First the Really Good News: I have got my hay locked in for the winter. I bought some square bales from this lady a couple of years ago, but had lost her phone #. I found an ad from her at a local feed mill, so called her about some round bales a couple of days ago. I went to look at it yesterday and immediately bought 5. It looks and feels really nice. I am going to see how the critters like it, and how long a bale lasts, then call her to reserve as many as I will need to take me through to April, when I HOPE my pastures will be coming up. She will store what I need in her barn, and then have it delivered as needed. That is a great weight off my shoulders. I was starting to worry about finding enough hay. I have fed the small square bales until now, but apart from the fact that fewer and fewer farmers are putting them up - they are a lot more expensive than the large round bales. I plan on unrolling one at a time, and storing it in the south barn under cover, feeding the critters with it twice a day.
The Bad News was that as I was about to leave this lady's barn, having bought four small bales to tide me over till the round bales can be delivered, my van refused to start. It had been working perfectly well until that second... Then... nothing. We tried all the usual stuff - checking battery connections and grounding connections, looking at fuses, etc. We tried jump-starting from her truck. All to no avail. Not so much as a glimmer or a click. (sigh). So I had to call poor Jim, my dear, long-suffering son in law and favorite mechanic. He ran me through a couple of things that might be wrong - but alas, they weren't the ones. So I had to bum a ride home from the generous hay lady and Jim had to spend his evening travelling up to Muskogee to look at the van.
The Could Have Been Worse news is that it was, in fact, a ground wire that was not quite tight enough so at least it didn't involve something time consuming and expensive. For which I am truly grateful.
The other Good News is that I scored 10 big fat chickens at a great price from a local processor. These are HUGE. They look almost like small turkeys. They were free ranged during the day and I understand that they were fed organic feed. They are now settled comfortably in my freezer. Between these, and the ones we processed at Amanda's a few weeks ago, and the few cockerels that are running around here and surplus to needs, I now have enough to last me probably a year. Which reminds me - I still have another large chest freezer to inventory and I need to empty and defrost my upright freezer so I have room for the piggy that we are processing this weekend. Always something.
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