Stocking up, and production begins

We've been spending the last week stocking up: Hay and wood.
Since I had offered to help pay for hay in exchange for staying at Correy's, once the house closed, we started looking. Being the Craigslist addict queen that I am, I started searching. Correy called me with the number of one - by the time I called, they had sold 5 of their 8 tons - we took the rest. Then I found another and called - the farmer was eating dinner, according to his wife - I told her to have him call me, and I wanted 10 tons. She said, "Oh!"

When we were unloading the last 5 tons of the 10 tons, we had help:

Cedric Snoopervising

We had help from a couple of local farm boys to unload and stack the hay - we loaded the trailer. This was complicated for me by the fact that I had fallen off Annie and hurt my back. A back brace helped a lot, as did going to yoga twice a week. It's better, but I kinked it good, and it's taking it's own sweet time getting over its bad self...

Correy's aunt is District Biologist for the Ochoco Nat'l. Forest, so she knows where all the good wood gathering spots are. There was a thinned unit of juniper (the best stuff...) about 40 miles from home. I had to buy 2 new tires for the truck to make the trip, though... We took off in the morning, in a caravan of 4 trucks, with Lyra and Ruby, Correy's kelpie/border collie along for the ride.

Lyra and Ruby

We had help gathering wood, too:

Look Mom - I got some, too!

After working for a good long while, Bob (Correy's Squeeze) manning the chain saw, Correy and me loading the trucks, my truck was full:

It's good to have access from all sides...

There's no more room!

I managed to forget to take a picture of Correy's truck, but it was full, too. We figure we had about 2 cords of well-seasoned juniper to take home. Unfortunately, before we finished, Lyra found a dead dear carcass and liberated a front leg. She chewed it until she was bored with it, and then Ruby took over. Because Ruby had ridden in the back of Correy's truck, I got to take both stinky dead dear leg dog breath dogs back in the cab of my truck.  It was pretty awful, until they both laid down and went to sleep.

As we were driving out, Correy was waving her arm around, but I was too tired to realize she was trying to show me the flock of wild turkeys - she said they were huge! Bigger than most Broad Breasted Bronze mutants you usually see on tables around this time of year!

So, last Saturday, we got 3 tons of hay, Sunday, we got 2 cords of wood, Monday we got 5 tons of hay, Tuesday we went to yoga, Wednesday we got 5 tons of hay, Thursday, Correy went to yoga, today Correy and Bob went and got another 5 tons of (free) hay, while I warped my loom for a Farm Day demo tomorrow.

We decided that we'd either be in really good shape or completely crippled by the end of the week. The jury is still out on me - Correy's tired, but still kickin'! We still have more hay to get, but we're doing that sometime next week.

Next up - the turkeys are coming!!