Fall update

Can it have been this long since I've posted? Well, we had a busy summer. I'll post some pics on the Flickr site (see the intro paragraph at the top) in a few days. But here's the rundown: Day before the pig roast the chicken coop/tool shed burned down. Total loss. Every chicken got out! The folks who came to the party got to see an object lesson in fire safety. Val and I had been talking about getting a biger coop, and the insurance is reducing the expense of replacement, so it's as if the Lord said, "Yup, you need a bigger facility—I'll pay half." We had about 125 folks show up at the pig roast, and everyone had a great time. Lots of folks commented on the diversity of our circle of friends. Very little pork left over, too. The jugglers were pretty good, too. So the summer went by, and we put in a concrete pad, then ran electric and water lines, then a shed, twice as big as the first. We divided it into 1/3 coop, 2/3 shed and workshop. To date I have some of the electric in and some of the insulation. Gonna be pretty nice when it's done. For a shed. Why has it taken so long and not finished yet? Well... I rode my motorcycle to MN to visit my dad, whose health is failing. That killed three weekends. Then there was raising and tending the three goats, nine geese, and over two dozen chickens. Then another two-week trip (by plane), so there went another three weekends. Then I needed two weekends to butcher the three goats and the lamb. And a weekend or two to get ready for the goat roast. Yup, goat. And the lamb. On a spit over an open fire. 75 folks showed up to that one. The goats were kind of at the instigation of the Mac Pac Eating and Wrenching Society, my main motorcycle club. I agreed that if they bought a goat, I'd raise it and we'd have a BBQ in the fall. That was the goat roast, Oct 14. I tell people that I'm laboring under the delusion that now I'll have some free time. One last thing: the fourth annual George Family neighborhood pig roast will be June 23, 2007. I managed to arrange to have the famous folk singer, Bill Staines, come sing for us. If you read this, you're invited.