Ash & Soot

 We walked!  It had warmed up into the low 20s. The ice was still hard and tracks were still needed on our shoes but for sure we could tell the warm up was coming. Joan was with mom this morning so we quit after one round, I took her home on the golf cart so she could bring her car over. She took mom to Bible study at the church.  I took plates over to the barn and spent some time cleaning to get ready for potluck on Friday.  Evan and Sheena were in the field grazing and it is a pleasant picture to see them from the kitchen window of the barn.

Two of the round tables were left up but the others put away. Mark helped move 2 of the big 8 foot tables back into the gym. Those are so heavy he really thinks we should replace them with plastic tables. I found a Christmas table cloth that would work for the big table. It is actually one large and one small but it looks ok. By 1:00 pm it had warmed up to 40 degrees. Mark needed someone to hold the ladder while he cleaned out the rec room chimney.

This one was way easier to clean than the living room chimney.

The next job was to move in bales. The middle paddock needed a bale as did Evan and Sheena's paddock. We first moved one into the middle paddock for Lea and Blueberry.

This is first cutting hay but was put up early and is still green and fine stemmed.

The horses really like it and do well with keeping their weight up on it without needing to feed grain. Below is the video of Mark putting in the second bale.

After coming inside Mark wanted to use the wet dry vac to clean out all the ash and soot that had fallen from the chimney into the fireplace.

 The bag inside must have fallen off and it sprayed that ash and soot throughout the downstairs.  I'm SO glad potluck is at the barn. That black gray dust went everywhere. The floor was swept up but I ran out of time to start cleaning up all the surfaces. We both needed showers again.  Hind sight after working on our 2 chimneys it might be worth the $150.00 the chimney sweep charges per chimney. On the way to church we saw an orange glow coming over the horizon towards Peoria. At first I thought it might be a big fire but soon we could see the moon peeking through the trees. When we got to the stop sign on Farmington road I quickly snapped the picture below.

Church was great tonight. Craig Stickling had the message on 2 Peter 1 and Caleb our new minister finished up.  Caleb will be speaking on Sunday morning.  After church we went to Culvars for a late supper.