March 28, 2008 In the final synposis of the day I was remiss in mentioning that your prayers are so very helpful.  Brad has been feeling better and stronger each day.  Last Friday he went in and they actually drained the lobe of his lung that had been infected with the pnemonia, even as they were draining it he could feel the improvement.  He could take a much deeper breath and the plueritic rub was disappearing.  I would say he is back at about 70% now and is seeming to improve daily!  Thank you for your prayers.

March 27, 2008  Snow...in late March...in the Pacific Northwest....Not our norm.  While many other areas of the country and world would still be expecting snow this time of year, I was not.  I would prefer the sunshine and about 50 to 60 degrees but will take what I get.  Actually next week that is the prediction and since next week is spring break for two of the kids let it snow now and get it out of its systems.  We will warm up soon.  I have to say I am a true Washingtonian as I have webbed toes, and I love 65 and overcast.  It is the best weather to work outside in and I am really looking forward to doing that. The best news we have is that all our family has returned home.  Our girls donated by Deb Bender have come home safely from Ninety Acre Farms in Arlington.  They look very good.  Gretchen Wilson and her friends sheared them, they are healthy and hale, two are showing udders so we will see babies in April and 5 are black and whites like our Holstein was.  I hope they turn out to be as good of milkers and as peaceful as she.  We also purchased 17 ewes from Promised Land Farms in Wisconsin.  They were delivered here on Tuesday by Ron Keener.  Ron also brought the Bender ewes to the Northwest in December and it was good for him to see them in their home setting.   We will breed the new ewes now for August and September deliveries.  We have a full house and hope to wean babies on Sunday to begin milking.....two whopping days ahead of schedule!  We will freeze the milk at first but this gives us such hope and inspiration that things should be moving along at a much better pace now.  Especially if we see those warmer temps and sun breaks!!!!!  We would have had girls out on the back pasture if this last storm had not given us so much moisture.   Things  will dry out much faster now that is it spring and by July Peter and I will be grumbling about taking water out to the back field twice a day.  Never happy :-).  We are getting along well here, the renters are settling into their new home, we are moving along with ours.  We had our friends from the University Place Presbyterian Church return.  It is nice to have made so many friends over the past 4 months.  It is remarkable.  They worked on the bathroom and did more cleaning outside.  This bathroom project is becoming a true remodeling project.  I had hoped to spare some of the old bead board that was original to the room.  We had left the top 4 feet on the wall but finally stripped it down....Do you know that not one of the 2 by fours holding up that 6 foot wall was complete!  Thank you Lord that it is an old house and solidly built to withstand what has happened along the way.  Wow, so we now have a barebones room to wire and finish walls and do all we need to have a utility bathroom off the kitchen again.  It does have the functioning commode and we can only go up from here,  I really don't think there is anything left to rip out!  The status report is lambs everywhere, milking starts Sunday, Cheese to follow, Barn is full and holding sheep well.  The pasture will be put to use after this storm passes on by.  Guard Dogs are here and willing to work, we will need to be cautious to see if Jewel will stay with the sheep or wander as not all the fences are intact.  Brutus usually takes his job seriously.  Kids have Spring Break next week.   Life is good, all the easter chocolates went on sale this week and my pantry is full!  Mmmmmmm

March 22, 2008  I t is hard to get a berth at the computer when I have to fight off four others for the honors.    What a month of ups and downs.  It has been challenging for all of us.  Brad is progressing as expected....by the medical community....give him 6-8 weeks to get better.  Not fast enough for us and it is hard for him to slow down as the honey do list grows longer each day.  There is a lot Peter and I can do but Brad can do things better.  Peter has been a huge help and a blessing.  We are progressing.  Our friend Brian came today with another motorcyclist.  He has not been here for a few weeks and it was nice to hear him say he could see a lot of progress.  I guess it is like raising children you do not see the millimeters as they grow but see the milestones as they fly by.  We are making progress, thank you Brian for putting it into perspective.  We have been blessed with people who have come at the right time to help and with appropriate skills to do that with.  We were blessed with a group, related to folks at the Toledo Presbyterian Church on Saturday.  They drywalled and mudded.  It was nice to have some progress on our house.  It seemed logical to get the rental up and going and rented, which it is.  WOO HOO.  The business needs to keep some momentum going but I have to say with all that has been going on here I was beginning to get depressed and it has been wonderful to see some progress in the office and the "mudroom".  The Adventist Church had a crew here last Sunday cleaning off fences and cleaning off equipment.  Then some of the Adventist students came on Wednesday to help finish up the drywalling project from Saturday.   Today we had a highly skilled group of friends from a Methodist Church in Renton come and make some more sense of our bathroom.  It now has a floor!  The Shower base is installed and we can move forward inch by blessed inch.  My 6 foot son will love having the shower installed, baths are for birds.  Joan helped me clean off the woodwork from the office and scrub it down and we even got two layers of Kilz on two of the walls.  I am not a very enthusiastic painter but once started now I can see the momentum kicking in and I will get the painting done more sooner than later.  Then we can move everything back into the office and have one room pretty much done!  wow.  Brad is up north today.  He took the kids and went to fetch sheep at Arlington!!!!  Yes Deb, they are coming home tonight.  They have been invited to an early Easter Dinner at his parents home in Stanwood and will rest there before driving home.  Ten bred ewes and a ram who has been returned to us by Alexia Stevens.  One of the ewes is bagging up so we can say THANK YOU again to Deb Bender who sent these ewes to us whose ram broke in one night.  we may be lambing yet again in April.  The rest of them should be due in May or June.  And then sometime this week we will be expecting Ron Keener to arrive with 17 ewes from Wisconsin.  We will be over run with sheep.  We will be able to begin using the back pasture after Easter.  It has dried out enough and is not muddy like the barnyard.  What a blessing these events have been.  Our ram, who is returning home tonight, will have a job to do as we will use him to breed the new additions to our flock.  Which means we will be lambing again in August or September this year and will be making Christmas Cheese.  We had thought of this before but never acted on it.  The time is ripe to do it.  Kristine called to day to offer more hay and they hope to bring it next week.  How God put it in her heart to call on the day more sheep are coming is really not a mystery.  I think God knew we needed the encouragement and I beleive God is in control not me so when I try to be the one claiming all the wisdom to make this place function like a farm again I learn, once again, God is the blessed Controller of all things.  Ups and downs this month.  Tomorrow is Easter, The Celebration of the Risen Lord,  A time of Renewal, new beginnings.....a lot of things but most importantly it is a recognition that we are loved and forgiven and will be forgiven when we mess up again and again and that God's plan is Supreme.

March 11, 2008  If you would like your dial-up connection to be faster, don't pour a cup of coffee into the keyboard.  sigh, It was a good cup of coffee too.  Well the lap top is at the shop airing out.  The lambs keep growing and I will continue to weigh them weekly.  We are done lambing....or should I say one of our e-mail delivery sites has completed their participation in our efforts to repopulate our farm.  Kim and Doug have been great and we have about 47 babies from the 22 pregnant ewes who survived the flood.  What a testament to their hardiness and health and good caretaking!  What blessing.  Ronda and Daniel have delivered 8 ewes from their farm.  They had decided to give us all the ewe lambs delivered.  That is all they have delivered!  Brad continues to get better each day and we plan to be milking by the first of April.  Folks are here to look at the rental.  Life continues on and has ups and downs this week I plan on going up!

March 8, 2008 It has been a week hasn’t it.  It has been a horrible week too...0r at least it tried to be.  As Saturday arrives it is looking up again.  I got the “call” last Saturday.  I was at a quilt show at the Centralia Christian School.  We were raising money for the school library which sustained a lot of damage in the December flood.  I went out to the parking lot to check my cell phone messages and there was Brad, unable to breathe, an hour and a half ago....oh my.  I called home quickly and my son said dad is okay they took him to the hospital in an ambulance.  What!  Brad had been sick with a cold but had no fever and had actually felt better that morning.  What!  There he was with a very nasty quick hitting pneumonia.  Hooked up to three types of IV antibiotics and sent home three days later with a likely 20 day follow up course of antibiotics.  What!  It still is hard to believe.  Today he is much better, he will be slowed down for several weeks but is home and alive....Wow.  What a week.  The kids have been champions.  Peter and I have fed and cared for the animals, the younger boys have had to be patient and work together on things.  We made it.  I managed to kill two out of three vehicles in the time Brad was in the hospital.  He has gotten the truck up and going again and the jeep worked for 30 minutes till I killed it again.  I am good!  The Cinderella car is working okay.  You just should not drive it after dark as the tail lights don’t all work.  It carried home alfalfa bales and feed the other day.  Who said Toyota does not make a good farm car.  The highlights of the week are Georgie who gave us triplets last Sunday and is doing well.  Georgie Girl, yes go ahead and sing the song, is a survivor.  She had gangrenous mastitis two years ago.  She never went off her feed so we kept her going and after losing the half of the udder that was affected she healed up very nicely.  We bred her hoping she would bring us good milking stock, but three lambs, with one half of an udder and one teat!  Georgie I have heard of achievers but this is ridiculous.  We will most likely put the ram lamb on a bottle and let her raise two.  They are still up at Kim and Doug’s since the week had other issues.  We hope to bring her and Emily home soon.  Yes, Emily also lambed, triplets as well.  What incredible sheep we have.  Two ewes and a ram each.  I think that brings the overall count to 51 live lambs, 31 ewe lambs, 20 ram lambs out of 24 mommas.  Good job girls.  We will carry on!  We were visited by a group of animal disaster relief specialists last Sunday.  I am sure that is not their title but it is a group who will be hoping to develop a plan to help rescue animals statewide during a disaster event.  They were wonderfully enthusiastic and hope to keep losses to a minimum in the wake of a volcano, fire, flood, any event we could have here in the NW.  On monday a group from the University Place Presbyterian Church pulled in.  I just sort of stood there dumbfounded.  I was not aware they were coming as Brad had been involved in planning jobs for them.  Very fortunately Bob and Jim had been here the week before scouting out jobs and Brad was available by phone.  We worked it out and they accomplished a lot in a day.  Bob and Jim actually came back on Thursday to further work on things.  What a blessing.  The week had very low spots and a lot of good.  My friend Connie called me on Wednesday right when I hit bottom.  “Meg, I have had you on my mind all morning, what is going on?”  I had just killed the jeep for the second time, had taken John to school, had a few moments before I picked up Peter to share with here where our lives were.  A quick prayer and there we were, on our way back up the ladder.  Life can be twisted out of perspective and then twisted back into the right light when you can lay out the good and the bad and take stock of what means the most to you.  God, Family, Friends, there you have it.  We are moving on.

February 29, 2008 An extra day to squeeze in one more lamb for the season!  We have had a hugely successful lambing season many, many thanks to Doug and Kim of Mountain Niche Farms, and Ronda and her son Daniel in Yelm.  We have had 44 babies so far 25 girls to grow our flock with and 18 males.  Yes, do the math, we did have one loss for unknown reasons.  These are amazing numbers for what our ewes have been through.  We really expected to see them abort or have problems after the flood but not a thing.  They were a bit quiet up at Kim and Doug's for the first few days but then they made themselves at home and turned into the aggressive dairy sheep we are used to, which is very different the the Shetland or Churro breed they are used to.  Kim made the comment these are most likely the most aggressive of the bunch as they are the ones that survived.  I expect that is true.  I expect that is why we have some beautiful babies.  That along with the excellent care given.  This has been quite the lambing season for me, I better not get used to it.  I open up my e-mails and see that 7030 had a single ram lamb, or that Snowflake blessed us with three girls, or that 6056 had a lamb who is  up and vigorous.  Then I do my little celebration dance and plan to go see my beauties.  E-mail delivery.  Next year I will have a rude awakening when I start doing the midnight and 3 am checks that Kim has been doing for me this year.  Thank you so much.  The 4 girls we have from Yelm are the first three ewes, Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, and now they have a St.Croix ewe lamb that was born yesterday.  We had “purchased “ , for cheese, a couple St Croix from the Dancing Nanny Farm in Puyallup.  Our ewes were lost but our friend Daniel also bought some ewes and has bred them to a Friesian/Lacuanne ram.  The beginnings of our look at a “hairy dairy”  We will see how the St Croix measure up to milking.  The folks at Dancing Nanny had hoped to see some numbers on this so we will be able to produce them from the offspring of the three ewes that Daniel and Ronda are planning to donate back to us.  What a blessing.  We have had and have made so many wonderful friends that I could not even begin to count my blessings if I had all year to do so and could borrow everyone's fingers!
Kim and Doug have three left to lamb.  Emily is left.  When we got back the day after the flood we had three animals who were alive but not walking.  We realized two of them were in total shock and we did have them put down.  Emily on the other hand could not stand on her left hind leg but she was chewing cud and eating the hay we placed in front of her.  I did not want to put her down but had no way to care for her.  We had just met Kim and Doug as they drove by offering their help and I really did not want to burden them with the care of a “downer”.  Kim offered, and we gratefully accepted her assistance in caring for Emily.  Emily has been a very mellow, easy milker, good mother and we really did not want to put her down.  Kim gave her a pen of her own so she would not get trundled by the others and soon enough she was standing.  The vet figured it was a bad strain nothing broken.  Emily, thankfully, is in the last group of ewes to deliver.  We are so thankful for the wonderful care these ewes have had and also the healthy babies bouncing all over the yard.  Blessings beyond measure!

February 24    2008  It was a beautiful day to introduce our new lambs to the wonderful green earth.  We brought 10 more babies home on Friday night.  Four ewes and their 10 offspring.  We loaded then into Kristine’s horse trailer and brought them home.  What a riot.  The sheep in the barn wanted out so they came out to greet the new mothers.  The new mothers wanted to find their babies and were following them out of the trailer, after I handed the babies out to Brad for him to set on the ground hopefully the correct mother, with a little nudge, would follow the lamb out the door.  Then all the circling and butting and calling and running and chaos in the barn until 90% of them had their own babies back.  The last 10% we could figure out who went where and if we could catch the little lambs we could set a mother-baby trio or quad set to rights.  Whew, I think those moments are actually quite fun because once they all find their babies they all settle in and the quietness that follows chaos is so serene.  The grain was fed, the newest babies got their earrings, the bottle babies had their milk.  We sat in the plastic therapy chairs and looked at our flock.  How peaceful it was.  The golden glow in the barn after dark is so magical.  I have written about this before but the wondrous color shed by light reflecting off the golden hay to the dark or painted white barn wood pacifies my restless soul.  Add in the mothers calmly watching babies and chewing their cud and it is a priceless scene right here in my very own yard.  I know this would bore some people to tears but it is a wonderful contemplative scene to me and I relish the time I can do that.  Ten minutes later we were hounded by noise “it is my turn to do the computer and he won’t let me do his game.” Back to the real world.
Saturday was the day for the introduction to the world outside.  Steve and his son Matthew from the Toledo Presbyterian Church created brackets to hold our hog panel fencing that we use to section off areas of the barnyard, and four women came to shake fence wires and replace fence posts.  That done we bracketed off the area yet to be fixed and opened up the barn door.  Woo Hoo, what a rush, the 10 mommas headed out to find grass and the 23 babies were all agog .  Some were left in the barn, some ran out, some were able to keep up with their mothers who headed out and around the large pile of mud and flood debris in the yard still, some were just confused.  It was all settled rather quickly with the four mothers who delivered this week spending a lot of the day in the barn with their offspring and the babies outside running and jumping and playing their little lamb games and then collapsing in a puddle on the grass to rest.  It was very entertaining, and we had just the group to be entertained.
We had 6 volunteers from the Sumner Presbyterian Church here to work.  I started them in the rental house doing the final cleaning of wood work and windows, thinking we would move on to the cheese room or to fencing after a couple hours.  We had trim that needed putting up and all the doors needed to be trimmed to work over the new flooring.  I had thought I would get over there some day and get it done myself.  I am so thankful they came and were willing to do all the work.  It took these 6 plus our friend Joel, plus Matthew after he finished the fencing to accomplish the list.  Brad came over and put the toilet in place and, wow, it will soon be rentable....once the kitchen counters and cabinets are here and in place.  I could see the possibilities. 
The group that came to work here are readying themselves to go to Mississippi in April.  They are working as a team and will go down to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina.  One woman in the group, Marna, has been to the south 5 times since the Hurricane.  She has such sad and heartbreaking stories of the work that is still going on there.  I am awed, once again, by the magnitude of disasters around the world.  Our flood, though quite and impact, pales in comparison to what others have had to live through.  I am humbled by how small we are in the big picture of life and what it offers us but, at the same time, I am humbled by all the wondrous support offered us in our time of need.  Each turn we take, each good deed we do, each and everyone of us can make a huge difference in how we work together in this big old world.  It takes all of us.  We can help the Sudanese refugees, those who are torn from their homes by wars, by floods, by hurricanes, by tsunamis, by tornados, fire, volcanos the news has been full of disasters since our flood.  It takes us all, one chore at a time, to help others out and replenish hope in peoples hearts.  We all have our gifts, recognizing them and sharing them is our calling.  When done, there is always the plastic therapy chair to sit in and contemplate what we have done to improve our world.  Sigh.

February 19, 2008 The sheep made it home yesterday.  It is wonderful to have their happy voices in the barn again.  We moved 6 ewes and 10 babies home.  Five of them mommas who have delivered twins and one yearling who was not pregnant.  Shirley, Goodness and Mercy now live in the barn.  They came out with us as we were putting the barn back together and with their tiny feet they were running through the barn pell mell.  Their hooves made a wonderfully happy tapdance noise as they raced across the barn floor boards chasing each other.  We did have to end the parade as we paneled off three bays for the sheep to lounge in.  Then we put down straw which muffled their joyous dance but this will keep the barn and sheep much cleaner.  After Peter, Brad and I readied the barn Brad and I went to load the sheep into a stock trailer.  Kim and Doug had moved all the moms and babies together so we carried babies to the trailer and the mommas followed fairly well.  Sheep are always acting like they left something behind.   You just think you have them where you want them and they turn around and head back to where they began.  This usually happens in lambing,  they cannot count and it seems they go back to their birthing placed to look for one more.  Or so it seems: really they were just comfortable before we moved them, they had their babies in that corner of the barn and why are you moving me into that little pen and disrupting my nest anyway?
Well we got all loaded up and moved home.  They will stay in the barn for a few days until we get all the fencing secure and baby safe.  The little ones always try to get out on the road side each year.  The mommas did not seem to have any hesitation about entering the barn again.  I wondered.  I know sheep remember things they know where the feed is and the grain.  When we clang the gate in the milk parlour it means Brad will be milking soon so they all line up at the gate.  The ewes had no hesitancy which was good, or was it all the oat straw on the floor that they were not having any hesitations about?  They unloaded, got all mixed up, then got into the barn and settled back down with their own babies.  Shirley, Goodness and Mercy were bouncing all over.  They were reveling in the fact that there were more creatures their size in this world.  They had been living in the laundry room with the cats but cats are kind of slinky and sometimes rude and indifferent.  These little things bounced like they did and soon they were all mixing it up and playing sheepish games bouncing and running in the barn.  It will be quite the sight when they all run and jump outside.
We have our first Black Sheep of the year.  Thankfully she is a ewe lamb and we will be able to carry on our name of the Black Sheep Creamery.  Of the 6 ewes who have their lambs in our barn 3 of them are jet black in coloration.  Only one of the babies so far has the same coloring.  We have spotty ones, we have long curly wooled ones, and short crimpy wool, all white ones but this was our first black lamb.  They are all cute no matter what the coloring.  Genetics are interesting.  Doug and Kim are Shetland and Churro breeders.  Kim has certain qualities she is trying to breed in and out of her animals.  She is a wool producer and color, crimp, and fiber size are critical to her work.  Doug was explaining what some of their known crosses will produce.  It is amazing how certain combinations will give certain traits in the offspring.  Black in most breeds is a recessive gene so we would need both the ewe and ram to throw the same gene to get our coloring.  Bonnie is one of the next ones to lamb.  She is white but her father was black.  She was bred by Ricotta’s Son whose Grandfather was a black Romanov Ram so we can see what the genetic crystal ball has in store for us and look for proof in the next few days. 

February 16, 2008  I knew this day would come.  It was lovely.  It was dry enough to work outside and warm enough, even on the shady side of the house.  We had great workers here from Lutheran connections in Maple Valley, the Sumner Presbyterian Church, and our friend Joel.  Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy came outside and kept us entertained. They bounced and ran and ran and bounced till they fell asleep on the porch swing which is still sitting in the back yard.  Our workers cleared fencelines, put fences back in, and nailed down the barn floor in readiness for our mommas with lambs to return.  We hope to get them this long weekend.  I guess my optimistic Wednesday plan was too soon but we are getting there.  We even have a load of hay coming from Onalaska donated by a horse person who had extra and was willing to share.  We will get the feed in tomorrow and bring our 4 mommas and their twins home.  We have eleven babies including our three girls.  We have had 6 ram lambs and two more girls to join our flock.  They are beautiful.  We have two yet to see as they were born this morning amid all the work going on.  We will see them this evening.  The mommas who survived the flood are doing well. We all watched for signs of aborting babies but they have stayed healthy and eager to please, very eager to eat!

February 11, 2008 We welcome two ram lambs to our flock, born on Saturday 2/9 and a ewe lamb and ram lamb set on Sunday.  Kim Kerley is a great midwife, she just e-mails us with these wonderful notes about healthy babies and we are so thankful for each one that is born.  That brings the year to 4 ewe lambs and 3 rams so far.  We  had every intention of selling off all the rams this year but the first two born were so darn cute.....
They are healthier than I can imagine after all these mommas went through in the flood. The first two rams were born at 11 and 12 pounds!  Yikes, Cocoa did a wonderful job and looked like a wonderfully contented momma when we saw her Sunday am.  We checked all the other ewes when we were up at Kim and Doug’s place, we saw some nice udders forming but nothing looked imminent.  Well I guess we are out of shape for this lambing stuff for just 6-7 hours later Kim found the next set of twins doing well.  Ebony had her second set of babies, she had two black rams last year, now white twins this year.  The sire for this ewe lamb is the same one who sired the triplets, we will expect good things from these girls.  They are a blessed salve to our spirits.  We have determined for all parties affected we need to begin to move the ewes who have lambed back to our property and raise the little ones here.  We may develop a bit of a feedlot area in the barn but it will work, especially with as few animals as we will have this year compared to the last two years. 
We have been busy planning and working and moving and ordering and trying to stay ahead of our game here.  We have flooring going into the rental on Wednesday, and cabinets have been ordered.  Once those two items are done we will be able to rent it out which will releive the mortgage payment.  We had a wonderful group of skilled men come from Othello, WA.  These men have come to this area several times now since the flood.  They work on Habitat for Humanity homes in Othello, and I suspect other areas as well.  They furthered the drywalling process in my kitchen and Laundry room!  We have walls again.  Another couple of gentlemen from the Bellevue Presbyterian Church took on my kitchen floor.  This floor is the original fir floor in the house.  There have been several reorganizations of the space we now use as the kitchen.  The original house had a kitchen half the size, a bathroom, and pantry set up in the areas that now house our kitchen and downstairs bath.  The floor needed patching by someone who knew what they were doing and who had the time to do it right.  We were blessed with the right someone to do the job.  It looks beautiful and we even had some salvaged boards that did not get flooded away which were still in the barn.  I can see it happening!  Brian came back and scrubbed out the ‘53 Chevy.  It looks good.  I hope time will allow us to get her running again and it will.  Saturday we were literally crawling with help.  A school bus brought in a load of kids from Black Hills High School in Olympia.  They cleaned in the barn, the fences, the cheese room, and moved a lot of things off the driveway.  The things emptied from the machine shop that Brad had to determine if it was: salvageable, junk, recycle, try to salvage, still a question.  They were good workers and were a blessing to us.  Our thanks goes to them and their tireless teachers who gave up a Saturday to be here helping out.  Way to go guys! 
Today as we attempted to repair the barn we had visitors from Portland.  Tom from Provvista and Debbie from New Seasons Markets.  We gave them the grand tour, complete with cuddly lambs.  It is funny to show the place to people who have never been here before because then I see it as it really is.  I saw the mud and gravel pits, I saw how ineffective the cave is where it is, I saw how dreary my house is without anywhere to invite people to sit down.  It will be good to do that every now and then, a reality check.  I see the cave atop piers next to a nice clean aging room and the cheese facility spanking clean with cheese hanging.  I see the yard clothed in the green of spring.  I see the daffodils that are coming up in full bloom, heck, I even see the patio around my kitchen steps that has been on the list for two years.  I see the walls in the house painted and clean.  I see kitchen cabinets in place.  We did not even open the bathroom door that has a two foot plank walkway to the throne and a two foot drop on either side.  It is a good thing we use the upstairs bathroom at night.  Tom and Debbie were wonderful encouragers.  We are still trying to get 4 rounds of Pecorino Romano to the New Seasons Markets.  Soon!  Tom knows farms and will come back with tools in hand, Debbie has a 6 year old and understood my John getting stuck in the mud just for them.  He is a ham.  Reality and my reality, they will collide.  Lots of work first on fencing though if we are to be getting our babies home.  How sweet that is.

February 6, 2008 Shirley, Goodness and Mercy are doing very well, they have learned to drink from a bucket instead of individual bottles.  It is a lot easier to feed them that way as you can pour their milk into the top and walk away while they fight and tussle over the two nipples at the base of the bucket.  They get wild at times and bounce and jump.  We have them in a 4x5 foot pen, wish we could give them more space but it is quite cold out yet for babies without a momma.  They are sure fun to have here.  I took the list of animals we lost to the USDA today.  They have an animal indemnity program to help livestock owners recoup losses of animals.  It was hard to face the names and numbers of the animals we lost, list them out, and turn in the final count.  No more Linda, or Luna who were the daughter and granddaughter of Mopsy.  No more Marilyn Monroe moles on their noses.  The sisters, Elizabeth, Louise, and Millie are all gone, as are Ricotta and Holstein, Gertrude and GiGi, some of our best milkers.  Ricki is gone she was ready to retire, we have one of last years ewe lambs who survived and her daughter from 2004.  They will carry on her line and hopefully be as good as she was in the milking lineup.  We do have several of Feta’s offspring, daughters and granddaughters.  Shirley, Goodness and Mercy were sired by Gertrude’s son, hopefully they will bring in her good genetics to our new flock.  We do have one of Ricottas daughters, she not only has her mother’s looks, she is a good milker and is very mellow.  Not much will startle Salt.  The sad part is that here twin sister Pepper is gone.  They were both very good, mellow milkers.  We will rebuild, we may even see better genetics as we grow and have learned to cull.  Our first several years we kept everyone who was born female.  We were just getting to the point of culling  some of our less impressive family lines in the past two years of lambing.  The lessons we have learned should help us in rebuilding our flock.  We will watch for good milk production and longer lactation.   It would never be easy to say goodbye to all of our old friendly ewes who are now gone but we have learned a lot of lessons from them.  We know what a good animal is thanks to all their good behaviors, and we know what we would rather not see in a dairy ewe, thanks to some of their “other behaviors”.   We have been gifted back some our our ewe lambs when we can handle them on our property, and we have the sheep Deb Bender sent from Wisconsin.  We will see some adjustments as we incorporate new blood lines.  We will strive to keep our milk as sweet as it was.  We have had more opportunity to taste some milk from other flocks.  We were startled at how different flocks yield different tastes, or is it all up to the individuals who influence the taste of the flock.  Our friend, Carol Smith, who taught us how to milk in 2001 told us how she managed her goats.  She would taste the milk of each goat as it freshened and came to the parlour to be milked.  She would determine by taste who was in the lineup to provide milk for the calves and who would provide milk for human consumption.  It was different from doe to doe.  We have had incredibly sweet milk and will cull appropriately to maintain our award winning cheeses at the level to which we have climbed.  That tale will unfold over the next several months.  Stay tuned.

February 2, 2008 The last 30 hours have been utterly uplifting , a healing wash to battered minds, hearts and souls.  We have been pampered and held, gifted and energized.  We have been blessed.  Friday afternoon we left Chehalis to go to Portland Oregon, home of the nations most amazing foodie population.  Home to many incredible cheese shops, home to The Cheese Chick and the Author of the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, Christine Hyatt and Tami Parr respectively.  What a wonderful group of people.  They planned and hosted a banquet of cheeses, wines, beers, and good foods all brought in by various groups from around Oregon and Washington.  We were amazed and blessed, and very full by the time we left the Ecotrust Building in NW Portland.  This feat, Cheese for a Good Cause was a blessing to us, it was to help us get back on our feet and it will, It also helped ground us in our hearts and souls.  People we knew and did not know were there, Cheesemakers from all around the two states sent product for this event, wonderful foods were prepared by some very nice restaurants in the Portland area, names I say with awe and respect.  The stores we have sold at were well represented, Steve’s Cheese, Market of choice, New Seasons, Foster and Dobbs, Beechers from Seattle had someone there, It was truly a blessing.  We were lifted up and put back on our feet.  We were given hope.  It was a huge gift.  We were given an abundance of encouragement.  We were given a glimpse of what we will be back to, in sharing our hopes and dreams with so many well wishers we could only say we cannot not be back in business.  We will get there some how some way.  We left the Ecotrust building and walked back to our hotel with full and thankful hearts.  Sigh
Which is just what I did next, exhale and sigh.  I have been saying for about two weeks now I want to just run away and fall into a pile of nice white feathers and sink in all nestled in their warmth.  We had decided to stay in Portland overnight away from the mud and our blessed children, one of which still finds his way into our bed at 2 am and insists on sleeping sideways.   I got all ready for bed and climbed in.  This bed had a feather mattress as well as three feather pillows.  I absolutely melted.  It enveloped me in its whiteness and warmth.  That was what I had been craving for weeks.  Sigh.  We did not set the alarm and shut the heavy curtains.  I woke up at 5:30 am and willed my eyes shut again.  The next look was at 7:45 what a couple of lazy kids. Sigh.  Breakfast out and a drive through snow to home. 
We checked e-mails first to see if we had babies........Why indeed, Shirley, Goodness and Mercy were born in the wee hours of the morning.   The friends who bought two of our ewes last August  planned to give us the ewe lambs back after the flood as we lost so many of our good milkers.  Daniel predicted his ewe would give triplets and Ronda hoped they were all girls.....they were right on.  We drove up to Yelm this afternoon to pick up our three new girls.  We now have bottle babies and will need to get up  every three hours at night to feed them.....it feels like lambing season is really here.  They are just perfect in every way.  Goodness was even prancing around this evening in the straw bed we have placed in the newly redrywalled laundry room.  Goodness has a very demanding baa and Shirley, the smallest, will be more than able to hold her own.
In the midst of our brief time at home between traveling from Portland and up to Yelm we were delivered a beautiful flower arrangement from Brad’s mother.  A beautiful bouquet of red and yellow flowers.   How did she know that just this week I picked up a wallpaper border for the laundry room that was red, yellow, and green.  It is perfect confirmation of the choice and will be greatly enjoyed. 
Pampered and held, Gifted and energized.  We thank all of you who have made our last two days sublime.  We have been so utterly blessed in this time of trial and recovery.  We are very grateful to all of our friends and family old and new and those we have yet to meet, lives are incredibly intertwined.  Thank you all.

January 29, 2008 Brad went to visit Beecher’s today he met with the Affineur.  The cheese finisher.  The cheesemaker makes his or her wonderful cheeses and then the Affineur follows along for as long as the cheese needs to age, to care for it and nourish it.  Simply put the Affineur brushes the rinds and turns the cheese, he or she watches for extraneous growth of unwanted molds as well as monitors the cave conditions and determines when the cheese is ready for market.  It is a big job and it is not one we have had the time to perfect.  It is good for Brad to get out of the mud and take this trip to visit with the fine folks at Beecher’s and possibly gain some pointers in this process.  Beecher’s has been incredible in their response to our flood.  Another incredible cheese event that is looming soon is the Friends of Cheese dinner in Portland the first of February put on by our wonderful friends in the cheese community in Portland.  Tammi Parr has been posting a lot of the plans on her web site the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project, www.pnwcheese.typepad.com.  This will be a nice event for us to attend
together.  I know Steve Jones of Steve’s Cheese has been instrumental in this dinner, as well as Tammi and I am wanting to know who all has been helping to give credit where credit is due.  They have a wonderful food community in Portland.
I, on the other hand, took my month long cache of information to the Small Business Administration to begin processing a loan to rebuild and raise the cheese building.  I filled out the forms I received from their representative I spoke to in late December.  I had about 20 hours of reconciling forms, finding taxes, copying the right pages, collating sales numbers for 4 years, month by month, and filling out the SBA forms signed in all the right places.  A month of finding numbers in wet tax forms, trying to replace lost computer and printer cords, a box of printer ink etc.  This was an accomplishment for me who hates to sift through the old stuff, I do my numbers at the end of the season to note progress as we see it and move on.   These were different numbers and forms.  Guess what?  The SBA does not do Agriculture loans.  I fell apart.  I tried to clarify if that means they do not do food businesses at all but all they were seeing was dairy.  I may call their 1 800 number and pursue this.  In the meantime I know we have had a huge many blessings from many people that will provide us the means to get back into business.  I just want to know what it will take to raise the cheese room by 30 to 45 inches as we have planned.  I was referred to the USDA for Ag loans and will need to see if they can help with the Food Processing (that happens on a farm) end of things as well.  At least they have a local, long term office.  I then found my way to the insurance office to pay for the new insurances.  The car I was driving quit in their parking lot...My dad rescued me with my mother’s car.....
It will all work out, no one got hurt, I have a house.  Today’s paper outlines a couple who were flooded in December and their new home just burned this past weekend.  I have a car to go retreive and a home to bring it back to.  I have the USDA already called to set up a loan meeting and an officer who will help us with the animal indemnity paperwork at the same time.  I fell apart today because I thought I had it all sewed up and was ready to be done with that aspect of flood recovery.  I have been sent in a new direction and it may be this one will be all the better as they may be able to look at the whole farm, riverbanks and barns, animals, feed, fencing and mud.  This may help us to recover in a much better, larger capacity.  Sigh.

January 27, 2008  Progress is being made.  I had a bad week last week finally crawled out of the mud far enough to look ahead.  That is dangerous isn’t it.  There are miles ahead but in the same token we have traveled miles in the last 8 weeks.  I neglected to look back and was wallowing in how slow things seem to be going.  I think it was the cold along with making decisions.  We made a lot of progress yesterday.  Brad and Joel Plewa drywalled most of the laundry room and Matt Kemph drilled out a big hole in the side of the house so we could ventilate the mud underneath and begin removal.  I cleaned off the last of the mud laden furniture and even got a wild hair and ran to get a quart of paint to paint a bookshelf, just to see something happen.  It is a beautiful thing.  The cats now need to wait politely at the door, the laundry room seems warmer, the laundry machines started at 8:00 this am and I did not have to wait for the pipes to thaw at 2:00 pm.  Brad had gotten the cheese room cleaned once again on Tuesday with Brian and then he got back in to clean out the pastuerizer.  The cheese utensils have been scrubbed and cleaned again and there is more than a glimmer of hope that we will have the building funtional by the first of April.  The cave will be a different story.  We will buy a pop cooler for our cave for this year and we will grow into needing our refrigerated container “cave” in a couple years again.  That will give us plenty of time to refine our plans for future flood control and growth issues.  We did not outgrow our pop cooler caves until we were milking 48 sheep so with 18 to 20 sheep to start with in April and May, and 10 more in June we will do okay with the cooler for this season.  Next year....onward and upward.  Literally.  We hope to raise the cave up by almost 5 feet from the current cheese room floor.  It did sit about 18 inches higher where it was.  God willing we will not see a flood with the huge swell that we saw with this flood but we will be much more prepared!
We have hope of new lambs soon.  During church today Pastor Tom Bradshaw spoke on the 23rd Psalm.  Our first three ewes have been named...Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy will follow us for the rest of our days!

January 23, 2008  Our sheep have been sheared and checked.  We have at least 18 who are truly pregnant and two yearlings who could be.  Those two are not due for 4 weeks so they may not be showing an udder yet.  Thanks so much to Marie Voelker and her 4H group from Castle Rock, WA.  It happens to be pretty cold this week but usually the sheep fare well after shearing.  They have a nice barn facility to huddle in if needed.  About one third of the sheep had pretty smelly wool and it was high time to get it off.   Brad went up with the shearing crew and watched them start.  They were impressive having all 23 done in a day.  We thank you so much.  Meanwhile I met with Rich and Mary Jane Hill a contractor who is a friend of a friend.  They hope to help us out with our downstairs bathroom.  It will be nice to get our bathroom and soon the kitchen done in our house.  It has been very cold this week for Western Washingon.  Temperatures in the teens at night.  Our pipes have been freezing in the bathroom and laundry room as the insulation and drywall are gone and it is fairly  open through that part of the house, lets just say the cats can make it in and out without us letting them in the doors.  I will look forward to cats annoyingly yelling at the door demanding to be let in, that will mean we have blocked the access holes.  It is a wonderful gift being given.  Another contracter friend has traded us some of his work for an older farm implement he will be able to fix up.  It got wet and with all the other projects here would be neglected, so it is a more than generous offer.  The truck will get the TLC it needs and we will get a hole cut under our porch by someone who knows what they are doing and has the tools to use to do the project right (besides the continued childcare offered by his wife!).  We will then entertain a couple youth groups who have offered to be moles.  God Bless their youth and generosity.  Brad had a wonderful helper on Tuesday.  Brian came from Seattle to help out for a day.  He was a good help, and a good helper.  They worked alongside each other and started cleaning out the cheese room with scrub brushes.  It had been powerwashed twice but was in need of a scrubbing.  I think this helped Brad see that cheese will be happening again.  We know it will, it just seems a long way off but step by tiny step it comes a bit closer.  It has become tiring to balance so much, perhaps the cold weather makes each step seem more difficult.  Spring will come and with that some promises of new life.  Lambs will be coming soon, the daffodils grow a bit more each day.  All things have a beginning and an end.  I lookforward to new beginnings and the promise of spring.  Step by tiny step it will come.

January 19, 2008 Another wonder filled day from the mud flats.  We woke up this morning not sure what the day would bring.  Had heard the Presbytery was putting together work groups but Gwen made no promises last night when we had suggested we needed people to TSP the walls and ceilings in our rental house.  Since we had no TSP I went to the hardware store at 8:00 to get some and dropped by a coffee place to juice up for the day.  Thank you Franna Pitt for the Starbucks card, it was very nice of you and it was a treat to stop and bring home lattes.  We got going, my goal was to clean the house.  I can’t understand that with all the other things going on how the housework and laundry keep accumulating.....sigh.  I have a bunch of things here I could consolidate and put into the bunkhouse to store to get them out of the house.  I started all that and somehow after vacuuming the floor in the kitchen got into washing canning jars.  Some of them have been outside and were full of rainwater.  They were beginning to crack with the freezing weather.  That led to restacking the Christmas things in the bunkhouse and making more room to get things out of the house.....Brad did have a couple of men come from the Toledo Presbyterian Church.  Friends of a Friend of ours.  They scrubbed and cleaned and came over for lunch.  Bobbie, a local volunteer had made us beef and barley soup last weekend so I thawed it out and we all feasted well.  That is another story she has made thousands of meals since December 3rd a real local hero in my estimation.  These gentlemen took the drywall off our downstairs bathroom.  We have a bead board layer yet to remove to see how much dry rot has accumulated over the last one hundred years.  Once that is repaired we can close up the walls again.  About this time we had a group of kids show up to start shaking fences.  We still have debris and a couple sheds and the neighbors playhouse on our fencing.  They were able to accomplish a lot in the time they had here, each step is a step closer.  I got a call from a disaster assistance outreach worker from the Rochester United Methodist Church.  They are attempting to contact all those who have flooded to see if they are aware of all services available.  She connected me with another woman who is aware of the Hay Wranglers.  A group of women, she thought, who are collecting hay to help farmers out over the next 6 months.  They also may have a lead on fencing supplies.  While I was on the phone to her the Crock Pot Queen showed up with a dish of lasagna and a bag of soup for the freezer.  I told the woman on the phone she is a wonderful mind reader as well as a wonderful cook.  Brad and I had discussed this morning that if no one came today to help with the scrubbing we would grab a pizza somewhere and head over ourselves, let the kids camp out and make a party of it.  Well the scrubbing was done and we now had a beautiful dish of lasagna to eat.  That is not even the amazing part of the day for me.  I went to a kitchen shower.  A woman I do not know had an idea to have a kitchen shower for some women who had lost things in their homes.  I have to admit I was a bit scared about going.  I did not know what to expect.  It is an amazing thing to see the love that has been poured out upon this county.  This woman and her friends had amassed a wonderful selection of kitchen gadgets, towels, toasters, tea kettles, drinking glasses, plates, baking pans, recipes, with a cake and coffee to boot.  (I think this will be the only time in my life that all of the tupperware in my kitchen has a matching lid.  How many of you can say that?)  I am humbled again.  It is with such gratitude in my heart that I am able to accept these gifts.  It is with such love that they are brought.  The other women were touched and grateful as well.  I had such a time listening to their stories.  One or two were plucked off of porch roofs, with wild stories of their rescues.  Two of the women lost their homes.  One woman found out after the flood that the last time the house had flooded they had slapped drywall on top of wet drywall and floor over wet subfloor.  The house should be torn down but the mortgage broker and the insurer are not in agreement about that.  Meanwhile the family lives in their 800 square foot shop with a port a potty and they shower at the local fitness center.  I am reminded it could always be worse.  There are miraculous stories as well one woman raises guinea pigs.  She had them housed in the barn behind her home.  She had moved a rubber tub holding some of her pets up to a shelf in the barn across from the wire cages.  She feared what she would find when she returned home the next day.  To her amazement the animals all survived.  The ones in the plastic tub, had a water line on them about 2-3 inches up.  They were on a shelf that was higher than the metal cage but those ones were dry.  The only thing they can presume is that the wire cages were on the wall that the water was hitting first.  As it came around the corners and dipped down it was low enough to avoid the cage but hit the wall across from these cages as it roared on around and out of the building.  What an amazing thought that the whole building was not crushed.  The garage at the house next to hers floated across the road and landed on the neighbors driveway.  It was huge to meet some of those I have read about in the paper. It was good to see that healing has begun in other homes as well.  Some have not and it will take time and a lot of help.  One woman has not been able to go back to her home yet.  It was a very hard thing for her to accept.  My heart breaks for the fear this sort of thing can generate.  I never thought we would flood.  We sit 30 feet above the river when at its summer low.  It is incredible how much water traveled through this valley.  But Robin and I agreed the flood was nothing compared to the tidal wave of humanity that has reached out to those here affected by the muddy water.  Robin corrected me...We are not facing a tidal wave...it is a Tsunami.
Tomorrow will be the laundry and housecleaning day maybe, we will see what happens

January 18, 2008  What a beautiful week it has been the sun has been shining and it just makes you beleive the mud and poorly draining soil will leave.  It is nice to see green things coming up like grass and daffodils.  I know we have a bit more winter to pass by but we always get glimpses of spring this time of year to lead us along and remind us that it will not rain forever here in the Pacific Northwest, spring does come.  I made it back to my quilting group on Tuesday evening.  It is a wonderful group of women who meet on Tuesdays to quilt, and encourage, and share ideas and books and experiences.  I love it.  Several of these women now have grandchildren and several are teachers.  They have seen and heard just about anything and are full of the wisdom experience teaches.  I have learned sometimes it is easier to get a lesson from someone who has had to create the wheel and not recreate the wheel myself.  They are warm and generous and whole heartedly welcomed me back.  I guess quilters are just as wonderful as wool people.  The group, called "In Stitches", is having a quilt show in February starting the 29th. (It will be at the Centralia Christian School 1315 South Tower in Centralia WA the weekend starting February 29th, if anyone is in the area and would like to see some fabulous quilts)  They are going to highlight rescued quilts this year.  We have another quilter in town who carried an abundance of her quilts up to her attic to preserve them from the surging waters.  I have my family room quilt that I have been working on for over a year that my friend Sandy Fick rescued from the mud on the floor of my dinning room.  She lovingly cleaned and hosed the muck off.  It looks fabulous and I started to remark the quilting lines on Tuesday pm.  I will display it with swatches of the fabric as they looked before the flood effect.  It may give quilters a whole new opportunity to age their quilts.  Instead of "tea dying" I could sell quarts of mud sludge and offer up official mud from the 2007 flood to dye quilts with.  Oh well, I won't get rich, I will not quit my day job.  It has been so good of my former employers to offer me work 2-3 days a week but it is hard to leave home when there is so much to be done.  Groceries and Mortgage payments still call out for attention.  We have so much to be thankful for as we progress into another weekend.  We have a group of hard workers coming tomorrow to help rescue fences.  It will be good to get a good assessment of what fencing work will need to be done.  Last weekend we had two groups here one from University of Puget Sound.  Kids out on college break and looking to play in the mud. They, along with a couple people from the Bellevue Presbyterian Church, cleaned the woodwork for the rental, they helped clean, clean, and clean it more so we are that much closer to renting it out.  Monday we will have the Castle Rock 4H group coming to help us shear the sheep and we will get our first good look at their udders to see who really is pregnant and who is not.  This usually is started in December when Brad feeds them grain in the milking parlour.  He gets a good look at whose udder is developing at what rate and each day he can compare progress to the list of due dates and we know who we will need to check on each night.  This will be our first really good assessment.  Pray for udders and Pray for ewe lambs.

God is good and we are making it.  Thank you all of you, we appreciate your love and generosity and always those prayers.

January 16, 2008  Wolftown.  We visited Wolftown Sunday as the woman behind the experience had a car to give us to help us out.  T Martino and Pete Yamamoto have an incredible place on Vashon Island where they are rehabilitating wolves that will be let out in the wild.  They also have several animals who are their “education animals” as they would be unfit to release back into their natural habitat.  I was amazed.  I have never been so close to a wolf before, they are beautiful.  I have never considered what role animal predators play in the balance of wild and domestic animals.  T has an amazing tour and the ideas presented I have been trying to put on paper for two days, but have not been able to concisely present the information.  I now have a much greater appreciation for predators and domestic animal parasite control.  I think it was a great tour and would reccommend a visit to their website www.wolftown.org for the information I cannot fairly pass on.  Going to Wolftown was a treat as we got to ride a ferry and drive through beautiful Washington in the sunshine!  It was a good day out.

January 12, 2008  If we did not have dairy sheep I think I would look into wool sheep and join a fiber group.  Wow.  The outpouring of help and generosity from this group is tremendous.  Growing up I loved to travel through Oregon to my Grandparent’s home in Medford and see all the sheep in the field.  I remember one Easter Vacation we drove down and all the lambs were in the very green fresh fields, it was such a wonder.  I, like so many, loved sheep.  I tried to find a way to raise them but being a city girl it just was not going to happen.  I often drove by a farm on Schueber road that sat up on a hill with sheep in the yard...were they really there or just how I pictured the place?    It had a beautiful old house, the paint had all weathered off and it just ached for someone to come love it.  When we became aware of our farm going up for sale,  Brad and I were in Northern California working on my aunt and uncles walnut ranch.  My parents came to see this place with the realtor and my mother told me first off “you are going to love the house it is just like the one you have wanted for years!”  And it was, and it still is.  We even have the sheep to complete the picture.  Now if you had told me I would be raising sheep all those years ago I would have looked at you in wonder.  If you had told me I would be raising dairy sheep I would have looked at you incredulously.  I always pictured wool sheep in my dreams.  I have so many old cross stich patterns with sheep and pictures for my walls.  It is fun to be living a dream.  I was not even detered by the Ivan Doig books about raising sheep in the cold reaches of Montana.  But wool sheep would be a whole new episode for me now.  I was just last fall saying I had learned from Gretchen how to prepare wool for market post shearing....well look for it in 2009.  As we refit the barn I will turn a corner into a great place to skirt the wool and possibly find a way to clean it.  Definitely will outfit a better place to store the wool.  We just placed it is black plastic bags and piled it up.  Hay fell on top of the bags.  I imagine a kid or two tromped over them.  Watch out kids mom is taking another section of the barn for off limit use....seasonally.  The wool sheep producers have a new web site here in Washington.  They had an auction last month to help our flood project along.  (It is still hard to say to benefit us...it just sounds so selfish...humbleness is a virtue is it not?)  Those intrepid wool warriors are at it again.  They have amassed another beautiful array of wool products and other fine crafts in an online auction.  I am in awe of their skill and generosity.  Some of the wool and products would take me a lifetime to produce.  It is a beautiful place to see.  Go to www.washingtonwool.net . and look for yourself.   My hat is off to these men and women who have maintained this age old industry of making a sheared fleece into a work of useful art.  I will learn someday.  I will have wool growing daily, I saved the spinning wheel, and I have two small looms to start with....It will happen.  Thank you so much Washington Wool Producers.  Your generosity and energy is Huge!

January 10, 2008  Just another amazing day from the mud flats.  We got up yesterday to take the kids to school.  We had afternoon places for them to go as we were driving north to buy a truck.  Sounds simple.  Well first of all we forgot a couple things so after dropping off children we came home got those items and off we went in one of the borrowed trucks we have been using for a month now.  It was not raining and I had a my pad of paper and lists of stuff to do we as were going to prioritize projects from here on out.  I left two or three lines between  each item so we can add or change as life evolves.  Like leaving time to change a big tire, on the drivers side ,on the freeway, next to the city center exit in Olympia.  Whew.  Fortunately we are borrowing this truck from a Contractor.  All the right equipment, a nice spare, and Brad had an F250 so he knew where to look for things to get the job done.  My main job was to stand on the pry bar to loosen the nuts.  I am a pro, call if you have a flat.  After this chilling experience we called my mom and asked to borrow her car since we had about a three hour trip to Mount Vernon it was better to be safe than take a chance.  So after dropping the kids off at school at 8:15 we got out of town at 11:00.  Sigh there went that little list addition of dropping by Brad’s folks in Stanwood.  Sorry Paul and Aline.  We drove with not a problem to Mount Vernon.  Saw a guy in Seattle on a very narrow shoulder with his drivers side tire hub on the ground It could always be worse.  Sigh.
Hey, we bought a truck, and while we were driving north two of my Northwest Pediartics Providers brought us a car.  We have wheels now.  We have a good farm truck with hose out mats, vinyl seats, cranky windows, manual locks, and 6 seatbelts! It also has an AM/FM radio.  One of the vehicles we are borrowing has only AM....and only picks up two stations....that are a lot of talk and oldy music.....which is okay....for a while.  We have a car that has been through two college students so when my 15 year old gets his permit I will not worry so much.  I have not checked to see if it is a standard or automatic.  I had Peter drive my Subaru a couple times to start learning a stick shift.  We can get these other vehicles cleaned out and returned.  A huge THANK YOU TO  Symons Frozen Foods and to Matt and Lisa Kemph.  We have been blessed with transportation for a month what a blessing to have the time to make careful decisions about a newer vehicle. 
That done, by 3:30, we went off to Arlington to see our new sheep at Ninety Farms owned by Linda Neunzig .  They are beautiful.  We have 10 new Dairy Sheep that were given to us by a Dairy Sheep Breeder in Wisconsin.  THANK YOU Deb Bender. They are beautiful, 5 are black with some white markings and 5 are white.  We received them just before Christmas.  They were delivered to Linda’s farm as she will be breeding them and lambing them and we will get the mommas and ewe lambs here when it is time to start milking.  We will have a very good idea of our pasture situation by then.  We THANK YOU Linda Neunzig.  Wow.  We have fielded a lot of offers of sheep and we truly thank all of your.  Dairy Sheep are bred to have multiple babies and produce milk to support that many lambs.  They also have a longer lactation cycle.  Some animals will dry up as soon as the baby quits suckling a good dairy ewe will continue to produce with the mechanical milking .  We have appreciated all those offers and have not wanted to offend anyone but good stock is a huge plus to us and Deb we are so very grateful to you and Linda and Ron Keener and Gretchen Wilson, and Gretchen’s mother and......for making this happen.  The animals were delivered by Ron Keener. Travels with RonK.  He has an RV and a stock trailer outfitted to carry small animals all over the country delivering them from buyers to sellers.  He has it organized, clean, comfortable, and is a wonderful host to all the animals he travels about with.  Ron was a huge help in this venture as he even turned around to get them in Wisconsin as his speedy trip went faster than all the e-mail confirmations needed to finalize a place for the animals to live.   THANK YOU Ron Keener, Travels with Ron K. 
As we entered Linda’s Barn we met a very nice friendly animal who looked so much like our Ricki we were amazed...until we realized it was our ram that Alexia Stevens had purchased and loaned back to us to us to breed these new ewes.  Ricki is gone but this young ram will bring back some of those wonderful blood lines we were developing.  It was such a blessing to see his happy face and his wonderful wooly self.  THANK YOU Alexia Stevens for the use of this animal.  I hope the girls from Wisconsin have appreciated him as much!
Off to dinner with the Wilsons.  We have a cheerleader in Monroe WA.  Gretchen Wilson has been cheering us on since we first met her in 9/2000.  We visited her after an article by Cookson Beecher appeared in the Capital Press about Gretchen and her Dairy Sheep.  We were looking for an alternate milk source for our son at that time.  The milk and cheese she served us was delicious and she was very helpful in helping us find our first real dairy sheep.  She has been more than helpful in getting our operation going and her depth of knowledge about sheep, dairying, milking and cheesemaking has yet to be plumbed.  I call her a leader as she has taken on so much in getting us back together.  She has fielded calls, e-mails, and cards.  She has wisely counseled us in regards to stock choices and was a major factor in getting us up and going as when help kept arriving you just have to function.  THANK YOU Gretchen and Rob Wilson.
Gretchens mother flooded last year in November.  It was a mess, I looked at the barn and saw the horses they had to pull out through the cold flooded barn yard.  She has given us a refridgerator  and she has also been a huge help in getting our animals to the Northwest via Ron and his traveling ark.  I thank you too.  We traveled home through a pouring rainstorm, ended up getting kids in bed by 10:30.  Luckily the younger ones were asleep when I got to Laurie’s house to get them. 
Wow life is just good.  I see days when I will need to weep but then all these good things come together and how can one lose faith when we have been blessed over and over again.

January 7, 2008  The Crock Pot lady saved my families stomach’s tonight.  I was out and about doing all sorts of errands and getting things done .  I had just spoken to Brad to fill him in on yet another mind-numbing detail of things to do.  I had asked him what we should have for dinner....Woo Hoo when I got home there on the hood of the truck in the garage was a gift from the Crock Pot Queen.  We do not know her name, all she says is that she is a former neighbor and she brought us a crock pot with soup.  Then she brought a casserole, and now more crock pot meals and goodies on top of that.  What a blessing.  I do not like to cook.  There are those of us who bake and bake well, and there are those who like to cook and cook really really well.  I do not know if she is a baker but she is a wonderful cook!  What a blessing.  I have soup warming as I type and I got a bunch of errands done and bills paid.  I even had a few moments to play hot wheels with John before he went off to pre-school today, before he turns five years old tomorrow.  Wow.  Thank you your Highness of the Crock Pot.  I love those things, they hold good food, ease of use and now, in my mind, they hold a whole lot of respect for someone who has taken the time and trouble to cook and deliver her fine meals.  People are like that.  People amaze me.  We have received anonymous donations from incredible people who are happy to give with no strings attached.  Who are just amazing to me.  I wonder if we have even met????  We have had incredible gifts from so many people far and wide hoping to help the business prosper, or to fund a replacement ewe.  We plan to be back up and running as soon as we can.  We will make it back only through the help we have received from so many people, churches, organizations and cooperatives.  People are incredible.  It had been a difficult day today.  I finally wept, not just shed a few tears but wept.   Our vet bill came for the visit made on December 7th to the ewe who had cut her foot in the flooding and it was infected.  I had no vehicle to call my own, I had my sheep at another farm it was 2:00 on a friday afternoon and the vet was out there by 4:00 and had not only served the animal with the cut foot but he had looked at a couple other animals as well.  They wrote off the bill.  I wept.  It was such an act of kindness on top of the others that have come our way.  This type of generosity has so richly blessed us I think I finally felt the enormity of what is going on.  I think the next phase of greif is anger, or emotion, I would prefer to miss that and just get on to the I am ready to be up and moving.  Since I lost most of my nursing and psyche books I can make up all the rules I want, right?

January 3, 2008 Major omission on my part.  I forgot to mention the First Presbyterian Church in Bellevue sent down a group on Saturday.  They had about 12 people who came brawny and fit and willing to work.  We had reports that Twin Oaks Dairy was just getting to the "deconstruction" phase of their cheese room.  The one they moved into on December first.  They could handle a few more bodies to get all that going and this group being flexible and just wanting to help out went over there to work.  I hope the progress they are making there is a good as here.  Lizzie Brandt who has been everywhere and offering much brought big...BIG bowls of chili for lunch to both farms and we were blessed.  Overflowing with blessings if my mind cannot even recall 12 brawny folks here to get a job done...oh my.

January 2, 2008 Normal?!?  We are in our own home, the kids went back to school today, it is Wednesday so there is Youth Group tonight.  I think we will try to have a normal schedule during the week and wild weekends.  Just like the rest of the country right?  Woo Hoo!   We did have a wonderful end to the year 2007.  It began Friday when we were home trying to get it ready to move back into.  We had a work group here from the Christian Church in Olympia.  An extra truck showed up and a man on crutches got out.  It turns out he was on crutches from an accident that he had here in this barnyard when he was 7 years old and living in our house with his parents the Tramms.  It was Gary Tramm of Longview who came to offer us a very special item.  He had in his possession a picture of our house and barn that may have been a tinted or painted photograph.  The picture was taken long before the road was “modernized” when the road took right angle turns, manageable in a horse and cart or a small truck or car.  He had his framed in a beautiful oval frame with a bubble glass on it and he said it used to hang in the front room downstairs that was only used on very, very special occasions.  He brought for us a copy of this very special portrait.  It is beautiful.  So full of the history of the place.  The barn was young and not so tired looking.  The house wide open, the walnut trees not hiding it from view.  The gray building we thought would be a casualty of the flood was up in the air, a three story building housing the cistern that was the gravity water feed to the house and farm.  The windmill that provided the power to fill it was also behind the house in view.  it was such a gift and so very nice of him to bring that to us in the midst of the muck.  We can only yearn for the day when we will see a picturesque place again.  Actually come May when the grass has grown where it can and the flowers are out It will be picturesque.  We can overlook the mud, it always looks its worst here in January and February.  The daffodils are coming out already, I noticed them today!
On Saturday the folks from the Butteville Community Church came to help out.  One of their members has been raising dairy sheep and we purchased our ram from her last summer.  She not only has forgiven us for the “poor care” we had given her animal but is willing to bring us another one out of her best ewe that lambs out a ram this spring and summer. Thank You very Much Colleen Smith we will be blessed for years to come!  The men in this group sprayed and shoveled and cleaned tools.  Looked at equipment and helped move things Brad cannot move by himself.  We also had two of my cousins friends from Seattle here spraying and mucking and spraying and mucking.  All for a cup of coffee.  They did get their picture in the local paper!  Thank you Brian and Torque.  The ladies of the group were the Murphys Oil Brigade.  There used to be and advertisement about some women who used a product to clean one of the old and impressive churches in New York or some such place.  I had the next generation at my house on Saturday.  They scrubbed and oiled and the woodwork looks grand.  In fact if we can get pictures posted I took one of windows side by side treated and not.  It was very impressive what a band of determined women can do.  Murphys Oil Soap and Howard’s feed and wax.  Brad’s sister Kathy came down to help and it was a blessing.  We took the murphy’s and Howards to the next level.  We did the stairs.  The stairs were caked in mud and rarely got a rest from feet and mud and water and feet and mud...you get the picture.  They have revived.  NO BOOTS IN THE HOUSE FROM HERE ON OUT!  Kath also did the mud caked dishes and helped the Butteville ladies with the Oak sideboard we brought back into the house to clean and try to repair.  It got cleaned but the old Horsehair glue was breaking down so the folks at Up the Creek Antiques are having a go at it.  It was a peice that came out of my grandmother’s family home in Missouri that I was able to visit with my parents when I lived in Kansas City for a couple of years.  It will have more stories to tell as it ages.
Dan Schreiber returned to visit.  He is a reporter and photographer from our local paper, the Chronicle.  He was in the boat that rescued us.  He stayed at the Adna shelter that first night of the flood.  He just moved here from Missouri....is not talking of moving back....he may be waiting for his socks though.  He gave my barefoot son Andrew his socks to put on when we were trapped on an island of Highway 6 waiting for the helicopter ride to the shelter.  Andrew’s shoes had floated and when we left the house neither he nor John had shoes on.  Bless there hearts by Sunday we had 4 pairs of shoes for each of them and I swear they still end up barefoot half the time. 
We celebrated the end of the years by blessing the house with the noise of 6 kids, two of the dogs returned home and a New Year’s Eve celebration!  We had my parents and Kath for dinner and we popped our party poppers along with you all in the Midwest as we went to bed at 10:00.  It was the end of the crazy year.

January 1, 2008  We are on our way, new year new beginnings, new start.  It will not be every remodel you have an opportunity to change things once you had the job done.  Our kitchen,which we remodeled in 1995, had a wood stove in it but once the chimney started to sag the wall we decided it had to go, two years ago.  Now we have opportunity to put cabinets around that wall and omit the large peninsula that was created to complete the kitchen.  It will give us  lot of different use in the same space. Our younger boys have found an opening between the studs where we had removed a door and are making great use of the hole left when the drywall came down.  They can run circles around the house, kitchen to dining room, through family room, into office door then the closet and through the wall into the kitchen again.  Simple. If I board it back up prematurely most mothers will understand.
Our cheese cave which floated needs to be moored.  Do we really want to tie it down since all the cheese and contents survived it’s ride? Had we had a real building it would have had two feet of water in it and we would have lost the cheese, a fridge and our vacuum sealer.  We had placed the container 5 feet from the cheese building.  Thinking just a hall way to join them would be good.  We found we would really like to make a salting room and place the container on a cement slab...we had discussed how to unhook it from the electricity, move it with a crane, build the slab and foundation for a salting room and then return the cave.  How and when would be the best time for that?  Questions answered, and steps 1,2,and 3 have already been accomplished.  We will placed the cave far enough away to accommodate an 8 foot salting/drying room.  Then when Brad is making cheese he will not have yesterdays cheese in the way of today’s make.  It will be a benefit of the mess we see now.  Check back in April,  We at least have to have it moved and ready to receive cheese.  The foot print for the salting/drying room will be in place.  If there is no room built yet, I will put out a picnic table, or a couple of my plastic therapy chairs.  I have several spots about the farm where I have created, or envisioned, a seat to relax in.  There usually sits one of our plastic picnic chairs.  These are the plastic therapy chairs.  I offer them to people who have had a day and would like to watch sheep frolic and play or just eat.  Depending on which crowd the chair is focusing on.  They are wonderful places to collapse when working around the farm. 
Our reach in cooler, which was the “red” cave took a hard hit in the flood.  It was a three door pop cooler, which was our original cave, and when we put in the container became our red cave. (The area we used to anoint and store the cheese with B. Linens, a red bacteria) Well its age was showing and the rusty spot on the bottom was what knocked us down two points on our last dairy inspection.  So I am sorry to those who liked the Muenster and the St. Helens...it may be a while before we replace the relic...or not.  Time will see which way we evolve.  The biggest change we may be able to initiate sooner than planned is to put in a retail space here on the farm.  So many dreams, so little time and space.  Again, new beginnings.  We may be able to get that rolling more sooner than later. 
We have moved home again.  Hooray!  Have seen a few mice but so have the cats.  Our phone serviced is iffy.  We had a lot of ringing then were unable to pick up the call or use the dial up internet.  Bless the Qwest service man, he called at 8 pm New Years Eve to let us now it was fixed. 
I think my plan remodel the kitchen is moving up on the list.  The kitchen walls and the bathroom have 2-3 inch gaps near the floor, these are normally closed with flooring and insulated with cupboards.  it makes for a very cold breezy room which may be okay in summer....