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I had an interesting day yesterday, and I want to tell you all about it. I have been thoroughly enjoying this holiday season and a bit of a break from my normal routine for the past four days or so.  However, even though I haven't been podcasting every day or conducting interviews every day, I am still working on the farm every day during this holiday break.  I had a couple of observations to share with all of you from that. To start, on Christmas Eve Day I wrapped up my work for the week and have been focused on friends, family and farm ever since.  We had a nice but small gathering for Christmas Eve at our house and then two Christmas dinner's on Christmas Day.  You heard me correctly, we had two Christmas dinners.  Here is what happened. As you all know, I grew up in the Central Valley of California.  So, I still have friends and family that live down there.  We had two different families call us to see if they could come visit us in Idaho during Christmas break so that they could escape the regulation and monotony of living in a California that is completely shut down with no sign of opening back up.  One of those families drove up here on Christmas Day with an arrival time of about 6pm on the schedule. So, on Christmas morning after the chores were done and Autumm, Hattie and I opened presents I started cooking.  I made a Christmas dinner for our friends who would be arriving at 6.  I made stuffing, mashed potatoes, cut up brussel sprouts for cooking later, baked a pie and stuck a ham in the Traeger by about 2pm.  Then I hurried and did my evening chores early and went over to our families house for our official Christmas dinner that started at 3:30.  By 6pm we had wrapped that up, and we headed home.  Our friends were already here, and we got got the rest of dinner cooked and served and started a multi-day visit. These are close friends, and they are city folks.  So, coming to stay on the farm is a novelty for them.  They always leave with stories they can share with the rest of their friends who also have no experience or knowledge about the way that we live our lives.  In truth, these are very close friends that have been a big part of our lives for a long time.  But, our lifestyles could not be more different, and when it comes to how and where we live, our values are far apart as well. These friends have never been to our farm in the winter before.  Every time they have come it has been in the summer, and they have only seen summertime activities.  So, this time would be a whole new experience.  I had extra clothes, boots and gloves for the husband.  And to his credit, he did chores with me every morning and evening.  And, he was helpful.  It was a pleasure to have an extra set of hands to help get gates and do the feeding.  And it was cold and moist.  An inversion set in while they were here, so there was frozen condensation on every gate we had to open and it was never above freezing. There were two events that took place while these folks were here that really made me appreciate this way of life.  The first one happened on Sunday afternoon at about noon.  All of us, except for their eldest daughter, took off at about noon to go grab a hamburger and shoot some pool.  It was cold and foggy out, and this seemed like a great way to spend a couple of hours. The daughter that we left at the farm was out on a run when we left, so the front door remained unlocked for her to get back in the house.  We hadn't got far when we got a call from her that she could not open the front door.  I was the last one out of the house, so I was positive that I had left the front door unlocked for her.  The latch on the door can be tricky every now and then, and I tried to talk her through getting the door open.  No matter what I tried, I could not get her into the house. I had left the door into our garage unlocked as well, so I told her to go around to the back of the house to try this one.