too bad it won't last....

I'm wanting to get a few projects on the homestead finished before we start lessons back up next week.  Here they are, somewhat in order of importance:

1.  Extend the electric fence so the goaties have more pasture to munch down.  I should have done this before the ground froze, but with the recent warm weather I'm hoping it's not terribly hard.

2.  Finish the rabbit cages I've been working on.  We're going to be adding wascally wabbits to the menu at DaisyChain farmstead.  We're trying to break free from supermarket meat and want some sort of red meat occasionally.  I'd like to be able to afford a side of grass-fed beef from a local farm, but that is NOT in the budget right now - neither is organic meat from the store.  We won't have any more goats to eat till late summer at best so we figure a few rabbits would provide us with something besides chicken and turkey.  We raised rabbits several years ago and learned the hard way to quarantine new animals when we bought a new bunny that ended up having a disease that quickly spread and wiped out ALL our rabbits.  Not a fun experience.  Otherwise, rabbits are super-easy to raise.  As soon as I get the cages made up we'll be buying two does and a buck.

3.  Pick up more straw and hay. I need to borrow my mom's truck and get a load of each so we won't have to worry about running out when the weather is yucky-cold.

4.  Trim hoofs -- all our goaties need footsie-trims to keep them in good condition.

5.  Get the two pups their shots and the female spayed before we end up with puppies!

If I get these things done we'll be in pretty good shape.  We should be able to plow through the list having several full days for me and the kids to be able to get busy.

We had visitors today -- my bestest friend and her four kids!  The weather was so nice that the kids spent most of the day playing outside, jumping over the creek (one fell in) and goofing around with the goats.  My friend's oldest girl fell in love with the kinder goats so it looks like our first kid or two is spoken for.

The bees were very active today with the warm weather -- tomorrow I think I'll open things up and check on their winter stores - I forgot to do that earlier this year and it's been to cold to do it for awhile.  I was really worried about the bees when the temps were down below zero a couple weeks ago - one night it was down to 17below and I was worried the bees were going to freeze.  There were quite a few dead bees being pushed out of the hive when it warmed up, but not too bad.  I'll have to read up on doing a little more winterizing to the hives in case it gets that cold again.  Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 50's again so I'll be firing up the smoker and donning the bee jacket to see how things are going.  I probably won't be able to do a good check on them again till it starts warming up next spring.

Tomorrow is also "axe day" for our last two turkeys - Santa Claus and Old Blue.  They will be our honored guests for Christmas dinner.  I butchered my first turkey the day before Thanksgiving and learned a lot so I'm thinking it will go quicker this time.  It's not much different than butchering a chicken -- a lot bigger though!

JennMarie