Congratulations on your new goat! Sounds like you're doing what I'd be doing for her soers. Do you have her health chart? I'd worm her for worms & keep her on an easy diet of hay for a few days, gradually acclimating her to your feeding regime, update her CD/T regardless of whether they say she received it this year or not(2cc/s under skin). Careful not to introduce her to lush new pasture if she hasn't been on it, feed changes need to happen slowly. I'd let her chill for a while as she may be under stress from the move, maybe not. Take things slow. Brendasue

Michelle, We have had misty, drizzly stuff several days this week but it all has added up to only about a half-inch. Today there is mist in the air blowing sideways but it isn't even reaching the ground. Thackerville must have had a good hard rain a few miles south of us on Thursday night, though, because the casino's EMS Fire Brigade (medics who double as firefighters) was paged out to rescue a woman from a ditch in front of the fire station (of all places!) and her vehicle was rapidly filling with water. So, we hardly had puddles at all and they had a ditch full.....but a lot of that was probably runoff from the casino's miles of concrete parking lots. Still, believe it or not, enough moisture has fallen in Jan.-Mar. here in Love County, that we have gone from a drought index in the upper 600s which is very, very bad to the lower 500s, which is bad but not terribly bad. In fact, the U. S. Drought Monitor just dropped us from a D-2 (severe) drought to a D-1 (moderate drought) last week. If we get 3 or 4 more inches of rain in the next month or so (probably wishful thinking on my part), we'll drop to D-0, which means only "Abnormally Dry". It is a slow and steady improvement. To REALLY end a drought and put water back in the ponds and creeks, though, we need a couple of good heavy downpours where 4 to 8" of rain falls in just a few hours. Until the ponds fill up, the ranchers and the cattle are still going to be hurting. All my life I've heard the saying "It takes a flood to end a drought", but it didn't really mean much to me until I moved here. Owie, It is OK that you didn't reply and I am glad y'all are OK. I figured if you knew a storm was approaching you'd be busy either seeking shelter, checking out radar or trying to secure the greenhouse and the children (though not in that order, of course). I'm surprised you could hear the siren, but it is good to know you might get a little advanced warning that way. It is terrible that the weather radios don't work there. Now that I know that, I'll pay special attention to the weather headed your way and post it if I see something severe rolling towards you. So often (and don't blame me for this) the storms we are having here head right for your part of the state after they leave us. I always try to post tornado warnings online if I see them in time because a lot of us, including me, are in such remote areas that there are no sirens close enough to hear. Usually, the weather radio alerts me, although I am usually downstairs and it is upstairs, but sometimes the local county dispatcher puts out the warning on the fire radio even before my weather radio goes off. The other night, when rotation was observed in the sky at Thackerville, they ran their sirens for about 30 minutes. Good heavens! I bet some people went down into their cellars just to get away (hopefully) from the sound of the sirens going on and on and on. I believe the school and one of the churches in Thackerville have underground basements they use as community tornado shelters too. In the tornado shelter, I was a technology fool. I had my laptop with the radar on and could receive it there (thanks to wireless technology) until I had to close the door because rain was coming inside, I had a weather radio, the fire radio so I could listen to the Emergency Operations Center, the firefighters and police and the storm spotters, and I was texting several people back and forth because some of them were out on the highway in the path of the storm and I was trying to help them get out of its way. My husband was watching the radar at DFW Airport and texting me or calling me to tell me what he was seeing. It must have been REALLY boring in the old days when you had to take yourself and your lantern or flashlight into the shelter and just sit there! My fingers were flying! Everyone did get out of the path of the storm, even our friend who was driving west on Hwy 82 from Sherman to Gainesville at the same time the tornado and hail were traveling east on Hwy 82 from Gainesville to Sherman! I even ran back inside in between bands of rain to check the TV radar and listen to the Channel 12 meteorologist, Steve LaNore, and storm chaser Doug Drace. Every time I did that, though, I saw enough to make me run back to the cellar (it's only about 20 feet from the back door). I was smart, though. On one trip back to the cellar, I grabbed a Dr. Pepper and on another trip back I grabbed some Chips Ahoy Cookies. Just because tornadic rotation was observed in the sky multiple places around us was no reason to go without a soda and cookies! LOL The wind is fierce here today but I can't complain. No ice, no snow, no damage and certainly no flooding like they're facing from the OTHER Red River near Fargo. Best of all, it warms up tomorrow, although I think we have a couple more cold fronts coming in the next week, though hopefully they won't be as cold as this one. Dawn

I watched it on the radar since I couldn't be outside playing in the dirt and it seemed to be headed your way. At least you got your tomato plants in the ground. Only half of mine are in the ground, but with this almost 12" of rainfall, and with the garden currently resembling a lake, that might be a good thing. I know know when the soil will drain and dry enough to plant anything else, and with rain in our forecast for most of the next 10 days, I'm climbing the walls. On the other hand, seed that was not yet in the ground can't rot now in the wet ground, can it? I don't know now many years y'all have been there, but we only had a scorpion problem for about the first 7 years here. Since them, we have found only 1 or 2 inside the house and have barely seen any outside too. I assume the chickens and guineas can take credit for the scorpions disappearing outside.

Yes... hand washing helps. I remember as a kid cleaning yellow bannana peppers for canning and my face burning from it. I'm fairly quick to wash my hands when working with peppers these days. Sometimes you have to wash them twice and scrub hard... pepper juice clings. Not just rinse but srub with soap and running water. Sometimes I'll taste my fingers to see if any residue remains. The baggie trick works good... learned that one on this forum! I grew jalapenos, cayenne, habenera, and the red savina habenera this year. The RS cultivar has been clocked at over 500,000 scovil units! Cutting a pepper and then cutting something else will transfer enough pepper juice to make the second item hot if I don't wash the knife in between... don't munch a chunk of onion while making chili. A couple jalapenos or cayenne I won't use a baggie but the stronger habenera require something even for only one quick little tiny pepper. : ) lyra