Reflections on my Year and a Half as a Farm Chick

In some ways I look back to when we moved in to our little white house on the bog and think, Has it really only been 18 months since we jumped head first into this adventure?

Then there are the days where I see the stacks of boxes in the basement, and the pictureless walls of our living room and think, Well we did just move in. There hasn't been time to get to ALL of the odds and ends!

In a weird way, both things are true. It has been a year and a half since we started down the build-a-farm-from-scratch path, but it has been an intense 18 months.

We've gone from 13 chickens, down to 5, then back up to an all time high of 40+ chickens (I don't plan on doing that again anytime soon). We started with two "female" bunnies who turned out to be a boy and girl, and whom had litters of babies like clockwork until we were able to get Papa bunny neutered.

We entered the world of livestock ownership with three goats, Spike, Archie & Gertie, and presently have 9 goats with more on the horizon in the near future.

We've crashed and burned hard, in our first year of gardening, but have lived and learned about what we did wrong and hope to build a garden this Spring that will feed us until next Spring.

I've also acquired a few bits of folksy wisdom and farm chick tricks along the way that have borne themselves out as true and useful for me-

*Foxes come out in force at the full moon. If the moon is full and nightfall sneaks up on you before you've had a chance to lock up the chickens, you've all but handed Mr. Fox his supper.

*The groundhog gets it wrong, but the frogs are always right. Phil says 6 more weeks of Winter, but the chorus of Pacific Tree Frogs who call my bog and pasture home say otherwise. This (times about 100) is what it sounds like at my house 3 weeks or so before Spring starts sneaking in.

*Critters escape, pipes burst and tires go flat at the worst possible time, always. And mostly when your hunky farm hand is away on a business trip.

*Goats will NOT eat anything. In fact, they're rather picky eaters. They will mouth just about anything to determine whether or not it is edible, which is probably where they got their unearned reputation as eaters of tin cans.

*To keep your chickens healthy and laying during the Winter months, supplement them with a carbohydrate (cracked corn, grain, day old bread) twice a day; once when you first turn them out in the morning and again right before they roost up for the night. The morning feed gives their body a little burst of calories that keep the eggs coming, the evening feed gives them a belly full of heat-generating carbohydrates that keep them sufficiently warm through the night without needing supplemental heat sources.

*A good pair of muck boots are worth their weight in gold. Spring for quality - they're an investment in your health and comfort!

I'm learning more little bits and pieces every day, and even though this place is still kicking my butt on a daily basis, I have an evolving vision of what it will be someday and that keeps me putting on my old jeans and my holey sweatshirt and getting back out there every day. Chipping away, S-L-O-W-L-Y but surely enough, we'll get there.


The little red shed, probably the closest thing we'll have to a proper barn for a while yet. ;)

Name these babies!

Chardonnay's little girls are three days old, but they still don't have names! So, here's what we've settled on - a naming auction.


Hello, world!

The highest bidder will get to choose the babies names, with 100% of the auction's proceeds going to Heifer International, an organization who's goal is to end hunger and abject poverty by giving families in developing countries livestock to help supplement their diet and family income. (Read more about Heifer's works here.)

This auction will be occurring on this blog, as well as on my personal Facebook page, with regular updates about top bidders and name choices. So get creative and bust out those checkbooks people! FYI - It costs $120 to donate a goat to a family in need, therefore $120+ is our goal! And fear not for these babies' fate. They will either remain with our herd or be sold as milkers to another family. They will, God willing, have a long, productive, happy life as someones family milker. :)

I'll start the bidding at $20 for Snowdrop & Blossom. :) I'll keep the naming auction going through Valentines day. Payment for a winning bid may be made directly to Heifer (on your honor), or to me, which will in turn be sent directly to Heifer (on my honor).

Now - go bananas in the comments! Lets give these happy lassies some great names! :)))


Proud Mama Chardy and her wee ones

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

Has your food been "slimed"?

Photos and videos of a substance ominously named "pink slime" have been making the rounds on social networks and in headlines for a few months now. Most of these videos depict a bright pink colored paste that is comprised of mechanically separated meat. Sometimes it's chicken, sometimes beef, pork or turkey, but it is all destined for processed food products, some of which might end up in you or, more likely, your kids' bellies.

Don't believe it? I don't want to either, but here it is, the grisly truth:



If you or your family are eating processed foods that contain this gunk, you are not only eating "cuts" of meat that aren't fit for most dog foods, but you're also consuming a product that has been "cleaned" (aka - soaked in) ammonium hydroxide.

This aspect of the meat processing protocol is obviously not something that fast food restaurants or the USDA think that you need to know about, because they consider it a process, not an ingredient. Are they asking us to believe that no trace of the ammonia remains in the meat after it has been marinated in the stuff? Seriously?

Apparently so, because the USDA has not required any special labeling for processed meat products that have been treated thusly, and it is estimated that up to 70% of the ground beef on the market has been processed this way. The beef and chicken products in your child's school lunch have almost certainly been through this process and the people who choose to purchase this chemical drenched food on behalf of you and your kids have the nerve to refer to it as "safe" and "wholesome". !!!

Why would they put caustic chemicals in your food? Because the folks in charge of food safety at the USDA have decided that the minuscule chance that there could be E. coli or Salmonella contamination in your meat products necessitates carpet-bombing it with caustic sterilizers. If meat is raised, slaughtered and handled with care and common sense cleanliness practices instead of living it's life knee deep in sewage in a CAFO and then cranked through a rendering plant, the odds of it ever needing such extreme treatments are virtually none. Fear has brought us here, but isn't this "food" what we should be afraid of?

My very favorite food crusader, Jamie Oliver, breaks it down in the video below. Please watch, and better yet - show it to your kids. I'm very conscious of the food my kids eat, but watching this has made me want to redouble my efforts to keep these "foods" out of my kids' mouths and bellies.



I became a farmer in part to ensure that I knew exactly what was going into my family's mouths. Obviously, not everyone can take that route. The steps that anyone can take to avoid and reject this notion of food are these-

Stay informed! Read labels, ask hard questions. You have every right to know the story behind your food.

Advocate! Let the people who are making these food choices on behalf of us all know that these are unacceptable practices. Make your preference for truly wholesome, recognizable food known!

Reject! Refuse to eat or serve foods made with these highly processed ingredients. For me, this will mean packing my kids' lunches everyday. A great pass/fail test for food - if your Grandma wouldn't recognize the ingredients, don't eat it!

Upcycled Crafting: T-shirt Headband

I have been having a mad love affair with Pinterest for the past few months. Have you too been sucked into it's shiny orbit?

In the event that you have not, Pinterest is "virtual pin board" loaded with brightly colored images of DIY projects, striking photographs, fashions finds and more. It goes beyond eye candy; for an easily dazzled thrifty crafter like me, it's more like eye crack.

And so, I've been self-medicating with gorgeous photographs of other folks' art and craft projects, and have pinned a whole mess of DIY goodies and crafts that I want to try my hand at. Today's venture was the "T-shirt Headband", using a few of my favorite elderly t-shirts.

The process is explained completely here, though I still had to find a YouTube video to get the hang of a 5-strand braid.

My first attempt was a herringbone-type braid, using 5 strands of 1" wide fabric (the salmon colored braid), followed by two goes with the 5-strand braid as shown in the video. They came ok for a newbie, I think -



The t-shirts that I used were probably not the best suited for this project. They had lost some of their elasticity in their old age, and the strands didn't really curl into themselves (as did the strands in the tutorial), leaving me with flatter pieces and the occasional visible raw edge.

I also had a spot of trouble keeping my tension consistent, but now that I feel like I have these braiding techniques figured out, I think my next few tries will come out better.

Lastly, here is my Lil' Peanut modelling my favorite of the lot-



:)