August

Hugslut has been downsized. The company that had hired her promising they were going to be fully remote, decided that they want their remote people to visit offices every month or three and since she's the only one they have in this province they were just like "too inconvenient. bye". We'll be okay for a while. No panic. Hugslut will get a new job but it's worrying and annoying.

We've been able to eat more and more from our own production. This brunch was all ours except the little bit of store cheddar I shredded on top for colour. The cheese and milk and eggs inside the quiche as well as the green onions, tomato, and sage flowers were all from our property. Eating flowers just feels so decadent.

My bloodwork came back showing completely normal B vitamins (which is good because it means my intestines are actually doing their job and haven't been damaged by the occasional gluten/wheat/whatever) but it ALSO showed that my thyroid has stopped putting out the hormones it's supposed to! I'm on daily pills now to replace my thyroid hormones but it could be weeks before I'm feeling better due to how hormones work. Meds usually do a job directly (eg: pain killers blocking off the signal catchers so your brain doesn't get the signal) but hormones are more like instructions to other body areas to make more or less of other things so the hormone level needs to go up and the rest of my body needs to get the rest of the stuff back into gear and then there will be repairs of things that got shoved to the side as resources dwindled, so it might be a whole year to get back to "normal". I have more blood work after 4 weeks of pills to see if dosage is correct. We may have to modify up or down from here.

Marsha's baby chicks are growing fast. They're almost the same size as the rest of the flock now with a lean/teen kinda physique. At least two "tween" roosters are just now starting to crow. They are adorably bad at it. One of them I thought was a dog choking and wheezing under our deck, but the other has a decent little "oodle-ooo" which will probably develop into a nice big crow as he grows. The coop is a bit crowded now as the roosts don't have enough space for 16 full sized birds. I do have a plan to fix that and have even bought the wood, but with my low energy and everything else going on, I haven't got to upgrading the roosts yet.

In the discussions with the vet I found out that he doesn’t recommend castration until 3 months because the small amounts of hormones before puberty kicks in allow their urethra to grow adequately and early castration can lead to UTIs or bladder crystals. I was a bit nervous because they can hit puberty and manage impregnating a doe at 4 months and we did not need any incestuous whoopsi-babies, but the vet assured me we’d get them before that happened (and he was right). What I was NOT expecting about waiting the full 12 weeks before castration was how big they would grow. They are almost already as big as their mom was at one year old. The vet came by for their vaccine booster and castration just this week and I assisted by holding them still.

We used freezing of course (we’re not cruel) but if you think about going to the dentist and how with all the freezing nothing actually hurts per say but … you can still tell that things are getting yanked around in there… and you’re definitely sore and swollen for a bit after the freezing wears off… yeah… they were not happy campers.

In addition to being too big to sit in my lap anymore without pretty much guaranteeing a broken nose for me (we had to do the whole thing with them standing (standard for this procedure/age)), their balls were HUGE! I mean, It didn’t look like it when they were still in the fuzzy lil nutsacks but omg! So here’s this cute lil goat, about the size of a border collie?, and the vet is taking out these testicles the size of jumbo chicken eggs! I’m still kinda baffled about how they both fit in there. (I’d share photos but no one wants to see that.)

It’s been a few days now and the lil guys are healing well. No outward sign except the small scabby spot on their sacs and the fact that neither wants to roughhouse with each other yet (maybe another couple days) but they are eating and running around and all that jazz (They did daintily tip-toe around for a day but I don't blame them).

The hurricane went by without a bit of rain or bother. I kinda wished it had come a bit closer so we could get some rain on these wildfires. They're nowhere near us but when the wind blows just right you can still smell just a bit of the smoke on the wind.

Our power is going to be shut off for two days this week to allow the battery bank to be installed. We're hoping the solar panels plus this whole home battery bank will mean uninterrupted power (at least for the key systems) through the winter storms. Unfortunately for this week, no power means no water pump (we're prefilling buckets for critters and kitchen pots for us and the bath tub for flushing) or wifi (and our cell service is dismal in our property so no internet access really).

It's gonna be an interesting couple of days considering most of our activities are computer/electricity based. We have plenty of games so it's not that we'll be bored and I can even finish my audio book from the library as I plan to recharge my phone off the laptop or car, but I can't really say I'll be too productive since I have to stay at the house for when they need inside. This means I can't just take the laptop to a library or McD or something so I can't really write a blog-post or work on my programming project as the laptop battery will give out long before the two days is up(Part of the reason why I'm posting now.

I can't use the power tools to work on the barn improvement projects, can't use the stove or hot water tank for cheese making or canning(or cooking), can't use the lawnmower because the batteries will need to be recharged before I'm done, and cleaning the house, laundry, etc takes water... preferably HOT water. :-p

I'm excited about all the progress we've been making and looking forward to feeling more capable and anxious to get working on more things so I'm often a whirlwind of nerves but, sometimes I do manage to just stop a second and enjoy. This was the view on my way back from the barn one evening. Taking a deep breath and really looking at the beauty around us that I didn't have to do a thing to partake of... well sometimes that's a good reminder that slow progress is still progress and where we are now is also good.