Yesterday we unexpectedly got 5 inches of thick wet snow in the morning. It came down fast. At 9:00 I went out and the netting over the pheasant pen was weighed down to the ground by the snow. I spent 1/2 hour clearing it off making me late for work. I called Tom about it and asked him to come home at lunch time from work to check on things. I then drove carefully to work, going around two trees down on the road and almost sliding in front of a snow plow since I had a hard time stopping.

When Tom came home at noon he found out fence down, the dogs missing, several trees down in the yard and our tarp shelter collapse on his son’s car. He quickly found the dogs, then fixed the fence. He checked the pheasant pen which was OK. He then cleared the thick snow and then the tarp and poles from the car. He found a dent in the roof but otherwise it was OK. He then spent the rest of the afternoon clearing the trees out of the front yard. We lost a fair amount of the flowering cherry tree (which was flowering) that is in front of the house and a pine tree that fell right next to the power and phone lines to the house. We also lost a birch tree out front. Now it’s raining heavily and windy, and the next concern is flooding.

On a more positive note, our bottle fed goat kid is doing well. Her name is Gertrude (named after the JP Patches character for those of you from the Puget Sound region). She’s eating well and kicking up her heels. Tom takes her to work with him where she has become the office “princess”. Everyone is spoiling her rotten. Once we can stretch out her feeds more we won’t need to do the 2 AM feeds and then she won’t need to go to the office anymore either. For now we are enjoying her.

2007-02-25 02:02:30 GMT