Boys will be Boys/Getting ready for WSWF

 Last Friday while I was working at the fair, our BFL ram, Ward Harwell, managed to get in with the ewes.  Fortunately Stan noticed and got him back in the ram pen with a bucket of corn. Then when I looked out at the sheep on Saturday morning, there he was again in with the ewes.

I took the camera along to document the possibility of February BFL lambs, but I forgot to put on my glasses. When I got up closer, I see that Socks, our wether managed to accompany Harwell this time.  I decided to let Harwell have his way and I put the BFLs & Socks in a separate pen.  That way I can feed them separately from the Shetlands.

While I was out there with the sheep, I distinctly heard a goose next door.  The neighbor boys have gotten into poultry this summer and I wondered if they had gotten themselves some geese too.   So I stepped over our newly fixed fence...

(freed from the huge oak that was pressing down it just days before) and took a quick look at the boys' bird pens.  No geese in there, just chickens.  But when I looked up I saw this:

So I took a couple photos, zooming in so I could get a better look when I downloaded them to the computer.  I mentioned to Stan that I saw a bunch of geese in the neighbors back yard hanging out by their chickens.  Well, the next day Stan is chuckling away and tells me the neighbor boy asked if I had seen geese in his backyard.  It turns out the neighbor kid was up in his tree stand with a goose call the whole time and had gotten a good laugh out of watching me taking photos of his decoys.  What a stinker! I really do need to wear those glasses whenever I go outside.  I didn't realize Saturday was the opening day of the early goose season.

I picked up the last of my inventory at the state fair today.  Not much to bring home thankfully. Next year I will be better prepared. Working in the booth was a real education -- so many people!  Friday morning's cold temps were a real boon to sales of hats, mittens and socks.  :-)

On Sunday we went to my dad's place in Wisconsin.  It used to be our family cabin, dad moved up there to live about 20 years ago. I remember all the summers we spent canoeing and swimming in that creek and the nearby lakes. It's cool to see our kids carrying on the tradition now.  In this photo, my sister and brother are in the canoes...

And now to get ready for the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival in Jefferson, WI this weekend!  Our 1997 Chevy Venture has 231,000 miles on it and Stan was nervous about me taking it on yet another long trip like that. 

This "after the storm photo" from last month shows my little red van.

But that little thing just keeps going and going like the Energizer Bunny.  The problem with it is the windows can't be trusted to go back up once they go down and the back hatch door can't be trusted to actually open.  Lots of little things like that add up and it's getting pretty rusty.  So this morning we bought ourselves another Chevy Venture:

This one is a 2003 so we're in the current century now!  I like the fact that it's the longer version, I wonder how many dog crates full of sheep it will hold.