Dead worms, dead duckling, dead tired me.

The second shipment of worms was also DOA. Finally arrived August 2nd, again almost a week late. So once again, Amazon got back a box of stinking putrid worms, and I just asked for a refund. I haven't contacted the person on the local CraigsList that's selling worm tea yet, just haven't remembered to when I had the energy to deal with it.

And our very expensive Ancona duckling was dead when I went out to do chores this morning. No idea why.

Still no eggs from either chickens or ducks. They still eat and they still poop all over the place, but no eggs for all the food and mess they leave. Oh yeah and they invade the garden and eat everything growing there before we even know there's anything worth harvesting. They were fighting over an acorn squash today, not the first time, and we've yet to get the first edible thing out of the garden. We put many tons of composted cow manure on it, plowed it, cultivated it, disked it, planted it, and now, the chickens eat it all. So annoying.

The farmer next door has been spraying his cotton every week lately, which makes all of us here feel completely rotten when the chemicals make their way to us. The only thing we've found that helps us is to wear breathing masks with activated carbon in them. But I've not managed more than the bare minimum since early July because of breathing chemical soup.

And the pump on our washing machine died. Greg ordered a replacement today which should be here in two days, but in the meantime we're very close to being out of clean laundry. I was close to getting it caught up, then this happens.

We're still fighting the flea infestation in the house as well. Between the house cat sneaking outside and the barn cat getting inside, we got invaded by blood-sucking pests. I vacuum as much of the house as I can, as often as I can, and empty the canister outside. Haven't done so in a couple of days though, so it's past due again.

Some days I just want to sell all the livestock and give up. But what would William drink if we didn't have milk goats? He doesn't tolerate store-bought cow's milk well at all. So, I keep on keeping on taking care of critters. But I'm so tired all the time, and hurt all over a lot of the time. Very discouraging.