After waking up to let one of the dogs out 3 or 4 times last night when she whined to go the bathroom, and listening to the ducks periodically break out in a quacking chorus every couple of hours all night long, we were all wide awake and ready to get to work at 7am. I quickly realized that poor Hoover didn't actually have to go to the bathroom. She was just out of water and wanted to go get a drink in the fountain. Note to self: fill doggy water bowl before bed.
We needed to get to work early this morning to get everything done and get back home by 10am to decorate the tree with our scouting troop. I had stayed up late cutting and painting ornaments for the tree and prepping supplies, so I was all ready to go except for the farm chores.
Milking the goats took SO much longer than we thought it would. All the times we'd practiced, we'd only milked them for 3-5 minutes each and I guess the owners finished milking after we left, but we quickly found out that it was at least a 30-45 minute job per goat, twice a day. Oy. The girls split the tasks among themselves. A was in charge of letting the chickens and ducks out of the pen and feeding them, and C and K helped milk the goats. This first day they did pretty good, getting at least half done per goat before asking me for help. I fed the goats and helped finish up milking and then we all headed inside to feed the dogs. It was almost 9 by this point and we hadn't even gotten dressed yet or had breakfast. I ran in to take a quick shower once the dogs were fed, and we left the house around 9:15 for our 35 minute drive. Not quite enough time to swing by the house like I'd hoped, but definitely enough time to hit the McDonald's drive-thru on the way down.
We pulled in to the parking lot downtown at exactly 10am on the dot. Despite the fact that I was supposed to be the first one there, I was actually pretty proud of us for pulling it off as well as we did.
Decorating the tree was pretty fun, with all the girls taking turns making the ornaments and hanging them on the tree. It took about 1.5 hours to finish, but it was nice to take a little breather and just watch them work.
working on the ornaments
the decorating crew (minus my kids, of course)
the finished product - decorated with uniforms and handmade ornaments. Cute, right?
After the tree was all finished, we headed back to the house to prep the food for Thanksgiving. I was cooking this year, so I needed to make sure everything was set before I headed back up to the farm. I prepared the brine and bagged the turkey up in it, dug out all my recipes and checked supplies, measured and packed the ingredients for the things I'd be cooking ahead of time at the farm tonight, and packed a whole bunch of food for us to eat up there for the next few days. Thankfully, I only needed a couple of things at the grocery store because the place was a madhouse being that it was the day before Thanksgiving. After we shopped, we stopped for a relaxing lunch before heading back up to the farm. I knew we'd be getting back up there just in time to milk the goats again at 3:30, so I wanted to relax just a little bit first.
The goats were a little less cooperative this time, but we managed to get the job done. We've gotten a teeny-tiny bit of clean milk for us to use, and quite a bit of dirty milk that's only good for the dogs to eat (their meals are served to them like a bowl of cereal) or for making soap, which is what the goat owners do with the milk they collect from these goats. By the time we were done milking, it was just about time to lock the chickens and ducks in their pen for the night. We fed the dogs once more and then settled down to relax for the rest of the evening knowing we'd have one more crazy day tomorrow, and then hopefully some days to enjoy this place more before heading back home.
C milking Jan
K milking Robin
Milagro, the baby boy goat. He is Robin's baby, but is now separated in his own area since he kept drinking all her milk.
When we came back up here tonight, K accidentally dropped one of the grocery bags, and unfortunately it was the one that had my baking dishes in it and my casserole dish shattered. We hunted around here and found one that I can use in its place, thankfully. Tonight I plan to make the pumpkin pie and also bake and mash the sweet potatoes so they're ready to go right in the oven when I get home tomorrow. The more I get done here, the better.
Last night A and C slept on the fold-out couch with the dogs and tonight K wanted to. So, I made A and C pick a number from 1-20, and A won it, landing C on the big bed with me for the night. She wasn't terribly happy about it, but soon enough they were all sound asleep. I joined them shortly afterwards, pretty tired myself from the long day we'd had.
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