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!

Sneaky Peepers!

You know that feeling you get when, as a parent, your kids' behavior catches your attention because they're acting too casual?

Our Brahma-Cauna (Buff Brahma/Ameracauna) hen, Pegleg Peggy, (owing to her once spraddle-legged gait) was straight-up busted today, trying to zip back into the chicken yard through a hole in the fence.

The guilty party is the girl in back, fleeing from justice.

That was enough to pique my curiosity, warranting a stroll along the fence line. And whattaya know?

I knew it!

Can you see it?

Jackpot!

Bill and I had installed some new "upcycled" recycling bin nest boxes in the coop on Saturday, and we got two eggs that same evening, raising my suspicion that our hennies had already started up laying again after their long Winter's nap, but laying the eggs somewhere different and weird instead of, you know, somewhere that we could actually find them. IwasrightIwasrightIwasright!

Our repurposed recycling bin nest boxes.

We ended up with a dozen eggs from the stash spot. I've collected them and brought them in for further investigation into their possible edibility. If they check out ok, it'll be breakfast for dinner tomorrow night. If not, next stop - compost bin.

Either way, it sure is nice to know that our laydies are back up and running and that Spring is definitely, finally on its way back.

Our Farm Stand!

Looky at what my boo made us this weekend -

My very own farm stand!

The girls and I spent part of the morning putting on the first coat of paint. Then it got hot, so we decided to retreat indoors for a while under the pretense of letting the first coat really, really dry. Here we have what shall eventually be known as, before:

After will happen when the sun lets up a little. 

In a wild, recklessly optimistic fit of hopefulness, I went ahead and added eight pounds of organic lemons and limes to our CSA produce order, in the hope that we'll have a splashy grand opening this weekend, featuring lots of fresh garden greens, herbs, fresh flower bouquets (maybe), eggs and delectable marionberry and lavender lemonades, hand squeezed by these two little enormous rascals -

The monkeys (Primatus Gigantis Boggy Hollowi) at the helm, eager to fix you up a tall, frosty lemonade!

So if you're in our neck the woods this week or next, stop by and say hi! And while you're not looking, a few pounds of kale *might* just show up in your car...

Garden Milestones

Not having been raised in a farming family, I've had to glean little morsels of folksy, hand-me-down farm wisdom wherever I could. Things like:

 -Tomato plants go in the ground on Mother's Day weekend
 -Don't cut hay before the 4th of July
-Fresh cream won't whip unless it's at least 3 days old
-Turkey poults are constantly on the lookout for new, more exciting ways to die
-Foxes and coyotes are at their murderous peak during the full moon

And maybe the most apropos bit of wisdom re: a Western Washington garden - if it isn't planted out and well established by mid-July, your crop ain't happening.

Our Summers are short here and typically have just two weeks or a month of any kind of heat, which is not always enough to make many garden favorites happen. I've learned the hard way that, short of using a greenhouse; hot peppers, watermelon and anything else that takes more than 90 days to grow or a month's worth of heat to ripen,  isn't meant to grow here.

There are exceptions, of course, a few of which are merrily growing away in my garden right now. My short-season corn is looking amazing, and well after I'd already resigned myself to the fact that in the land of mold and hungry raccoons, there would be no homegrown corn for us, ever. Behold the beauty (and note that the tassels cometh!) -

Yukon Chief Corn, day 37 (direct sown on 5-30-13)

Minnesota Midget Melons (Cantaloupe), day 70 (started indoors 4-27-13)

These melons are supposed to only take 70 days from seed to fruit (hence their appeal), but were held up on account of my delay getting them out in the ground, and their very rough (nearly fatal) transition from indoors to out. I'd love to see our first melon harvested before July is out, but I guess we'll get what we get when we get it.

Toma Verde Tomatillos, day 70 (started indoors 4-27-13)

Giant Greystripe and Miriam Edible Sunflowers, day 42 (direct sown 5/24/13) 

It may not look like much, and honestly, it's not, but to me... how do I put it? I get a sense of pride and nervous excitement when I think about my little garden, and all of the stuff that is growing beautifully there in spite of it a) being grown in soggy/unsunny/unpredictable western Washington, and b) being grown by a lady who is still learning to speak and understand the language of plants. So far I haven't screwed this up. Suffice it to say I'm pleased.

In addition to all of the up and coming beauty and bounty in the garden, there are a few other foodie delights coming our way shortly - wild blackberries and the opening of crabbing season in the Puget Sound. Happy days are here again!

If you're interested in learning more about any of the varieties of seeds/plants that I've mentioned here, you can read more and/or purchase some of these same seeds through Victory Seed Company and Seeds of Change. By the way, this is not a sponsored post - just one farm nerdess gushing about her garden. :) 

DIY Magnetic Mason Jar Spice Rack

I bought a case of these little 4 ounce jam jars because I fell in love with how cute they were. I was planning to save them for Jam-o-rama 2013, but in the ensuing lull between planting fruits and picking them and turning them into some of our fabulous jam, I found another project that captured my fancy - a magnetic spice rack.

I probably originally got the idea for this from Pinterest or from someone else's blog - I don't remember - but once the idea started percolating in my noodle, I decided that the jars would have a different destiny than originally planned.

Here's my step-by-step photo how-to for making your own DIY Magnetic Mason Jar Spice Rack:

Paint or label your jars to your liking. I used some chalkboard paint, because it was what I had handy.

Even though these are painted with chalkboard paint, I decided to label them with metallic-colored sharpie pens instead of chalk. Have you ever tried to write tiny with chalk? It either doesn't fit, isn't legible, or wears off every 10 seconds. No thanks.

In addition to your freshly labeled jars, you'll need a corresponding number of small, strong magnets, some super glue, and a piece of sheet metal that will fit your specs - this is 6x18".

Put a wee little drop of super glue in the middle of your lid. Carefully place your little magnet on the dot of glue. Be careful! The strong little magnets tried to jump right out of my hand onto the lid willy-nilly. And between the strength of the magnet and the super glue, there'd be no moving it from where it lands. Go slow.

Affix your sheet metal under a cabinet, on the inside of a cupboard door or wherever else it'd be handy to have your spices hanging. (I have not attached mine yet, I held it in it's eventual resting place just for this pic. I'm leaning towards using Liquid Nails or Gorilla Glue to attach the sheet metal to the bottom of the cabinet, but the hubs wants to use screws. I'm afraid they'll go through, into the cabinet itself. I'll update with whatever we end up using.)

And that's it! I paid $9 for the jars, $4 for the magnets, and $14 for the sheet metal (which I now realize that I could have sourced a LOT cheaper - d'oh!) for a total of $27 for this project. If you already happen to have some jars on hand that you'd like to use, you could cut the cost by 1/3. Have fun! :)

The New Kids of Goatlandia

Hop's babies -

 Little Girl

 Baby Boy

Hop's little buckling. He's a spirited little dude!

Hop's boy, Hop, Chardonnay & Valentina. We think that Teeny may have 3 or 4 babies on board!

Liberty's Babies -

Baby Boy (in back), Baby Girl (in front)

Little Man (in the foreground), Little Girl (in back)

Sidney's Kids-

 Sidney and her buckling

Sid being hounded by her twins and one of Liberty's kids.

"Helllppp Meeeeee!"

Sophie's Kids -

Soph's boy

Sophie's big girl with Hop's little girl

A Heap o' napping Kids :)

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. :)

A Farmgirl's Friend - Reusable Plastic Mason Jar Lids

You know I'm not plastic's number one fan, but I must admit that these one piece reusable plastic mason jar lids have been incredibly useful around here.

Spicy infused vodka in progress

I especially like these when making things like infused booze or homemade vinegar; things that might react chemically with standard metal lids and rings.

But the reason I'm writing this here piece is not to get you to run out and buy a mess of these lids, but to show you another handy little feature that we stumbled upon while using them.

You can use a dry erase marker to label your jars! We've found that this is a much simpler and cleaner method for keeping track of the what and when of a jar's contents, compared with the old sticky label, which can be a nightmare to remove.

For the record, before figuring out the dry erase thing, we also tried post-it notes to keep track of what was what and when it came in to being. But, post-its won't stick when there's any moisture on the jar or lid, so we would end up with a pile of soggy, misplaced sticky notes and jars full of mystery items.

The way we employ these lids, and the dry-erase "trick" most often, is when storing our goat milk.

Labelled with the date of production and the lassie who produced it.

Nothing groundbreaking here, just another way to take advantage of something that you might already have in your kitchen. ;)

Happy jamming & canning!

A Plethora of Good Things

Life has been wacky for a while now, so I'm going to focus on nothing but the positives today. I've got a heck of a lot to be thankful for!

*I just found out that we've been accepted as doggy foster parents! We get our first foster pup next weekend.

*I got SO HOOKED UP with garden goodies by my sweet and generous friend, Lisa, that my kitchen runneth over with garlic and beans.

*Three of my four apple trees are loaded with fruit, as is my one and only pear tree. Pies & cider... nom.

*It's been 3 months since my accident, and I'd say I'm, 80% back to normal. My broken arm has healed, my scalp wound has finally closed, and my cognitive issues seem to be dogging me less. :)

*The girls go back to school in two weeks and three days. But who's counting?

*Fritzen & Oreo, two Lamancha does that we sold to a friend earlier this year, are here for a romantic getaway with our guy, Buckley. I get extra goat nuzzles this week!

*The vet got back to us re: Anabelle. It seems that she had something like cancer, which sucks, but the good news is that the rest of our flock is not at risk. Trying to see this as a good thing, even though I know her last days were hard.

*The heat wave seems to have passed, temporarily at least. The difference between 75 degrees and 95 degrees is too beautiful to describe.

*I have an awesome giveaway in the works! Stay tuned. :)

Introducing...

Liberty & Hope!



And congratulations to Sue on winning the auction and giving these little girls such beautiful an hopeful names!

The gift of her donation to Heifer International will most certainly mean hope and liberty to the family who receives it. Your generosity and support are endless and inspiring to me. Thanks, friends. :)

xxoo
Chelle

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!

Sir Fluffelbutt Saves the Day!

Rex is already earning his LGD stripes! Last night he alerted us about a disturbance in the farm force, and Bill and I went to investigate. Long story short - Bill saw a red fox in the road, and my chicken security double-check revealed a few lapses on the chicken-locker-upper's part.

Luckily, Rex's heads-up was enough to get us outside in time to beat Mr. Fox to the punch. Big atta-boys and belly scratches were given, and the head of security went calmly back to his post (the front porch) to continue his watch. :)


Defender of the Flocks, at rest.

I have to say, even though Rexy isn't a purebred Pyr, he has been a kick-ass farm dog and companion, as promised by the wonderful people at the Great Pyrenees Rescue Society. We are so thankful to everyone who lobbied on Rex's behalf to rescue him and find him a good forever home.


Rest easy, Sweet Rexy. You are home.

Cheddar Check-in

August - Day 1 - Still in the mold


Day 2 - Just turned out of the mold and air drying


September - Just waxed


November - After 12 weeks of aging. It is still "young", quite sharp and definitely goaty. The texture is firm and creamy, and melts nicely.

I only made the one cheddar, as I had no idea what to expect. Cheese making is a lot like wine making in that you don't really know what you've got or if it's even edible until months or years down the line; making it imprudent to spend a heap of time and raw material on a pursuit that may be all for naught.

Anyways - this one turned out! It's too strong for me and the girls, but Bill has been enjoying it, so come Spring, when our does kid and the milk is flowing again, I'll make another one or even two.

By the way - this cheese was made using Ricki Carroll's Farmhouse Cheddar recipe. Everything was by the numbers except for us using goat milk instead of cow's milk, and my improvised cheese press (I have a real one now) meant that this cheddar didn't get pressed with quite as much weight as was recommended in the recipe.

The Last of the Stud Bunnies

Do you all remember the little guy here with Scarlet?



This was "Leap", the last of our litter born this past February, at about 4 or 6 weeks old.

His brothers and sisters all went to new homes in pairs, leaving Mr. Leapy the odd man out. Right up until he successfully knocked up his mother, Cinderella, Leap's gender and sexual prowess were in question. The surprise litter of babies were our "A-Ha! moment" (don't sue me, Oprah!), immediately after which we segregated Leap to a bachelor pad of his own, where he lived a tolerable but somewhat lonesome existence, estranged from his mother/aunt/baby mama.

Well, our young buck has finally moved on to greener pastures. We sold him this past week to our neighbors who are starting to raise meat rabbits, but who's buck wasn't getting the job done. Enter, Leap.

Leap's new Mommy called me today to say that "he's been taking care of business". So much so, that he's been given a new name befitting his take-no-prisoners brand of courtship.


Ladies and gentlemen - Charlie Sheen!

WINNING.