Spiky Plants and Itchy Plants

See those tall white flower spikes behind Wendigo?  Those are yucca blossoms.  When I think of yucca plants I envision the southwest, or my grandma's yard in Kentucky.  We were careful when playing freeze tag to avoid the yucca patch by the clothes line.  

There were a few of these spiky plants here when we moved in, and they are spreading.  The flower stalks are huge, and pretty.  I read on Wikipedia that people in the Appalachians called yucca the meat hanging plant, because the fibers from the leaves are so strong they could be used to hang meat in the smoke house.  

The flowers don't have a very strong fragrance. 

As Brandon expands his mowing area, the yucca are being released from the weeds that have surrounded them, so Wendigo and I can get close to admire the blooms.

Look what grows in the grass near the yucca plants - poison ivy!  Can you see the leaflets of three? 

"Leaves of three, let them be."  The leaves also have a "mitten" shape or a "thumb".  Poison ivy can be tricky to identify because it can be a tiny plant hidden in the grass, like this, or a long vine growing on a tree, or a tall woody looking shrub and vine, that can brush against your face as you walk.  When it doesn't have leaves, I can identify it by the naked end bud - the last bud on the end of the branch or vine doesn't have scales, and looks fuzzy. 

See the tiny new leaf that is growing from this poison ivy plant?  It's red in color.  I notice that poison ivy often has a reddish stem, new red leaves, and a bit of red at the bottom of each leaflet.  It took years of me pointing out poison ivy plants before Brandon learned to identify it.  I forget that not everyone looks at each leaf in the world and wonders what kind it is.  What does the world look like through the eyes of someone who doesn't notice the shape of individual plant leaves?  Is it all just a green tangle?  

She's Out

Little Newnoo escapes from the goat pasture whenever she wants.  She doesn't go far, and keeps the trees near the barn neatly trimmed.  There's not a leaf left where she can reach on the fig trees.  There's hardly any branches left either! 

She helps herself to some grape leaves...

then explores the chicken coop. 

She steals a drink from the chicken water bowls.  Peaches cries for her to return, and she cries in response to mothers call. 

Then scoots back under the fence.  Aha!  So that's how you do it!  

Bad Dog, or Bad Brandon?

If you ever come for a visit, and one-hundred pounds of Wendigo jumps into your lap as soon as you open your car door, you can blame Brandon! 

This is how Wendigo reacts to seeing Brandon's truck coming down the drive way.  She does a good job of making us smile when we come home. 

After she shows off jumping up and down, she runs around the side of the workshop to meet him at the door of his truck. 

Sometimes she jumps in with both front feet on his lap, and spreads hair and dirt in the process, and gets hugs and kisses for her efforts.  This is why I have dog hair on the ceiling of my car, and slobber on my rear view mirror.  I also know to never drink out of an open cup in the car, because there's a good chance Wendigo has licked it! 

Getting out of the car once she's welcomed you home involves shoving and yelling "back up, back up!" and hoping she hasn't helped herself to any object that she can leisurely chew to pieces.  Bad dog, or bad Brandon?  

Big Green Hoop House Hay Barn

Do you remember, back in January, when Brandon was busy putting up a giant hoop house in the back field?  Well, the day finally came when the vinyl tarp that covers the hoops was ready to be installed.  It's green! 

Brandon placed an order over the phone, giving all the dimensions of the hoops, and a few weeks later traveled to a Mennonite workshop to collect the custom made tarp.  Someone took him onto the farm to show him a finished hoop house and explain how it all fits together.  As you can see in the photo above, the tarp has a pocket sewed into the bottom edge on each side, and a pipe slips into the pocket and is the anchor for ratchet straps that connect to the hoops.  

The example barn used metal pipes for this pocket, but we used plastic PVC, since it was less expensive.  

Each ratchet screws to the metal hoop near the ground, and anchors the tarp to the hoop as it is pulled taught.  

The front and back of the tarp also have pockets, so a pipe can be used to ratchet the tarp tight from front to back, anchoring to the hoops at the ends.  Genius, right?   

The very front and back edge have a pocket with a long strap inside.  This strap is anchored to a hoop, and ratcheted tight, so the ends don't flap and are snugged up like a hoodie when it's pulled tight around your face.  

Brandon and his friend installed the tarp in a single day, and had it up before I returned home from work.  The donkeys were interested in the process, and kept an eye on things as it progressed. 

The tarp is supposed to last for fifteen years.  We purchased the hoops from someone on craigslist, and paid three hundred dollars for them, but had to take them down ourselves.  The tarp and ratchets, plus some PVC pipes, were about sixteen hundred dollars.  I think we have nearly eleven hundred square feet of covered space now, which works out to about a dollar eighty per square foot. A metal barn or a wood barn would last longer than fifteen years, but cost more than five times as much and take more than an afternoon to install.  We're excited to have a place to store hay now.  If only it would stop raining long enough to harvest some!  

We could have had a red or white tarp, but I'm happy with the green color.  It's a big object, but it blends in pretty well during the summer.  It will probably look even larger in the winter, when the green will stand out.  We've already gotten used to parking equipment and storing stuff near it.  We're expanding!  

The new hoop house, situated on top of the hill, with pretty views and freshly mowed grass was so inviting that our friend brought his kids out to the farm to camp beneath the new tarp.  It's big enough for his truck and tent to fit inside, which makes camping under threat of rain pretty nice.  He said it was a shame we were going to ruin it by filling it full of hay!  

Onion Harvest, Greenhouse and Garden

The onions in the greenhouse were starting to get brown leaves, and the plants had fallen over, so pulled them from the loose greenhouse soil.  Some of them made these neat little clusters of bulbs, all attached to each other.  

Some of the bulbs were solitary, and a little larger. 

Tamara said to dry them out if I want to save some bulbs for planting later.  I placed all the onions on a small piece of fence, and stacked it on a straw bale in the greenhouse. 

I covered the onions with a piece of burlap, to block the sun, and I've turned them over a few times to help them dry.  With all this rain, I wasn't sure how to dry them, but it's nice a warm in the greenhouse, so hopefully they will dry out under their shade cover.  

The greenhouse is a jungle of plants gone to seed!  I have straw bales at the ready, so I can smother the plants whenever I'm ready.  I thought I might collect some seeds first. 

I've got radish seeds, 

turnip seeds, 

mustard green seeds, 

and even some dill plants that are about to flower.  

These are rutabaga plants.  I've never grown any before, so I'm not sure how to know when they are ready to harvest.  I guess I need to pull one up and see if there's a rutabaga on it, huh? 

Out in the summer garden, I planted two cherry tomato plants and one Cherokee purple tomato that I bought from Tractor Supply.  After several years of starting plants from seed, and growing nearly thirty plants last year, I was sick of tending to tomatoes and nearly said I was taking a complete break this year.  But then I couldn't resist and planted some anyway! 

The summer garden has several volunteer sunflowers and a cucumber plant.  Plus about fifteen pole beans, grown from seeds I saved from the heirlooms my friend gave me years ago.  It's past time to give them something to climb on, so they are all twisted together in knots.  Also in the garden are over twenty sweet potato plants, and a small strawberry patch near the thorn-less blackberries.  Most of the space inside the fence has grown up in weeds, but the plants that have been mulched with old straw are growing well.  One good thing about all the rainy weather is that I don't have to worry about watering the garden.  

Does and Kids

In the early evening, when it starts to cool down, the goat kids come out to play.  They chase and bounce, and climb to the top of their tub, an upturned metal water basin.  Yesterday I saw the two littlest ones, Lips and Nose, chase each others tails round and round on top of the tub.  They like the way their little hooves make deep rumbles as they play.  Their game ends with jumping into the air and flinging their ears back while they chase each other to the barn.  

Peaches, my big doe, seems to be a sturdy goat.  

And her kids are very sturdy too.  Especially young Nibs, who looks muscled but feels soft like velvet.  

Her kids eat hay and grass now, but she still lets them nurse, and she never seems like she's getting too skinny from feeding her big kids.  Her kids, Newnoo and Nibs, are tame and easy to handle.  

Her udder stays full, and sometimes I look at all that milk, there for the taking, and wonder why I don't help myself to some.  It's like I own and goat milk dispensary and yet I have no goat milk! 

Young Noobi is smaller than her mother, Peaches, but seems to be handling her first kids gracefully.  She looks thinner to me, like she's lost all her baby fat feeding her own babies.  I've given her an extra dose of herbal wormer, and make sure both does have access to the pasture at all times.  I give them hay and sunflower seeds, but I don't feed grains. 

Noobi's udder is full too, but smaller than Peaches udder.  She's young, and maybe just a smaller goat overall. Will she continue to grow now that she's a breeder, or is this as big as she will ever be? 

Her kids are the wildest babies yet.  Noobi was my first baby, so she got lots of handling and is tame like her mother.  Her kids rarely get held, and they run from me when I get close.  They won't make very good milkers if they are afraid of the milk maid. 

Lips and Nose are adorable little girls.  They aren't chubby, but they seem strong and energetic. 

If I sit still long enough, Lips will come to me, but she stays just out of reach.  She's curious though, so I think I could tame her with a little effort.  It's time for all the goats to have their feet trimmed, so I'll introduce the big kids to the milk stand, and let the little kids watch the action. 

Haha Little Buck!  He doesn't understand why I want attention from those little kids when he's more than willing to rub his silly head on me!  

She's a Turkey

I think Turkey is a girl.  She's probably a breed called the broad breasted white turkey, one of the most common types of meat turkeys - like we are used to eating for Thanksgiving.  

Her foot is still a little swollen, but this week she started roosting on the perch under the chickens instead of sleeping on the coop floor.  I let her out with the rest of the birds now, and she lounges in the shade and eats things from the grass.  She's very docile, and unafraid of me.  Unlike the chickens, she isn't afraid of the hose, and sticks her beak right in the fresh water as I fill the bowl.  

She's shaking dirt from her feathers in this photo, and I thought it was cool that her head and tail stay so still that they are in focus, but her back feathers swish so fast they blur. 

She makes a pretty whistle that sounds like, "tweep, tweep" when she is excited for food. 

This white hen isn't grumpy, she just looks that way!

White hen, white dog.  

Can you see the tiny baby chick beak peaking out from under the wing?  One of my hens sat on five eggs, but only one hatched.  I put the hen and her chick in the brooder box inside my barn to keep them safe from predators and the other chickens.  I have to work up the courage to reach into the box each time I change their water, because she puffs her feathers and attacks me when she thinks I'm threatening her chick.  

Our neighbors are out of town, and Brandon has been checking on their flock of chickens while they are gone.  Yesterday evening he came back without the eggs because each nest box had a hen sitting on the piles of eggs.  He wanted to know what to do.  When I told him he better move the hen and collect the eggs, he said I had to come with him because the hens might peck him!  Ha! Who's a chicken, huh?    We collected six dozen eggs - wow!