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This morning. Yay!

So today, my love and I drove way upstate to visit our friends at Howling Hog Barbecue, so that we could help them practice their barbecue skills by basically stuffing our faces silly on beef brisket, pulled pork, chicken thighs, and ribs. It was definitely a carnivorous day.

Chris stayed up much of the night last night preparing for it. It wasn’t actually all about us, although naturally, I prefer to think of the Universe revolving around me, slowly, and perhaps a bit wobbily. No, they’re getting ready for their next competition.

Major finger-licking goodness ensued, and then we went outside to visit the sheep. Jenn’s raising a handful of Katahdin ewes and their lambs, some of whom have yet to pop out. Jenn’s job involves supporting grass-fed farmers. No, that’s not right. It’s not the farmers eating the grass. It’s their livestock. And it’s not always grass, per se: sometimes it’s other stuff entirely.

…Like the evil wild chervil, a member of the parsley family that is native to Europe and apparently taking over central Vermont, including Chris and Jenn’s yard. Looks a lot like Queen Anne’s lace.

Fortunately, the sheep love it. So Jenn just rotates them around the side yard every day or so, and they eat the whole plant, more-or-less down to the ground. Not the roots, alas, which can go six feet deep.

When you’re an expert, you get to design the bumper sticker.

And now, for some “awwww!” pictures!

George and Martha.

a wee little one, snuggled next to mom.

“help! help!”

You can learn more about Chris and Jenn here, from when we attended the Harpoon Brewery Barbecue competition last year. They’ll be competing in it this year, as well. Chris and Jenn started dating when they were sixteen. There is a great complicated story about them, which involves their parents – either her mom dated his dad, or his mom dated her dad, I can’t remember which, before various break-ups occurred, allowing each of their parental sets to get sorted out. And then each of them was conceived. And their moms wound up in adjacent hospital beds, giving birth at about the same time – one of them, three weeks early, and the other, three weeks late. Basically, Chris and Jenn made a deal a long time before incarnating in this lifetime that they were going to be spending some serious time together, whatever it took.

…as can be seen in this picture from Jenn’s 17th birthday

Is this not the cutest picture, EVER? It makes me sigh for all the lost years where I hadn’t yet met Kevin.

One last cutie pie for the day:

Yours truly, in a shiny new Howling Hog Barbecue apron.