Memory Lane

November 25, 1972 was a great day... Old Goat and I were married.  42 years later we are still going strong.

This Thanksgiving I went into the big city of St. Louis to spend time with my mother and stepfather.  They both keep a VERY busy schedule between family, church and the Battle of the Bulge Veteran's group.

Anyway, we stopped by the church late Thursday afternoon to do some quick decorating for an up coming event.  Walking around the "Old" church brought back some very fond memories of the events of 42 years ago.

The church was established in December of 1912 and it still has the same "country church" feel.

This is where our marriage began... oh SO long ago..

It's been a 42 year honeymoon.... 

Church Information

Blue Eyed Goat

It's fairly warm here today... 60 degrees..  I thought I'd try and get a few more pictures before my camera dies...  It's trying really hard.  I am now using the manual settings most of the time.   I got a fairly nice picture of one of our blue eyed goats and ran it through Photoshop... came up with this picture.

Baby it's cold outside!

The weather man told us this was going to happen... Weathermen lie a lot!  Not on Sunday...Started snowing before 8 a.m.

Still not noon...

Apparently I won't be going on any long walks for a few days.

Road trip to Granny's  The amount of snow varied a lot, pockets of heavy snow.  We had more snow at our house than Granny did, and it's only a 3.5 mile trip to her house.  A mile if you go through the fields.

Old mare Wendy sharing some grain with one of my "special" goats...

The critters are NOT HAPPY!  At least it will be gone in a couple days.  Goats have lots of shelters to keep them out of the wind and have dry bedding area.

Bird Nest and Adapting

Wow, guess winter is really here.  This morning it was 18 degrees with a light refreshing breeze... ha.  We are still in much better shape than our friends West and North of us.  We do have a little bit of snow in the forecast for this weekend..we shall see what happens.

As I went up to the barn this morning to take care of the critters this little used nest caught my eye.  I don't usually stop and look at a "used" nest but this one looked a little different to me.  It is amazing how the animals and birds adapt to their surroundings.  I have no idea what type of bird built this next, I guess that really doesn't matter.  What I thought was interesting is the fact that they used all the resources available to them.  Small twigs, grasses, dog hair, horse hair and goat hair to build their nest.  My camera is not the greatest for close up pictures but you should get the idea.  The long black strands are from the horse, the long white hair is from the dog (s), and the shorter fine white hair is from the goats.  All this in one little bitty birds nest..

Ready for Winter Outage

We are finally getting an electrical upgrade that we have needed for a long time.  

We have been lucky, in the 25 plus years we have lived here, the longest we've ever gone without power is 10-12 hours.    January 2007... horrible ice storm, we listened to cedar trees snapping under the weight of the ice all night long.

With this new box we will have a quick connect to our generator if needed.

We will be able to keep our generator in a "shelter" and keep the basics running if there is an extended electric outage.

With the upgrade came a new meter with main breaker switches.  

We are ready for winter!  Sure hope we don't ever have to use these wonderful additions!

Random Shots Nov. 2, 2014

November 1, 2014 was a COLD start to a new month, November 2, 2014 turned out to be much milder.  I decided to take advantage of one more beautiful day.

We had several days of showers last week, just not enough to create a mess.  Creeks are still dry.

This old truck body has always been a story waiting to be told.  We have no idea what it is or how long it's been there.  We do know that it's been there at least 35 years.  It is full of dirt and gravel, and hopefully no bones.. ha..

 

 We grow rocks here.  Hence the name Black Rock Ranch... this shows what the trees around here grown in.