A Series of Unfortunate Events

This is my Spikey-boy-



This is Spike saying Hello!



This is Spike discovering my camera strap-



This is my camera being hurled to the ground, landing in wet straw and goat turds.



Archie - Wasn't me.

The Bright Side of Bad Weather

Last night we got wailed on over here in Western Washington. The winds were as high as 60 mph, and let me tell you, being inside a little old house in a little hollow on a peninsula doesn't help to lessen the feeling of living in a wind tunnel in any way. After a night of howling and banging, I was scared to go outside this morning and see what might be missing, and/or freshly impaled by a tree limb.

But the goats wait for no wimp, so I had just decided to suck it up and go outside for morning critter patrol when I felt my couch gently, rather soothingly, rock back and forth under me. Yes indeed, we had ourselves an earthquake.

It was a small one, especially by West Coast standards, just a lil' 4.2, but fresh on top of a clobbering windstorm it was a little unsettling.

I sat back down for a few more minutes to wig-out on facebook. Am I nuts or did we just have a little earthquake? Almost immediately, my cousin Jen seconded my quake theory, and a quick trip to the USGS website confirmed it. Yikes what a morning! When do the other plagues arrive? I'm hoping that the four horsemen of the apocalypse get food poisoning or take a wrong turn at Albuquerque or something on the way to my house. I've had plenty of excitement for one day, thanks.

Anyway, beyond the inconvenience of navigating my house by head-lamp and this morning's initial world-coming-apart-at-the-seams paranoia, all inhabitants of Boggy Hollow escaped mother nature's wrath unharmed, which I will call blessing number one.

Blessing number two came from the skies in the form of limbs and branches. The wind knocked down a lot of tender branch tips as well as quite a few heftier limbs. The goats LOVE a good fresh evergreen tree and there were literally tons of them laying in the streets throughout the city. I only needed to go about 20 feet from my front yard to collect a yard cart full of them from the street in front of my neighbor's house. I'd say that we jammed a good 30 pounds of Douglas Fir needles & branch bits into my cart, which will supplement the goats' hay & sweet feed rations quite nicely, for free.

I may go get another cart load from a little further down the lane, but for now I'm going to chalk up my free goat chow score and my safe little house as my wins for the day, and sit back with a hot cup of coffee and a blazing fire and just enjoy my many blessings, in whatever strange forms they choose to present themselves.

For my fellow Cheese Fiends

My homegirl, Suzanne over at Chickens in the Road is giving away a boatload of home cheesemaking supplies to one lucky winner.

Check it out here- Do you know Jack?

I'm not only hoping to win these, but to use them soon too, as we *think* our little goat princess is going into heat, and have found a sweet boy to breed her to which should equal goat cheese for us as early as late spring. Viva el queso de cabra!