I’ve tried again to upload pictures, and it won’t work, I get “Unable to create directory”. John says he suspects Ruzz who fixes these things is out of town for the weekend. John is off line for the weekend, so he won’t know if there is email telling him why it can’t be fixed. I’ll post them as soon as I can.

It took us longer getting out of the house, partly because after all the rush of the last couple weeks I just wasn’t going to go there. There were also little matters like the goats escaping through the fence to the neighbor’s tree farm filled with knee high fir trees. The neighbors who are good intentioned but, well, it would be impolite to say dim witted, perhaps I should say that I often don’t understand the reason they do things. At any rate, the neighbors get very upset about the goats or sheep in their tree farm. They beleive, or have in the past beleived that our animals are responsible for all damage to the trees, and that the deer browsing on the tops of the trees have nothing to do with it. Never the less, our animals on their property is a problem, especially past a full fence.

A week ago John went down with fence posts and the fencing tool and post pounder (T Posts which you pound in to the ground, not wooden posts), and set some new posts. He also found that the fence had only been attached to every second existing post, and often by only one fence tie. So after a good bit of work he felt he’d solved the problem. The fence was tighter, reinforced, and the goats could no longer slip under it. (The goat leading the herd in all this is 150 to 200 pounds with horns that stretch three to four feet from tip to tip. How he gets down and slips under a fence has got to be like watching a`really big cat burgler in action!

Then long about Wednesday, there were the goats again on the wrong side of the fence. We speculated on the possibility of Rutherford, that lead goat, becoming more closely related to Pan and just somehow willing himself across the fence. We discarded that notion along with some other improbable ones. So Friday morning while Logan and I looked for things we wanted to bring to Portland and packed, did a load of laundry, and so on, John reluctantly loaded up fencing implamants and went down our big hill again. All goats were on the wrong side of the fence this time. I should mention that we’ve been able to get them back for some time by opening a panle in the fence that leads in to our house yard, filled with lush green unmowed grass and other delicacies such as rose bushes which they don’t normally get to eat. The neighbors have started “helpfully” closing it for us. And in case the goats are somehow coming in to our house yard and pushing it open to have an escape to their farm, wiring it shut, with many pieces of wire. This makes it difficult to get the more skittish ones home again. John will talk to them at some point. Possibly when he’s not carrying the 40 pound post pounder if it’s a good day. So he went down and delicately herded them back, and found that they had started pushing the fence down so they could leap over it. A few more fence posts were applied, and a lot more ties. Some old barbed wire (good old Bob Wire from my childhood of strong Florida accents) untangled from where the fence had once been tied to it, pulling everything lower, and once again the goats are in our pasture. Keith our farm sitter of the moment said he might go look at the fence if he were feeling enterprising too, but he’s been employed removing fence for horse people recently, so he may have had enough of it before he gets to our place for the evenings.

Because many people have announced that this is a vacation for us, and Logan begged for an extra day because the Heathman hotel (Inn? It’s in Vancouver WA, look it up if you ever need a place to stay, it’s worthwhile!) has a nice indoor pool, I planned to sleep in. No go. I woke up at 5:20, ten minutes before the unset alarm would have gone off. No hotel breakfast until 8, and if Logan wakes up she’d like to swim before that, if the pool is opened earlier. I could put tea on, but I’d like John to sleep longer if he can. We did find a good sushi place last night only blocks from the Heathman. They’d run out of Quail Egg, but had avocado on the two piece sushi sets, which looked for all the world like green fish. Logan and I felt as if we were having the sort of sushi John had, and it was very good. John had an unfiltered Saki, which I tasted and Logan smelled. Now he’s ready to try making Saki again — he never did get all the equipment, but we’ll see if he does this time.

Today Logan and I go to the zoo, and then back to the Heathman to change and on to the evening at the coffee gathering where John will be all day. I can see us continuing this routine of zoo or similar event after the last day of school for years to come.

We’ll see if there’s down time enough for me to post again this weekend.

Filed under: life, farm, family