Surprise!

On Tuesday (Dec. 22), I heard a strange noise emanating from the barn as I left for work at 3:30 a.m. I was tempted to just ignore it but my conscience got the better of me and I went to check it out. (Before going to the barn I had to find a flashlight because the electricity to the barn is currently out. It went out on Monday, Dec. 21. The last time the power cut out in the barn was just before lambing season...) I found a flashlight, wandered out to the barn and discovered that Moya (Hannah's goat) had given birth to twins at some point in the night... I got Grace and Hannah up and they took care of Moya and her offspring while I went to work.

The fact that Moya had kids wasn't the surprise part. Hannah had bought her as a bred doe (not "bread dough" (stupid spell checker)). We knew we had a pregnant doe on our hands, we just thought her due date was late January. Surprise!

We were woefully unprepared to begin milking. Thankfully, we had milked before and this was not Moya's first freshening either. She is an awesome milker! Very cooperative, patient and a good producer. The girls had to milk her while she stood on the ground since we had gotten rid of all of our milking equipment about four years ago.

I downloaded milk stand plans, Grace picked up the necessary lumber and our bedroom addition was temporarily transformed into a work shop. I finished it off in a couple of days and now it's ready for action. It could use a coat of paint but the girls are more anxious to be able to milk a little more comfortably.

Heat

Why is it that whenever I have to do anything under the house it inevitably involves the longest possible distances of crawling, wriggling, etc? I hate having to do stuff in the crawlspace but if we wanted heat in our new bedroom it had to be done.... Also Grace is taping and mudding in there and when the temperature is hovering around absolute zero it not only affects her ability to work but also the ability of the tape to stick and the mud to dry (as opposed to simply freezing...)

I was going to get started on the duct work last week. I had mapped out where we wanted registers, taken measurements, made a rough sketch and figured out how much and what kind of materials we would need. I went to Home Depot in Abbotsford and was confronted with a plethora of different sizes of duct work. I panicked and went home. I waited at the border for thirty minutes before I could explain to the guy at the booth that I didn't get anything at Home Depot because I didn't know what size ductwork I needed. He seemed a little leery of my explanation and seemed to be on the verge of pulling me over and searching the van (and my person) for illegal drugs... but he didn't.

I got home and figured out that it was six inch ducting that I needed. (I had to crawl under the house to figure this out. Ugh!) I decided I would just go to Lynden Sheet Metal to get my materials since I didn't want to cross the border again. When I got there the helpful receptionist told me that my little sketch was the dumbest layout she'd ever seen and that only an idiot would do it that way. (She was nicer about it but that was what I took away from our conversation...) So I went home again, modified my plan, refigured my material needs and by then the day was pretty much done.

Grace and I picked up the ductwork on Saturday night at Lowes in Bellingham. I got started today (Friday) and realized that five foot lengths of six inch ductwork aren't as bendy as I need them to be in certain instances. I needed to go get some more 90 degree fittings (which can be made to do amazing things since they're all twisty...)

We picked up some more parts on our way to Seattle to pick up Sara and by Saturday I was going full tilt. To make a long story short (and let's face it, without pictures most of you have stopped reading by now anyway...), it took me all day (Sat.) but I got heat to the addition.