Blustery

Nine o'clock and winding down after a long day.    Made a good stiff cuppa tea with this amazing blend put together by my shepherd friend, Jean Walsh, up in Jordanville.  I ran out of herbal tea bags and after rummaging around in my little kitchen I found a ball and bag of leaves, seeds and spices.  She calls it Organic Lemon Ginger and it contains chicory root, ginger root, orange peel, lemongrass, lemon essential oil, hibiscus flowers, coriander seed and cinnamon chips.  Wow, what a sturdy tea!  With the ball I can make the tea stronger.  I love it.  Think I'll start designing my own tea.  Lookout...Got my Christmas goodies out of the trailer to put together for some special people at school.  This time of year my soap and creme really comes in handy.  So many people are so nice to me and I like to remember them at Christmas, but there is such a weird vibe in the school with the terrible massacre of last Friday and the sudden tragic death of our building manager this week.  My throbbing ankle is not helping.  I told Annie today that I am very anxious to get ot her house and put my feet up, with Christmas happening all around me.  I will be a passive observer, which suits me just fine.  I have put on many magnificent Christmases.  It's my time to watch.  The weather is giving us a taste of winter with cold wind carrying icy bits of a rain threatening to turn into snow at any time.  I feel sorry for any animal out in this, and worry about the 40 year old mare down the road.  I offered the owner my barn but any further intrusion might be considered meddling.   The other way down the road has some poor chickens crowded into a pen on the cold ground with a loose tarp overhead.  There is no way for them to get up and roost, which is what chicken like to do at the first hint of darkness.  Two large barns sit behind this miserable little pen of frozen chickens and I wonder why the owners can't find a little corner up high for these birds.  I was in a similar situation with my sheep before I bought this magnificent old funky barn.  I had a flock of sheep and goats all trying to get their heads into a couple of lean-toes to get the rain and snow off their faces.  Don't tell me they don't care about cover.  I built a plastic hoop shelter out of cattle panels and a big sheet of plastic.  After they got over the flapping sounds they all squeezed in.  Now they have all the space they want with a decent hay pack to stay up off the ground...a little too much of a hay pack if you ask me, but here we are.   Love to see them cozy and dry munching on hay in the morning and evenings we are together.   Good to have shelter from the storm.  Have to bring more egg nog ingredients tomorrow.  We made it in art class.  Oh, my old mixer is getting a work out and I love to see the students making stuff.  The kids ran egg nog all over the special ed. wing.  So much fun.  My morning GED kids got wind of it and said they want egg nog tomorrow.  Had to buy more eggs - ouch - as my chickens are on their Christmas furlough.  Speaking of chickens...a certain person has promised me he will fix the chicken room so the wild girls I put in there can't escape.  They are making their way back into the milk room where they are roosting over my dye stove and washer.  Needless to say doing laundry is very tricky.  My dye stove will need a good shovelling and washing before I can fire it up for fear of starting a manure fire.  The month of January will see dye pots bubbling constantly - something which the milk room kitties love as the hot pots heat up the room.  Speaking of heat I better check my wood stove which wants to back draft in this wind.  The barn isn't shaking over my head the way it does in real storms...but they will come.  Oh, they will come.