These past few days have been full of excitement. First, two of our sows farrowed. For those of you that have never owned or had much to do with pigs 'farrowed' means she had her piglets. All told, there are 16 new piglets. This time of the year in Texas is not ideal for baby pigs but Fred didn't really seem to care when he climbed the fence to visit these two sows. Fred is now in a more secure location after proving multiple times that he has the energy, expertise, and willpower to get out of almost any fence.

In more recent news, I woke up night before last to a noise like a rain storm in my closet. On closer inspection I found that the pipe going into the water heater had busted. This did not create any gently annoying drip, it created a four foot fountain coming straight out of the wall before it hit the floor.

After alerting Ellen and Nathan (it was around 3 in the morning) I went back to see if there wasn't a shutoff valve in the closet. In pure amazement, I found that there was a shut off, but that it was no longer connected to the wall or my new fountain. It had popped off the pipe coming out of the wall.

Since that was useless, I decided I may as well see if I couldn't pop it back on and at least slow the water down. Apparently, as I was trying this technique Nathan came up behind me to shut off the water himself. My idea didn't work to slow the water down any but my trying did make the water pressure slightly rise, so that when I quit trying the fountain shot out six feet and blasted Nathan. I was totally unaware but I sure wish I could have seen it. I don't think that Nathan was really awake before then.

When Nathan saw that the in house shut off was useless, he turned off the water to the entire house. We vacuumed and toweled water up for about two hours before going back to bed.

We found out the next day that the local water company had a problem with their water pressure regulator that resulted in the water pressure in quite a few houses jumping from around 40 psi to over a hundred. We didn't have water all day yesterday.

Some time in the early afternoon, as Ellen got ready to publish a page on our new website, our electricity went out. In most houses this is inconvenient but when you have a couple thousand dollars in frozen meat it can be disastrous. Thankfully, Nathan was able to hook up the freezers to a generator. When we called to see how long it might be off we found that the problem went all the way back to the power plant. They said it might be out for at least 6 hours. To do them credit, I don't think it actually was that long.

Last night I woke up again around 3 am slowly realizing that my room smelled so bad I could hardly breathe. My carpet was sour. Today, some men hired by Nathan's insurance came out and ripped up all the carpet downstairs. If you have ever had your flooring redone you know how much upheaval it causes. Nothing is where it belongs, the house that I cleaned the day before the water busted is now in complete disarray and these huge (and hugely annoying) fans are blowing in an effort to get the house dry.

I am considering renaming this blog something like It Isn't One Thing . . . It's Everything; or When It Rains It Pours.

Don't get the wrong idea, given the interesting circumstances the past two days, we are doing very well, have had numerous good laughs over the situation, and are in fact grateful. Ellen pointed out that if I hadn't moved in with them then the water heater would have been sitting in their office instead of my bed room and it would have poured for hours before they found out. A lot more would have been ruined than the carpet.

I have tried numerous times to get a good picture of our bottle lamb, Sue. When she was born in April, she got separated from her mom and with a cold front coming in Ellen decided it was safer to take her in. There have been bottle lambs on the farm before but Sue is a special case.

Last year, there were two bottle lambs, but they were kept in the shed and didn't form much of an attachment to Ellen. Sue, however, has the run of the yard with the dogs and thinks that she is a dog. She even goes so far as to eat dog food when she can get to it. She is perfectly adorable, with a cute attitude when she's hungry, and unafraid of anything. She doesn't understand why she isn't allowed in the house with the other dogs and she regularly tries to change our mind on this subject.

I often think of the creator of the rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," whoever it was knew what they were talking about. If there is a human in sight, Sue is on their heels. That brings me back to my original statement about pictures; in spite of Sue's non-stop cuteness and funny "Kodak" antics it is nearly impossible to get a good picture of her. They often turn out something like this one.

In the case of this particular picture I was letting her suck on my finger in an effort to keep her occupied long enough with one thing to get at least a decent head shot. Sucking on fingers is not a new pastime for her, nor is sucking on or tasting anything within reach.

Sue is not going to be a bottle lamb for many more months and so she is learning to use her teeth to good advantage. I didn't think of this until the little monster had sucked my finger into her back molars and gave it a good crunch. AAAHHHH! It felt like it had been slammed in a car door.

Sheep, as well as many other ruminants, don't have top front teeth. This includes sheep, cows, deer, and goats to name a few. So, up till now, it has not been at all dangerous to let Sue suck on my fingers. However, to make up for the absence of front teeth, a ruminant's molars are quite capable of grinding grass like a mill. My finger hurt for a good three days.

Here is another gem of a picture, making Sue look perfectly crazy. I begin to think it may reveal the true depths of her silly heart.

Fun Fact: When feeding milk to baby ruminants the milk must come from a nipple above their head (as apposed to giving them milk in a pan or a bucket) so that it bypasses the rumen and flows into the true stomach. The rumen is designed to ferment grass and will cause milk to curdle.

It's haying time and my first chance to see how it's done. First, I got to help replace broken teeth on the hay rake, making me feel like something of a mechanic. The emphasis there would be on "something". I thought of a child's joy in doing or helping with "big people work" as I enjoyed the simple pleasures of tightening bolts with the right tools for the job. Today, I am not enjoying the repercussions of parking the rake in poison ivy.

Afterwards, I rode with Ellen and two dogs on a one person tractor, getting an education about tractors in general and raking hay in particular. In the traffic of the hay field, we eventually passed Nathan, who was baling hay, and I was invited to switch tractors to receive more education. Nathan was driving a borrowed tractor (his is in the shop) and it includes two seats, air conditioning, and a radio. I learned that baling hay in the borrowed tractor is more desirable than raking.

Our yellow zucchini, cucumbers, lemon squash and radishes are starting to produce. We plan on having our first yields available at the Sulphur Springs and Frisco farmers markets tomorrow.

The sunset as we were working a few nights ago.