Job Description: The Shit Shoveller

There's something about waking early, barely able to see through the fog, bitterly cold hands you can't feel fumbling with gates and a frost on the ground that crackles as you walk through it. The water in the feeder hoses has frozen, and the thawing dew is dripping through the roof onto your head as you feed a ravenous flock of sheep and their progeny, followed by the hauling of 50 gallons of fresh ice cold water.

For someone who has lived in either a sub-tropical or "arid" environment for the last 20 years where there were two seasons, summer, followed by a cooler summer that people claimed was really winter, getting back to a real winter has come as a shock to say the least. While the snow on the surrounding hills has all but gone now the morning's are still below freezing and it's afternoon before our new world finally warms up. Thankfully we have coffee, the wonder drug that revitalizes and refreshes.

The days of incessant rain before we arrived and the sheep imprisoned in the barn and feed area had left the place a veritable sewer. Yesterday we cleaned it. 20 years in IT, and I'm now shovelling shit for a living. In some places the straw and the manure were so thick and trampled it was like lifting carpet, wet shag-pile carpet. But the end result was satisfying and even if the sheep didn't acknowledge the effort, we were pleased with our efforts.

Our daily runs to Lowes or Home Depot are beginning to cost us less finally. Yesterday we were at the DMV as well changing the titles over on all the farm equipment (including the 1955 Chevrolet Truck we got with the property).