A couple of days ago we were outside doing stuff. Andy was waaaaay over by the workshop, and he did a little dance and bent over and picked something up and wiggled and came over and had a HUGE toad in his hands. I like toads.

This really was a big toad. I wanted to be able to show everyone how big, so I asked Andy to put his hand near the toad. Of course, the giant hand scared the toad and it fled. Andy swiftly grabbed the toad and clutched it close to his bosom. (I guess his reflexes aren’t too old for amphibians…just reptiles.) I was so proud and beamed as I got this photo.

Then things suddenly took a turn for the worse….Andy shrieked and threw the toad into the air. The toad flewwwwww and went kerplunk on the gravel! I squeaked and waved my hands in the air, “You tossed the toad!!!”

“It peeeeeeeed on me!”

“You could have killed it!”

“But…it peed on me!”

I laughed and laughed and laughed. I’m laughing right now thinking about it. Teehee. The toad peed on Andy.

The End.

Sheep Update: Sourdough’s bottle jaw (sheep necks get swollen and full of fluid when they have bad worms — it’s called bottle jaw) is almost completely gone, and she’s up and about more, going potty, eating a little. She wasn’t eating a whole lot, so Andy called the vet, and I picked up a syringe of steriods after work. Yup. I got to give a sheep a shot. The steriods are supposed to help her appetite and also help reduce the inflammation in her tummy and guts from the worms. Pumpernickle’s bottle neck is still there, but she’s very perky and was running around and even baaa’ed.

You know, before we moved here, no one warned us about the flies. I suppose it’s the same way the Michigan Board of Tourism fails to mention that you might encounter a mosquito or two while you are there. We seem to have very few mosquitos. We have a lot of flies.

Sure, we have some animals on the property that certainly attract flies (especially the chickens and the ducks). But the flies were here before the animals. Everywhere. Buzzing around my head, and congregating on the strangest things. There will be dozens and dozens sitting on the truck. Today there were at least 20 sitting on the charger for the electric fence. They don’t seem to be the biting sort of flies. Are we just some sort of layover between cow pastures? The Schiphol of the Copper Hill?

Oh, and it was foggy this morning.

This coming weekend is Floyd County’s 175th anniversary celebration. I’m sure all our friends are busy planning to come up and visit during it – after all, who can resist…cowpatty bingo?

Although on a more serious note, one of their events is carding and spinning wool – maybe someone at the event would know where we could get our sheeps sheared!

Steve Irwin may have died, but his spirit lives on here at Loafkeeper Farm.

I had just gone into the bathroom to give Sana her fluids when I heard a shrill, girlish yelp from downstairs.

“Are you okay?”

“Snake!”

I was calm at first because….well, I was upstairs and the snake was downstairs and I didn’t really know if there was a snake at all or if Andy was just making it up because he’d gone batty from sniffing so much laundry detergent in his laundry orgy.

Then I started thinking about a snake. In the house. In the basement. Where my bed is. The bed where I sleep.

“A snake? Ummm…is it a big scary snake?”

“No, it’s a little baby snake but my freakish reflexes are too slow to catch it now that I am old.” (Okay, he didn’t really say it quite that way.)

As I sit on the bathroom floor, syringe in one hand and the other holding onto Sana…I picture Andy running around the basement chasing a snake and I realize he probably could use a little help. I hopped up and then paused and thought for a brief moment. AHA! I dashed into the bunny room, grabbed the bunny poop broom, dustpan, and trash can and raced down the stairs.

Well, not all the way down the stairs. I stopped a few steps up and timidly asked, “Um, where’s the snake?”

It had slithered under the big wooden chest and seemingly disappeared. I knew I had to act fast, so I sprinted down the last few stairs and flew across the room to the bed. Safe on my perch, I tossed the snake-catching tools to Andy.

Too bad I forgot the camera in my supply gathering spree. Luckily, Andy was not terribly adept at first with his weapons, so I had a chance to hightail it upstairs, grab the camera, and return to my safehaven towering high above the ground (pictured below during a more peaceful era).

Before reaching the bottom of the stairs, I once again paused for a status of the snake’s whereabouts.

Andy lost the snake.

“Where did it go?”

“Um…I don’t know. Maybe it went under the stairs?”

Images raced through my head of living in perpetual fear of Snakes on a Bed ™.

“Oo! I think it went into the bathroom!”

“Quick! Close the door!”

“Um, the door is closed. It went under the door.”

I ran on tip toes to the bed so I could watch. Andy flung open the door and swept the snake into the dust pan and then said, “QUICK! OPEN THE DOOR!” In the moment it too me to wave my hand at the garbage can I’d brought down, the snake squirmed off the dust pan, back onto the floor, and under the bookcase.

Andy brought in his backup.

Together, Andy and Buddy worked to herd the snake back out into the open. Alas, the snake was wiley, and when the boys weren’t looking, the snake slithered into MY PANTS!!!!!!!!

….which were on the floor waiting to visit the new washing machine.

The snake was in love with my pants. (After no washing machine for a week, I’m sure they smelled really fabulous!) The snake crawled all over my pants and wiggled in my pants and then…then…the snake crawled into my pocket! AHA! We had it trapped!

“Quick! Toss the whole thing into the trashcan!”

“It may jump on me!”

“Hurrrrry!”

The snake somehow got away and ran back under the bookcase. Buddy and Andy got into a huddle and planned their moves out. Moments later, the snake was in the trash can. Andy glowed with the triumph of kings! (Or possibly from the fumes of my smelly pants.)

We both peered down into the trashcan and Andy said quietly…awe in his voice…

“Crikey! Isn’t she a beaut?”

After much delay I finally racked my two batches of blackberry wine, and combined them into one 5 gallon batch so it would only use up one carboy. It seems to be a very nice ruby red color, except when the yeast is still in suspension, at which point it looks a lot like tinted primer.

Racking

I also started another batch going (about 2 1/2 gallons) with the last of this year’s blackberries. They’ve spent more time in the fridge than they really should, though, so I’m not sure how tasty it will turn out. In fact, I saw some bubbling while the berries were soaking (before I added the yeast), which could mean some wild yeasts got a head start. But since the only real costs were a packet of yeast and a bag of sugar (and a lot of holes in my hands), it’s no big loss if it’s gone bad – we’ll just have a lot of blackberry vinegar to bottle.