Today was a bit of a rocky start...both literally and figuratively.  I started at 6:30 am and it was nice and relaxing hooking up the milk machine, feeding charley, and herding with trottle.  On my way back with the golden girls I slipped on the mud from the irrigation and my shin landed right on a rock!! It was one of the falls where you feel sick to your stomach right after.  All is well and I'm just left with a very sore shin that has swollen up to give me a fat leg and a large bruise haha.  Milking went well...we're still using the machine in the morning.  We're down to 26 goats to be milked in the pm though so hand milking has started. I've somehow managed to get out of this thus far what with my schedule and special duties such as delivering.  Autumn and Lisha Jo have some sore/scabby teats as of lately so I have had to hand milk them in the morning.  Lisha Jo was being such a pain in the butt jumping around and kicking.  She even knocked the whole milking pitcher onto the stand and me.  I was getting so frustrated.  Note to self: always do the hand milk ladies first so they have food to distract them.  By time I was hand milking they had gobbled up their breakfast already.  After feeding, herding, and cleaning up a bit it was off to the dump for a dump run.  I have to say...I'm getting much better at backing the big truck up.  Dad would be so proud ; ) It looks as though my race car days are over, though I'm pretty sure Andrew is laughing at this right now and saying yah right.  For those of you that don't get this reference I may or may not have gotten a nice big white scratch on the van when I first got my license.  I got into a fight with a parking structure pole and the pole won.  Needless to say parking has never been a strong point in my driving career but I'm mastering our big truck pretty good.  After the dump I picked up grain at Del's.  Wow I've never driven so slow on the curvy road back up to Kula.  I also got the fun job with Teo of rewriting some number tags and getting them organized for the babies!!  Every time my co-workers walked by they'd get excited knowing once the numbers are out babies are coming.  

The trade winds have really picked up this week.  It's never been so windy.  I feel like my shed is going to blow right over!  With the winds we've had some beautiful rainbows as well.  It's just so beautiful.  Speaking of beautiful I went to church Sunday morning with Nalani.  After trying out a different church I've decided to regularly go to St. Joseph in Makawao.  It's SO beautiful.  The atmosphere of the church and the service is really great as well.  Even though I'm giving up my only day to sleep in what with volunteering and yoga on my days off it's worth it to come out of the church in the early morning refreshed and renewed ready for the day.  Not to mention the sun is up and shining.  The early morning tends to be super sunny....sometimes I feel like I need sunglasses to milk.  

Not much has been happening on the farm besides the typical day to day stuff.  I found out one of the fedex boxes Christi and I packed last Tuesday didn't make it in one piece : (  Thursday I got to go with Eva to Alan the vet in Kula to check out Amelia's leg.  It looked great!  He took the cast off and you could see the window where to wound was and there wasn't any infection.  We've been worried because she's been dragging her cast and not using her leg.  He even let me help wrap her leg back up and redo the cast.  We're gonna take her off penicillin and take off the cast ourselves in a couple weeks.  Hopefully she uses the leg like normal but it'll take some getting used to since she's had some muscle atrophy from dragging it along.  I was thrilled enough to get to go along and help with the cast but then Alan asked me if I wanted to help him feed a Pueo.  Ummm what?? What in the heck is a Pueo??  Turns out it's the Hawaiian owl and he had one at this house he's rehabilitating since he had to amputate one of it's wings (like Adonis!) from an injury.  I actually got to hold him in a towel while Dr. Alan put food in his beak and gave him water from a syringe.  I feel so thankful I've had all the opportunities I've had to experience and work with all the animals I have since May.  I'm not even really a fan of birds (the birds anyone??)  and this owl was gorgeous.  Eva said we have some in our orchard.  I'm definitely going to read a book in the orchard and look for them.  

Saturday's tour went well.  I actually felt comfortable and not nervous.  I think it's that I feel like I have a lack of knowledge of the goats and the farm but come to find out I don't!  I can answer pretty much any question the tourists throw at me.  Ghira was the entertainment this week.  Scout was taking her sweet time with the tourists.  Even after the whole herd went into Gold she didn't want to go in (pampered much?).  So I calmly asked Ghira to "bring her here" (clearly not calmly enough haha) and he freaked out getting super excited and nipped at her ears.  They started running away back towards the barn but he turned her around and brought her back.  He listened pretty good so people were impressed by his herding.  Probably won't use him for that on a tour again haha.  But they thought it was entertaining.  I also had a woman who visited the AWCC this last June and was so excited to hear I was there too.  I might not enjoy giving the actual tour but talking to people and meeting them is always fun.  

Wednesday's volunteering we went to a different facility in Kula and met with two patients.  One of which was perfectly content to sleep cuddled up with her favorite bunny Gigi.  We also brought one of our guinea pigs R2D2 for the other patient and he was very fun to interact with.  He can't communicate by speaking but he has a computer that he can use to type out words by the computer picking up on his eye movement.  It was too sunny out so we used the old school method of this board with a window where you look into at him and watch his eye movement to spell out words with colored squares and letters.  It was kind of difficult but he was so patient with us.  This was by far my favorite volunteer day thus far.  

Off to a farmily dinner!  Wish me luck on those packages tomorrow haha