Monday, October 24, 3:30 PM. Amy.

It’s really cold today: 46° this morning. It’s raining gently outside and we’ve got all the fires blazing. I actually rather like it. I don’t like the cold, but this is okay. Claire and I are sitting on the sofa, sharing a blanket. She’s reading one of my old Nancy Drew mysteries. She’s been getting into them lately. Coolidge is sleeping beside her. Pudding and Molly are lounging on the blanket between us, cleaning each other and keeping our feet warm. I’m fresh from a hot shower I took to fight off the chill. (I was outside in the mud all morning, picking a peck of peppers.) Trevor has brought out some of his Legos and is building a race car on the floor. Brewer’s in his easy chair, sipping a cup of coffee, reading the Almanac. Garrett’s outside chopping wood. It’s his way of warming up; he’s kind of addicted to it. The horses are running around in the rain like fools; Blizzard and Ilsa are watching them. The cows are in the barn. Everything feels like it’s in its right place for once.

We’re having black bean soup tonight with fresh jalapeños and homemade saltines.

I’m a little concerned about Brewer. He’s stressed out, worried.

The calves have been frustrating. About a month ago we separated them from their moms to get them weaned. That’s been wonderful. We get gallons of fresh milk every day, and we use it. I bet Garrett drinks half a gallon every day by himself. All the kids drink it. We make ice cream with it. It’s good in our coffee. I cook with it. We make butter. I’m working on making cheese.

After keeping the calves away from their moms for a month, we’ve finally let them come back together. It’s a pain to keep them in separate pens and a relief to have a single herd again. But it wasn’t a day before the calves were back at the cows, suckling for dear life.

That put Brewer in a black mood for an hour or so. Then he snapped back to action as usual. He went to the feed store and found some things that you put into the calf’s nose. It’s a plastic flap that sticks out. It stops them suckling, because when they try, it pushes the udder out of the way. He put one in the bull’s nose as well. The flaps have resolved all the issues. But it was stressful while we figured it out.

It’s the cars that have him really worried. I see him fretting about it all the time.

Some of the cars are having a hard time starting. None of them, with one or two exceptions, are running as well as they were. Thankfully, the propane truck still runs fine.

These are all brand new cars. Many of them we took straight off of new car lots with zero miles on the odometer. Yet they’re hesitating and stalling. Last week one of them simply died out from under me. I was on my own about ten miles from home. I could have walked it if I had to, but it wasn’t a good situation. I was able to get it started after three or four minutes, but it sputtered the whole way home.

We’re concerned. Brewer thinks it’s something with the gas. At first he thought it was something he was doing, but now it’s happening even with fresh gas, even when he’s careful.