Blue Skies Smiling at Me

Yesterday afternoon the snow stopped falling. I really don't know how many inches fell. Seemed like 15 or more. Kind of hard to tell as some if it drifted and most of it was compressed in the middle by a thick layer of ice. When the sun came out the sky was the most incredible blue. Violet-tinged cobalt faded into crystal clear cerulean. After days and days of white and gray the effect was rather shocking.

I enjoyed spending part of my day working in the barn. Barn maintenance has become a bit challenging as we apparently have a burst pipe somewhere. The water has been seeping into a couple of areas where animals bed down, soaking into the pine shaving and old hay deep litter. As Philip and the kids worked on other areas of the farm, I attempted to discover a way to drain the lagoon. First, a truck load of soaking straw and mud slurry had to be pitched out of the barn. Then I dug a little trench, trying to get the muck water out. I thanked the Lord that the temperatures were warm enough to work up a sweat, allowing me to shed my coat, but cold enough to keep the mess from smelling terribly bad.

I wish I could say that I was completely successful in my efforts. Well, much mess was removed from the barn and the lagoon is draining slowly, but I guess we need to spend a few hours out there tomorrow to totally clean it out. The clock was working against me and I had to shower and head to another friend's farm that afternoon. It was probably a good thing to have a time limit. Sometimes it is easy to get obsessively engrossed in farm chores. I can get very hyper-focused, which is a helpful tool at times, but can also lead to body injury.

Working in a flooded, manure and straw lagoon isn't terribly fun. But it felt good to tackle a problem, knowing that it was a part of my job of taking care of our animals. We all had some nice chat time, the sheep and the cows and the goats and the pigs and I. And the chickens and the ducks and the geese. The work took all my physical strength and that was helpful to keep my mind off of worrying problems that I can't control or fix.