We got a delivery of hay today from our lovely hay people, and as soon as I sat back down inside the house to warm up (it’s frigid out there!), I realized that tomorrow’s forecast calls for sleet and rain.  This means that all 14-odd 800 lb. bales of hay HAD to be moved down to the back field, lined up on cinder blocks and covered before dark.

This is normally a job that Paul does, but he doesn’t get home in the evenings until after dark.

So I bundled up and grumbled all the way out to the tractor and got busy.

It took ALL AFTERNOON.

It’s not so much that it is difficult work, but that it is slow going.  You have to be very careful going down the hill with such a heavy load on the spear, and you have to line up cinder blocks for each and every bale.

I also discovered that the insulated work gloves I got from Tractor Supply for farm work didn’t hold up to freezing temperatures at all.

Thankfully my hand-knit hat kept my head nice and toasty – let’s hear it for wool!

I finished up just as it got dark, and I even dropped an extra bale in with the sheep.

I’ve got a pretty big workload ahead of me for the next few days.  I painted Oona’s room but now I have to get it put back together properly.  I started painting our rockers for the front porch and need to finish those:

Yes, I know it’s all over the grass.  You see, there’s a difference between how I do things and how Paul does things.  He prefers the “put it off until you have everything you need and can do it properly in one go”, whereas I hail from the school of thought of “why wait if I can half-ass it now?”

Tonight I’ll be sewing up napkins for Thanksgiving out of this lovely fabric I found at fabric.com:

Tomorrow begins the timeless tradition of baking and obsessive cleaning that will take us through to the holiday.

Let’s hope that sleet passes us by, shall we?