Shalom

More Drama... and a blessing

I have been waiting with no little bit of anxiety for our does to give birth.  Yesterday morning I walked out to do the chores and found one doe with a kid stuck, half emerged from its mother's womb.  It's sibling near death from cold, it had not been cleaned and dried by its mother.

I took the chilled kid in the house and then ran back outside to deliver the second kid.  The first leg came free and into position easily.  The second came much more difficulty and distress to the doe but it came free and the kid was born.  When I returned to the house the first kid was dead.

I thought that the doe was going to die but after two hours I went out and, figuring there was nothing to loose, jerked her to her feet and made her walk.  Almost instantaneously she began to look better and I quickly returned the surviving kid to her.  When I left for work both mother and daughter looked well.  Otto has named the kid "Boo." 

She sure gave me a fright.

My Very Bad Really Stinky Day (or "The Stupid Thing I Did")

When I pulled into the driveway this morning I looked where the goat barn should be and saw this instead:

Before leaving for work the night before I had gone out to check the animals and noticed that the smoke from our wood burning stove smelled funny.  I almost went back in the house to check out the stove, but I had just checked it before walking out the door to check the animals before work.  I now realize that what I had smelled was the smoldering of hay in the goat shed.

The three goats are o.k.   Only General Lafayette was singed, which is a bit of a miracle.  Their pen is not that large and not three feet away from where they would have standing a plastic feeding pan was half-melted.  In good buck goat he must have kept himself between the girls and the fire.  They are now living in the garage, having a gay old time.  The first doe is due to give birth later this week.

Four rabbits perished in the blazed, including my buck rabbit.  It does feel like a significant personal failure.  God has given us the animals to care and protect.  We should consume them with respect and thankfulness, making sure their death is as humane and painless as possible.  They did not get the protection that they should have, and I am penitent.

Three rabbits did survive, remarkably.  Their water dishes melted into the wire bottoms of their cages, their hutches are severely charred, and the vinyl siding I used as a roof, melted.

I had been worried that the goats would give birth during the cold snap we recently experience.  We were only expecting so early in the spring because of my excitement at getting a buck led me to bring him home before I had a separate pen prepared for him.  Though I thought I had taken every precaution, every precaution was not good enough.  Either through an electrical short or, more likely, some failure with the heat lamp led to this senseless and needless loss.

No person was hurt.  The family slept through the inferno.  I guess neither the neighbors nor any passing car noticed the blaze, though it must have been quite the sight.  I am thankful that it was not worse than it was.

I spent the day cleaning up the debris.  Tomorrow I start in that most human of endeavors, on repairing what has been destroyed.  I spent the day cleaning up the debris.  The truck from the lumberyard is scheduled to arrive at about 9am.

Here are a few other photos of the destruction:

Effectiveness

In my three decades I have believed a lot of things that turned out to not be true.  Truth is I probably hold some things to be true right now which will, in time, prove to be false.  Such is the human condition.  Among the most revealing was my transition from using a splitting maul to an ax for chopping wood.

For those of you who do not know a maul is a heavy piece of iron with a wedge or ax faced front for the purpose, obviously, to split wood.  They run anywhere from 8 to maybe 15 pounds.  Holding one you have a sense of power.  "This must be a powerful tool," the mind thinks.  It is so heavy the individual gets the impression that no hand held tool could do more.  One is slow to notice that the head is made from a soft metal that will barely take, let alone keep, an edge. 

I bought a new ax two years ago.  I can't remember what possessed me to buy it but I laid down my money and drove home wondering how to explain the purchase to my long-suffering wife.  The head weighs 2-3 pounds.  I can only swing a maul for an hour or two tops but I can swing the ax all day and a sharp ax does a better job.

I don't pretend to understand the physics but the lighter ax moves through the air faster and, with a sharp edge imparts a greater splitting power on the log in question.  From a wood splitters perspective the difference is not a matter of theory but of better tangible results for less effort.

What is true for splitting wood is true, I think for life in general.  There is an impression that a heavy life full of busy-ness and things is the good life, the life of impact.  Yet, the opposite is true.  The heavy life has a hard time keeping an edge and it moves through the air slowly.  It can have power, for sure but it is short-lived.  The life that is light, sharp and wielded with skill, however, slices through the air and slices logs into stove-sized wedges and slats.