An Untypical Typical Day

My day usually begins the same way. I wake up, turn on the light, get out of bed and head for the thermostat to turn up the heat. I usually set the thermostat for 62f at night so the house is usually pretty cold when I wake up. I have a space heater in my bedroom which I run at night when the temperature outside is low, which it was last night. After resetting the thermostat for 68f, I return to my warm bed.

Especially during the winter months, I am usually awake long before the sun even thinks about rising. So while I am waiting for the house to heat up I like to open my Bible and start reading from where I left off the day before. I enjoy snuggling under the covers, listening to the night sounds that I may hear, and contemplating on God’s Word and praying. It is such a peaceful time.

Right now in the earth’s solar cycle the sun starts to peek over the horizon around 7:05am. If I am up early, once the house is warmer I venture out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. I am a tea drinker so my first task is to make myself a nice warm cup of tea. Once that is accomplished it is time to make breakfast. While enjoying a warm breakfast I turn on the computer.

As soon as it is light enough outside I throw on my jeans and a coat and I am out the door to take care of the animals. I used to do this task in my PJ’s but somehow they kept getting muddy and wet so I now always put jeans on. This morning is extra cold, 31f with a wind chill factor of 13f, so I really bundle up. I put on a sweatshirt over my PJ top, then my winter coat, followed by an orange padded windbreaker and an orange knitted hat.

Often I am greeted at the front door by Tiger and Little Bit, the first two “employees” to come work at the ranch. Their job is rodent control. They have been here for 13 months and are very diligent workers. There has been a substantial decrease in rodents, especially mice, since arriving. I would much rather pay for their food and pet them on a regular basis then buy mouse traps and remove dead mice from the house.

The cats have wonderful accommodations in a cabin, turned kitty condo. Every morning I walk out to the kitty condo and scoop some food out of a bag and pour into their bowls. It does not matter if their bowls were empty or not, both cats will jump onto the counter and start feasting. I never leave without petting each kitty. Not only am I giving them love and attention, but I am feeling for prickly pear stickers or anything else that may be in their fur which needs to be removed.

After attending to the cats I turn my attention to the newest “employee”, Lawn Mower. Her job is weed removal and lawn mowing; she is also doing an excellent job. She has almost cleaned out all the weeds from the vegetable garden and I am expecting her to finish that job by planting season. Since her arrival I have spoken to several goat ranchers and consulted with a vet tech, so I am gaining some knowledge in goat care. I have also done some research on the Internet and for those who are interested, there is a great forum called The Goat Spot. On the advice of the vet tech I gave Lawn Mower a CD/T vaccination (Tetanus, Clostridium, Perfringens). I had never vaccinated anything before in my life, so this was a new experience. The hard part was trying to grab some skin on her rear end, as she kept turning around to look at me. But I eventually accomplished the goal. She didn’t even act like she felt a thing

Both the vet tech and the goat rancher instructed me to feed Lawn Mower about 1/2 cup of pellets twice a day. I have no idea what is in those pellets but she clearly loves them. Feeding her at first was a challenge because she refused to eat them off the ground. The first couple days I poured them onto a plastic frozen dinner tray and she gobbled them down, but she quickly started refusing to eat them. Not wanting the pellets to go to waste (they dissolve in rain), I stopped giving them to her. But somehow I discovered she would eat them out of my hand. Hand feeding a goat in the dark (Sunday mornings) or when it is cold and raining outside is no fun. The next time I drove to Kerrville I visited ranch style stores looking for a solution. The very last store I stopped at, a feed store, had just the perfect thing, a food trough/bowl that hooks to the fence. And the best part is Lawn Mower will eat out of it. So twice a day I pour her pellets into the feeder and she happily gobbles them down.

This morning is one of those cold miserable mornings that I do not want to be out in so I also threw a handful of alfalfa in the garden for Lawn Mower to munch on. She doesn’t need much as she also has some cedar branches to eat (she loves cedar needles). But since I knew it would be afternoon IF I decide to go outside to work (and let her out of the garden to graze), I wanted to give her some extra food in the morning.

Now that the goat was happily eating, I went off to check the rain gauge. As expected it is empty except for some dead bugs that somehow have fallen in and couldn’t get out. I dump the bugs out.

Usually I would return to the warm house but this morning’s sunrise is gorgeous and I have to take a few pictures. Then I return to the warm house, take all the coats, hat, and jeans off and put my PJ bottoms back on. I then log onto the CocoRaHS web site and record my rain gauge total.

It is one of those really cold cloudy mornings and the house just feels cold to me. It amazes me how much warmer the house feels when the sun shines through the windows, but today there is no sun. So I grab a magazine, return to my warm bed where the blankets and space heater keeps me toasty warm, and start reading.

Around 8:30am I suddenly remember the turkey. Last year I purchased 16 poults (baby turkeys). A friend raised the poults and in return I got some turkey meat and she got her foot in the door at being a turkey rancher. She had been raising chickens for eggs and meat for several years and was eager to start raising turkeys, but she could not afford the initial purchase. So we went in together. Turkey’s are a lot harder to raise I have learned and half the poults did not make it. A few months ago she selected the two largest birds and together we butchered them. Well, she actually butchered them and I assisted. The two turkeys have been in a neighbor’s freezer but recently I decided it was time to thaw one out and cook it. Because the friend did not want to pluck the turkeys by hand, she simply skinned it, which means roasting the turkey’s in the oven is out of the question. So this morning I removed the legs, thighs, and wings from the turkey and threw it in the crock pot with some vegetables.

Once that job was complete, I returned to my warm room. After a little reading and some phone calls, I decided to bring this computer into the bedroom. I cannot get online in my bedroom, which is a bummer, but I still have plenty of computer work to do.

The mail arrives around 11:00am and so I eventually put some clothes on and drove down to the mailbox. My weekly newspaper arrives on Thursday and I wanted to pick it up. Since it is a mile to the mailbox, I only pick it up a few times each week. Once back home I read the newspaper and then back to the computer.

Around 2:00pm for the first time today I noticed the sun shining through the window. I went checked to see the outside temperature and was pleased it finally warmed up to 40f. I normally prefer to go outside and work when the temperature is above 50f, but today I knew it was not going to get that warm. So I put on several coats and my orange knitted hat and ventured outdoors.

My first stop outdoors is to let Lawn Mower out to graze. I grabbed the 20 foot chain I attach to her collar and then headed for the garden. As soon as she saw me coming she ran up to the gate and started bleating. She always jumps on the gate but has learned to get down so I will open the gate. I then put her chain lease on, say okay, and off she runs to her favorite cedar tree to start eating.

By now both cats show up. I know they have been sleeping in the cabin all day, but when I am outside they like to be with me. I bend over and pet each of them quickly and then off to work. Right now I am working on three major projects.

1. Burning the many piles of dead cedar trees the previous owners left behind. A few days before Christmas the county finally lifted the burn ban and so like so many folks out here I have started setting those piles on fire to get rid of them. So far I have eliminated 5 piles, but there are many more to burn.
2. Collecting rocks for two major projects. One project is a raised garden bed inside the garden. The other project is a goat shelter I hope to build out of rocks/stones.
3. The third project is building a goat enclosure. That requires installing a fence and building the goat shelter.

Today I collect a few rocks and spend some time scraping dirt off a sheet of rock that will form the floor of the goat pen. Instead of laying down cement, nature has laid down a rock so large it can never be moved and will work great as a floor. I also take some time out to pet Tiger and Little Bit.

While I am working I keep an eye on Lawn Mower. She is just happy to be out and spends time running around and finding stuff to eat. Today she wants to be close to me so every time I walk to a different spot, such as to get a drink, she comes running. Then when she sees I am walking back to where I had been working a few minutes ago, she runs back to wherever it was she had been to continue eating. Lawn Mower clearly enjoys this cooler weather. But I don’t so after about an hour I put her back inside the garden. It is early but I know I won’t want to come back outside so I go ahead and feed Lawn Mower her afternoon pellets, which she gobbles down. I also give the cats a little bit more food and then I come inside the warm house.

When I come inside I smell the aroma of the turkey in the crock pot. I glance at the clock and know it is about done. I get the meat thermometer which confirms, dinner is done. I turn the crock pot off, but I am not hungry yet so I let the turkey just sit there.

Before going outside I had put the computer back on the dining room table where I normally keep it. Even though the sun had only been out for less than 30 minutes, I decide not to return to the bedroom but just work at the dining room table with a throw on my lap. I spent the rest of the day working on the computer, watching a few hours of TV, eating dinner, and reading.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder, so I have a feeling I will be spending some of the morning in my bedroom reading. Oh well, it won’t be long before the sun is up before I am done with breakfast and I am out the door before it gets too hot to be outside.