Today we got to sleep in, which was great! We woke up at around 10 and then watched Friends until about 11 and then came up for a chaotic breakfast of oatmeal, milk, cheese, etc. The kids all seem really sweet, even though we can't particularly understand them, but when they are all together, it conspires to be a hurricane of craziness.

We were at loose ends a bit after lunch, but we ended up going for a nice walk down the road for about 45 minutes each way, and found a pretty little river and some old ruins, which T said was an old sheep-holding pen. It's all made out of rocks and quite cool. It would have been good to walk over there, but we weren't sure if we were allowed to traipse through someone else's fields. Unfortunately, though it is a gorgeous valley, there isn't really anywhere to go, so we just wandered till we got tired and turned around.

We had a companion on our walk--City Dog--who has been visiting the farm and doesn't have so much barn sense! He came along and went shooting across fields chasing birds and sheep and whatever else caught it's fancy; completely ignoring us as we yelled and yelled for it to stick close. He then turned tail and took off, luckily to the farm, where we saw him once we got home.

On the way back we also saw a cow licking a horse, which was pretty cute!

We got home, relaxed/worked for a bit, and then had a late lunch before heading down to the barn at 4.

We did the normal cow/sheep/horse chores, and then spent about half an hour shoving old round-bale wrappers into huuuuuuuge bags (you could easily fit 4-5 of me standing up in there). It was notable only because it was disgusting--the puppies use those bags as their bathrooms :/ I realised 20 minutes in what the smell was that I couldn't quite place--it exactly matched my old cleat bags haha.

Cow chores went as normal, though this time we did them with T, as B was ill today, not entirely sure with what, and trying to believe its not due to them getting home at 3am yesterday :p We got to learn how to shut off the milking system and set it up for cleaning, which was actually quite a bit more complicated than you might think, and there's no way I'll be able to do it again without getting shown once or twice more, but anyway...in the next couple of days, we're going to take pictures of every step of the way, so you can see the cow chores in action. I bet you can't wait! :p

After that, we came up to the house for spaghetti and then C called it an early night. I sent BAB to print and am blogging, etc., before sleeping early too--Up at 6:45 again tomorrow. At least we aren't getting up in the dark, though! It's only sunset from midnight to 2am right now, which means that by the time you rock through dawn and dusk, there is some light basically all the time up here on the 65th parallel. I love it!

xx
D