If you had started the season predicting the Skins and Giants on top of the NFC East and the Eagles and Cowboys at the bottom, I would have called you a fool. Shows what I know about football. Of course I can’t say I’m displeased, but I’ve watched every Giants game this season including the preseason, and they’re not a good football team. Their troubles are as much about injuries as they are about talent and coaching, but even if everyone was on the field, my read is they’re a middle of the pack team that needs help on defense (linebacking and secondary) and on offense (the line primarily, though it’s unclear if any of their receivers can step up and become the goto playmaker that Smith was and Plaxico was before him).

It’s too early to make predictions I have confidence in, and there’s the whole on any given sunday thing, but barring a string of injuries the Packers look even better than they did last season and an easy pick for NFC champs. I haven’t seen enough AFC games to have an informed opinion, but I’ll go with the Pats  and their explosive offense in the AFC.

We have around 3 acres of land now, most of it grass. I spend 5-6 hours a week mowing. We also have a barn with 4 stalls. Given these facts, Susan and I have been kicking around the idea of getting goats/sheep/alpaca that would help keep the grass trimmed, clear some of the land, and maybe produce hair for spinning and knitting. There’s also something of a principle at work here, which involves us working the land and trying to produce some of what we use locally ourselves. Mowing is a waste, but cleared land is an opportunity – for an acre of asparagus, or of sunflowers, or a bunch of goats, an acre of fruit or nut trees, or even just a field of wildflowers. We have several issues to deal with before we get there though, including getting water out to the barn (we’re thinking we’ll get a hand pump well drilled, since there’s a vernal pool nearby suggesting there’s ample groundwater close below) and how to contain the animals.

The well seems straightforward, but the fencing turns out to be complicated. There’s lots of ways to fence livestock. We could pay for or build permanent wooden, plastic or metal fencing. We could use horse panels, which are basically stiff steel wire fence panels with large rectangular holes, and move the animals around along with the fencing every couple of days. We could use corral panels, which are steel tube fencing panels which are sturdier than the horse panels but much more expensive. We could use movable plastic ribbon electric fence, which use plastic rods with foot pedals on them that you reposition periodically. Or we could do something we haven’t thought of yet. What would you do were you us? Permanent fencing doesn’t appeal much because of the cost and the lack of flexibility. Horse panels leave me nervous that I’m going to be chasing down escaped goats all the time. Corral panels seem pretty expensive (they run ~$8-10 a foot). The plastic ribbon fence is an eye sore and a lot of work to move around, plus even though they can use solar power, they do require the power. Basically, we’re not loving any of the options and debating what to do. Anyone else got an opinion they want to share, or other options?

So who knew having 1.5 jobs and a new baby would keep me from using this site much? Probably everyone but me. Truth is though the main thing that’s kept me from posting here has to do with Facebook. Well, Facebook and a lack of time to deal with the issues. Basically I had connected this site to my Facebook wall so that anything I posted here would show up there, but I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with Facebook to the point where I don’t want much to do with them, so I needed to disconnect the site. On the occasions when I’ve had time to deal with that I either wasn’t at a machine where I could do it (I only allow a virtual machine at work to connect to them at this point), or I bounced off the changes they made to their interface and backed out. Yesterday I finally took the time to disconnect things. The intent is to return to using this space. We’ll see if I can live up to it.