I left work a bit early yesterday. I closed a $23,000,000 deal which I knew nothing about prior to last Friday so I was beat. As I write this, we are closing a $150,000,000 loan, just waiting for a few more signatures and it’s closed. Not a bad week’s worth of work.
It’s so nice coming home to dogs. They are always so happy to see you. Quickly I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and took the dogs for a run on the ATV. When I got up to Red’s I saw that they were baling hay in the front field. I sat and watched for quite a while. The creation of those big round bales of hay is fascinating. I’ve done “haying” before, but we only did the small square bales. I hadn’t seen big round bales of hay until I moved to NC. The hay looks so pretty. A big improvement over last year when the fields were brown and ugly by this time.
I brought the dogs back and suited up to ride my bike. Of course, the dogs tried to follow me out the gate, but I told them they had to stay, that they couldn’t come when I rode this bike. Riding the bike is my time alone. Time to enjoy the feel of the bike under me, the road, the wind, and of course the pain, yes I am enjoying feeling the pain. Eventually the pain will stop, but almost ten years of not riding the bike is going to be difficult to overcome. I am amazed at my willingness to continue to ride the bike. I could have thought of a million excuses why I shouldn’t ride the bike: I was tired, I needed to clean and grind rabbits, I needed to clean my house, I needed to sit in front of the TV and drink wine, but I rode and I felt good when I got back.
Sound asleep this morning I rudely awoken by the sound of water running on the floor. What the heck I thought to myself. Did Fern have an accident? Nope, well, not that kind of accident. She chewed a hole in her canine cooler and it was emptying its contents all over the floor. Great. I got up and grabbed some towels to clean up the mess, put the dogs out for a few minutes, then went back to bed and slept soundly until 6. I’ve had two very good night’s worth of sleep and it feels wonderful.
Today we could wear jeans to work and the ones I have on used to be tight on me. They are now all but falling off. Guess I need to get a belt. I may be spending some money having my clothes altered. This is all a very good thing!
Now that the front field has been hayed and the bales made, I will be able to work Gel again. The hay bales will make perfect “panels” to work on driving. That will be on tonight’s agenda. I’m hoping to get out of the office early again today to get an early start on the long weekend.
I am going to look for a dairy goat to buy. Raw milk has many health benefits and I can make yogurt and cheese with it! I love goat cheese. Gathered another eight eggs this morning. Now if I can just get the garden in this weekend, I’ll be in good shape.
This weekend I’ll be going over to Wally’s so that we can worm the adult sheep, trim hooves as needed and tag the ewes and their babies with fresh tags. Wally has a stand that we can use to hold the sheep as we work on them, but getting some of those big sheep up onto the stand is going to be a trick. I have suggested that we set panels into an alleyway leading up to the stand and use Gel to push them through. This will be good practice for Gel who doesn’t like to push from behind or heel. I’m not looking forward to wrestling some of those sheep up on to that stand, and in fact, some probably won’t be able to go on the stand. After we finish the worming, trimming and tagging we’ll put them across the street onto fresh pasture.