My confuser guru tells me that’s not a very good sign

The scurs were convinced by the Weather Eye’s data to slow the faucet down a tad while continuing our warmer than normal temps. Does this trend continue or does our luck start to run out? Starting on Thursday, mostly sunny with highs in the upper 40’s and lows in the low 30’s. Mostly sunny on Friday with highs in the mid-50’s and lows in the upper 30’s. Partly sunny on Saturday with highs in the mid-50’s and lows in the upper 30’s. Sunday, mostly sunny with highs in the upper 40’s and lows in the low 30’s. Mostly cloudy Monday with highs in the upper 40’s and lows in the mid-30’s. Tuesday, cloudy with a good chance of rain. Highs in the mid-40’s with lows in the low 30’s. Mostly cloudy on Wednesday with highs in the low 40’s and lows in the low 30’s. We’ll see under nine hours and thirty minutes of daylight on the 19th and won’t see more than that again until January 22nd. The normal high for November 19th is 39 and the normal low is 23. The scurs Carhartt’s hanging on the line with the white hanky hanging out of the back pocket suddenly have a lot of holes in them.

 

The Full Moon for November will occur on the 15th and it goes primarily by the Full Beaver Moon. It is so named for the beaver that build their lodges and tuck themselves in for the winter. Beaver pelts were in high demand back in the early 1800’s and November offered the last opportunity for trappers to harvest them before freeze-up. The Ojibwe knew this moon as the Freezing Moon and the Sioux called it the Moon when Winter Begins. For us at the ranch it follows much the same pattern, known as The Moon when Shadows Grow Long. We watch them as the moon rises while we trundle towards another chore session in the dark.

 

After rainfall for six out of seven days, all the sudden farmers find themselves waiting for a dry stretch or a freeze up. The rain was welcome, although now it becomes hurry up and wait. Some anhydrous did go on last Friday after the rain, but the weekend drizzle put a stop to that. It still wasn’t ideal perhaps as indicated by the mud on area roads. Once we get into mid-month, it appears we should see a drier pattern develop with temperatures remaining above normal. If we do and can get some breezy conditions to go along with it, we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine anyway, I suspect. There are almost always options as we’ve discovered in the past. Who knows? It may allow some to explore new ideas and practices.

 

A holding pattern at the ranch of sorts continues at the ranch. Rains have made the fields tacky enough, so it will track mud all over the yard when cleaning barn. Looking more like wait until it freezes up before attempting that. Ditto with working the garden up, one of those things that would be nice, but seldom happens anyway. A more pressing priority will be grinding leaves that have suddenly become a wet mat underneath. Next week looks drier as noted above, so we’ll have to wait and see. Still plenty of apples to be picked up yet, some tree pruning to do here and there along with tons of stuff to clean out of the sheds. Gotta make room for more stuff, so it can be thrown away at a later date.

 

Keyboard woes continue on the confuser. It seems to be happening randomly that the top row of letters spits out multiple characters or doesn’t work at all. My confuser guru tells me that’s not a good sign. Tell me about it. Guessing things like hay chaff and Corgi hair probably don’t help. I’ve blown the keyboard out several times, but to no avail. Downloading and reinstalling Windows 11 seemed to provide temporary relief, but within a day the problems returned. Likewise when reinstalling the keyboard driver. All I can say is I better type fast while this thing is still working, or I’ll be forced to resort to an external keyboard for a while. I can’t remember the last time I typed copy on a standard sized keyboard. Making a quick run to Wally World to pick up a keyboard isn’t my idea of having a good time. Too many people of Walmart.

 

Sheep, specifically a couple of March lambs are heading to Louisville again for the second year in a row. Not sure how they’ll do in the showring, but that’s out of my hands. We were lucky to have good help washing them on Saturday, even though it drizzled off and on. It did make it more difficult to get them dry. We persevered and they looked fairly clean in the overall scheme of things. Now, if the Garden Gnome works his magic on them, at least we’ll know they had their best chance to place. With any luck someone will like the March buck lamb and take him home with them. He won’t get as many frequent flier miles, but it’d be one less mouth to feed over the course of winter in a small pen. Small pens are a lot of extra diddling around and efficiency killers at chore time. Besides, putting those mints on their pillows gets expensive.  

 

Poppy continues to enjoy the warmer than normal fall weather too. For her, it’s been the gift that keeps on giving. There are lots of things to sniff and dawdle with, which is right up her alley. In the daytime she keeps the squirrels on their toes and at night it’s the bunnies’ turn. Not uncommon to see her take off in the dark behind something, then catch a glimpse of a white tail just ahead of her. Both the bunnies and squirrels have figured out where the electric fence is and use it to their advantage. Poppy hasn’t had a bath up to this point. Just in case, we have the ingredients on hand to make the skunk smell go away if there are any chance encounters. In the meantime, we have to hope the skunks got the same electric fence memo the squirrels and bunnies did.

 

See you next week…real good then.