Snow

Thanksgiving snow.  First day of December snow.  Putting up the Christmas tree snow.

I like snow.

Quiet, soft, whispering, falling, white, cold snow.

The Long Winter

This winter has been hard.  Since moving to Ohio, the snows have been a change from the winters I knew as a child.  Never did I live anywhere that got this much snow.  A little?  Yes.  A few snow days off from school?  Yes, but never a lot.  Now we are in Ohio, and I cannot say that anymore.  I like the snow.  The beautiful flakes quietly falling transform the out-of-doors into a winter wonderland.  This year; however, I am ready for the end of winter.

Our driveway - can you see the culvert and miss the ditch?

The road in front of our house.  Yes, that is our mailbox.

The driveway view of our house and the truck that is not going anywhere any time soon.

The deck

The animals are surviving.  All but one.

Sunny, our first goat, had her kid early during a night of 40mph winds with snow on the ground.  To everything there is a season, and this was not the time for this kid to be born.  It died, and I found it two Wednesday mornings ago.  After calling the local 4-H goat club leader to ask her what to watch for next, I kept an eye on Sunny while she was in the process of passing the afterbirth.

Friday morning when I went out to check on the animals, Sunny did not come with the other goats as usual.  She did not even get up.  She ate a little hay that I fed her and barely touched the water.  I called again and was told that help could not come until that afternoon.  I understood that.  That afternoon I went out to check on them again.  Sunny had moved outside to where we feed them their hay.  She looked like she did not care what happened to her next.  The goats were out of water so I trekked back in for more.  Help arrived after that.

They were a lot more experienced than me who has just started learning about goats and has a lot more to learn.  They checked her temperature - low and started giving her shots, but it was just too late.  She died while we were there.  It seemed to happen so fast in my mind.  She had been full of life just a day before and now the life was gone out of her.  Final.  Not coming back.  Sadness.  What could we have done differently to prevent this?  Regret.  I cannot change what has happened, but I can learn from this experience.  Then we had to fight to get the helpers' car up our driveway.  I thanked them profusely for coming over.  They were sorry that this has happened.  Sometimes it does.  That is life.  We have three more goats still counting on us.  Dependent on our not giving up on them.  We are cast down but not destroyed.  Determined to go on as good stewards learning as much as we can along the way.

"A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." - Proverbs 12:10 KJV

Winter Wonderland

The Winter Wallop has delivered two inches of snow here in southern Ohio, and more is falling. We woke up this morning to a day at home and a beautiful sight.