Linda reported that the sheepherders who live cross the creek in Mom and Pop's old house had a couple of their goats out on the ice on our pond this morning. The goats are usually in a pen next to the shed I built for our horses twenty-nine or thirty years ago. Meanwhile the noble shed has been reduced to being a shelter for two exceedingly dirty off-white sheep and one less obviously dirty brown sheep. Bah!
The horse shed has held up amazingly well over the years, and I'm pretty proud of its post and beam design. I suspect that the trunks of the cedar trees I used for its supports have rotted off underground by now; but the thing still stands proud. If only I had built it on our side of the property line rather than on Mom and Pop's side. It would make a great drying and storage place for wood although it wouldn't be very well sited for that.
It's been about as cold as it gets around here for the past couple of days and we've been burning wood at a prodigious rate. Jas was talking yesterday morning about those electric space heaters they've been selling all over the place; but those surely can't hold a candle to a nice hot woodstove. It's not only physically luxurious to sit near; it's also morally luxurious to contemplate. The trees take the carbon out of the air and we put it back into the air.
Sully's Side
- Sully
- Collegeville, PA, United States
- Born in Norristown, Pa. to loving parents with whom I stayed close until they passed away. Went to Catholic schools back when we learned the state abbreviations and other things in fear of the rod. Studied some and partied a lot at Illinois Tech courtesy of the U.S. Navy and then went off to 'see His wonders in the deep' for four years in return. Married longer ago than seems possible to a wonderful wife. Fell into and mastered a reasonably lucrative white collar craft. Raised a great son who's now self sufficient. Have been lucky to be able to stay close to my brothers, sister, aunts, uncles and many cousins. Have almost always been able to find interesting and productive work when I've needed or wanted it. Have read more books and been to more places than I could ever have imagined as a gawky kid in the 1950's. Still going reasonably strong long past the millenium which seemed an impossibly far away date back when I was in 'the season of the rising sap'.
5 comments:
Are they keeping the animals as livestock or pets?
Is there any possibility of them polluting your pond? From what I can recall, sheep are not particularly clean.
As for the cold, I work from home and it gets quite cold by my workstation (as in 54 degrees). My laser printer can't even get up to operating temperature right now. My husband bought me an infrared strip that hangs from the ceiling, and I sit under it. It heats the entire area up to 75 degrees very quickly; but the first time I used it, I felt like an order of french fries sitting under the heat lamps at McDonalds. :)
So, you live on the same land where you grew up. Same here. There's something comforting about your roots being all in one place.
Welcome to blogging's dark side. I'm tagging you with this meme. Have fun!
http://bluftooni.blogspot.com/
They keep three sheep, four goats and a few chickens as pets. The old farm pond is purely decorative at this point anyway. The animal pen and horsh shed are about a hundred yards from the pond as well so it would be no problem even if they had more animals.
I don't really mind the sheep or goats - I was just playing off all the cattlemen versus sheepherder movies of my youth.
This isn't where I grew up. Linda and I went in together with my Mom and Dad to buy this property in 1978 - they wanted the big old colonial farmhouse and we wanted the land. The current neighbors bought Mom and Dad's house and their three acres in the mid 1990's. At that time we considered redrawing the property line to put the horse shed on our side of the line; but it wasn't really worthwhile. Since then the suburbs have grown up around us on all sides, so we now live in a 30 acre island of green in the middle of them.
Thirty acres! OMG! Where I live, some people have taken their 80 foot lots, broken them into a pair of 40's and had their houses moved to one of the lots. Then they sold the other lot.
If you lived in my area, your mailbox would be overflowing with junk mail from real estate agents, or the government would seize your land for a county park. :)
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The acreage sounds like a lot more than it is from a financial perspective. Our land is at the juncture of two creeks so much of it is flood plain. The neatest thing is that the property is a longish and fairly irregular rectangle, so the walk I do more or less along the borders is well over a mile long.
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