June 27th, 2006

Our company arrived yesterday afternoon. They had a fine trip up from the States and are tired from the trip and our elevation. For dinner they had their first taste of Perogies handmade by my bf's mom (she and her sister made 800 of them for a relatives upcoming wedding).

My company went to bed fairly early and they are still sleeping.... But I got up early this morning and it is still around 5 am now. My bf left to go to work at 4 am, but before he did, he woke me up to look at a doe deer who was eyeballing the garden from about 30 feet away and on the other side the fence in and standing in our front pasture. I have a dog strategically parked with his doghouse there ("Cyrus"), but the bum was still sleeping. I watched her walk back and forth through the gate a few times and just as I was thinking what a lousy dog patrol system I had and was wondering what dog to switch with him, "Cyrus" re-deemed himself and woke up, bolted like a flash out of his house and scared the deer away, pronking (running like Peppy Le'Phew) away as fast as her little hooves would take her.

I tried to go to bed again and I heard this HORRIBLE dying cry of a chicken. I had forgotten to lock the chickens up last night. I heard this horrible noise over the cats Purring (as I am trying to smother his purr to hear what I was hearing, only to make him purr louder- finally covering him up with about 3 pillows to drown out "Watson's" purr ) about 4 times.. with a heavy heart, I get dressed and grab my tennis shoes and head up to the barn to check out the aftermath..I get around the corner and the chickens are looking at me like "WHAT?!?!?!".. I then realize that horrible noise was evidently one of the roosters learning to crow.

I say hello to the horses, grab the goat and tie her down the driveway somewhere shady to eat and hang out for the day.So.. now that I am wide awake.. what does one do before 5:30am and try to stay quiet? Work on the computer an make bagels. So the breadmaker is kneading for me and then I will build and boil the bagels. My Ginger Rhubarb jam was a hit last night. I even like it and I am not a jam eater, unless it is involved in something like cookies.

I have leftover salmon from the other night when a friend gave us some HUGE salmon steaks and I am going to make a salmon spread with it to go on the bagels. Between that and organic oranges I got yesterday, that ought to be a good breakfast.

At 9 pm the night before they arrived, our well went dry again. It has since recovered, but drilling a new well is in order. We will keep the hand dug one for gardening and greenhouse purposes, but in the meantime we are hauling 400 gallons of water every trip when we go to town. It is a good question when we will get to drill a new well. There are some people in this country that I know that have hauled 300+ gallons of water to their homes each and every day for 10 years. I guess you just get into the routine of hauling it. I am glad we have a fire hose though as we hook to a hydrant at my bf's truck shop and the tank is filled in about 5 minutes. At the town well, it would take 40 minutes to fill.

It turned brutally hot yesterday. It melted the suet feeder in the shade. I am worried about bushfires. There had to have been one yesterday as the whole valley was just filled with smoke and I could not hardly see any distance.Well it just turned 6 am, so I best get at the bagels before the rest of the house wakes up. Everyone have a great day!

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