Reprieve.

Apparently, severe head colds are going around -- the woman and her husband who were taking part in the Great Llama Swap this past weekend, were both felled by it.  This did not bother me one little tiny bit.  It gives me another week to enjoy His Fuzziness.  I did manage to get him wormed which was like a mini rodeo.  Hey!  Another Olympic Farm Sport - llama rasslin.  Thank goodness I had the presence of forethought to keep his halter on.  He forgave me after a couple graham crackers.

Cookie continues to heal and is almost totally back to his large, sweet, normal self.  He is still bewildered that the kibble dishes aren't magically filled and persistently remain empty.  I have found that his being hungry is the best way to insure that he eats his twice-a-day canned food so fast he doesn't notice the crushed amoxicillin mixed in it.  Ditto with Bernie's twice a day, hidden-in-the-(insert here) pills.  We've gone through the cooked ground venison and just finished the cooked organic chicken livers.  Next is the free ranged cooked chicken.  Heaven knows how I'll top that -- she gets dosed until February 10!  Maybe I should hard boil some of Melanie's quail eggs and hide the pills in that...or a little pate de fois gras?  Shingles on toast?

Sunday morning brought a temperature of 1 degree.  Thank goodness the sun came out and raised the temps to the low 20s by afternoon.  This morning - same time - the temperature was 30 degrees.  Is it my imagination, or is this one wild winter?  Rain is forecast by the time I get to drive home.  Sigh.  I am hoping it doesn't start freezing.  If it does, I may just hang up my Muck boots and get out my skates.  I'll give that Apolo guy a run for his money!

Since none of my planned activity happened on Sunday, I took advantage of the free time and finished up my seed order.  I am expanding my raised bed garden again this spring - one more long bed that will run perpendicular to the five existing beds.  This one will be about 10-12' long, depending on how long the boards are that I have amassed in my 'wood pile'.  I am going to use this bed for squash planting.  Thanks to Hoosier and the sheep, their old paddock is about 6" deep with a glorious mixture of old hay and manure.  Black gold.  All I have to do is shovel it up and cart it out of there.  Yeah, right, that's all.  I think I might start looking for a hardworking, non-whiny high school kid that doesn't feel entitled to $30/hour. 

I'm finally starting to get into the swing of winter - I'm reading (!) at night, there's knitting on the needles, and my garden is getting organized (on paper).  There would have been fires in the fireplace, too, but with temperatures plummeting overnight, I cannot bring myself to allow all that heat to go up the chimney while I'm waiting for the embers to cool.