January 3, 2022 - Day 32

Yeah, there isn't a post for Jan 2. It was Tom's holiday, so we didn't do much that is farm related. 

Just as a reminder - I post the day after during this particular period of 100 days. So far it is working out alright.

January 3 - Well, it was a busy one and almost all of it was away from home. 

As per usual the critters had to be taken care of. However, since releasing Big Momma from the breeding pen, the feeding dynamic with the four boys has become a little chaotic. She's a Queen and the boys are the jesters. Still working that out really. 

The rest of the morning consisted of me running to the feed store because someone didn't think to replenish the pig feed...hmmmm... the person who went to the feed store as recently as the day before to get straw and hay. The woman who helped me says "Oh, yeah I remember seeing him here..." 

sigh

Then to the bank and then to the church. It had been well over a month since I last helped restock the food pantry. So off I went. That pretty much took the rest of the morning and saw me returning home around 1pm. 

I took some down time once I returned home, but not too much. I had feed bags to dump into bins and out of date dairy and bread to take care of as well. My goal is to only make a trip to the feed store once a week. I'm not sure that I can actually take care of more than 4 bags (40-50 lbs) AND the discarded food pantry items. This was an anomaly though, trips to the feed store should not happen on a Tuesday - unless someone doesn't say that the pigs need food. So, if needed I'll purchase more than need in a week and store it. However, until I can get the garage organized and a place designated for feed, we'll continue to go once (or twice) a week. 

By the end of the day, my body was tired and I was feeling the weight of the day on my back. Fortunately a good night's rest usually does the trick, but at the time of this writing I am a little sore. I really need to move more!

I did notice that big momma was in the pig shelter - so I figured that the boys wouldn't have a space to crash for the night. So, straw on the other side of the shelter under the tarp roof should do the trick...

Little Zeke got to settle in first. After I was done for the night, I saw all of them making their way over to their new space. They have each other to keep warm and they really do adapt quickly.

December 22, 2022 - Day 25

Today I had my Good Friend Christmas gift exchange and coffee date. 

Every year for many years I have been meeting up with a couple of friends, really good friends, like 20+ years friends to exchange gifts. It took a while before we decided to go out for coffee - and it's been a lot of years before we could do this during the day. This year friend #3 retired, so it was a morning coffee date! This works for me, since I end up waking up so early most days and go to bed early most of the time. So, we met up at Latte Da in Vancouver and spent an hour or so catching up and drinking coffee and enjoying good fellowship. We met up early instead of at lunch which is what sounded like fun to me. Newly retired friend wanted to get a head start on her travel to Southern Oregon for Christmas with her folks and there was a severe weather storm in the forecast. We drank our coffee, opened our gifts and then went our separate ways. 

On my way home I dropped by WinCo to get some treats for the pigs. I scored by finding a 25 pound bag of juicing carrots and some cheap apples. Normally I would look for organic produce, but it's Christmas and I wanted to just grab whatever was available and get the heck out of there. The church food pantry had bags of baby carrots so I grabbed a bag and did a little extra "shopping" and then went home. 

This was the extent of my exciting day - nothing terribly exciting - except my Good Friend Christmas.

This will be the last post until next Monday. I'm going to give myself a break this weekend and enjoy the holiday weekend. 

Merry Christmas! See you next week...