10.06.07
Famous last words, #283
“Vi, what have you done with your diaper?”
The Boss, uttered just before hanging up the phone with me while I was returning from the lumber yard this afternoon.
10.05.07
How deep IS this rabbit hole, really?
So, The Boss is about to have a kid.
No, not that kind of kid. One of her Nigerian Dwarf goats is pregnant and about to give birth. So, The Boss is hustling because we just can’t seem to keep Mr. Handy engaged in building the goat barn.
Oh, see, there I go again, getting ahead of myself.
Let’s recap: seven goats (soon to be eight), six sheep, a baker’s dozen of chickens (even though our Siberian dispatched another hen and The Boss sold off four roosters for $14 — trust me, I’d rather have the $14), two rabbits, two guardian dogs (welcome to the family Loki), two cats, and two dogs as pets.
It certainly looks like a ranch. Kinda smells like one too.
As part of this, The Boss has been on me since the beginning of the year to get a goat barn put up. Of course, here we are in October, the goat barn is about 15% complete, and it’s getting tougher to keep Mr. Handy engaged on it, for whatever reason. Of course, it’s built to withstand the ages (i.e. it’s overbuilt), hence it takes longer, involves a fair bit of timber framing (okay, post-and-beam, but who’s really checking) and is now expected to be twelve feet tall.
Honestly, it looks like a tower over on the far side of the yard. Of course, there’s trees all around, so you almost can’t tell, but it’s still going to be tall enough that we will be able to put a loft up above (for hay and grain storage — yes, this is a real barn, I’m telling you).
But in order for it to minimally work for us, we need to have the roof up and floor put down. The walls can be tarps for now, until we’re able to get siding (or boards and battens, depending on how rustic we want this sucker to look) up on it.
Yup, The Boss has a plan, yessiree.
The other interesting thing was that the youngest goat, named Happy by our kids, is (or more pointedly, was) a buckling — a young male goat. Now, considering his genetics, or lack thereof, The Boss decided it was time to wether Happy. That is, considering Happy was going around molesting the lady goats with his little winky hanging out in the breeze, and he doesn’t particularly have any traits or qualities that are worth propagating, his <ahem> nuggets were no longer considered mandatory equipment.
So, Happy has now become Un-Happy (The Boss jokes that he — or “it” — is now Anti-Happy, but that implies a gender change, not the same as being emasculated). Of course, I find it deeply troubling that a fellow male, however genetically distant, suffers genital mutilation, even indirectly, according to The Boss’ whimsy.
Note to self: keep The Boss happy, lest I become Un-Happy.