Fit as a Fiddle

    One of many happy things which occurred during our trip to Portland was the repair of my fiddle (damaged through my carelessness on my previous trip to Portland).  My son-in-law Chet seems to have a veritable plethora of friends who are good at one thing or another.  Lucky for me, one such friend repairs violins.   I brought the fiddle back down the the scene of the crime so to speak and a few days later it is looking and sounding better than ever.  It has a new bridge (the old one leaned significantly) a new A string (the old A string was starting to fray), a new sound peg (apparently the previous one was undersized), a new chin rest (the old chin rest broke in the fall from the top of the car), and is very clean and beautiful. I think the new sound post may have slightly improved the tone. It's great to have the fiddle back in tiptop shape. I felt a little empty or incomplete having my poor broken fiddle  sitting there in the case.

A less than focused  photo of the recently repaired fiddle

 
    While we were gone to Oregon our escape artist goat, Black Jack, escaped yet again from his enclosure.  He conducted his own form of severe pruning of blueberries, currents, chives, and narcissus. While he did a lot of damage to various parts of my garden, his primary crime was the wanton destruction of my little fruit tree nursery. He nibbled all but one of the baby fruit trees down past the graft unions.  I'm not sure what Black Jack finds tasty in chewing on grafting rubber bands, elastic plastic wrapping tape, and rubberized tree sealant, but goats have been known to chew on worse tasting things.  He easily pulled most of the newly potted rootstocks right out of their pots.  I've repotted some of the rootstocks in hopes that they may survive to be bud grafted this summer or dormant grafted next spring.

Baby fruit trees prior to Black Jack's escape.

One of the innocent victims of Black Jack's voracious appetite.

    At this point I decided to break down and purchase the ultimate goat fence. I went down to the co-op and bought three 16 foot long "combination" panels. I attached them to the current "field" fence using numerous zip ties. The field fencing I had installed previously was supposed to be fairly tough. Its normally used to fence in cattle who happen to be much larger and stronger than goats. However, cattle merely push on the fence. They don't have the ability to stand on the wires with their front hooves until the wire start to break. The combination panels are like hog fencing, but 52 inches tall and the metal is fairly thick.  I'll need to buy a few more of the panels to finish the job, but I could only get three of them into my van in one trip.  If Black Jack ever manages to break them down, instead of buying new fencing I will invite my friends and relations to a goat barbecue.

Taller, stronger, better, and more expensive.