Taking the Good with the Bad: Late Winter on the Farm

Saturday was the first rain-free day we've had in a while here. It seems like it has been windstorms and Pineapple Express-born heavy rains in our little neck of the woods all Fall and Winter. No severe cold this year and no snow to speak of, just endless wet.

It puts a strain on us, our garden and our critters. Trying to keep bedding clean and dry is a battle without end. Making sure that our beehives are draft-free and cozy for our little honeys is something we fret over, especially when the winds pick up.

So it seemed like a good omen - actually, a bit of a surprise - when Bill went up the hill to take a look-see at our three hives. The temperatures are still just a tad low to actually open the hives up and check things thoroughly, but observing your girls' activities can still tell you a lot about the health of the hive. Bill saw comings and goings at all three hives, a promising sign of life. Better yet, he saw bees coming in with pollen on two of the three hives, which is indicative of a happy hive, as pollen is what is fed to the "brood", infant bees.

We were pretty dumbfounded to have all three hives seemingly healthy and active, especially after one of them had the roof blown clean off their hive during one of the larger windstorms we've had this season.

Alas, if the bees' good disposition was our Yin, the sadness that awaited us in Goatlandia was the Yang.

After greeting and giving good head scratches to my goat gang, I went in search of Blue, who usually heads up the treat shakedown/scratch-fest. I found her in the goat house, looking very much like she was asleep. Our strong, sweet, sassy, irrepressibly-maternal little girl Blue, left us on an unseasonably sunny Valentines Day.

Blue was 14 years old, though we'd only had her for her last 4 years. She came to us with her little tiny buckling, Blackjack. He would be the last baby for our Bluey, and as though she knew that she'd reached the end of her new-mothering journey, she coddled and protected that little stinker to the point of spoiling him rotten. She was small but fierce.

Blue & her little man, Blackjack, chowing down.

In the years following, Blue became Auntie Blue, the maiden aunt/foster mom to many of our kids. If a doe had quads and couldn't keep up - the kids nursed Blue. If a Mama rejected/neglected a baby, Blue took them in. Even when her infant charges were nearly taller than she herself was, she nursed them when she could, fought for them to get their fair share at the feeder, napped with them in pools of warm Spring sunlight and slept close to them in the goathouse at night.

Bluey, in all her chunky glory :)

Waiting (uncharacteristically!) patiently for head scratches from her Papa

It hurts - literally hurts - to think that I'll never hear her insistent, distinctly unladylike "EH-EH-EH-EH-EHHH!" and see her rotund little form come trotting around the corner of the goathouse, in hot pursuit of snacks and head scratches. Her sassy little spark has gone, and I miss her.

So long, sweet girl.

Baby Goats!

Chardonnay has her babies on January 6th - one boy and one girl. And I was so sure that she had at least three in there! D'oh!

At 2 days old - the dark kid is the doeling, and the tan fella is our lone buckling, Cocoa.

After fooling me several times, Chardy finally, actually went into labor right around dinner time on the 6th. Farmer Bill was up the hill to feed and came scrabbling back to tell me that Chardonnay was delivering her 2nd babe. We all trucked back up the hill to check on everybody, help Mama dry everyone off, iodine their cord stumps and give them their first dose of colostrum/vitamin supplements. Chardy came through like a champ and her babies are healthy and beautiful!

And then again last night, Sidney did practically the same exact thing. Bill noticed two little new, wet babies at feeding time and came back with the report that we had two new pretty little girls.

The twinses!

Sidney and her darling doelings.

It is highly anticipated that Blue is also expecting shortly, but as she tends to be rather rotund on any given day, who knows for sure?

Three girls and a boy so far. YAY! :)

Today's Take - 8/18/13

Zucchini - 3 pounds (another 2 or 3 were thrown to los puercos)
Yellow squash - 3 pounds
Pattypan squash - 10 ounces (just one squash)
Tomatoes - 8 ounces - mostly cherries
Yukon Chief sweet corn - 2 pounds
Chamomile flowers - 1 ounce
Sweet basil - 2 ounces
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon
Eggs - 6

We have two visitors in the goat pen this next few weeks - Fritzen & Oreo! They are here for "pregnancy camp" and Buckley is ON THE JOB.

The pumpkins and summer squashes are taking over the garden! The flower/botanical bed is getting invaded by the naked-seed pumpkins and the strawberry bed is being taken over by the sugar pies. I've had worse problems. ;)

Still only the one sunflower open. Seriously - what's it gonna take?!?

Bill harvested just enough corn for dinner tonight. It is GORGEOUS!

Critter Update - 4/20/13

Today four baby goats went to new homes! Both of Sophie's kids, Sidney's boy and Hope/Liberty's (I can't keep them straight) girl. The folks who took the goaties brought us a few chicks too. We now have six Light Brahma/Americauna chicks being fostered by our silver-laced cochin, Lacy.

Since kid-fest '13 began, we've sold 1 doe in milk and six babies so far. Hop & Liberty are on hold for another family, pending Hop's little guy's successful weaning, and one little wether and one little doeling are earmarked for one of the hub's co-workers, who will be trading us turkeys for the two kids.

Since Sid & Soph are still well in-milk, we'll start our much-anticipated milking tonight. Chardonnay, who was the last to deliver, is still nursing her twins for another few weeks, but will eventually also be a milker for us this year.

I can't wait to make cheese, soap and cajeta again with our milk, and I'm sure the pigs are looking forward to having a belly full of milk-soaked bread and pastries each evening for dinner too.

Besides the joy that is the influx of milk made available to us by weaning off and selling a few babies, I also  very much appreciate the reduced feed and hay bill, and the lessened impact on our pasture. At our fertility/baby boom peak, we had 20+ goats on this little piece of property, which is waaaaay more than it could sustain. We're grateful to the babies for bringing their Mamas into milk for us, but we don't plan on keeping more than one this year. It'll be one of Chardy's babies, who are so identical that I can't tell one from the other. Pictures forthcoming!

Piggies, Birds and Disbud-a-palooza

This was a very full weekend for the residents of Boggy Hollow. First of all, two of us turned a year older, which, hot on the heels of a knee replacement surgery does not tend to make one feel Spring Chicken-y, generally speaking.

In addition to the clicks on the odometer, we managed to cram a whole lot of farm stuff into those 48 hours.

Firstly, Bill finished building a pig pen and pig house on the site of our first (completely flopped) garden, in the bottomland. Plants didn't grow well there, but we're hoping that piggies will.

Secondly, we bought ourselves some piggies. We got two gilts and a barrow, also known as two girls and a castrated male, 6 1/2 weeks old and already weighing 30-odd pounds apiece. They are mutts, essentially, being primarily Berkshire/Duroc crosses, with a little Yorkshire somewhere in the mix way back. They're fairly mellow little things, who managed to root up the grass in their newly built yard in a single evening.

Against the advice of some, Scarlet has decided to name this motley lot Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie). I personally have no doubt that any inadvertent sentimentality for these gals & guy will go out the window just as fast as the first whiff of frying bacon (or Baykin) finds its way to my kids' snoots.
These will not be the first animals that we have harvested for food on this farm, but these will be the first that we will have raised for expressly that purpose. I certainly hope that knowing that going in will make it that much easier to harvest and eat these lil' oinkers. For the record, the pigs cost us $95/each. 95x3= $285

As if our dances with pork weren't enough for one weekend, we also were gifted a pair of strikingly pretty/odd Guinea hens. These gals are useful in guarding and alerting our chickens to the presence of the nasty coyote who killed Cotton and who keeps dropping by. I'm not sure if they'd defend our flock or just raise the alarm about a predator in the vicinity, but either way, these gals are a very welcome addition to our rag-tag flock.

Per Wikipedia, Guinea fowl are voracious consumers of fleas, ticks, lice and other insect pests, and will keep your coop and garden relatively bad bug-free. That's a pretty sweet deal, no? I have to admit that I'm also quite in love with their super-cool polka dot plumage. I think that Bill could tie some really cool flies with those feathers!

And as if that weren't enough to fill up a weekend, we also enlisted some help getting our 9 baby goats vaccinated, disbudded, and (where applicable) castrated. The gal who came out to do the deed was kind enough to show Billy the ropes, so that maybe next time we can do the disbudding and banding all by ourselves. For the record, the gal charged $15 per kid for the disbudding/vaccination (with our meds)/castration. x9= $135

Just to clarify, because I feel kinda like I need to justify our descision to disbud, we personally do not care at all whether our goats have horns, but since we're looking to sell these kids to folks, possibly within Olympia city limits, where horned goats aren't allowed, we thought it prudent to go ahead and have the babies dehorned. We also went ahead and castrated all of the bucklings, since one uncontainable buck is plenty for this little farm, thankyouverymuch.

So, that was our weekend. Even with having had goats and a whole mess of chickens for years now, something about bringing pigs and exotic birds into the fold makes this farming-thing suddenly seem super legit. I am going to do my level-best to keep good, accurate records about how much this pig adventure costs us, and how much meat we end up with for our trouble. I'm really, really hoping that between excess goat milk, bakery outlet scores and garden/kitchen scraps, that we'll be able to feed these pigs up, on the cheap. Come harvest time, which we guesstimate will be in August or September, I'll have to crunch the numbers and see how much this experiment cost us. More importantly though, will be whether or not this pork tastes ho-hum or crazy delicious.

Only time will tell!

Today's take:

Eggs - 8

Kids?

Today I finally managed to work myself up to making the trek to the goat yard, so that I could eyeball the lassies for myself and see if I could figure out who was pregnant.

Bill thinks that they all look a little too thin, which tends to happen after a cold Winter eating past-its-prime hay. To my eye, they look in fine flesh, especially blue who is built like a barrel.

My best guess (because it is only a guess) about who's pregnant - Chardy looks pregnant, but not "ready to go", Hop is *maybe* pregnant, and Sidney looks pregnant, though not bagged up, but I did see a little discharge on her lady bits, so I don't know whether she's pregnant and getting close (though not yet bagged) or just fat and in heat.

Time will tell! Between 8 does, I can only hope that we end up with at least one milker!

Stay tuned...

Today's Take - 8/4/12

Oh the heat! If only we had plants that would thrive in it, instead of only having critters who suffer on account of it. :( Today's high was 94, which is misery to a PNW girl like me.

We helped the pup keep cool by giving him ice cubes, which he loves to crunch, as well as a container of homemade chicken stock, straight out of the freezer. Rexy licked that thing down to a nub, grateful for the relief.

The goats did a lot of lounging in the shade to beat the heat, while the chickens walked around with their wings out, airing their armpits (wingpits?) in an attempt to shed a little heat. We all made it, but we're all a little worse for the wear. ;P

*Goats milk - 1/2 gallon
*Eggs - 2 :(
*Raspberries (from Lisa's garden)- 14 ounces

Cheese n' Stuff

Miss Sidney has been keeping us in the milk, big time lately. That, and life is getting closer and closer to normal with each passing week, post car accident, which means that it's time to find my groove again.

I busted out my handy-dandy copy of Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll, and found a few recipes that I'm keen to try.

Always at the top of our list is feta. I'm a huge Mediterranean food nut, which means that we go through epic amounts of feta. I also want to try some paneer or queso blanco, the non-melty variety of cheese that texturally works a lot like tofu. I'd like to try it in a stir fry or maybe in an egg roll. And then, the hands-down most popular incarnation of my goat milk - cajeta. I'll be interested to try a batch with Sid's milk, as it seems to have a higher butterfat content than Chardonnay & Fritzen's did, and according to a few folks who have tried it, tastes more "grassy". I'm not sure how that'll translate to caramel, but I volunteer as test subject! ;)

Livy & I are also studying up on making goats milk soap. We are trying to find our necessary supplies on the cheap at thrift stores and whatnot, and will be cutting and drying some lavender and rose petals soon that will eventually end up in our soaps. With raw milk, it's use it or lose it, hence the grand plans.

Boy it feels good to be getting back to "normal"! ;)

Oreo comes a-courting

Our sweet Miss Oreo and her Mama, the feisty Fritzen, moved on to a new home together a few months ago. At the time we were all but certain that both girls were pregnant. However, as time has gone by, it looks more and more like we were mistaken.

Fritzen has a history of quadruplets, so when she's pregnant, she is PREGNANT. If she was bred when we had our initial billy-goat jailbreak, as we suspected that she was, she'd be about a month away from kidding. Her "figure" and the softness of her belly have lead me to the unfortunate conclusion that she is either a) not bred or b) not as far along in her pregnancy as we had thought.

And so, her new Mama is keeping an eye on her for signs of either pregnancy or coming into heat, so we can try and get her with a buck ASAP if she's still open.

Meanwhile, her daughter, the sweet yearling, Oreo, has very definitely gone into heat, and was therefore promptly trucked back to our place from her new home for a little overnight rendezvous with our yearling buck, Barley. We observed them for a little while and saw a lot of interest & flirting between them, but don't know for sure if they sealed the deal. While young Oreo was away on her lovers tryst, poor Fritzen bawled for her baby and had to literally be lulled to sleep by her loving new owner.

Bill brought Oreo back home to Fritzen tonight and said that Fritzy was very joyful and sproingy upon her baby's return. It was nice to have our little Orrie back for a little while. I sure hope that this breeding takes! Can you imagine how cute the babies from these two will be?


Young Miss Oreo


And our dear little Barley boy

Goat Maintenance

UHG.

Today was hoof trimming/ear maintenance day for our goats, and well... yuck.

Goats are awesome little critters, and though they can be challenging at times, are sweet and fun 90% of the time. The other 10% - crazy, smelly, ornery and bitey.

Today was a 10% day. Their hooves all looked really great; no hoof rot, impacted gunk or anything else nasty. I am especially grateful about the absence of the hoof rot. One of our girls had a terrible case of it last year when we first bought her. It took a lot of foot baths, intramuscular antibiotics and constantly refreshed bedding to get her hooves back in shape. Hoof rot is also very contagious, so we were lucky that our other goats didn't get it. Keeping their feet trimmed and clean, and having dry, poop-free bedding are the keys to keeping their feet healthy. It is a lot of work!

When we do hoof and foot maintenance, we also do ear checks. Seven of our nine goats are Lamanchas, and have tiny little ears that occasionally need to be irrigated and medicated, because they have very small openings and don't "breathe" well. Needless to say, the goats are NOT fans of these procedures, and wrestle and wiggle the whole time that we're trying to flush out the gunk and administer the ear drops. It is thankless and messy.

So by the end of it all (today it took about 2 1/2 hours), you smell like a buck, have bits of hoof trimmings in your hair, have had ear goobers flung in your general direction and have probably had your finger chomped a time or two by an overzealous goat seeking his or her snack. A shower and change of clothes will knock the smell down, but not always out, and the "essence of buck" has a way of lingering in your sinuses and throat for a few hours after the fact.

Even with all of that, how could you not love sweet faces like these?



Just like with kids, all of the work and the craziness are rewarded with little moments of sweetness that remind you why you bother with it at all. I heart my stinky, ornery, snuggly little goaties, even on days like this. ;)

A Kink in the Flow

The goats have finally been dried off for the Winter, and the chickens' egg output has dwindled down from a dozen plus per day to two or three each day. In terms of the milking, it is a relief to be free from the daily chore.

We have a few cheeses aging, but will otherwise have to learn to live without fresh goaty goodness until the gals kid in late February/early March. As for the reduction in eggs; well that's just a bummer, no upside to that at all!

Last March, when I was browsing to buy the day-old chicks who have since grown to be our laying flock, I sought a "workhorse" of a breed. Between my research and the glowing recommendations from fellow chicken owners, the Australorp breed really stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Our wish list was this - a sturdy laying breed that was a) friendly b) hardy, health-wise c) would lay during the winter. The 'Lorp fit the bill on all counts.

So I ordered 10 hens and 2 roos, and the hatchery sent us an extra free roo. Out of our original 13, we still have 10. One was butchered (a mean roo), one died of a mystery virus (a nice roo) and one passed away from egg binding. For a flock of free-rangers, that is not a bad rate of attrition. Now the Polishes on the other hand - oy! - hothouse flowers. Never again!

Besides being hardy and better than their fellows at avoiding predation, the 'Lorp girls have indeed kept up their end of the bargain in terms of egg-laying during these first few weeks of dark Fall/Winter. Every last egg that we've collected since mid-November has been a Lorpy egg! We're averaging a dozen and a half to two dozen eggs per week now, as opposed to the 8 or 9 dozen that we were getting at peak production. I can't complain though. Even if it isn't quite enough for us to sell, we still don't have to buy eggs for ourselves, and to me, that's a pretty big deal.

So I'll take the slow down in production and try to enjoy the break. All of our "baby" hennies are headed toward their first birthdays, and therefore their first Spring of laying. I anticipate a landslide of eggs. :) Add to that the fact that, as best as we can tell without a veterinarian to confirm, we have five (maybe six) pregnant goaties. Keep in mind that twins are the standard in goats and visualize the sproingy-happy kid fest that will be my back pasture in just a few more months. :) We'll be swimming in milk and eggs again before we know it, so right now is our time to hunker down and rest up.

We have a goatie dooooon!

Our poor Fritzen girl has just come down with a mild case of mastitis. :(


Fritzen & I, on our first go with the Henry Milker.

Thankfully, it is "sub-clinical", meaning that it is both less uncomfortable for her, and easier for us to treat than "full-blown" mastitis.

She presented with reduced milk supply and increased tenderness upon milking, which made Bill & Liv suspect mastitis. A paper mastitis test strip confirmed their suspicions. To err on the side of caution, we threw out the past two days' milkings. Boy does that suck!

We'd been looking at beginning the dry-off process for our milkers anyway, since they are both likely already pregnant with this spring's kids (on their schedule, not mine - d'oh!) and need to focus their energy into growing babies and keeping a good amount of meat on their bones this winter instead of milk, milk, milk.

So Fritzen is officially drying off now. We will continue to "pump & dump", just to keep the milk from further backing up and clogging the works. We're also treating her with an udder balm and teat dips, and will be talking to our vet for further instruction with regard to either treating her with injectable antibiotics and/or orifice flushing.

It's kind of insane, the sort of stuff that you end up having to do with and for livestock that is soooo beyond the scope of what you'd normally think of doing for a "pet". Giving intramuscular injections, for one. We had to give Chardonnay i.m. antibiotics last January, right after we first bought her, because she had a severe case of hoof rot. That was awful. Thank God for Bill being tough enough to do what had to be done, because I don't know if I could have.

That was a particularly tough case anyway, being that she was a) new to us, b) weeks away from delivering twins and c) didn't have a lot of muscle in which to insert the needle. The poor lass was not in great shape at all when we first got her, but we managed to help her find her way back to health, and learned a heck of a lot about veterinary medicine in the process.

Hopefully Fritzen's health hiccup will be nowhere near as serious, but we're prepared to do whatever we have to to make our girlie well and comfortable again.

Today's Take 9/28/11

I've mostly only been bothering to check the garden for harvestable goodies every few days, since all of our stuff is stunted and ultra slow growing, but for most of this week I've been checking it daily and getting little drips and drops of produce.

Today I ventured into the garden to kill a little time while I let our does out to graze a while. Since we don't have the pasture properly fenced in, the girls could wander up as far as the front yard, if not supervised, and eat all manner of toxic plants like our rhodies, azaleas and irises, which they have an unnatural attraction to. So I hung around picking a few berries and tomatoes while my gals snarfed down grasses, weeds and freshly fallen maple leaves. The maple and alder leaves seem to be the thing that they're gaga for these days, because they even went so far as to stand up on their hind legs to try and reach the lowest hanging leaves of our neighbor's 50+ foot tall maple trees that droop over the fence and into our yard.

It'll be interesting to see if the milk takes on a different, maybe sweeter flavor with all of the maple leaves that they've been eating. Hmmm....

-Goats Milk, 60 ounces (Fritzen kicked the jar over again. GRRRR!)
-Eggs, 6
-Tomatoes, 6 ounces
-Blackberries, 6 ounces
-Cinderella Pumpkin, 3 pounds, 4 ounces

Today's Take 9/4/11

This morning we moved the doelings (Oreo, Valentina - aka "Teeny", and Hop) into a pen of their own, away from their mamas. And they are NOT happy about it!

They are being finally, very belatedly, fully weaned. They haven't been taking that muck milk from their mothers, but based upon today's milking, it's definitely been enough to make a dent in what we're getting for ourselves, so I'm glad that we went ahead with the move. We're probably going to move ol' Miss Blue down with the little girls too, since she is never happy without babies around her. ;)

Today's Totals-

Goats Milk - 34 ounces!
Eggs - 4
Blackberries - 1 lb, 12 oz

Today's Take 7/28/11

The goats' milk production is bouncing back, thank goodness! Adding the alfalfa to their diet seems to have made the difference. I guess that the local orchard grass hay just didn't have enough good stuff in it. Crisis *hopefully* averted. ;)

*Radishes, 1 pound
*Eggs, 7
*Goats Milk, 12 ounces

Things I Learned from Fritzen

Fritzen is the herd boss.  She's the oldest of the mini-lamanchas and the toughest.  She rules the roost and Chardy, Blue, Gertie and all their babies make way for her.  She is a tough old goat and has a beard to match.  I don't think I really knew her though until we started milking.

Every time we think we have the hang of something they throw something new our way.  Two days ago I went outside to milk them and it was windy and cloudy.  Chardy hopped right up on the table because I think she both likes being milked and eating the grain we give them in their bin as a bribe.  She milks out fast and not as much as Fritzen so off she went back into the pen.  I collected Fritzen and hopped her up on the table.

One side of her milked out, it takes more time with Fritzen and I switched to the other.  Then the rain started. By started I don't mean there were a few drops here and there before it went to a steady light shower or drizzle.  I mean God turned on the shower kind of rain.  I was sans coat and Fritzen munched on her grain for a few moments as she watched her babies and pen mates run into their little goat house.  A few moments after that she was pulling back on the milking stand.

Now I'm paranoid about them getting mastitis, an infection and sometimes blockage of their udders.  You avoid that by milking them all the way out each time.  I know their babies are still drinking a bit but still, I worry so there we sit as I quietly encourage her to be patient.  She begins doing the riverdance with her hindquarters, turns her head around, looks at me with her one eye, sticks out her tongue and literally screams at me.  I put my hat on her head to see if that helps her block out the rain.  She screams again.  And again, and again and again......

I wait a few minutes until I know she's milked out a little bit and drag her back to the pen.  She is, needless to say, a bit crabby and I am soaked (even after Chelle sent Livy up with my raincoat).

Lately she has been only letting me milk out one side.  She doesn't let her milk down on the other side for some reason.  Both sides have done this so I know it's by choice.  I try sweet talking her but ever since the rain incident she just looks at me like "you lose buster".  I finally figured out though that she's OK with hand milking the other side.  This is a skill I thought I'd never get down pat but after practicing quite a bit to get them ready for the Henry Milker I seem to be able to pull it off.  It takes some stamina but I think she prefers it.

Last but not least I finally got her tender hoof trimmed up.  It took help from Chelle to hold her head and snuggle her because it hurt but I got it done and got the medication in there.  Today I used the berry treats before and after brushing her hoof with iodine water and medication and she got nervous but seemed OK at the end.

She is a tough old goat but she's tender too.  She can't stand hearing her babies cry and when she's sore she lets you know.  She's as patient as she can be with us as we learn this milking business and sometimes is even tender towards us.  At 6 years old she's second oldest of the pack and a good mama.  Slowly but surely she's training us as much as we're taking care of her.  Words of wisdom that she has passed on to me....

1.  "Never milk an angry goat in the rain"
2.  "I can't take care of my feet so I need you too, even if it hurts"
3.  "I'm in control of if and how you get my milk"
4.  "Learn how to milk by hand, like it or not"

She is our cash cow too so to speak.  She gives easily three times as much as Chardy, even as she's twice as hard to milk.  So today as I drove home thinking about milking the goats in the rain I remembered what Fritzen told me the other day.  Before I got the milker put together I went into the basement and got some nails, rope, a tarp, saw and hammer.  I grabbed a couple of 2x2's and a dowel and went up the hill.  In went two dowels to anchor one side of the tarp and up went the 2x2s and lo and behold the milking stand was dry.  Up went Chardy and was done in a hurry (her right side is finally giving us some more milk) and into the pen I went to get Fritzen.  She was hesitant until I got the leash on her and then up and onto the table she went.  She stayed dry, didn't fight too much when I brushed her hoof and looked over at me with thanks when I gave her the berry treats.  Success!  Then I switched the milker over to the other side.

She wouldn't let down on the left side until I hand milked her.

Yes, ma-am.  Whatever you say ma-am.  You're the boss, Fritzen-big-mama.....

Today's Take 7/11/11 (and other ramblings)

Wow - I just realized that I have been writing the wrong month in these "Today's Take" posts for over a week now. Where is my brain? ;P

I pulled a whole wheelbarrow full of weeds from around the pumpkins and watermelons in the garden today, then fed the lot to some very grateful chickens. The only disappointment was that for all of my weeding, I hardly made a dent in the onslaught. Does that expression "A clean house is a sign of a wasted life." apply to the yard and garden too? I hope so!

Speaking of the garden, the radishes are all about ready to come out, and will thus make way for my last few Yukon Chief corn seedlings to pop into their place. The lettuces are finally looking good. What a strange growing year this has been! In an average year (what does that even mean anymore?), my greens would have bolted by now. Then again, I'd also probably have zucchini coming out my ears, and that's not happening either.

The pumpkins and Amish Pie squash are both spreading out and producing nice big leaves and blossoms now. In fact, one of the pumpkins has a baby on it, but I don't think that it's going to make it. It is wee and yellow. Maybe it wasn't fertilized?

With respect to the critters, we're having some ups and downs, as seems to be our new normal. We had to segregate an Australorp roo from the rest of his flock because his testosterone was getting the better of him and making him act like a rather aggressive jerk to the ladies. When we originally ordered our chicks I opted for 10 hens and 2 roos, so that we might have better odds of getting a "good" rooster. A gentleman. For whatever reason, Murray McMurray included a free 3rd Australorp roo, so we feel like we can afford to be that much more picky about our keeper. If we had somehow magically ended up with three saintly boys, we'd have craigs-listed the extra two, but since Captain Crankypants has outed himself as an irredeemable misogynistic thug, he's destined for the frying pan.

As for the goaties, it looks like two of our does, mother and daughter, may have some hoof issues. This is the never-ending issue with goats! The little girl's hooves are so thick that the trimmers won't cut them, and she's walking on just 3 legs right now. Her Mama has dirt, poo, and straw "impacted" in her hoof, and the stuff will. not. budge. I think we need to give her some warm iodine foot baths to get the gunk soften up. Poor babies! I'm going to email the vet, just to see if she feels that they need to been seen or further medicated. I want so badly to give these animals the best life possible, but we just keep hitting these snags. I feel especially bad that it sometimes takes me a little while to figure out that there is a problem, being that I'm still a relative newbie goat owner. Live and learn, I guess, and pray for my babies to stay well and strong.

*Goats Milk, 16 ounces
*Eggs, 3

Milking - Day 3

I didn't stop to jot it down, but yesterday we got just 5 ounces from a late morning milking and this evening we got over 10 ounces of milk from our goaties. Pics of the milker in action to follow shortly. ;)

Milk!

We finally got our Henry Milker in the mail today, and took it for a spin straight away. We had a little trouble at the start, as one of the holes in the modified lid wasn't bored out completely, and wouldn't let the milk flow into the jar. A little poking around and, problem solved.

We tried the milker out on all three of our lactating does, but only got decent results with one, Fritzen. Her milk seemed to flow best out of her right udder, at about 5-7 pounds of pressure, per the gauge. Chardonnay just would not let her milk down. I got a few squirts out hand milking, but the pump just didn't do it for her. Gertie, the first time Mama/milker of the lot, was that hardest to milk. I got a few dribbles and drops out of her, but she was very antsy, and frankly, mostly milked out already by Miss Violet by the time we got her onto the stand.

My plan for tomorrow is to turn the ladies out to graze for an hour or so before trying to milk, in the hope that they will "refill" from having fed their babies that morning, and have a lil' sumthin'-sumthin' for Mama.

I was nervous to try the milk for the first time. In fact, it grossed me out a little. I was the same way about eating the first eggs from our chickens. It felt odd to be eating something with my "pet"'s DNA in it. I told myself, They're farm animals, this is their gig!, but it still felt weird.

Until it didn't.

I guess I'll just have to hang in there until I feel the same way about the goats' milk. The kids and Bill are already on board. The girls had little cream moustaches after trying their first sips of homegrown milk. They both commented on how sweet it was, and actually finished up all 6 ounces of today's milk with their dinner, before having to switch to the store-bought organic cow's milk. Now, I just need to get the supply and demand thing matched up with my goaties, and we'll be off and running. :)

Cajeta, here I come! :)

For the Record:
*4 eggs
*6 oz milk! :)))

For the Record, week of 6/13-6/19/11

The garden is still getting its feet under it, and growth has been s-l-o-w, despite my fertilizing and fretting over it. I guess that this soil is just not as plant friendly as we'd thought it might be.

We've also had some slug problems. Bill is planning to set out some beer traps. God help us if the goats get into them!

New in the garden this week -
*1 row (about 12 seeds) of Giant Greystripe Sunflowers
*1 row of French Breakfast Radishes (the first row got hit hard by something - we think slugs)
*1 row of Golden Improved Wax Beans
*1 row of Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans
*Re-seeded a few pumpkins that didn't make it

Still pondering about where to squeeze my beets in. I'd normally fret over having started them too late, but with this early spring-like weather in what is about to be summer, well, I'm just not that worried about it. Now whether or not my stuff will ever get enough sun to do anything, is another question entirely.

Our new roo, Thunder, is fitting in nicely. We had him in a separate run/house right next to Curly so that they could get to know each other a little before moving in together. Just yesterday we put the two together, and things are going fine. Thunder is definitely more interested in Curly than she is in him, but that's ok. He's not being rough with her at all, so I think we'll leave them together unless relations go downhill.

Hop's ear infection seems to be clearing up well. The vet called back yesterday to check on her, and I was glad to report that she was back up to being her sassy, bouncy self. Bill's been giving her her ear drops each night (no easy feat), and tonight I'm going to try and irrigate her ear, just to make sure that we don't have any residual gunk down in there.

I hope that I'm not jinxing us by saying this, but right now everybody is happy and healthy and looking good. :)

Tonight Bill racked & bottled our beer and wine. His beer is a ringwood ale, and I *think* that he made 5 gallons of it, which ends up being about 2 cases of beer (I think). He racked our two gallons of rhubarb wine that was started back in November. We'll bottle it in another 3 months or so. The dandelion wine was bottled, and made 9 wine bottles worth, after occasional sips and samples on the sly took their toll. The dandelion was started in April, 2010, so we were actually a little bit late in bottling.

While Bill bottled our booze, I snuck a little of our kegged hard apple cider, and a bit of our rhubarb wine, and inoculated them with some of the "mother" from some store-bought natural apple cider vinegar. I filled the bottles just over half full, leaving plenty of air space for the oxygen to move through the liquid and let the acetobacter breathe and do it's thing. I topped both bottles with a double-thickness of cheesecloth, and rubber banded it on. It is supposed to take 4-8 weeks to go from alcohol to vinegar, but as I'm storing it above the stove, and summer is on it's way (supposedly), this small first batch may convert faster. My fingers are crossed!