My baby!

I’ll post a Mopple update tomorrow. In the meanwhile I want to share these pictures I took of Martok about an hour ago. My sweet, itty baby grew up practically overnight and now he’s a big, bruiser buck!

And right now he’s a big, bruiser buck living by himself since I moved Uzzi over to the round pen to start his harness goat training. I tried putting The Red Brothers in to room with Martok but while he’s okay with them most of the time, he occasionally decides to use one for a punching bag. That’s unacceptable, so they’re in the round pen with Uzzi for the time being. Uzzi is actually nastier to them than Martok is but it’s a larger area than the buck run and they can get away.

Once Mopple is banded (that’s going to happen soon, as he’s becoming seriously amorous and I can’t risk him impregnating my little ewes), Mopple and Edmund can live in the elder sheep pasture and The Reds can have the pen and Port-a-Hut they’re using now. Bon Bon’s children are staying in the elder pasture at the moment as they’re being weaned and The Reds can’t stay with them since The Reds have horns and Bon Bon’s twins are disbudded.

It is SO interesting figuring out who goes where, especially factoring in most goats’ propensity to beat the stuffings out of any goats smaller or weaker than themselves.

John made a singletree for my wagon shafts

John made a singletree to go with the shafts assembly for my sheep and goat wagon. He also explained how to make the entire assembly. I wrote it down and it’s now part of chapter 10 (Wagons, Ho!) in Get Your Goat. It looks and sounds complicated to me but he says anyone who is reasonably handy with tools can make the whole assembly in half a day, for about $30 in materials.

It’s still raining here and everything is seriously soggy. I’ll have to bathe Mopple before taking pictures again. His pretty white parts are now dingy yellow parts. Funny, dirt and discoloration are much more obvious on Mopple’s coat than the white woollies’ fleeces.

Still not finished

I didn’t make my book deadline and will be pushing hard for the rest of the week. Today’s weather didn’t help. We’ve had power outages and thunderstorms on and off for the past 24 hours, greatly interrupting my writing time.

I shot pictures of the wagon shafts yesterday and here they are. Tonight I asked John to explain, step by step, how he made them. To say I’m mindboggled is a vast understatement, so tomorrow, with the shafts in front of us, he’s going to try again. He says anyone reasonably handy with tools can make these. They are so nice!

Now I have to figure out where I put the singletree from my goat cart so he can put it on the wagon shafts for now. I packed everything when we moved our bedroom after last winter’s ice storm and it’s anybody’s guess which box it’s in. Organization is not a way of life at the Weaver household.

Time flies when you're having fun...

Today John asked me how soon I’ll be weaning Mopple.

“He’s only six weeks old!” I said.

Then I started thinking…hmmm. So I checked and he’ll be 10 weeks old on Tuesday. How can that be? My baby is growing up!

I’m not going to make my book deadline on Tuesday, but it will be a wrap by the end of the week. I have to bite the bullet and stop with these 18 hour days; I’m starting to make serious mistakes.

I started looking for my Resources .doc file this morning at 1AM—and it wasn’t there. Around midnight I cleaned my desktop of stuff I didn’t need anymore and emptied my Recycle bin. Apparently I also grabbed the Resources file by mistake. I had to resurrect it using a copy I saved last week, trying to remember what I’ve added since then. Ha!

John finished the shafts for my wagon today and they are awesome. I’ll shoot pictures tomorrow if it doesn’t rain. Now I’m dying to try it out but I have to finish Get Your Goat before I do. Waaa!

I’ve pretty much decided that I’ll finish The Red Brothers’ basic training this winter, then move Hutch in with Martok and Uzzi with Meegosh for awhile. Uzzi and Meegosh both have strong work ethics and Hutch, not so much. It would be nice to train Uzzi to drive next spring when he's a full two years old. Both pairs, Hutch and Meegosh, Martok and Uzzi, have been together since they were tiny kids. I hate separating them but they will still see each other every day.

For those who don’t know Uzzi, here he is. He’s a 17 month old Nubian wether. This is a favorite photo taken last Christmas that hints at what a character he is.

I’m back! (but not for long)

I’ve been offline since Friday. Our computers wouldn’t hook up with Centurytel, though precisely why, I don’t know.

When the Centurytel repairman crawled under my computer desk to check things out, he said, “I’ll have to remove this screen for a while.” It’s one of several small window screens I place in strategic locations when we have bottle babies in the house. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him it was there to keep a lamb from chewing the cords.

I probably won’t post again between now and next Tuesday. That’s when Get Your Goat is due. I am really burning the midnight oil (literally: it’s 11:48 as I write this). I seem to have hit a wall and I don’t like it!