Land of Milk and Honey

The girls have upped their milk production again, to the point that I'm going to have to start taking two buckets down to the barn.  One two-gallon bucket has been sufficient, even with the addition of Sheila in the line up.  The level has been rising in the past couple of weeks, however, and for the last two mornings I've had to pour some down a squirrel hole to make room for Ruthie's contribution at the end of the line.  Milk weighs, I'm told, eight point six pounds a gallon, and hauling that nearly twenty-pound bucket up the hill has been getting harder.  Two buckets will even the load.  When there's a surplus of milk, I stop off at the chicken pen and pour a half-gallon or so for the little girls.  There is darned near a stampede as they come running and fluttering from inside and outside the pen to get their "slurps." 

Bessie Anne and I stood looking out the front screen door yesterday, just to see what the weather and the chickens were doing, when a ground squirrel, its mouth stuffed with dry leaves, came up the walk and ducked into a burrow it had dug right at the edge of the front porch.  I know this squirrel saw us, and Bessie was whining to get at it, and it had the temerity to come on ahead anyhow.  I guess one can't choose one's neighbors.

I've got the milk...I think the honey is down in Amador County.