She spent the night sleeping in front of our door, ignoring the shelter I rigged up for her.

Shortly after 7 this morning, I looked out the kitchen window to see a very chilled man in a hoodie, sitting at the front step, very diligently not making direct eye contact with the goat, a container of feed in front of him. Later, I saw him almost manage to lure the goat into the garage.

No success.

Thankfully, we have multiple doors.

I went through the sun room to bring food out for the cats. When it came time to put feed out for the birds, I went around the house from the other side.

The poor guy doesn’t know what to do. He can’t catch her, and he can’t stay around here, trying, when he’s got a farm to run. I assured him again that we were okay with her being here. There is someone here all the time, so we can slowly work on taming her. The only problem is, we don’t have any feed or shelter or anything. He commented that he’s running out of the feed mix he was trying to bait the goat with and, like so many, money is tight. He won’t be able to get more until Wednesday. The goat can at least graze now, if she wanted to. Except she really doesn’t want to leave that door! He said he would come back later, and hoped we would be able to at least lure her into the garage, where he’d left the container of feed, but I think she’s already forgotten about it. As he was leaving, he commented on how he’d really like to get her back (I think our being so okay with her here has ended any notions of killing her for meat!) and had hoped to breed her, and just doesn’t know what to do. Then he made a passing comment of, well, she was a free goat for him, she might be a free goat for us. !!

We shall see.

Meanwhile, I was able to do my morning rounds, followed by not one, not two but three boys!

Yes, I was finally able to confirm that Pump Shack cat is a boy. Not only was he following me around with the other boys, he was coming closer to me than ever before.

They weren’t following me for any sort of affection for each other. Not at all, as you can see.

No, they were following me because Butterscotch was also following me. They’ve been trying to breed with her. 😦 She seems very ticked off with that idea and has been fighting them off fairly easily. She’s less than 2 weeks from having kittens, so I don’t imagine she’s in any condition to go into heat right now. That doesn’t stop the boys from trying!

I noticed something yesterday that I made a point of checking out this morning, and I am very excited.

While following the goats around, I noticed that the surviving haskap bush we planted last year is leafing out very nicely.

This is the male plant. I’m impressed with how large those leaves are. All the other trees are just starting to show buds. I’ve read about how cold hardy these are supposed to be, and it definitely shows!

It was the other one that I was most happy to see.

This is the female haskap. It is very hard to see, but it has leaf buds! Each spot that has the remains of leaves from last year, when it suddenly just died off in the fall, has tiny leaf buds under them.

I don’t know what happened to it, but I am glad it survived!

With this spring actually having real moisture, unlike our first two springs here, the sump pump is doing its work to keep the basement from flooding. It doesn’t turn on often, but enough to notice. While the new part basement, with its weeping tile, is dry, the old part basement is showing some moisture this spring.

This is where wood for the furnace used to be store, and I remember well how very wet it would get, when I was a child. This is very dry in comparison. On the other side of the little wall is the sump pump reservoir, and there is a bit of a puddle there, but again, not much at all. Hopefully, it will stay that way.

On the other side of the old basement, where the floor drain it, is is drier, but still shows signs of seeping water.

Some of it is following the concrete patch over what I now know covers the weeping tile drain pipe from the new basement. There are also patches at the base of the wall shared with the new part basement. I’m glad we were able to clean that area out and elevate the things we put back.

Beep Beep and the kitties, meanwhile, are dry and cozy on the other side. I just wasn’t able to get photos this morning. Beep Beep was keeping them all warm with her own body, and I wasn’t going to disturb them. 🙂

I’m a little frustrated by the long range forecasts right now. Even just yesterday, I was seeing that we would be chilly for a few days, but only a couple nights would dip below zero. Then the temperatures were expected to warm right up again. Well, the forecasts have now changed dramatically. We’re supposed to continue to be chilly for longer, with lower temperatures overall. Even when it is supposed to warm up, it’s no longer expected to warm up as much, and the nights are all expected to dip below freezing. The warm temperatures we were to expect by the middle of the month have been pushed back to the end of the month, with not a lot of sun. Which is not good for our seed starts. Even in the sun room, they will have a hard time getting full sun, and while the room is certainly warmer, I’ve still taken steps to keep them even warmer. I considered moving them back into the house but the house is actually a bit colder than the sun room is. I even turned the furnace back up a couple of degrees so it would turn on during the night.

Well, we shall see how the seed starts do. If they won’t work out, we’ll manage.

For now, though, we’ll be focusing more on taming a goat! 😀

The Re-Farmer