Signs of Spring...

I've now seen a couple robins... the geese are back... there's mud, water, snow and ice everywhere... and I've been fighting a "plague" for almost 2 weeks now. Yep, must be spring.

I took a few pics on Monday and I finally posted them to the FHH album today. Mostly pics of the mud, water, snow and ice... nothing too exciting. Of course, just 2 days later, it looks all different again... yesterday was really quite warm during the day (+12 C)... then it got very cold and windy last night (-15 C with windchill) and was actually snowing for a while. Lovely. It didn't stick, but it was swirling around and pelting us in the face when we did night feed / check on the goats.

The mud was deep yesterday too... almost got the minivan stuck in front of the feed building (where I always drive!) It was getting iffy whether I'd get it out... I did... but it left deep ruts which I had to tamp back in with my rubber boots later.

I've not been doing much this week... mostly sleeping and whining about being sick. I'm exhausted and sleep at least once during the day, sometimes twice! Then I sleep pretty much all night too. Disgusting.

Shawn's feeling some better, not 100% yet... but going to work and all that.

The new goat pen is working out well... there is still mud and standing water where there are no pallets and mats, but up on the pallets and mats its nice and dry. They rarely go off their little "life raft" unless they are playing and ramming all about, as they like to do.

The one problem we're having with the pallets and mats is that we had to put the pallets down on the snow and now the snow is melting unevenly underneath. So some of the pallets are on a bit of an angle right now and the mats slip a bit. Nothing horrible or dramatic and I just push them back into place when I go out.

A few more days of warm and maybe the snow underneath will be gone... I can dream. Or maybe we'll pull up the pallets and mats for a day and let the sun at it... maybe this weekend if its nice. We'll see how the next couple days go and how bad things shift. We expected this to happen, so its not a surprise and they are still way better off in the new pen than the old.

That's a nice thing about goats compared to horses. You could never put horses up on pallets, they'd just bust 'em. You could never put horses on something so sloped either, for fear they pull tendon or something... but goats... they LOVE uneven ... they LIVE for hilly slopes. They purposely walk along the sloped edges because its FUN. Strange little animals. Plus I only use ONE bale of hay a WEEK! :)

Shawn went down to the basement last night to check for flooding and there was almost no water at all.... a tiny little damp patch and that was it. Considering all the rain and melt we've had this week, that's surprising... last fall we had a little more down there, but still just a couple small puddles, nothing dramatic.

Not much else new around here... *cough, cough* *sneeze, sneeze, sneeze*
-- Lisa the plagued