January 2017- A Look Back

 January is my least favorite month, for obvious reasons.  It's the month the winter really begins to show it's face and the cold and snow settle in. The first week of January we received about 6 inches of snow.  It was just enough for the kids to go sledding, have a snowball fight, miss almost a week of school and then it all melted.

The goats didn't seem to mind the snow, but the chickens wouldn't even get out of the coop. We were finally able to catch up all the feral  barnyard mix birds that were hatched out over the summer and had gone rogue.  i was able to give away 8 pair of chickens. :)

  My baby boy turned 15, this January. He requested a Portal cake, which is from the video game Portal.  2 days after his birthday is my mom's birthday and also the anniversary of our house fire. So January is always sort of a roller coaster of emotion.

This January started off with a snow storm, but seemed to be ending pretty mild. Then on the last day of January, it decided to remind me of why i dislike this month. We had crazy wind that 'blew up' my greenhouse. It literally blew the front doors in, and then blew all the panels off the back and roof.  

We were able to collect all of the panels, which were blown into the chicken pen and thankfully trapped by the fences.  One of the doors was bent in a number of places.  i think we'll be able to put it back up, but it will no longer slide along the track and function as a door.  i believe all the panels are undamaged, so we do need to get them put back in place. 

i hadn't even thought to look for other things damaged by the wind, but when i went out to collect eggs the next day my goat Delilah walked right up to greet me.  i was totally surprised and went over to her pen to find out how she had escaped, and found a large pine tree had fallen and taken out part of the back fence.

Kenan got out his chainsaw and cut up the tree and then was able to repair the fence, and i got the goats back in the pen. i have no idea how long they had been out, but they seem to be okay.  Not a great start to the year, but it definitely could have been worse.