A New Year

It's been quite a while since we've had the time to even think about the luxury of sitting at the computer to post something on our blog. But now that winter has truly arrived with a BANG ! and the out of doors work has slowed a bit, I need to spend a bit of time catching up here.
When I last posted an entry we were getting ready to shear kids. Well, here's what's happened since then ( Monarch Note version) :

-We sheared 100 adult goats (actually our shearer Jeff Traver sheared, we skirted, vaccinated etc.)
-We did our second cutting of hay
-We stacked the hay in the barn
-We fenced in a new 10 acre pasture
-We processed 250 pounds of fiber for our Fall shows
-We harvested 10 huge red cabbage from our garden
-We made and canned 15 pounds of sauerkraut
-We harvested bushels and bushels of tomatoes
-We canned quarts and quarts and more quarts of sauce
-We harvested peppers : sweet peppers, fry peppers, hot peppers
-We roasted and canned lots of peppers
-We dried a lot of hot peppers
-We attended the Fiber College in Searsport, Maine
-We attended the Fingerlakes Fiber Festival in Hemlock, NY
-We lost the brakes on our truck on the way home and had to replace all the brake lines
-We placed 6 bucks with 6 groups of nannies for breeding
-We purchased a beautiful fine fleeced, natural colored ram lamb from Alice Field
-We placed 2 rams with 2 groups of ewes for breeding
-We processed more fiber
-We attended the NYS Sheep and Wool Festival
-We removed all the breeding bucks and put all the nannies back in the same pasture
-We repaired our sock knitting machines with the help of Marvin our sock machine repair friend
-We ate Thanksgiving dinner
-We ultrasounded all our breeding nannies to confirm breeding
-We discovered that one of our bucks had not done his job
-We attended the Hawthorne Valley School Yuletide Fair ( a truly wonderful local Waldorf School)
-We had a huge ice storm and were without power for 6 1/2 days ( Yes, even though we have the solar panels, we net meter or feedback electric to the grid. When the grid goes down our panels must shut off as well. If we were to continue producing power and feed it through the grid it would electrocute those folks working to repair the lines - not a good thing.)
-We celebrated the holidays and new year with friends and family
-We wish everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year
-We took a deep breath.

There- now you' re up to speed !
Cheers !