Smokey Mountain Breakdown

It's been a brutally cold and bitter morning. Snow and sleet have been falling intermittently. I made the decision to keep Black Doe inside and Pearlie is not happy about it at all. I'd been keeping Black Doe inside at night since she is so small. Feisty, but small. And her brother is a great whopping thing who is obviously drinking all the milk that Pearlie is making. So, Pearlie recognizes that I haven't brought Black Doe out to spend the day with her as I have been. So she's standing outside the back door blahing most pitifully.

I get Maggie up on the milk stand and milk her out. It barely yields enough for the morning feeding for Bossy Toe and Black Doe. She usually gives me a quart and a half. Her milk hasn't entirely come in yet. Hmmm. The weather is only going to get worse and Maggie is a real bitch to catch. So I get her settled on the back porch and plan to keep Kidzilla off of her so she can make enough milk for me to feed the girls. I further plan, since we are probably going to get snowed in, to keep her back there. That way I can just go out and milk her as needed.

Which means I have to go collect Kidzilla. I trudge through the snow and pick him up to bring him down to the house. He's snuggled up in the shelter. Blinkin' has her triplets all cozyed up with her. I'm not worried about the triplets at all. They were out dancing and romping in the snow this morning. Blinkin' probably has more milk than any of them. Pity that milking her is damn near impossible. But she needs all that milk for her big family.

I quickly realize where all my milk went. The little bugger must have drained her dry this morning. It feels like he weighs 20 pounds already. He's easily twice the size of the bottle babies and larger than any of the triplets. I can feel how full his tummy is. I put him in the dog crate where he immediately passed out to sleep off his milk high.

It's a real chore keeping both girls in diapers. Black Doe is so tiny that she tends to leak through hers. And Bossy Toe has to keep her onesie on or she gets out of hers. By the way, if anyone has any suggestions for naming Black Doe...I'm open to suggestions. The name of my farm is "Old Maid's Aerie"...so I like to keep sort of old fashioned, old lady themes if possible.

Posting is likely to be spotty during this cold snap. Bell South hasn't changed the phone lines up here since 1972 or thereabouts. I feel sort of snitty about this since we are paying the same for basic phone service as the rest of the southeast but are forced to use these old connections that don't work so well in bad weather. I'd be happy if I could just use dial-up at the normal 56K speed. But we are stuck at 26K. And that doesn't even work half the time. I've been meaning to write a nasty letter to Bell South about this. They take advantage since most of the people here aren't accustomed to anything different than poor phone service. The honorable thing to do would be to charge us less if they are going to continue to provide substandard service.

Bossy Toe