"I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming." - Jimmy Carter

We ran errands in town this morning. Dropped something off at the church office and then went to Harbor Freight and Coastal Farm and Fleet. At the former I got a folding welding table so I can learn how to use the wire welder I got a couple of weeks ago, and a gambrel, both with a 20% off coupon. At the feed store I got a halter so I can train Stella and Itzhak to a lead. On the way home we stopped at the feed store in Veneta for a bale of alfalfa hay and the beet pulp pellets that, when water is added, turn into the mash that Sundae can eat.

Pam says it looks like a gallows, but a bit less so with the gambrel attached. I wish I'd made it taller because this might put the carcass too low. So I may rework the location of the gambrel attachment point, putting it on top of the crosspiece. I don't think that will be too big a deal.
I need to get a cleat for tying off the rope and then that part of the project is done.

Pam's getting anxious about judgment day. She's grown attached to Itzhak, which is a little surprising because taking care of the goats is my responsibility. I'm the one who feeds and waters, trims hooves, mucks the barn, and spends the most time with them. OK, so maybe she's a softie and I'm...not.

In one of the video's I watched Sunday morning, the one where a guy was teaching the group that would go out to do foreign aid work, the instructor asked at the beginning, "Who's looking forward to this?" Nobody raised their hand. He went on to say that slaughtering and butchering is not something anyone enjoys, but it's how nature works and part of what it means that we're meat eaters. Our "developed" culture has so separated us from where our food comes from that we've concocted a whole denial system that allows us to pretend meat comes from the back of the supermarket instead of from living animals. We pay people to do what we don't have the stomach to do and ignore the reality. A solid case can be made that what I'm going to do is a lot more humane than what happens in a slaughter house, never mind the life my animals have prior to slaughter compared to a feed lot.

I've caught some flack from people on Facebook who think I'm pretty horrible for butchering goats I've raised.
I picture them typing that with a mouth full of hamburger.

Have you seen the TV ads where someone says they're a descendant of one founding father or another? Explain to me why that isn't bogus and nothing more than false advertising.
Thomas Jefferson did not have a cheek swab done. If we can identify direct descendants through some other method (archival birth records) it would be possible to show a familial link to a current descendant who DID have a cheek swab, but how does that prove a direct link to Thomas Jefferson and not just to one of his family members?
And to say, "I'm 12% German!" seems equally bogus. There is no German gene.
Or am I missing something? (like 9th grade science)

On the way into town this morning I asked Pam if she felt a sense of attachment to our church. She said she didn't. I don't, either. She does feel attached to the seven other people in our small group, but we both feel some frustration with the nature of that group and they way it works, the way our gatherings are conducted.
I don't know what, if anything we do with that. Probably nothing. It's just such a change from what we're used to, what we've felt for the previous 45 years.