And now it’s November. The weather today was the same as it’s been for the past few weeks, sunny, with a chill in the air. There was, as there has been, a light frost on the ground. When I wake up in the mornings, I look closely at my cabin and see if there is frost on the red roof.

Fortunately, we took advantage of the extended fall and got quite a bit done. Pete took down the two trees adjacent to the horse enclosure and sawed up the wood. I split some of the wood in the splitter; he took care of the rest. I no longer trust myself to move the larger, heavy rounds. I now know what it’s like to have a heavy lifting injury and I don’t want to experience this again.

I am even being careful when hauling manure out of the horse pen. I’m now using the dolly. And I am not tossing the bucketed manure over the pallet station fence. Lifting heavy things over my head is a bad, bad idea.

I’m still putting the saddles on the horses’ backs – if they were heavier, I’d have to get assistance from Pete.

I did not ride today. Instead, I took care of things at the warehouse. The sun is now setting earlier – I am not feeling the effects of this because it has been so light. I do feel it when it’s overcast this time of year. The problem is that there is now less time to get the horses out. I did get the dogs out for a walk in the woods.

It’s so peaceful there. I hope the snow holds off and the snowmachiners stay inside, doing what they do. Maybe they are spending their time in their heated garages, working on their engines. I have two acquaintances over at Lazy Mountain – he purchased one of those fast, noisy machines, and yes, the last time I saw him he was tinkering with it.

Today I sorted all the Christmas books – the ones that previously were in the closet at the Meeting House. They are now categorized. We have adult fiction, children, and holiday craft books.

We have seven boxes of children’s Christmas books – I thought we had more, then I realized we gave several boxes to a woman who distributes them at the Thanksgiving dinner at the Menard Center. So we will take these to the Anchorage Performing Arts Center production of the Nutcracker on November 24. I even have six or so Nutcracker books. I’ll distribute the adult Christmas fiction and craft books by putting them in our bookcases.

It's a good feeling to be caught up. It’s a bad feeling not having any books coming in. The local recycling center cut us off. We were told to get our books from thrift stores. The problem is that we don’t have the space or a vehicle large enough to handle large volumes of books. I think we have enough inventory to get us through the holidays.

Too many, too few books – this sems to be the nature of the beast.

Next: 301. 11/2/23: Resuming Agility