Sing For Your Supper

Last night we had a nearly-full moon, and the sky was unusually clear. What this tends to mean here in Boggy Hollow is - Predator Fest.

Luckily, the coyotes seem to have taken the night off, so we all slept mostly soundly. Having a pair of livestock guardian dogs in the house at night makes for a rough one when the coyotes are on the prowl. Our fellas pace and whine, and will occasionally growl or bark if they feel like the 'yotes are getting too close.

Instead of yips and howls, the night sounds were the hoots and calls of owls... and some other, less enjoyable, noises. But I'll get to that.

We have several Barred owls who visit/live in our cedar trees, just a few feet from our bedroom window. So hearing Who cooks? Who cooks? Who cooks for you? as we're falling asleep is a fairly regular occurrence. Last night though, another owl joined the chorus. I think it was a Great Horned owl. It's call was so much deeper and softer than the Barred. It was lovely to fall asleep to. With one, rather large exception.

A bit of prologue: The reason that the predators love a full moon is because it makes hunting so much easier. (This is the part where the not-so-nice sounds come in.) You see, we have a rabbit problem. At least we view it as a problem. It's more of an attraction to the wild things in our woods.

So, even though we were being serenaded to sleep by owl song, and even though the pups were uncharacteristically chill for a night with a near-full moon, the night did not sail along altogether undisturbed.

At about 12:30, all of the dogs suddenly perked up their heads and let out a series of soft whines. Not the usual ballyhoo for a coyote's yip, but an alert nonetheless. Bill got up to investigate. He popped his head out the front door for a listen, came back and crawled in to bed. 

Me: Well, what was it?
Bill: An owl got a bunny. The bunny is screaming.
Me: :(

Now, there is no love lost between either of us and these wild rabbits. They are a bloody plague on my garden and flower beds, and I would *love* for them to just disappear overnight. Maybe not like that though? 

Anyway - thanks (I guess?) to the assorted owls for taking care of business, and thanks, especially, for the lovely songs. Tonight is the full moon, so we may be experiencing round two this evening. 

A Barred owl seen on a walk near our farm. Photo credit: Billy Jackson 2020

Putting the Laydies to Work

Need a bit of soil weeded and turned over? Sic your hens on it!

Eight hungry hennies in the tractor, day 1

I have a long-disused bed that I needed to start clearing out to prepare for an April/May/June planting of flowers. This bed is far removed from (and less protected than) our veggie garden, and as such, has been sort of ignored since we moved in almost 5 years(!) ago.

With weeds and reed canary grass getting that long and strong of a foothold, I knew that weeding this bed wasn't going to be easy. So I recruited some hard working gals to help get me started. As you can see in the photo below, they've made a decent job of it on their first pass.

The tractor, day 3, and it's path of destruction improvement.

All this, and eggs too!

The Kids These Days

Nanny Granny Chelle needs to get her booty up to goatlandia to take more pictures of the wee ones, but, in the mean time, I hope these photos and the linked video at the end will satisfy your baby goat adorableness quota until the next installment is available. 

Chardy's babies, Cocoa & Fiona, 2 days old

Scarlet & Evangeline, 1 day old

Elodie, Mama Sidney, and Evangeline

Elodie & Evangeline, 1 day old

For your viewing pleasure: A video of some very skeptical baby goats. For the life of me, I can't get this thing to upload normally, and so... viola. The magic of the facebook at work, ladies and gentlemen!

Mid-Winter Whine-o-rama

Every month/season/year I think: The end is right around the corner. Life is about to calm down and I can spend more time knitting/cooking/sleeping/hanging with my husband/kids/critters, etc.

That has yet to actually happen. EVER.

Getting our new business up and running has been a full time-plus undertaking for the past few months now. Meeting with suppliers-bankers-contractors, renovating our space, marketing, hiring employees and doing 90% of the physical labor on the building ourselves... it's kicking our butts a little.

Then we have life on the home front - kidding season, garden planning, fostering dogs, fending off raccoon and coyote attacks, attempting (and failing) to keep my house and yard presentable, seeing my kids for more that 5 minutes per day, etc. Le Fail.

I offer last Friday as an example:
*My oldest stayed home from school sick.
*My youngest came home early from school, sick.
*My big dogs escaped. Thrice. That meant that I had to keep them in the house for the day after escape #3. Guess how productive a gal can be when she's being stalked by two giant, cagey dogs and two needy daughters? Not very.
*Our septic tank filled up so completely that we couldn't run any two of the following at the same time: the shower, toilet, dishwasher, clothes washer. When water did successfully go down the drain, we were "rewarded" with a burp from the toilet. Magical.

So... how's Winter treating you?

The Telltale Huevos

We don't use supplemental light in our coops. We never have, with the exception of the few times that we've been taken by surprise by a mid-Winter clutch hatching out, necessitating the extra heat.

Typically, our girls enjoy a well earned ovulation-vacation during the cold and dark months, which can lead to certain teenagers becoming a little cavalier about checking the nest boxes when she does her chicken chores. This happens -literally- every year, even though I harp on my certain teenager to take the extra 5 seconds to check them anyway. And she says things like "Ok", and "I will" and my favorite "Nope, no eggs again today!".

With the recent passing of the Winter solstice, I thought it might be about time for a few of our hennies to start laying again, so I decided to do a little spot check on the nests. Surprise, surprise!

Busted!

Seventeen eggs. Seventeen flipping eggs! That's almost $6 worth! A certain teenager was very repentant when confronted with the evidence of her ongoing dereliction of duty and offered to wash the eggs off for me. You're darn tootin' you'll be washing those eggs! *grumble, grumble*

The Frets of a Feeble Farmer

Our herd of nine goats - 5 mini-Lamancha does, 1 mini-mancha buck, 1 Nigerian Dwarf doe and 2 Alpine does - has had me hand-wringing worried as of late.

Let me digress a tad. Because of the state of my knees, I can't make the walk to the upper pasture and back, especially in mud season. So I haven't been up to visit my babies in a long while, and it really, really sucks. I miss these sweet faces!

Valentina, Blue & Chardonnay, February 2012

So the daily visitor to Goatlandia for the past 9-months-plus has been Bill, exclusively. And the goaties love their Papa.

The daily love-in/treat shakedown.

In fact, they even know the sound of Billy's truck pulling into the driveway and start bleating to beat the band when they think Pops is home and headed their way with chow. He does right by them and they love him for it. 

Alas, Billy is a dude. 

Now, at the risk of coming across as some sexist Neaderthal, I'll attempt to explain how this hinders him ever so slightly as a goatherd. He takes amazing care of our guy and gals, but as a fella himself, lacks that sixth sense about babies and critters that I feel is inextricably tied to the X chromosome. It's a nurturing/intuition/mothering thing that goes bone-deep. I don't know how to explain it really, but I know when something is a little off with one of my goats (or dogs, or hens), even when they're "fine". It's a skill that I unfortunately have not been able to translate to the world of plants and my garden is living (half-dead) proof. I can also usually tell by one means or another if and when my girls are pregnant. Unfortunately, since I haven't had a face-to-face with my gals in a while, and can only see them from a distance out the window, I have no idea whatsoever who might or might not be pregnant, and I'm worried. In fact, I don't know whether anyone is pregnant so we might be looking at a very dry year.

This past Fall and Winter we finally found a profitable way to use our goat milk in soapmaking. There are a lot of very talented craftspeople and artisanal products made and sold here in Olympia, including a good number of small-batch soaps, but our beautiful, organic goat milk was the ingredient in ours that set us apart. In fact, we sold out of it! And now that we have a product that sells and have begun to build a knowledge base about making and marketing it, we're looking at the possibility of not having our magic ingredient available to us for drinking, cheesemaking, soapmaking or as a protein-rich food for the hogs that we'll soon have. The loss of it would be pretty major for us.

I started wondering if Buckley, our lone buck, did, in fact, have "the goods" or not. Billy and I talked about what our next steps would be if it turned out that Buckley was sterile. Our only viable option would be to cull him. Neither of us were looking forward to that possibility.

Well, a reprieve came in my inbox yesterday in the form of an email from my friend, B. The mini Lamancha does that she bought from us last year, and boarded here for a few weeks this Summer, were both successfully bred by none other than Buckley himself. Fritzen delivered healthy twin girls yesterday, Blackey & Wobble.

Wobble is the tan gal in front, and Blackey is the girl way in back. The mini-Lamancha breed is achieved by crossing a standard Lamancha with a Nigerian Dwarf. Blackey somehow ended up with tons of the Nigerian traits, including her long ears and frosted nose. My more experienced fellow goat ladies tell me that long ears can occur about as often in mini-Mancha kids as blue eyes can, as much as 25% of the time. But this is the first long eared baby mini-Mancha that we've had, out of 10 born. 

B says that her cry is even different sounding - loud and whiny like a Nigerian. Genetics are fascinating!

B's other doe, Oreo, is due any day. :)

Anyway - there is hope yet that at least one of our eight lovely ladies may give us babies and milk this year. I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and truck my tushie on up the hill, wonky knee and all, and give my girls a thorough once-over to see who, if anyone, might be in the family way. I think that Bill had pretty much resigned himself to the fact that we wouldn't be milking anybody this year when B's email came. Now he's worried that we could end up with babies and milk times eight!

Aye, chihuahua. 

In the event that rampant fecundity ends up being the way that this all shakes out, this year Bill won't be alone in caring for our girls. I'm getting a brand spankin' new knee next week, and after a month or two (or three) of rehab and therapy, I'll hopefully be able to get right back in the trenches! I suspect that I may actually be the first person on earth who looks forward to mucking out a chicken coop or cleaning birth goo off of a newborn goat, but I do. I totally do. 

Farm chick Chelle will shortly be back in the saddle again. :)

Ma Vie en Gris

I'm 99.9% convinced that Winter is trying to kill me.

In years past, I've hit the wall with Winter weather much later in the game than this, say February or March (or April or May), which usually has more to do with the color outside, or lack thereof, than the actual weather itself. I'm a Washingtonian born and raised, so three feet of rainfall in a season doesn't tend to make me turn a hair. However, the ceaseless grey chips away at my normally sunny demeanor after day 100 or so. I've bought therapy lights (not a very viable route for those of us with light-induced migraines, I'm afraid), taken fists full of B and D vitamins, upped my exercise, all to relatively little avail.

My theory on the death-by-grey phenomenon is in part owing to my being moderately synesthetic. Color is tied very closely to emotion in my addled brain, and even if it weren't, 100 days of blah would kick just about anybody in the butt. So, the grey literally plays hell with my emotional state. It sucks.

But this year it isn't the grey that's doing me in. We've actually had quite a few uncharacteristically beautiful, clear and sunny January days. It's worth noting that those days have been SO DAMN COLD AND DRY that I get a static electric zap every time I pet Rexy and that the freezing fog has been jamming every lock and latch on this place, but other than that, lovely. Those inconveniences are minor compared with what the dry cold does to my joints. My already crappy knees are so swollen and stiff this past week, that I've been sitting on my butt instead of taking care of my family and farm. Again, it sucks.

I never could wrap my mind around those old folks who would say that they could feel the weather in their bones, but let me tell you, now I'm all like Preach it, Granny! I can tell when the barometer is about to swing madly one way or the other, and I can tell with absolute certainty, even before I get out of bed or peek out a window, whether or not we've had an overnight freeze, all because of my rickety knees. What the heck is this crap?!? I'm thirty seven! :(

So, I'll probably be in a mood to varying degrees for, oh, the next 3 months or so. Sorry 'bout that. The painkillers, the heat packs, they help but they don't fix, and I'm kinda pissed about it. I have a lot that I'd like to be doing for my kids, my hub and my farm, but right now I'm lucky if I can slow-mo hustle my butt from the couch to the front door fast enough to let Penny-poo out in time to tinkle. We presently have a collective 50% success rate.

I'm going to try to channel my frustration over the things that I can't do into kicking ass at the things that I can. For starters, I'm a dag-gum knitting machine lately. Sure, my kids are eating leftover leftovers, but their heads, hands and necks are gonna look fly in their spankin' new knitwear. And I'm reading up on all things swine. That's right, people of Olympia, if you went to the library looking for a book on rearing pigs, you're out of luck, 'cuz I've got all four of them right here. I suspect that our library system may actually have more books on underwater basketweaving than they have on pigs, but I know that by the time we urban farm nerds are through, Backyard Poultry magazine will have the same circulation as Us Weekly up in this piece. ;)

So there it is - I'm a beyotch because the evil, rotten weather is making my broken parts more... brokended? But, I'm going to try to put on my best grin and bear it mug and make the best that I can of my crappy situation. In the mean time, if you have any organic pig-rearing books to recommend, or excess uber-soft yarn that needs knitting up, hook a sister up - I'm in the market. ;)

Squirrellin'

I'm really, really enjoying my Winter's rest this year. I'm in a post-bazaar, post-holiday, pre-Spring-freakout land of unscheduled bliss. Knitting what I want, as fast or slow as I want = heaven.

I'm also doing a lot more reading since I'm not on a production knitting regimen. Presently, my reading list is mostly made up of farm research material - garden layout, info on organically raising honeybees and pig pen design - I'm a real wild card!

At the moment, I'm mildly obsessed with learning every last thing I can about pig nutrition. I want to take advantage of the food waste streams available around us, like imperfect produce from farmers markets and grocery stores, and bakery outlet surplus, and possibly other food sources - foraged fruits/nuts/greens/grains/etc., that are considered sub-par for us humans, and possibly restaurant trimmings/leavings, within limits. I'm so jazzed about the possibility of raising some fantastic pork on a shoestring budget that I've gone slightly manic in my research and information gathering stage. I was up 'til 5 am googling "organic pig diet formulation". I may need help...

As my facebook friends now know well, every few months I land a bread windfall from one of our local bakery outlets. Look at what $20 can get you -

This is about 20% more than I usually get for my $20. They had quite a bit extra following the holidays. This was a really nice quality batch too, not a lot of donuts or garlic bread, which are both pretty useless to us in terms of critter food unless we want our eggs and milk to taste like deep fried onions. :P

Obviously, this is way more than our 17 (or so) chickens and 9 goats could handle, so we give some away to fellow farming friends, freeze some and dehydrate some. I have about 50 pounds worth of dehydrated bread and buns already, which I'll sock away for a rainy day for the goats' goatmeal or for eventually using for pig slops. I've had my dehydrator going 24/7 since I brought this haul home, and I feel like I still haven't made much of a dent. I must work faster than the mold can!

I'm also looking forward to using the packaging to make more "plarn" for my knitting experiments. At a minimum, I plan to wring every last penny out of this $20 investment and keep a few hundred pounds of plastic-encased organic material from ending up in a landfill. The fabulous goats milk, eggs and home raised pork will take a little more time to be realized, but the legwork I'm doing now will pay off deliciously...eventually.

The Indignities of Transition

My hens are mostly finished molting, and, with a slight increase in daylight, and a little extra protein in their diet, have also slowly began laying again.

This one gal, however, has not yet completely recovered from the ravages of her first adult molt, and is reduced to a single, sad-looking tail feather.

Mama feels your pain, anonymous-Australorp-hen-that-only-my kids-could-identify-by-name. My molt was pretty intense too, and the grow-back phase is slow and awkward. We're in this together, girlfriend.

Filthy bathroom mirror and all. You're welcome. ;)

Good Riddance 2012!

Normally, I do these end-of-year and end-of-season posts sort of like a tally; the wins on one hand, the losses on the other. Suffice it to say that no one wants to read that jolly list, myself included, and so, I'm going to focus on the things that have me looking forward to 2013 in Boggy Hollow.

We're getting piggies!

Homegrown pork is out-of-this-world delicious, and raising pigs is just about the most complete form of waste-food upcycling that there is. They'll eat our leftovers, excess or sour goat milk, windfall apples, bakery outlet leftovers and imperfect, unsold produce from our local grocery store, and maybe some dumpster-dived restaurant leavings.

Besides the pork for ourselves, I'm looking forward to the stellar manure that these guys and gals will produce that will fire up our compost heap.

We're going to have a garden again

Bill is taking the reins for garden planning and building this year, which has in no way dampened my zeal for browsing every seed catalog that lands in my mailbox, and buying and coveting interesting and old seed varieties like other women covet new pairs of heels. Yeah, I scored a couple packs each of Hungarian Blue Bread Poppy and Slow-Bolt Cilantro seeds. It's probably more than I need, but I figured I'd splurge a little...

Bees!

I bought my Boo a beginning beekeeping kit and a few books on organic beekeeping, and he's pretty fired up about it! We're leaning toward trying top bar hives, at least initially, as they produce more wax than a traditional Langstroth hive, which would be useful to us in soapmaking and candlemaking, among other applications.

According to what we've read, the bees will venture out as far as three miles to gather nectar for their honey. We live in an area that is well known for its blueberry patches and bogs, so the flavor of our honey is likely to reflect that. I don't think I've ever even seen blueberry honey available, so I'm looking very much forward to tasting our first batch. :)

We're also excited to see what impact keeping a hive or two on our property will have on our garden and fruit trees' productivity.

The Grand Opening of our Farmstand 

A lot of kinks are still being worked out with regard to how we'll realize this goal, but I feel pretty confident that we'll find a way to make it happen, hopefully in time to take advantage of the increased traffic that comes our way when the blueberry bogs and Christmas tree farms open for business.

Among our offerings will (hopefully) be goats milk soap, eggs, produce, flowers, handicrafts and honey. If I am able to acquire a cottage food license between now and then, I may also sell jams, jellies and baked goods.

So now you see why I'm not willing to look back, even for a day, at 2012. 2013 holds so much promise for us - I can't wait!

But as for today, it's snowing at a good clip, and I have a half-finished knitting project in my lap. Noses will not be put to the grindstone just yet - this next little piece of Winter will be reserved for dreaming, reading, preparing and resting up for the big Spring that we have planned. :)

Wishing you all a Happy and Fulfilling New Year -

Billy, Michelle, Livy & Scarlet,
and the Critters
xoxo

Farmer Bill and his happy herd

Surviving Winter Break: The Tween Edition

Trying to keep a pair of 9 and 12 year old girls productively occupied and not bickering during a two week break from school is a tall order. Here we are on day three and we're already starting to unravel a little...uhg.

So, here are some things that I have done, and others that I've tentatively planned, all in an effort to keep peace in our wee kingdom.

Baking - We made these frosted pumpkin cookies on the first day home together. They are delicious and not too fussy a recipe, which made baking these with the 9 year old actually enjoyable. Madness!

Crafting - We made suet (actually, lard) cakes for both the wild birds and our chickens.

Chicken scratch, oats, dried fruit, poppy seeds, peanut butter and lard, mixed together and pressed into hollowed out orange peels and set up in the fridge to firm up = birdie delights.

Threaded with a little biodegradable cotton yarn, and hung up high enough that the dog couldn't snatch it up and eat it himself (the lard smells very tasty), our little cakes are ready for the finches and chickadees to enjoy.  This one is hanging in our giant old apple tree.

Distraction - I bought a dvd of their new favorite "old" movie, The Goonies, that I'm holding back for a time when I can't take the I'm borrrrrred's any more. Now I just have to resist the urge to give it to them immediately, lest they burn themselves out on it too quickly.

Distraction #2 - Their Pop is lined up to take them to see The Hobbit this weekend, during which time I'll be at home luxuriating in 3 solid hours of silence. Have I ever been so happy to be raising nerdlings? I doubt it.

That's what we have on deck to get us through the first week. We're hoping for - nay - counting on their Christmas gifts to keep them sufficiently occupied for the second week. 

In the event that they fail (don't do me like that, Santa. You owe me, fat man!), I've got my Costco-sized bottle of Baileys and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones at the ready. ;)

How to: Paper Snowflakes

Now, I know that making paper snowflakes isn't rocket surgery, but some of us learn better with a visual aid, which is why I'm posting this here How to.

Paper snowflakes in the front windows during the Winter months are a long-standing tradition in my family. My sister and I grew up with a single Mom and a tight budget, so we learned to make our own fun when we could. Mom's office had a ginormous dot-matrix printer that used 15 inch(?) wide green and white striped, accordion-folded reams of paper. For some reason, the printer would always spit out two blank pages after every print job. My Mom's boss gave her the green light to bring the wasted sheets home for us kids to use as coloring paper. I still have some of that pretty epic artwork scratched on those place mat-sized pieces of paper. I could draw ducks like nobody's business back in the day.

Those awkwardly shaped, oddly-striped pieces of waste paper ended up being our first snowflakes too.

Nowadays, the girls and I just rob the printer in my husband's home office blind. But we're doing it in the spirit of the SPREADING JOY, dang it!

Monkeys against a backdrop of snowflakes, Christmas morning.

What you'll need-

*standard printer paper (or re-purposed wrapping paper scraps, sales flyers, etc.)

*scissors

*scotch tape for hanging them

Step 1: Squaring up your paper -

Fold bottom edge of page up to touch a side. You will have made a large triangle. See that extra bit that wasn't folded? Trim that piece off.

Now you have a perfect square!

Step 2: Fold the square in half along the same crease you made when making the initial fold to square it up. It is now folded in half.

Step 3: Fold it in half again. Now it's in 4ths.

Step 4: Fold it in half one last time. It is now folded into 8ths. You should have one side of your triangle which is a single, solid folded edge (side one), a side that has two folded edges (side two) and a side that has all cut ends of the paper (side 3).

Each of the facets of the "flake" need to be treated differently. This is where a small mistake can lead to a giant pile of pretty scraps instead of a gorgeous finished snowflake.

Side One - This is the side of the folded paper that holds things together. If you go to bananas with the scissors, your snowflake will either be very fragile or will fall apart completely. I try not to cut away too much more than 50% of that edge.

Side Two - This side also contains folds that hold things together, but isn't as critical as the connections on side one. I'd probably cut a maximum of 75% of this edge.

Side Three - This edge is all cut ends (what will be the outer edge of the snowflake), so there are no folds to preserve. Go crazy and cut 100% of it if you want.

First cut on side one. I want this snowflake to be kinda-sorta frilly, rather than strictly geometric, so I'm going with bends and curves.

Finished cutting. I cut maybe 30% out of side one, 75% out of side two, and 80% or so of side three (a very subtle dish shape). Now the unveiling begins!

Open slowly! You don't want to tear your lovely creation.

Et viola! A lovely, festive, one-of-a-kind paper snowflake.

This is a great craft for those long, cold days of Winter break at home with the kids. Be creative and have fun!

Mope-fest #283

ARRRG, THE RAIN!

Well, I guess it's better than the snow that we've also had a few times this week, and that's as close to optimistic and chipper as you're probably going to get from me today. Nonstop rain, you are killing me softly.

This season of blah has lasted almost two seasons. I feel like it was September when I was last able to wear my beloved flip-flops. Giant yellow orb, why hast thou forsaken mine greater geographic area?!?

I grew up in this county, and am the 3rd generation in my family to do so. Soggy is in my DNA. But this, this weather has crossed a line.


Really? On my birthday?!? RUDE.

I'm attempting to deal with this gray and wet with humor, but seriously, this crap is breaking me down. Not only is it taxing my already heavily taxed sunny disposition, it has flared up both my allergies (molds & fungus plus some early pollen) and my arthritis with a vengeance. I can't taste, smell or for that matter, breathe through my nose right now, and I'm having trouble walking because my knee is so stiff, it keeps buckling and sending up stabbing pain at random intervals. I'm a chunky, wheezing, limpy mess with an increasingly poor attitude.



I need a tanning bed, a queen-sized Mai-Tai and a personal chocolate fountain to get me over this hump.

In the mean time, I'm going to go outside and throw rocks at the sky. Happy Thursday, everybody!

The Difference Between Success and Failure...

...is a dishcloth. Well, it was for me, anyway.

Ten days ago I started an incubator full of eggs that the hens had laid in weird little hidey holes here and there in their yard. Whenever I find an egg "out of bounds", whether it be just one or a whole clutch, I always either compost them or incubate them. The last thing I want one of our friends or customers to crack open is an egg that has already started down the path to chickenhood. Been there. *shivers*

So, though we didn't need this brood of babies, we figured that we might as well incubate them, what with Spring coming, supposedly, and maybe sell a few, keep a few. 'Twas not to be.

I started the incubator in our back room, which is unheated. It is the same place that I start all of my seeds on their heat mats and under grow lights. It's basically like a greenhouse that is connected to my spare room.

Well, the seeds don't mind the cool so much, but my poor little incubator just could not get up to temp. I upped it by little smidges each day, trying to get to the magic 99.5 degrees, but never going higher than 90. I maxed out the "increase" switch without ever reaching temperature. I knew that this wasn't great, but what else could I do to increase the heat?

I considered a heating pad. Nah, For one thing it had auto shutoff, so the temp wouldn't stabilize anyway, and for another, I was too scared that it would go bananas and somehow burn my house down. For a lack of better ideas, I threw a kitchen towel over the top of the incubator, hoping that that little 1/32" thickness of cloth would insulate my little foam box just enough to hit the 99.5 degree mark. Boy did I underestimate that towel!

I checked the eggs later that evening, and upon removing the top of the incubator was greeted with a hot blast of sulphery/chicken poopy smelling air. OH NO.

The temp on the thermometer was at 120 degrees! 101 degrees is theoretically enough to kill a chicken embryo. There was no doubt, these little eggies were toast.

I removed them from the incubator with a great deal of care, lest I drop one or smack a few together and create a noxious cloud of superfunk. Bill carried them ever-so-carefully to the compost bin, and I was left with a smelly, empty, fireball-hot incubator. :(

And so I'm bummed. Poor eggs. The only potential silver lining here is that only about 1/4 of the eggs that I candled had shown any signs of development at any point anyway, so many of them may have been duds from the start. Maybe they weren't fertile in the first place? That would be hard to imagine with the way King Kong has been, err... "patronizing" his ladies lately. Maybe they got too cold out in the chicken yard before they were found? We've had a lot of weird cold snaps since mid-January, jammed in right next to beautiful sunny days. It's the devil's potpourri, this Winter weather of ours. Or maybe, I just straight up murdered 42 potential little fluff balls with my kitchen towel and a heaping helping of stupid.

Next time, I'll preheat the incubator to find the perfect temp before adding my eggy babies. And yes, I will be using my kitchen towel turned insulation WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

Babies!

Chardy delivered her babies just about an hour and a half ago now - two beautiful little tiny blue-eyed doelings!





Mama and babies are doing just fine. Chardy, as always was a trouper. She is the easiest birthing Mama ever!

This is the second time Chard has had babies since she came to our little farm, and I have been lucky enough to be present at both births. Not all critters welcome human "helpers" during labor, but Chardonnay not only doesn't seem to mind it, I get the feeling that she waits to go into labor until I'm there with her.

I knew she was going to go soon, though we had no idea when she was bred (oops!) so we couldn't count the days to help narrow down her estimated due date. Yesterday I spent some time "up top" with the ladies. I don't know how else to explain how I knew that she was about to begin labor other than to say that she gave me a sort of vibe that said "Stay close, Mama. I need you."

So I fed her up good last night, and Rex and I went to peek on her late in the evening, with no signs of active labor to be found.

This morning I got up, and thought - I need to get my butt up to the goat house! I dressed, grabbed an old towel, my birthing kit, camera, phone and a bag of hot dog buns.

When I first got up there, things seemed completely normal. I fed the girls the bread, giving Chard a little extra, figuring that a carbo-load couldn't hurt right before birthing. I grabbed my folding camp chair and had my daughters turn the other does out to graze so that Chardy could have a little peace and quiet. At this point she went into the manger and laid down. This was the first indication that she was, in fact in labor. Up to this point, it had just been my gut telling me that I needed to sit with her and watch her a little. The bond between a farmer and their animals is amazing!

Things progressed rapidly from there. Chardy only labored for about 20 minutes before delivering her babes. (I will post video over on The Bog Blog later today for those of you who'd like to see the full monty. ;) )

The little girls both have Mama's blue eyes, and both are getting around a little already, slowly but surely.

I've given both babies some colostrum gel and some goat drench to get their blood sugar up and their rumens going. Last I saw, they were in the neighborhood of Mama Goat's udders, but couldn't quite figure out how to connect the dots. I'll be checking on them hourly, just to make sure no one gets rejected or goes hungry.

Oh, what a way to start a morning. I'm so exhausted from helping and tidying up after, that I feel like I gave birth today.

Goat Granny needs a shower and a nap - stat!

Bleating Beauties

This afternoon I spent quite a bit of time with my goatie girls, snapping tons of photos since it has become increasingly obvious that they are going to start kidding any day, and I wanted to document their rotundity for posterity. All of the pictures of my goats are cute, of course, but this is my hands-down favorite -


Teeny, Blue & Chardonnay. Aren't my babies sweet?

The countdown is on for Chardonnay. She looks ready to go, so I'm on high alert for the sound of goat-in-pain wailing and teeny-tiny baby bleats. :)))

My New Gig

And that would be as a freelance amateur goat gynecologist. Which is, of course, every bit as glamorous as it sounds. ;)

As I'd mentioned in a previous post, I was called to the home of my friend, B, to check on Fritzen's potential pregnancy, and to bring Miss Oreo back to the ol' ranch for a romantic rendezvous with our yearling buck, Barley.

In addition to checking on the fertility of B's does, I did a little look-see at my own goatie girls today.

Chardonnay is the one who is most obviously pregnant. Beyond being uncharacteristically girthy, she has recently started to bag up a bit. She's also got the floppy tail and the bulging bum-bum that tell me that she's probably within two weeks of kidding, give or take. Last year she kidded on February 10th and had beautiful twins, a boy & a girl.

Blue. Miss Blue has me wonderin'. Bill is 100% convinced that she's quite preggo, but I'm still not there yet. I'm... maybe 80% sure. She's as big as a house, but she tends toward the chunky end of the spectrum anyway. I think that I might have seen some fetal movement on her left flank today, but I just don't know. Her lady business is all poker face. No bulging, not in heat, no clues at all to what's going on in her generous little low-riding belly. Blue last kidded in November 2010, delivering a single sassy little buckling, Blackjack.

Hop (Chardy's yearling doe) is definitely not pregnant. She has somehow successfully managed to avoid her frisky brothers' many attempts to deflower her. Good girl.

Valentina ("Teeny", Fritzen's yearling doe) is also definitely not pregnant, but is very much in heat. I find it fascinating that she and her twin, Oreo, who have been separated by a few miles for going on two months now are still so synced-up, cycle-wise. We are debating on whether or not to breed her to Barley, her half-brother. We would only do so if we intended to harvest her kids, as we wouldn't want a line of inbreeding and re-inbreeding goats. We're not sure that we're up to harvesting a kid. That, in addition to the fact that we will, with my cousin's Alpine does joining our flock, have at least 3 mommies in milk has us leaning towards letting Teeny girl grow for another year before breeding her.

And so that's the scoop. We should be seeing the sproing! of little hooves shortly, but exactly when, no one knows. You know I'll keep you apprised. ;)


Chardonnay in her signature "head shot". Apparently my camera strap is delicious every time!


The unsinkable Auntie Blue with young Miss Hop


Fritzen and her daughters, Teeny & Oreo

Winter To-Do's by Month

January sort of blew by us this year, leaving us a bit behind on our farm chores checklist. February, short and sweet will hopefully bring us less madness in the weather department, a few baby goats and those first fearless leaders of Spring, crocuses. And March, well, March is always crazy, with 3 out of 4 of our family members celebrating birthdays, starting seeds, garden prep, etc. As always, I make a checklist of our must-do's then proceed to be completely freaked out by it! ;)

Our list of chores by month -

January -

*Storm Cleanup (a BIGGIE this year!) - assess, treat/trim trees as needed, clean up, sort wood/limbs into firewood, chipper fodder and goat snack piles. Set some big limbs aside for an epic mid-summer bonfire. :)

*Cut & Stack firewood

*Garden Planning & Seed Orders -Check!

*Turn Compost

*Replenish Emergency kit supplies -In progress. Costco here I come. :\

*Replenish Animal first aid/med kit in anticipation of kidding -Check!

*Purge Freezer -Also in progress. One Layer at a time...

February -

*Goats due to kid (Chardonnay/Blue)

*Start early seedlings indoors with heat mats/grow lights (late in month)

*Trim Trees & Shrubs

*Fence Building/Repair

March-

*Goats due to kid (Cassie's Alpine doe & doeling)

*Start up milking again

*Plant out Brassicas & Lettuces, weather permitting

*Order & Plant new trees, weather permitting

*Forage - Stinging Nettles & Dandelion, maybe mushrooms if the weather is right

Our plans for the months following depend a great deal on how well we manage to get these tasks ticked off in a timely fashion. As you might have noticed, we're adding two Alpine does to our goat herd. They are the sweet babies of my cousin, Cassie, whom we will be looking after for the foreseeable future. Both Alpines have been bred to an Oberhasli buck, so we're going to be dealing with an entirely new, much larger breed than we have in years past. The big upside is that they give really great milk and lots of it, so we should have cheese, cajeta and maybe even soap aplenty this year!

Cabin Fever Diaries - Dispatch #2

Three days of fairly heavy snow were followed by a day and night of freezing rain. This is very bad news in the land of trees. :(

The snow that has accumulated on trees, power lines, etc., melts just enough to refreeze again as a clinging, solid crust on whatever it is adhered to. It doesn't take long for the weight to become more than the trees and wires can bear, and things start falling and collapsing.


One of two ornamental Japanese(?) willows that were thrashed by the weight of the cumulative snow & ice.

Last night while the power was out and the snow and ice were at the peak of their destructive potential, limbs and whole trees would snap all of a sudden with a crack like a rifle shot, followed by a thunderous rush of snow. Normally wispy evergreen branches and fronds came raining down on houses, cars and power lines. Each pop and crack woke me with a start, wondering if the house (surrounded on all sides by cedar, fir, maple and alder) would take a hit. Going from deep, exhausted sleep to fight-or-flight adrenalized panic a dozen times per night sucks.

Besides the fear of having timber fall on our heads while we slept, we fared just fine. Our wood stove is a beast, and we used it to warm ourselves, cook our food and melt snow for water when the well water ran out.


"White Out Soup" (aka - everything that needed to be cooked before it spoiled), the greatest coffee pot in the world, and tea water for Bill.

Our power is back - for now. And luxuries like flushing the toilet and being able to wash the dishes are back and will not soon be taken for granted, I assure you.

Cabin Fever Diaries

Day 5 of my incarceration being snowbound

The freezing rain has come on top of the snow, weighing down the trees, power lines and rooftops, and making our driveway and road impassable for all but the most fortified of vehicles - the Redneck duelly.

We've managed to keep our wits about us thus far, but the isolation and dwindling food supply weigh heavy on our minds. Just this morning we ran out of cocoa - COCOA! What next, Panda Puffs?!?

The power has cut out and returned a few times already this morning, and the cracking sounds coming from the trees across the street have me all but convinced that our power will be out shortly. We have a small supply of firewood and will set up our sleeping area in the living room, around the wood stove if the heat goes.

As for food and drink- I'll be scouring the basement shortly for our camping supplies to retrieve the most coveted of all power-outage necessities - the camp coffee pot. Pray that I find it, lest I be left in increasingly close quarters with the family and grossly under-caffeinated to boot. NO ONE WANTS THAT.

To be continued....