Our old stove had given up the ghost. It was dead. No longer functioning.
We had gotten a nice little toaster oven because at the time, a new stove was not in the budget. Not even a used stove.
But that’s okay, we are patient and we used the crockpot a good deal, as well as cooking at the firepit and other creative means. Actually, the toaster oven was very efficient and we didn’t mind at all. We are used to making do until we can make do!
Well, today was the day! We had done some sign work for a friend in exchange for some ditch digging. However, his little backhoe broke and it just hadn’t been fixed yet, what with harvest and haying season upon us. Which was fine. We are patient. We understand.
However… we learned that he had a nice used stove for sale from his sister! Electric and pretty darn new… so we struck up a bargain. And we got the stove delivered with a big stack of hay as well for our critters! Don’t you just love when a good trade works out for everyone?
Watch out there maple tree… it’s a wide load!!!
Pretty darn nice stove if I say so myself! We are happy!
The chickens seemed uninterested, however. 
With the stove offloaded, Jerry took the truck back to the pony barn so we could all unload the truck. I thought it was very funny to see how interested all the animals were. But then, it was a strange truck, in their yard, with food on it. I guess if I saw an ice cream truck just show up in my back yard, I’d be pretty interested.
Honest, I did help stack hay! I’m helpful, I’m not just the camera operator! But Jerry and Maggie were doing quite a good job, I must say so. He was pitching off and she was stacking.
We ended up with 36 bales. Not too bad for one truck load. That is about 6 weeks worth of hay for our gang. I would like at least 2 months of hay going into the winter… November and December… but, hey, 4 months would be unbelievable! But not quite in the budget yet. We will keep getting hay from our regular feed store run, 8 bales at a time. If we make a few runs this month when the weather is still tolerable, and perhaps one more trip from Jerry, we might actually have plenty of hay and not have to drag it around out back through the snow and all! That would be wonderful!
Maggie is contemplating the future. Or perhaps just thinking about lunch. Hard to tell sometimes.
Actually, this is going to be one of the first times since we have lived here that we are ready for winter. We have a good deal of hay put up, the buildings are ready, heated water buckets at the stand ready and we are getting propane next week and more grain feed. The idea is to have enough feed and fodder so that if it is nasty out, we can stay home!!! Can’t tell you how nice it is to be able to stay home for a bad storm or cold temperatures… just do chores and back into the warm house. Driving 30 miles round trip for hay and feed just gets very old when it’s super cold!
The chickens are still not impressed. They will be more excited when the bags of feed come around. Perhaps. Chickens just don’t seem to get that excited about too much.
The goaties, however, approve of the new hay! They are taste testing and give it two hooves up! Yum!
Don’t you like my little hay rack? It’s an old guinea pig cage top. We don’t have the bottom so I thought, why not? It’s actually perfect. Just enough of something to keep them from walking through it all and a freebie repurposed into a hay rack! Yes! Always good.
And look at that beautiful new stove! So happy! All the burners work and it makes lovely food inside… We are so happy! (Don’t worry, we leveled it… it was a little wonky, or well, our floor maybe is a little wonky… needless to say, we got it all nice and level!)
Trading is one of the things that I love in the country. Livestock, hardwork, appliances, wood, feed, you name it, it gets traded and bartered. It works out good. Now if we could only get someone to dig some ditches out for us… I guess it’s going to be the shovel and the shoulder for us! Good exercise!
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