Today, November 1, 2025. October is now past. Winter is here. We have five months of it ahead of us. I want time to go by fast. When spring comes, I will want time to go by slowly. I wonder if everyone is this way.

This morning, after breakfast, Pete took the Ford F 350, which he just got back from the shop, and the flatbed trailer and went to get another load of hay. He got the first load and unloaded most of it yesterday. There were, when I got home last night, 16 bales on the ground with a tarp on them. He tarped them last night with the intention of putting them in one of our three hay sheds this morning. We had to clean the one shed out, so that it would be ready for the fresh hay.

I don’t recall what I did while waiting for Pete to get back – wait a minute, I cleaned the horse enclosure. Took a while. It was a mess. He got back right after I finished up.

Sorting Native Language Books at U-Haul

I started to clean out one of the two empty sheds. Upon Pete’s return we finished this job and continued to bag the loose hay. We’ll use this hay for goat and chicken hay This shed now contains Tyra’s compressed orchard grass and non-compressed timothy hay.

I had to leave for town, so Pete put the 16 bales in the larger shed, and as well, the 97 bales that he’d just brought back from our hay dealer. I helped unload the 16 bales, but then I had to go to town. I felt bad because I was leaving Pete with a lot of work. This wasn’t something that I wanted to do. I left because I knew that the two high school volunteers would be on site at 1:00 p.m., and I felt like I needed to be there to supervise.

I stopped at U-Haul before going to the hotel and picked up four boxes of books. The volunteers appeared and immediately got to work, categorizing the existent books and then cleaning and stamping the U-Haul load. Robert then appeared – I sent him to U-Haul, and he brought back more books.

The high schoolers worked until 4:00 p.m., non-stop. They usually talk amongst themselves, but today I got them talking about jobs – I threw out a few ideas then the best one came to mind, which was for them to tutor the homeschool children. Mellisa and Lexi are both 16 – but according to the Mat-Su School website, old enough to tutor. I am excited about the possibility – it almost makes me feel as though I am a person who is able to enact change.

I did little things while they worked. When, finally, they left, I went and did some distributing. Two women were carefully picking out books at the Lekker Bakery. I waited until they were done. As I was standing there, a Bakery clerk asked, and then when I responded in the affirmative, brought me a hot chocolate. I thought – an instance in which good begets good.

Pete had just finished taking Tyra for a ride when I got home. There was just enough daylight for me to take Hrimfara for a short ride. Lucky me, to have a good partner, a good job, and great horses. Lucky, lucky me.

Next: 296. 11/2/25: I love my Horses