Still healing, and a LOT of wine!

The healing on Chico's leg is still going slowly, but this weekend, for the first time, I can't detect the cleft in the granulation tissue!  And the seepage from the wound is suddenly remarkably less.  I'm taking that as a great sign that we are finally closing up, but he still has a ways to go.  Starting last weekend, I've been taking the bandage off during the day and on at night.  During the week, that was spotty, as my Dad had to change his bandage, so I just had him change it everyother day and not worry about off in the a.m., on in the p.m.  But I started that back up this weekend.  His leg still swells up just a bit when it is not bandaged.  With a bandage on, it stays much less swollen.  So, we are trying to get the best of both worlds (air to the wound and decreased swelling) with our current methods.  I just don't want Chico's leg to heal up all thick after all the work we've put into it.  Chico has also been out in the small pasture (no longer cooped up in the barn) for the last couple weeks.

Chico is such a good boy though all this.  When he sees me enter the pasture, he comes over to greet me immediately and stands stock still while I check out his bandage and remove it.  To put it back on, I always take him out and tie him near all my supplies.  He seems to enjoy all the attention.  Nothing has been a bad experience for him.  He comes right up to me for scratches and love.  I think a lot of that has to do with being separated from the rest of the herd.  He's with Catlow now, but he REALLY wants to be with his best bud, Cody.  He's lonely for the whole herd.

And I must show the pictures from my wine exploits.  I got into wine-making over the summer.  So far I've done Black Raspberry, Peach, Peach/Blueberry, Elderberry, Grape, Grape/Apple, Crabapple, Cranberry/Elderberry.  They are in 1 gallon carboys (each gallon makes 5 wine bottles full), but some I have between 2 and 4 gallons of.  I think that's about all I'll tackle for this year.  The wines need to finish fermenting and aging.  My first ones are supposed to be ready to drink around Christmas.  I've been sampling them along the way during the whole process and I really like most of them (in the beginning they didn't taste the greatest but they did change as the fermentation proceeded).  Some have required some tweaking, but I won't go into it...I could spend a whole separate blog writing about wine-making!  All I'll say is it is so fun, and I'm so glad I got into it.  The most fun part is I get to harvest wild fruit (most of what I've picked grows wild around our land), and tweak it all to the tastes that I like.  I don't like my wine sweet, like most fruit wines are made, so I get to make it just the way I like it.

Some of the wines in this picture are cloudy because they are really young and still actively fermenting.  From left to right: Black Raspberry (the deepest darkest color I've made so far), Elderberry, Grape, Grape/Apple, and Crabapple.

 

 

Not all the wines I've made are in this picture.  Some have been bottled and but away in my cold room.