Quiet

Sometimes I want to freeze a moment, or scenario, and save it forever.  Lukie is sleeping, New Age music is playing softly, doggies have gone back to bed, the sheep are grazing on the hillside giving me a lovely view out my window, and my tummy is full of wheat toast with butter and jam with Most Pulp OJ.    Life is good.  It will be even better if I can get some hay cut this weekend.  There is a break in this hot, moist, rainy weather or so the forecast promises.  There are so many variables that come into play here.  Julia wants to do my hay again this year but her rake is broken, her son is working at the Chobani factory all weekend, and Matt cannot take any days off to help me roll the round bales into place in the mow once they are delivered to the barn - if we are so lucky.  If I can pull this off it will be a miracle.  One can only live, hope and try her best.  I'm getting some raking done in the barn.  Toughest part is hauling it out to the compost pile, which is across a rutty lane and up an embankment.  My good wheelbarrow is broken due to students I hired filling it up too much with chicken manure and breaking the handles off when they tried to lift it.  I use a plastic garbage can which must be dragged. Trick is don't fill it too much.  I like having a clean concrete barn floor to walk on to the milk house and out Thor's door.  Forget about the rest of the gigantic barn where the animals live.  There is a hay pack two feet high again.  I think my friend Mary is right when she says if you feed baleage - pickled hay wrapped in white plastic bags - there is much less waste.  If Julia can't get dry hay done for me I will ask her to wrap the wet grass in bags and feed it that way.  Trouble is, the bales weigh much more and can't be moved without a tractor with a special forking implement.  The 1946 tractor my spouse chose to sink the last three years of his life into doesn't even have a front loader and I doubt if it could pick up a heavy baleage bale even with the proper implement.  The sheep have to eat and I will deal with whatever challenges are presented to me, but, heck, I'd love it to be a little easier.  In the meantime, I have to find a used washer.  My dyes are here from Dharma and I need to get cooking.  I have some lovely black fleeces I am going to skirt and sell as is, a market I have not taken advantage of the way I should have long time ago.  This is what I'm talking about when I say I need a partner to tell me - Maggie!  Get those black fleeces ready to sell!  I didn't even have any ready to put out at Bouckville.  Hannah is coming on Friday and I'm looking forward to doing some wet felting with her.  It's a lot of work, but oh, so wonderful.  She is very talented, tall and strong, and does the most amazing needle felted embellishments.  If we can get some hats and bags done she can take them home and do them up.  Better get cracking and let the day begin.