Donkeys, stanchion and hail

Today was farm day.  I am sick with a nasty cold after having a stomach flu last weekend.  But chores still need to be done- particularly with my 2.5 weeks absence because of my back.  I initially walked the back fence line where we have most of the goats and sheep grazing on black and salmon berry plants amongst the trees.  I found that another one of our neighbors had dropped a tree on out back fence and a lot of large branches had fallen on the far fence-line over the winter.  There's also what looks like a child's fort near our far fence-line.  Looks like even more fencing in our future- Tom will be thrilled.

The donkeys were due to have their hooves trimmed 2 weeks ago, but I couldn't with my back- barely could walk then.  So I managed to get Olivia in the new (to us) stanchion which helped her hold still.  I used a leash to hold her feet up to trim them.  This meant I could safely sit down rather than bend over to trim them- thus saving my back.  But then I couldn't get Marty in the stanchion so had to do him the usual way- tied to a fence post and bent over.  Then (to top things off) it started to hail!  This did not help Marty hold still and since I got wet and cold probably won't help me with my cold either.  But the hooves are trimmed so at least I accomplished something today.  Plus I figured out htat I can use a stanchion to help with this task although Marty needs to cooperate.  As we get older we are going to have to learn tricks to get farm chores done despite our aging bodies.

Other than this, I did the usual animal chores and weeded the morning glory out of the rose patch.  Morning glory is one of the most obnoxious weeds and is one of the banes of my existence.  The other plant banes are nettles, ivy, and foxglove.  It'll be  a long spring fighting these plants  but at least spring seems to finally be here.  So I am actually thankful to be able to start this fight.