Snow Day Morning Chores

 

Finally, a work day snow day!  We had perfectly picturesqe snow on Christmas day, but I already had the day off so it hardly counts.  The perfect snow day is an unexpected day off, right?  

Especially if you have a collection of fuzzies to keep you company.  Sienna puppy is growing so fast, but I predict she will not be as large as Wendigo.  I've been reminded that I thought Wendigo was a challenge when she was Sienna's age too, but now Wendigo seems a perfect angel compared to Sienna. 

Sienna chases, chews, and pounces but it's so good to have a dog that will do all my chores with me again.  Wendigo limits her exhertions to protect her bad knees, but Sienna sticks with me no matter how many trips I make to take to visit the goats.   

We begin our mornings chores with a visit to the donkeys on our way to the mobile chicken coop.  Good morning Ernest - what a big yawn!  

The mobile chicken coop has been moved into the small fenced paddock next to the donkeys.  This gives the chickens their own space to eat and assemble at the coop without being harrassed by Sienna.  The chickens can get out of the fence through gaps, but they tend to stick to the tree lines and back fields to avoid the dog.  I miss seeing them near the house, but it's nice that they keep their mess to the back of the farm now.  

With only ten hens, a rooster, and two guinea fowl, there's plenty of roost space in the mobile coop, yet five of the hens are roosting in the cedar trees at night.  They are taking a risk that a racoon will nab them while they sleep, but they roost so high in the tangled branches I can't fish them down and re-train them to the coop.  Cross you fingers that Sienna and Wendigo take their guard dog duties serisously.  

I moved the chicken food to a lidded barrel near the coop, and I have water buckets near the fence that I can fill from the hose.  I secure the coop door open in the morning, spread chicken pellets on the ground, and bust the ice from the water bucket.  Sienna waits with the donkeys while I tend the chickens.  On this snow day, instead of the normal excided exodus when I open the door, all the tree roosting chickins quickly hopped inside instead.  I don't blame them for wanting their feet out of the snow.   

Look!  Eggs in the nest box!  

After a winter break, my hold hens started laying again when the days began to get longer. The giant white eggs are from the little white hens, and the smallest tan egg is from the giant red meat hen.  

Good morning, Rufus!  Are you anxious for your breakfast hay?  I break the ice on the donkey water and give them a couple flakes of hay.  I've been told that mini donkeys can live on a single flake of hay per day, and a flake is approximatley four pounds of hay.  Rufus and Ernest love to eat, so I give them each a flake in the morning and each another at night.  They would eat even more if I gave it to them, but Ernest is supposed to be on a diet.  I've been cutting little maple saplings from the tree lines and pitching them in the fence.  They eat all the little twigs and peel off the bark!  I think they get bored without something to chew on.  Especially Ernest, who nibbles on the wood gate.  

I need to weigh a flake, because I may be giving them way more than they need, and Brandon is worried I won't make it through until spring with the hay we have stored.  I can easily use a bale each day, and we won't make more bales until the end of May.  I do have one last giant round bale from the year before, so maybe we'll squeak by.    

The goats are living in the fence in the woods behind the zip line field.  Can you see the little shed in the photo?  It's a bit of a walk from the hay barn or the water spicket, so I get plenty of steps during my chores - even some wieght lifting as I carry hay and water.  

My nephew and I walked to visit the goats when we had our camp fire thanksgiving pie celebration, and he mentioned that all these animals seem like a lot of trouble.  Tell me about it - Ha!  I told him that I spend about a half hour on chores in the morning, and another in the evening, so I get an hour of outside excersize every day, rain or shine, because if I skip it my animals will suffer or die.  Talk about motivation!  He said he spends an hour outside playing basketball every morning since he can't go to school.  Why didn't I think of that! 

Unlike the sheep, who rarely need their hay basket filled as they spend all their time grazing grass, the goats are voracious hay eaters, and hay wasters.  Can you see how much hay has built up inside their fence?

The goats are standing on nearly two feet of hay they drop from their basket, and once it hits the ground they don't eat it.  It's good for them to have clean hay bedding, and all that organic matter heats up as it composts and makes a nice warm bed for them.  Brandon found a big wooden crate dismanlted in the dumpster at school.  He brought it home, reassembed it, nailed some tin on for a water proof roof, and cut a little door way into it.  The goats think this goat house is the perfect place to cozy up out of the weather, and I laugh when I see them all come squeezing out of that little hole like clowns from a clown car.  How do they fit?   

The last chore is to feed the wolves dogs.  

Wendigo thinks it's rude to take photos of her with her mouth full. 

Seinna looks ferocious when she chews! 

If Goats Could Talk

 

The Shepherd and the Goatherd Go Hiking

I got to spend several weeks out in the woods at night, catching bats.  The photo above is a federally endangered gray bat.  Despite their endangered status, in certain parts of Kentucky and Tennessee where there are lots of caves, we regularly catch gray bats.  In this photo you can see the little metal bracelet that I put on his forearm.  This tag has a number that will be entered into a database, and if anyone in the future finds this bat hanging in a cave, or tangled in their mist-net, they will report the number and we will learn about how far this bat travels.  I think the bats get used the bracelet pretty quick, but I always feel a little guilty about making them wear one.

Despite being very busy with travel for work, things have been happening back at the farm.  We have sheep!  This is our new ewe, named Lamb Chop.  How did we get into the sheep business?  Our experience butchering one of our goats taught us two things.  One, we can definitely butcher an animal and make meat, and two, it would be more worth the effort if the animal was meatier.  Katahdin sheep were recommended by our vet because they shed their wool, usually give birth out on the field with no problems, and aren't prone to parasite problems.   Plus they are little butterballs and make good meat.

This is our ram, Pistol Pete.  He's a big boy already, at only five months old.  He and Lamb Chop are hopefully the foundation of our flock.  

I have always been the driving force behind the goats.  Brandon is tolerant and supportive - building fences and shelter and taking care of them while I'm gone, but he has never thought they were worth the effort if it wasn't for my enjoyment of having them.  The sheep are different.  Brandon has an enthusiasm for these sheep that he never had for the goats.  He made all the arrangement for getting them, subdivided the pasture with electric fencing so he can rotate their grazing, buys and mixes grain to supplement their feed, and checks on them daily.  He's the shepherd and I'm the goatherd.  

We've been hiking every chance we can get.  We're practicing for some serious overnight hikes we plan to take every month starting in January.  Since June, we've hiked approximately 47 miles.  

It's been so nice to have something to do with our friends that is outside, where we can keep our distance from each other.  

Kentucky has so many great hiking trails.  Some of them have pretty stone arches.  

And mushrooms!  Hiking with mushroom hunting enthusiasts means we get to see lots of pretty fungi. 

Chicken of the woods.  

Cauliflower mushroom. 

Trails near swimming holes are perfect during the summer.  Laurel Lake always feels like home to me.

Although hiking in my bathing suit resulted in poison ivy on my leg.  Between the time spent outside for work, hiking in the forests on the weekends, and fighting through the weeds in the garden, my skin has been itchy from bug bites or poison ivy all summer!  

This year was the first zucchini and spaghetti squash harvest since we've been at the farm.  The weeds and the squash vine borers have taken their tole, but not before I was able to get a harvest.  There are green beans on the vine, waiting to be picked.  

We sold some of the goats, including Little Buck.  It was hardest to part with him, but I needed to reduce the herd size and I didn't like making little inbred babies.  Little Buck was purchased by a local man who is starting a herd and was grateful to find a nice buck.  Donnie is now my only buck, and he is with Peaches and Little Buck's daughter, Newnoo, so they can make more kids.  I still have the River Brothers too.  Brandon was amazed that anyone wanted to buy the goats he put on craigslist.  They sold within the day, especially Peaches' little bucklings, that were only two months old.  After making enough money selling the goats to buy his new ram lamb, Brandon was suddenly more enthusiastic about the goats too!  

The goats have been relocated to the new fence down in the woods.  Brandon built them a small shelter.  Five goats is easier for me to manage on walks.  With my set up, the goats stay healthiest if I let them out of their small pasture regularly so they can browse.  

The new goat pasture is full of honeysuckle vines and shrubs, and they are quickly eating every leaf.  When I let them out for their daily walk, they eat my green bean vines.   Doh!  

Goats, Carnivores, and Greens

In early May, Peaches delivered two baby boys!  These kids are the third batch since she's been with us, and I'm pretty sure they just keep getting cuter.  

When they were a few weeks old, Brandon and I mustered our courage and cauterized their horn buds with a hot iron.  I almost couldn't bring myself to do it, because I knew they were going to cry. The book said that it would be more traumatic for us than for the goats, which was true.  They did cry for a moment, but then shook their heads and ran to their mother to nurse.  

Following a diagram in the goat book, Brandon built a little box of plywood to hold their bodies with only their little head poking out of a hole.  He let the iron heat up, then held their muzzle with his left hand and applied the iron for five seconds.  Once the iron was heated again, he did the other bud.  They cried.  It smelled like burnt hair and meat.  I closed my eyes and held the box steady.  The horn buds are supposed to fall off and they haven't yet, so I worry that we didn't do it long enough, and they will still get their heads stuck in the fence.  Maybe next time we'll be able to hold it on there for a longer five seconds.  

We built a small fence down by the tree line.  It encompasses a thicket of honeysuckle vines and blackberries.  We don't have a shelter there yet, so I've been leading Little Buck, Donnie, and the River brothers to this area in the evenings, when its dry, so they can browse.  They love the forage, but they don't like the biting deer flies that live in this shady moist area, or the ticks they are picking up on their ears and heads.  I take them back to the barn before dark, and they are always excited to see me coming so they can run back to their cozy barn, where they lounge around and enjoy the hay I dole out.  Why bother to pick your own leaves when Rain will bring them to you, right?  

 

We had another first experience - we butchered one of the goats.  Noobi, Peaches first kid.  She was the scrawniest of the whole herd, and never recovered her good condition following the birth of her set of kids.  It's not possible to keep every goat, I know, and the recommendation is to keep the best and eat the rest.  She wasn't the best.  

We watched many YouTube videos and re-read the butchering chapter in the goat book before we attempted it.  I put a halter on her and lead her to a bowl of treats and retreated with Wendigo.  Brandon did the deed (pow!), and we hoisted her up by her back legs and stripped off the skin and pulled out the guts.  Then we got busy with the bone saw and knives.  I felt like a carnivore, for sure.

The fella whose video instructions we followed was butchering a young boar meat goat, and he made beautiful little steaks and chops.  Our scrawny little Nubian goat didn't really look like the same animal.  We mostly left the meat on the bone in big roasts, and ground up the small bits.  We smoked a leg, shoulder, and a rack of ribs in our backyard smoker, and the meat was tasty but super chewy.  At that point we were doubtful that we were goat meat enthusiasts.  But, I cut the smoked meat off the bones and into chunks, then cooked it with some beans and cabbage in the instapot pressure cooker.  It was really good!  Wendigo got a fair share, and I made some smoked bone stock too.  We haven't tried the ground meat that we made yet.  Since Peaches gave us two more boys this spring, I think we will get even more practice making and eating goat meat in the future.

 

The greens in the greenhouse did wonderfully, and the lettuce that I kept harvesting returned over and over, but now is going bitter and bolting.  We had several batches of cooked radish greens too.  I have baby cabbages in the greenhouse, plus green beans, squash, cucumbers, turnips, and onions in the summer garden.  The rabbits enjoyed the peas and lettuce I planted in the summer garden.  I'm dreaming up a new rabbit proof garden fence.  It's not uncommon to see three or four rabbits in the garden at a time!  

Office Window and Goats

Check out the view from my new office window.  The office that's now crammed into my bedroom!  I like it though, even if setting up a home office in the bedroom preceded weird dreams where my boss set up a bizarre command center in my room.  My work life has invaded my subconscious private life!  

Here's a close up through the window screen right behind my laptop.  The donkeys entertain me by rolling in the dust while I wait for my slow internet connection.  All that brown area in the fence in the middle ground is the summer garden covered in old hay from the animal bedding.  See those white shapes in the garden?  Those are chickens digging in the garden beds behind the supposedly chicken proof fencing.  This is a problem.  

Donnie, our newest goat herd member and hope for future kids with nice udders, has stopped being such a cry baby.  I think he's finally accepted that his new life doesn't involve animal crackers.  Poor guy.  If I could have animal crackers without eating them myself, I would give him some. 

Little Lips, Peaches granddaughter is a scrawny little goat.  She's spry though, and the only goat that likes to play with Donnie.  

Here's Peaches daughter from last spring.  She's a hardy goat like her mother, but has horns and likes to jab me with them.  There's a chance she's pregnant from Donnie, although I don't see any evidence.  Peaches had a date with Little Buck back in December, so she's due to deliver in May.  She looks like she's got twins to me.  

When Newnoo jabs me with her horns I can imagine how tasty goat burgers would be! 

I don't let Little Buck and the River brothers out to graze with the rest of the goats.  Mostly because they are hard to separate back into their own pasture, but also because the River brothers get riled up around Wendigo and have been known to ram her with their heads.  With her creaky knees, she can't get away quickly.   The girl goats don't pay any attention to her as long as she's laying down.