Salud, friends!
Well, things aren’t getting any slower around here. In fact, with an early apparition of winter, we seem to be entering warp-speed. Luckily, I’ve mostly been able to keep up.
This past Wednesday, September 9th, we got about half a foot of ground cover of the most perfectly fluffy snow. According to the National Weather Service, the earliest snowfall on record in Taos was September 28th, 1936! Most everything was melted by the time we went to town the next day, but the snow stuck around for a good 48 hours in Tres Piedras. The newest addition to our Goat House clan, Daisy the Rhodesian mix rescue dog, was having a time for herself romping through the drifts; the goat boys weren’t as ecstatic! John and David don’t mind the snow, but they hadn’t prepared their winter coats yet, so it was a bit chilly for them.
With the reminder that winter is not far off, Monday’s acquisition of the lumber for the goat barn was well-timed. Two weeks ago we had a cement truck in and poured the concrete for the foundation. Then my neighbor Ed, who is helping with the construction of the barn, loaned us his 20’ trailer for the 2-hour round-trip to the nearest Lowe’s, in Espanola. I walked away with a hefty bill — about double what supplies would have run in normal times. The guys helping us load up the lumber said that OSB had jumped from ~$7 a sheet, to $12, to $20, and finally to the whopping ~$26 per sheet I paid. Ed suggested that I could return the supply load and wait for prices to drop, but we really need to get the goats out of the atrium room in the cabin before winter! The extra space could serve so many much-needed uses: a place for a combination desk/dining space, greenhouse for more plants and fresh herbs, and a crate space for Daisy to sleep at night.
Another stroke of luck befell us when Ed and Paul, the lovely gentleman I’ve been seeing, got called out from work on Tuesday. They are building a house for a woman in Tres Piedras, and she thought the weather was too wet and windy to raise trusses. Free for the day, Ed proposed that he and Paul take one of his work trucks out to the mountain to chop firewood for our wood stoves! At the end of their adventure, Ed generously insisted that we keep the entire cord they had cut, because he wanted to help us get our start on the winter. No one had been around to help him start out up here, he said.
Then Tuesday night, the snow began to fall, and we fired up the little propane heater for the first time this “winter” (although we now have wood, the chimney remains yet to be cleaned!). It was quite a reprieve to have two snow days to ourselves, smack at the beginning of September. We got fully into the swing of things, lounging in the living room in warm hoodies, reading our various books (mine: “The Muses,” gifted to me by our new friends David and Mark of El Prado; Paul’s: Harry Potter, 5th and 6th books, for around the 5th or 6th time..), snuggling the dog, and sipping dark hot chocolate with oat milk creamer. I showed Paul North by Northwest, which was a success!
The snow has all melted now, even in TP, and I’m back to wearing tank tops and sandals — but the fresh chill of the fall air has fully arrived. This afternoon, driving into Taos at 75 degrees out, I wished I’d put on socks with my Birkenstocks.
There’s plenty more to update on, but for now, it feels like a good time for a hike with the Daisy dookie.
See ya’ll next time,
T
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