November 1, 2007 

4:30 am  

t was really windy tonight. It must have stopped about 2 am, for that is when I fell into a deep slumber and had weird dreams. Then something in my dream didn't sound right..

.. I woke up to hear.. Pushing? It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. Nope. I went back to the bedroom and opened a window. It was coming from the barn area. Hogs! In their pen or out? Out I decided. I grabbed some clothes and got dressed (and found I went down another size of jeans WooHoo!) and wide eyed "Blossom" and complaining "Crystal" looked in appeal to me as hogs were meandering all over the place in the barnyard. Determining that the calf and goat were safe for now, I went back into the house until it is daylight. My plan is to open the hog gate, dump their feed in and slam the gate shut and barrier however they got out. I am glad they are leaving in a few days. This is the worst batch of pigs we have had. I know I will have a bunch of repair to the hog barn to do before next years piglets. The pen is very stout. The hog barn itself got very beat up this year.

While I am up and all refreshed from my early morning jaunt in the cold, I am thinking about Christmas gifts (as I munch on last nights caramel corn and drink some lemonaide). I make most of my Christmas gifts, but I do have my eye on a few things for my mom at the Cottage Boutique. They hand make one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry called "Gifts of the Earth". Check them out!!

9:30  am Update: 

The Single Homesteader Challenge #1

Well.. I just had my first challenge as a 'once again' single homesteader. When it was light enough I went out to investigate how and why the pigs were out. The scene was very different than I had imagined it would be. This is one of the reasons you do not attach anything like a fence or building to a tree. Before we moved here, someone had the mentality of "if the tree is in the right place, nail a board or fence or gate to it; if the tree is in the almost in the right place (within 5 feet to or fro), nail a board or fence or gate to it". This was no exception.

With the high winds, the poplar tree, which was evidently rotted at the bottom, fell over into the hog pen, with part of the fence and gate and part of another part of fence between the gate and the hog house. I dumped a bag on feed on the ground to keep the hogs busy and turned "Crystal" and "Blossom" loose in the backyard.

Quickly assessing the situation, I go hunt for what tools I have left here after my ex-boyfriend moved out. No saw (even my Christmas tree saw I brought up from Oregon is gone), no chainsaw, no hand saw... so I find a dull axe (and nothing to sharpen it) and proceed to cut the tree a bit above the fenceline.

The pigs are starting to get curious and I have to shoo them away. They are rather pushy at this size and can be scary. One got tapped in the nose with my boot a couple times. Another awesome factor in this, is the ground is frozen in many places, so I did not have to be in mud while cutting the tree. When I had cut about halfway through the tree, I slid a steel pipe under it and lifted to break the tree. With the dull ax and no gloves, I was getting a blister. Enough of that!
 

I had some 'ouchy' yellow rope from when I brought windows up from my mom's last month, found a huge bolt and drove that into the ground, hoisted the tree and fence into an upright position and tied it into place. Everything wants to go into the hog pen, so there is good tension on the rope. Just in case, I braced it with a fencepost. It will have to do until the hogs are butchered around the 9th and I go about fixing it properly.

I will need to walk my fenceline in the back again and see how many trees came down on the fence as well last night.