A Simple Metamorphosis

And now there are 4...

2011-08-31T09:57:00.000-07:00

Our Pygora goat Buddy (pictured above) has a new home. He was really bulling our smaller goats making it very hard to keep the smallest goats well fed, so we had to re-home him. Luckily, we found a nice couple not too far away who had recently lost one of their Pygoras and was hoping for a new one. They had one left who was very lonely, so Buddy came along at the perfect time for them.

They've kept us abreast of his progress and he is warming up to them. He gets along well with the other goat, too. His name is Jerry. Buddy and Jerry - sounds like the makings of a 50's sitcom! Anyway, we are pleased that he's happy and actually serving a purpose again.

The remaining 4 goats (Pepper, her baby Penny, Daisy and Dollar) are all doing well. We are still milking Pepper but having some difficulty keeping her from nursing Penny through the fence. No matter what we do, they find a way. Luckily, keeping Penny well fed keeps her from drinking too much milk so we are still getting plenty. This coming weekend, we are going to look at how we can create a third goat area so that we can rotate them a bit better (to allow the pasture to freshen!).

We also now have two ducks on our farm. Meet Luna and Butterscotch! Luna is the black one and this photo does not do her justice - she is glossy black with gorgeous green undertones and a blue stripe on her wing. Butterscotch actually came with the name Buttercup because she was a yellow duckling, but somehow her name morphed into Butterscotch. They are currently sharing the same fenced area with our dogs, but they do poop on the deck, so we will have to come up with something else. We'd be OK with letting them totally free range (they are less destructive than the chickens) but for the neighbors' three jack russells that would love to have duck for lunch. I think that total property fencing may have just moved up a few notches on our priority list.

Aphids Suck

2011-07-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

The first two years we had this garden, we grew gorgeous Brussels sprouts but before we had a chance to harvest a single one, aphids found them. They left the other brassicas alone though so we got a good harvest of broccoli and kale, totally aphid free. This year, we opted against the Brussels sprouts. Unfortunately, it appears that in the absence of Brussels sprouts, aphids are perfectly happy infesting the broccoli, kale and cabbage that we did grow. I'm most disappointed by the loss of cabbage because we had some BEAUTIFUL heads forming!

We'd tried using non-pesticide type remedies in the past. Companion planting with lavender (which grows very well here) didn't help. The aphids were unaffected. Setting up two little lady-bug homes in our garden to encourage lady bugs didn't help either. I've seen all of one lady bug in our garden in the past 3 years. Chickens would probably eat ahpids, but they'd also eat our garden and I can't take that chance. (Chickens also love slugs by the way, but chickens sleep at night when slugs come out, so they are a terrible option!).

A little online research turned up an easy solution. Apparently tomato leaves (of the nightshade family) are poison to most bugs. You can make a 'tea' of tomato leaves to use as a pesticide. It's safe for humans and pets, but deadly to bugs. The problem is that it's deadly to ALL bugs, so you'd also lose any beneficial bugs in your garden. Since we don't have many of those, I figured it was worth a shot. My plan was to only spray brassicas.

So I pulled off about two packed cups worth of tomato leaves and coarsely chopped them.

Then I added hot water and let the mixture sit overnight (or about 8 hours).

I then strained out all the leaves and poured the liquid into a clean spray bottle we had. I added plain water to fill the bottle (about another cup) and voila - organic tomato pesticide!

I immediately went out to the garden to try and rescue our brassicas. It took almost half the bottle just to spray our two kale plants. Then I tackled the least infested of the cabbages. The cabbages that were the worst, I just pulled from the garden. Same for the broccoli. Actually, it was as I was spraying the broccoli that it occurred to me that we DO have one beneficial bug in our garden...our bees! I totally hadn't thought about the bees, but I was careful to not spray any flower at all, so hopefully it won't affect them. I'd feel awful if I accidentally killed our three hives!

This was two days ago. Tonight will be my first opportunity to investigate the results. I promise to report back. Keep your fingers crossed for me that this worked!

And then there were 5...

2011-07-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

On Monday evening, we took Polaris and Skylark on a LONG drive from our place to their new home. We found a couple with a good amount of land that were looking for some goats. They'd just lost one of theirs to coyotes, so they needed new ones to be companions to their lonely wether. As we had decided to not breed Skylark any longer and since we didn't need another wether around our place, the two of them went together. We drove them ourselves so that we could see the conditions of the new place. It's really nice and I think they'll be happy. They'll have a small Alpine wether as a companion and a small female boer-cross as well. Two acres just for them with plenty to eat and places to explore. The couple were very nice and very affectionate with their goats (which Skylark will appreciate) and I think we made a good choice.

While I'll miss her to some degree, I know that she'll be happy there. I really hadn't formed much of a bond with Polaris, but I'm glad that they went together as he's still quite young and seemed to welcome the security of a familiar goat when introduced to the new surroundings.

The remaining goats are doing fine. Pepper is providing us with milk, but she has continued to find a way to nurse Penny (the other little black goat baby!) through the fence that separates them. We've finally decided that we cannot thwart her, so we are going to outsmart her. We ordred an 'udder sling' that kind of works like a bra for goats. It's designed to help goats with low hanging udders from getting injured on the ground, but it can also be used to help discourage sneaky goat babies that should be weaned already! Hopefully this will help as we just don't have the room to put more distance between the two of them without investing in some fence changes that we are not financially ready to tackle just yet.

5 months = many changes

2011-07-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe that it has been 5 months since I last posted on this blog. Due to the directional shift that my life has taken lately, I cannot pretend that I'm going to turn over a new leaf and begin posting like a regular blogger going forward. I would sincerely like to, but I must be realistic and I know that I just don't have the time.

That said, I miss the part of my life that this blog was representing. When others ask me when I'm going to update this place, I think not about the camera full of photos that I have not uploaded or the piles of recipes that I've collected to try, or the times I've thought about documenting another aspect of our 'farm life'....I think about how much I miss it.

Before anyone gets all concerned on me, we still have the farm. We still have seven goats (yes, the most recent babies are still with us for the moment!), we are down to only 9 chickens and one rooster, and we are up to now three beehives, one of which my husband captured on our property when a swarm showed up a few weeks ago. We still have a garden, we are now using the new barn and I'm working on the start of an herb garden that has culinary herbs in boxes hanging from our deck railing and medicinal herbs growing in the flower bed in front of our house.

So what has changed? The big whopper is that I have a new job. I am now the College Program Manager for my company and as such, I'm building a college program (we had none!) including an internship program and a solid college recruiting effort. We hire predominantly masters and PhD level graduates, so I will have the opportunity to use my technical background as a way to connect with the hires, with the hiring managers and with the professors at the schools we target. I will be doing a LOT of travel and therein lies the biggest change to our lifestyle. I travel, my husband takes care of the farm and neither of us have time to blog or cook or do half the things we used to do around the place.

We are working on scaling back and considering where our future lies. At this point, we don't see a whole ton of changes in the immediate future as we have no intentions of attempting to sell our place in the current real estate market. We've also got entirely too much that needs doing around the place before we could even list it (like replacing the wood stove and doing some work on the septic system). I think that for now, we are going to just work on scaling back a bit. To that end, we are working on finding a new home for Buddy, Skylark and Polaris (the boy goat baby pictured above). We will keep and eventually breed Penny (the girl goat baby), Daisy and Pepper (again). Dollar will be kept as a companion and because I cannot part with him. He's my 'little guy' who is actually the biggest dwarf goat we own! He's sweet and super easy to manage, so he'll be a good companion goat when we have to separate someone for some reason (like weaning). For the chickens, we are going to rethink how we house them. Each time we build a new coop/run, we learn something new, so eventually we'll get a system going that is virtually 'kink' free. All the remaining girls are still laying, but considering that more than half of them are now three years old, their production has significantly fallen off. This is a good thing for us because the egg load is now manageable.

The fruit harvest is looking good for this year so we've sent out feelers into our local community for anyone wishing to glean our fruit. Basically, we'll harvest what we want for ourselves and then send out a email to a local collection of people who will come and pick the remainder of the fruit for themselves (or for charity). All in all, I think we are making good progress towards getting on top of all we need to do and learning to have fun as well.

Just so no one thinks it's all work and no play at our tiny farm, that's not the case. We have a sea kayaking trip and two hiking trips planned still for this summer and two different people lined up to watch the farm while we are gone. It's all about balance, right? We just have to learn to build up our balance muscles a little.

A source of heat

2011-02-21T10:26:00.000-08:00

You may recall the above photo. This was taken in the hotel room we stayed at briefly when we first moved to Oregon (we were waiting on our furniture). For some unknown reason, Kitty felt inclined to share a crate/bed with Chalie - all of his own accord.

Fast-forward 3 years (almost exactly!) and our new cat, Cooper decides that Kitty must have been onto something. I look up from my Kindle and see that Cooper has made himself comfortable on Charlie's dog bed - while Charlie is on it! Charlie awoke when I grabbed my camera, but they were both sleeping peacefully when I first looked up.

Neither Kitty or Cooper ever joined Maggie on her dog bed. Personally, I think it's a heat thing. Charlie radiates heat. He's often cold and shivering in the winter and can function quite well in the high summer temps. And his head is always hot to the touch. I think the cats like this feature!

Maggie is usually cool to the touch. She is naturally well insultated and is always energized and happy on a cold brisk morning. She will almost melt before our eyes in the summer heat.

Funny, but Maggie is just like me. Charlie is just like my husband. Both Kitty and Cooper will chose to cuddle up to my H long before they'll do the same with me. Apparently, it's not that they don't like me, it's that he is a better heat source in the winter! Phew, I feel like less of a pariah now. ;-)

Goat babies are here again!

2011-02-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

Pepper had her babies on Feb 7, 2011!! She had two tiny babies - both black - one boy and one girl. They both have blue eyes (like their sire). The boy has a little white spot on his forehead that looks like a star, so we've named him Polaris. The little girl is still nameless at this point.

Pepper is turning out to be a good mom. She's still skittish of us, but she's attentive but not overly protective of her babies.

Since our herd is currently at 7 (for now), I thought I'd mention everyone:

Pepper (left) and Skylark (right)

Here is the proud momma, post birth. She and Skylark (the goat with white on her face) are butting heads a bit, but Skylark is definitely cutting the new mom some slack.

Dollar - who is HUGE for a Nigerian Dwarf wether. Dollar loves to be pet and will actualy choose to be scratched over food!

Daisy - our sweet little girl. She's very curious and loves attention. Her favorite past time is following humans around as we do our chores!

Buddy - our first wether and the only Pygora of the bunch. Buddy is kind of a bully to the other goats, but he is definitely entertaining!

Spring in January?

2011-02-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

Apparently, our chickens think so...

The 'easter egg' birds lay green eggs. We haven't seen a green egg since October. When the days get shorter, most chickens molt and stop laying for awhile. Our 'easter egg' birds (aruacana/americana crosses) follow this pattern.

A few days ago, we got our first green egg of 2011. I guess it's spring. Someone needs to tell mother nature.

Gravel, gravel, everywhere....

2011-01-19T11:49:00.000-08:00

Pile of gravel awaiting distribution. See that ground to the right/rear of the pile? See how green it is? Yeah, that's driveway. It should not be green.

We have a gravel driveway. At first I was a bit dismayed at this fact because as cyclists, my husband and I would much prefer to ride on pavement. Of course, our driveway is short, so we figured we could live with it and it certainly wasn't a deal breaker when we bought the house.

After almost three years of dealing with it, we had an estimate done to have it paved. Holy moley...that is NOT what we want to spend our money on! Besides the fact that gravel is better for the environment (it doesn't disrupt water flow patterns), it's cheaper. And frankly, in our little country farm world, I think the gravel looks better with our house than a pristine asphalt slab would. Unfortunately, all this indecisiveness has only led to a driveway that gets greener and greener each year (and not in a good way!).

Then we finally have our mini barn built. It has a gravel foundation under the main enclosed part. We are about to pour a concrete slab on the open part where the goats will live (concrete lasts longer than wood and it's cleanable for birthings as necessary). To pour this concrete, we need to add some gravel to level the area out a bit. Last weekend, we had a truckload of gravel delivered from a local shop up the road. $180. Significantly less costly than asphalt and it will do double duty as concrete foundation as well. Score!

Our wonderful small tractor, the handy cart and our new mini barn...

But now we get to distribute it. Yay, not. First we loaded up our handy-dandy new trailer to drag the gravel from the driveway to the back corner of our property where the barn is located. A couple of trailers full, and the space is sufficiently leveled. (This trailer will be 100% necessary to move 36 80lb bags of concrete to the site as well.)

The remaining gravel will need to be spread out on our existing driveway. This will not be fun. This will be back-breaking work. It is a necessity. Not only are the weeds taking over in the summer, but we are finding that the mud is getting a bit too thick in the winter. Gravel, gravel, everywhere... anyone looking for a unique way of getting some exercise this weekend? ;-)

Winter harvest - carrots!

2011-01-18T12:07:00.000-08:00

Many pounds of carrots (and parsnips) awaiting their fate...

We planted 4 types of carrots and one type of parsnip (and beets) all in the same 12 inch high box in our garden last year. They grew like crazy! We've been harvesting them as we've needed them for stews or recipes since August, but we've never bothered to dig up the whole box.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to pull out a few and I found that I had to really hack at the ground because the top two inches or so were frozen. I decided then that the next time we had a string of warmer days in a row, I'd harvest the remainder of the carrots. We had that string of days last week - 4 or so of 50+ weather in a row...plenty to soften the box soil.

So on Sunday, I grabbed my old milk crate and set out to harvest the remainder. Uh, yeah. That was a bit ambitious. I had no idea how many carrots we had!! The crate above is only two varieties of carrots and the parsnips. I still have two more varieties of carrots and one of the ones I didn't dig up actually occupies a double space. The above crate was easily 20 lbs in weight and I have no doubt that there is the same amount or more still to be harvested. That's greater than 40 lbs of carrots in a 2' x 4' box! Talk about space utilization!

My plan was to can...but I just couldn't bring myself to pull out the pressure canner and all that goes with it. I'll save that for the next harvest (next weekend?). For the carrots above, I cooked a few pounds to have with meals, I mashed some of them and made a yummy carrot-orange snack cake. I peeled a bunch and put them in the fridge for snacking. I'm going to make some carrot muffins or cake later this week. And lastly, there will be roasting. Lots of roasting. Nothing is yummier than roasted root veggies with garlic and rosemary (both also from our garden). The yellow carrots in the above bin are ok raw, but they are buttery and sweet when cooked - even without butter or sweetener! YUM! Lastly, I've wrapped them up and I'm storing them on the deck railing for now. We have no room in the fridge!

Anyone have any carrot recipes they want to share?

A New Entryway

2011-01-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

This is what our house looked like when the old owners first listed it - about a year before we saw it for the first time...

Our front entry into our house was pretty pathetic. It was narrow, partially blocked by the flower bed, ugly and worst of all, slanted towards the house so that when it rained (which happens here a lot), water would eventually run towards the house. If the water sat there long enough, it would soak into the basement walls. Not good.

This slant appeared to be getting worse each year so this year, we decided that it needed fixing. First of all, we had the huge old stump that sat in the flower bed dug out. Before we bought the house, there was a huge pine tree there (see above) but the previous owners removed it. We know it was pretty recent since the original listing showed the tree but it wasn't there when we viewed the house. We thought that the stump/roots were still expanding and therefore lifting the sidewalk. Once the stump grinder people dug it out, we found out that it wasn't the case. Most of it was already rotting. Ok, so the sidewalk might not have been getting worse...it just appeared that way. I didn't need that huge stump in the way of what will eventually be an herb garden anyway.

The next step was getting the walkway repaired and resloped. We briefly thought about doing it ourselves but quickly changed our minds when considering how this basically attaches to our foundation. So we got a few estimates and selected a local crew to do the work for us. They were going to pull out all the old cement, relevel it, widen the opening so that it curved towards the driveway more and create a new low wall to better contain the flower bed. They were starting work when I left for work one day and by the time I got home, it was done! Awesome!!

Here are the photos. I don't have great before photos, so these will have to do.

This is the front entryway before we had our siding replaced. Where the chairs are is where the water would collect against the house. You an also see how the dirt from the flower bed would just fall into the walkway.

This was taken as the siding work was underway. Here you can see the whole walkway and how narrow it is at the end by the garage (front door is to the left). The stump is where those flowers are in front of the ladder.

Here is what it looks like today! No stump. Nice wall. Open walkway. And no water collects against the house. Yay!

The next step is to extend the wall around the entire bed and get some herbs planted this spring/summer. Our plan is to finish the wall this winter so that we can plant as soon as it warms up.

2011 Begins

2011-01-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

New years resolution #1: Blog more.

There, that takes care of this week. ;) Actually, my minimum goal will be at least one blog post a week..and more if I can swing it. Stay tuned!!

In the meantime, here are a couple of photos of our repainted laundry/storage room and our dining room.

The laundry room with a peep at our kitchen through the doorway. In the mirror, you can see the previous color on the partially unfinished wall (yellow).

Slightly closer shot of the shelving. I have green and yellow awning stripe fabric for curtains. Let's see how long it takes for those to get done!

And lastly - our dinning room. The trees in the background are only in residence during the winter - they usually hang out in the greenhouse (dwarf orange and meyer lemon).

Tiny Barn: On the Horizon!

2010-12-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

It's unbelievable, I know!!

I'm actually updating the blog! ;-)

No, actually...I mean that we are finally going to have a proper barn! At least 'proper' for our tiny farm and our tiny goats. We have been researching this since we bought the place. We knew what we wanted, but most pre-designed plans and most pole-building places are organized around much larger buildings. Given that our space is limited, we really didn't want to give up too much real estate to a building, no matter how helpful that building will be. Plus, a big honkin' barn in our yard would look decidedly stupid as it would dwarf everything else.

We had basically come to the conclusion that to get exactly what we wanted and within our budget (a key consideration, of course), that we'd have to buy plans, modify them somewhat and then build it ourselves. This is a massive undertaking for two completely untrained carpenters. One look at my addition to our goat shed would quickly convince any doubters as to my lack of carpentry skills. So, to be smart about this, we ordered plans for a small shed and we were going to build that first, as practice. (Then we'd turn our current tool shed into housing for meat chickens...but that's a future endeavor). This shed was supposed to be built last spring - after we moved the compost pile.

The compost pile is still in its original location. The shed is not built. The plans are gathering dust and spiders in the basement. We just don't have time for this type of major project.

So, months later we just happend to walk into a 'Tuff Shed' building at our local HomeDepot. We were just curious. It was a 12x16 space and as we stood there, we realized that we could totally turn this into a workable barn for us and our small goats. We'd have to build some interior walls and figure out a pully system to load hay into the loft, but we could do that!

So we contacted Tuff Shed for a quote. It came out within our budget, but I had a lot of questions about the features we were choosing. Turns out, there is a Tuff Shed showroom not too far away. We took a trip down there last weekend and it was exactly what we should have done a year ago. We worked with the guy, toured all their on site samples, chose our own materials and features and basically created the barn that will suit us perfectly. He drew up the quote and for whatever reason, it was even cheaper than the first one! Top this off with the promise to build it on site next Monday - and we can promise our goats a new residence by Christmas!

This is essentially what it will look like.

We are providing the paint (left over from our house painting - we never used it on the deck) and they will be painting it for us, so ours will be a midnight blue color (coordinates with our slate blue house). The trim will be white. Our window and door configuration is different than the one pictured here, but the basic structure and openings are the same. Inside the enclosed area, we will be creating a clean, sanitary, milking parlor! Both sides will have loft space to store hay and feed bags (we'll create a pully system for this) and we will create a 'birthing stall' area inside the enclosed part so that when Pepper kids in February, the babies won't freeze to death if we don't happen to be in attendence.

And, if this turns out to our liking, we'll start setting aside a little more money to eventually have Tuff Shed build us a new garden/tool shed.

Can you tell how incredibly excited I am???

More Goat Baby Images

2010-10-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Daisy and Dollar atop the dog house together.

As promised - a few more photos of the goat babies! These were all taken a couple of weeks ago. Dollar is now almost twice Daisy's size. He's will become a wether this weekend because we feel that he has probably developed enough due to his large size and fast growth rate. Both goats are growing a shaggy coat that is super cute and very soft. Good thing they both enjoy being petted...they get a lot of attention!

My husband holding Dollar.

Me, holding Daisy. (please excuse the squinting - that morning sun is BRIGHT!)

And lastly, just because he was being a good boy - we have a photo of Cassanova, our only remaining rooster. He's got the oddest orange eyes - I swear that they are fake! So far, he's not shown us much aggression but he is still a young rooster. He's a cross between a white leghorn (father) and an Arucana/Americana/easteregg bird (mother).

Cassanova in all his orange eyed glory!

Babies and Bounty

2010-10-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

Strawberry jam canned mid-summer - the start of our canning season!

We've been busy! Harvesting, canning, cleaning, fixing, and playing (mostly with goat babies!).

Since my last post we've named the goat babies (Daisy is the girl and Dollar is the boy), had them disbudded (they both turned out to have horns), and attempted to milk Skylark. Milking has been unsuccessful thus far. First of all, one udder doesn't produce much milk so we are hesitant to take any for fear the babies will suffer. They are eating quite a bit of other food now, so we may try milking her some this weekend. Secondly, she hates it. We ordered a hobble (a velcro strap contraption that will hold her legs motionless while we milk) but we have yet to put it into practice - again, hopefully this weekend. Dollar is growing like a weed. He's easily more than twice Daisy's size now. Both goats are super sweet and very friendly.

Pepper has been bred. We matched her up to a buck with similiar coloring to her and she made friends quickly. She stayed at the buck's place for a couple of weeks but is now safely back with us and tolerating the babies reasonably well. She should be due right around Valentine's Day. I'm anticipating naming at least one of her babies 'cupid'.

The farm bounty has begun! We harvested pears and then I dried and canned as many as I could in one weekend. Lots went to waste though - I am getting better at dealing with this! Then we harvested blackberries - they went into a LOT of jam and quite a few batches of muffins. I have a recipe from my mom that was based on the original Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins (remember back in the day when department stores had restaurants and bakeries? Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston was known for their killer blueberry muffins). I've subbed in blackberries (and whole wheat pastry flour) with much delicious success. I particularly love that they freeze so well! I also freezed a few quarts of blackberries for recipes later in the year. Lastly, I made a pear blackberry pie with cardamom in it and it was DELICIOUS! It was so good that I'm tempted to actually buy more pears to make it again for Thanksgiving. Oh the sin!

Then the harvest moved to apples. I did 16 quarts of applesauce (I still have a couple left from last year!) and then 6 of those went into making apple butter in the crock pot which then turned into 7 pints of apple butter. I also did a couple of dehydrator loads of apple rings for winter use (and hiking food!). Delicious apple bread, apple crisp and baked apples were also made. There are two more apple trees that are just now ripening, so I forsee much more apple products in our near future.

We harvested the garlic which turned out beautifully and is drying in the garage. We harvested TONS (possibly literally, though I didn't weigh them) of onions. One dehydrator load took care of about 20 huge Walla Walla onions (Walla Wallas are similiar to Vidalia onions for you southern readers!) and the rest are stored in the laundry room for general use. Having what feels like a neverending supply of onions is nice...but I can honestly say that I will never buy bottled garlic again. The home grown fresh stuff (we did four varieties) is incredible!

I didn't get many zucchinis this year, but yellow summer squash is taking it's place. I've successfully subbed summer squash for zucchini in my favorite banana zucchini bread recipe, so I will be doing quite a bit of squash shredding for freezing and winter baking. All the winter squash varieties appear to be doing really well, so expect a future post about sweet potato squash, pumpkins, butternut squash and Fujitsu black squash recipe experimentation!

And then there were tomatoes - and more tomatoes...and more tomatoes. Wow. HUGE harvest this year. With a friend's help, we produced 12 quarts of seasoned sauce this past weekend and two pints of salsa. My next project will be to attempt to can tomatoes diced since that's how I use them the most. I'll probably end up doing another batch or two of seasoned sauce as well. I will also chop and freeze and also dehydrate as many as possible to try to tame the hoards.

Then I'll move on to carrots...looks like a bumper crop of some delicious carrots! I think carrots are like tomatoes - the store bought ones just don't compare to what you grow yourself in terms of flavor.

Grapes will be the last to be harvested, I think. The plan is to put a new steam juicer to work so that we can get the most of our grape harvest. Who knows...maybe home made wine is in our future!

Goat babies are here again!

2010-09-03T13:02:00.001-07:00

Skylark and her new babies a couple of hours after their birth.

On Tuesday, August 31st...one day after the date I predicted, Skylark gave birth to two baby goats. One girl and one boy. The girl is a sweetheart in almost the exact color markings as her mom (the black kid in the photo) and the boy is mostly white with some black markings. Both are very playful and curious. We anticipate that the boy will eventually be a handful as he's already the more adventurous one. The boy is slightly larger and is older by about 20 minutes.

On Monday, I expected that Skylark was going to be delivering soon. I actually hesitated to go to work on Tuesday morning as my H was still out of town until about noon and I had a feeling she was close. Luckily, she held off until the afternoon until after he'd gotten home. I'd cleaned out the goat shed that morning and left him a note to fill it with fresh straw when he got back. He went out to do just that and goat baby number one was already here and being cleaned off my mom! He threw some straw in the shed and called me at work to let me know. A few minutes later, goat baby number two arrived! What a huge difference from the events of this night, huh? As it turns out, Skylark is a great mom, so we had to do very little at all.

So now we have three things that we need to take care of right away. The first is getting them disbudded. Our disbudding iron is for larger goats, so instead of buying a new one immediately, we've located a woman that will do it for us. She also said that she can do these small breed goats with a full sized iron, so I'd like to watch in order to learn. The difficulty is that we don't yet know if either of these goats will have horns! Skylark has had polled babies before when bred to a polled buck ('polled' means that they naturally have no horns) so there is a good chance that one or both of these babies won't have horns at all. That would be AWESOME because disbudding really, really sucks. It's far worse than weathering the boys (castration) as far as I'm concerned. Rick may feel otherwise! ;-) This is partly why we haven't bred Pepper yet. She is polled and you cannot breed a polled goat to another polled goat or you get other potential deformities. The farm where we bought these two had only two bucks. One was polled (the one we bred to Skylark) and the other was Pepper's sire (can't do that combination!).

So now we need to get Pepper bred. Our plan is to get her bred soon so that she'll deliver in the spring and if we keep rotating like this, we'll have milk year round and babies twice a year! I've found a buck for Pepper who is actually colored exactly like her and who is not polled. Once we arrange a date, we'll take her to the bucks residence for a couple of weeks. She's never had babies before, so hopefully it'll go smoothly and she'll be a good mom.

Thirdly, we need to prep for milking. For the first two weeks, the babies get all the milk, but then we'll separate them at night and milk Sky in the morning (until they get weaned). There are two issues with this. First of all, Sky is much smaller than Sass was and this means that her udders are very close to the ground. There is no room underneath her for our old milking pail. It's too tall! I've found a shorter one that might be a good option for us, so we need to get that ordered. Secondly, since Nigerian Dwarf milk is twice as rich as Alpine milk, we'll need a seperator (or I'll never be able to drink it!). Sass' milk was probably about 3% milkfat (whole cows milk is 4%). Nigerian Dwarf milk can be 6 - 7% milkfat! That'll be like drinking half-half! Ick! The seperator we used when we had Sass was 1) too big - we'd have to collect milk for a week before skimming and 2) not working properly. We've found another one that will probably work, but I need to do a little more investigation first. We will certainly have no trouble making butter and cheese with this milk, that's for sure! Oooh, and ice cream too! Yum!

So all of this plus one more triathlon (Sat, Sept 4th) and the need to do some serious harvesting/canning/drying of both our produce and the local peaches that I want to buy and you have a recipe for a very busy holiday weekend.

Crater Lake

2010-08-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Us at approximately the half-way point of the ride - tired but still smiling!

So for the past 5 years or so, I've drooled over pictures of Crater Lake in southern Oregon. When we first decided to move out this way a few years ago, one of the first ideas that popped into my head was "oh yay! We can ride the Crater Lake Century!". The first year we were here, we were just moving into our house on the farm. We had just purchased a goat and we desparately needed to build a fence and shelter...and of course, milk her. Travelling 6+ hours away for a bike ride was impossible.

The second summer we were here, we actually signed up for the ride. We still had a goat in milk, chickens laying eggs and a garden that was difficult to manage. In addition, we were out of shape and overweight and both of us were working too many hours at our day jobs. We had to cancel.

THIS year, I was determined that we would go. I was so excited that I signed up right away (as evidenced by our bib numbers - 35 and 36!) and began making plans to do the ride. I stalled on breeding our first Nigerian Dwarf goat so that she wouldn't give birth until AFTER the ride. I was already training for triathlons, so I felt that I'd be in shape if we could manage a couple of longer rides. I found a girl to watch our farm (and with no goats currently in milk, it worked out) through a web site I frequent. We were really going to do it this time!

And we did. And boy, what a great ride it was! It was well supported, well organized and worth the 6+ hour drive. The weather was gorgeous (if a tad windy) and the route was challenging but satisfiying. And of course, the lake was spectacular.

Some of the most spectacularly blue water I've ever seen!

We started as late as we dared (start time was 6:30 to 8:30 am at our leisure) so that the air could warm up a bit. We headed out of the parking lot in Fort Klamath at about 8 am. We were registered for the century ride, but we had no intention of actually riding 100 miles just to say we rode 100 miles. We wanted to ride to the lake! So we skipped the 18+ mile tour of the valley floor and headed strait up the road that went to the lake. We climbed in the forest and while it didn't look all that steep, it was a pretty good incline. In addition, Ft Klamath was at 4200ft so to us flat-landers, it was a challenge.

We made it up to the rim and then turned left on to Rim Drive West (while the metric century riders turned right). This is where the climbing got difficult. It was steep. I was in my 'granny gear' and working hard to keep the pedals turning. It was also pretty hot as this part of the climb was in the sun and sheltered from the wind. But we plodded along and finally made it up the rim and FINALLY got the views. Spectacular!

Requisite photo of my bike taken at our very first view of the lake.

The ride continued in a clock-wise direction around the lake with plenty more climbing to be had. Spectacular views dotted the route both towards the lake and out towards the south as well.

Everytime I started thinking 'hmmm, I'm hungry' a rest stop came along. They were remarkably well placed and very well stocked. A handlful of grapes, a homemade cookie, a small subway sandwich, some water and we were on our way again.

There were a couple of spots where I felt pretty discouraged. It was hard to look down at my computer, realize we still had 40 miles to go and then figure that since we were only going 6 mph, that we'd be out there FOREVER. Luckily, there were a few downhills as well. By the time the last descent came our way (about mile 60), I was ready for it. My legs were done, my rear was killing me from the saddle and my shoulders hurt from riding in the drops so much to fight the wind. We FLEW down the mountain and back into Fort Klamath not a moment too soon as far as my rear end was concerned. Total distance: 78+ miles. Total climbing: 7500+ miles Average speed: ~13 mph (better than I expected!).

See the way the water is blowing in the wind? It was worse up on the rim - we almost bit it a few times due to super strong cross-winds.

We enjoyed the provided pulled pork sandwiches and baked beans and then headed back to the hotel for a nice hot shower and a nap. I'm so glad we finally got to do this ride.

Honey Harvest!

2010-08-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

Slicing the caps off the honey comb prior to extraction.

So our hives are huge and full. We have two of them, one of which already has two FULL supers on it (the large box that tops the hive and where the honey gets stored). We pulled a few frames to give the bees more room about a month ago, and we needed to harvest that honey so that we could reuse the frames. We rented an extractor from the local bee place and invited some friends over to watch/help/learn.

First step was to cut the caps off the honey comb. This is done in multiple ways, but we used a hot knife to slice them open on both sides of the frame.

Each frame has a notch in the spinning mechanism inside the extractor - the centrifugal force pulls all the honey from the comb.

Then the frames get inserted into the extractor. This particular extractor holds 9 frames. We are looking to buy a slightly smaller one to use for future use as we anticipate rarely harvesting so many frames at once.

The frames are spinning in this picture (barely visable) while we held the extractor from shaking too much.

The lid gets closed once all the spaces are filled and the spinning begins. Everyone took turns. We actually had to hold the extractor pretty tightly because we were short two frames and it created enough of an inbalance to wobble. We did bolt it down to a wooden board, but it still shook quite a bit. Next time, we'll make sure to fill the extractor!

Here comes the first of the honey!

We had a special filter pan sitting on a bucket to catch the honey as it came out of the extractor. This makes sure that you capture any and all non-honey bits (like wax).

The empty frames can go back into the super for storage or reinsertion into the hive. The header on the blog shows a close up of the comb after extraction. (above)

After all the honey is out of the frames, we can reuse them by inserting them back into the super. This is actually helpful to the bees because they don't have to build more comb...they only have to fill it and then cap it.

This shows some of the beeswax caught by the filter as the last of the honey comes out of the extractor.

Lastly, we tilted the extractor to help the last of the honey flow out of the spout and into our filter. It was just beautiful as it glowed in the sunlight! And man...nothing beats fresh, raw honey for taste - it's heavenly!

Summer Fun

2010-08-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

I admit it. That's what I've been having. Summer fun. I've been having so much of it, in fact, that I just haven't had time to blog. Shame on me, I know.

Let's see - what has been happening? On a personal level, I signed up for and have been training and competing in triathlons. Yes, triathlons. This non-runner, former swimmer decided to give it a shot and sure enough...I got hooked. I've now completed 3 sprint triathlons and 1 super sprint (all approx 0.5 mile swim, 13 mile bike and 3.1 mile run). I've got one more on my schedule for the end of the summer and then I will take the winter off from racing and focus only on improving my running (which is pathetic, at best). In the process, I've lost about 25 lbs and I feel 100% better about myself and my health.

We have also finally ventured off farm this summer. We found a lovely local girl to watch our animals and we went for a weekend hiking trip this past weekend. It was our first time leaving the farm together in over 2 years! We had a great time. The photo above was taken of me as I stood at the edge of our campsite with one of many waterfalls behind me. I'll post more photos later - it was a beautiful area called Goat Rocks Wilderness of all places!

We have one more weekend trip planned in a couple of weeks. We will be traveling to southern Oregon to complete the Crater Lake Century bike ride. We feel woefully ill-trained, but we are going anyway. I think it'll be a blast!

On the farm front, things are moving along. We think that Skylark is pregnant (it's kind of hard to tell on goats!) and if so, she is due the end of the month. We cannot wait to have goat babies around again, but I'm not really looking forward to the twice daily milking routine again. It will be nice to have fresh milk though. We still need to find a mate for Pepper. We've also asked a barn builder to draw up some designs for us, so there may be a REAL barn in our future. We'll see what he comes up with and how it'll sit with us financially, of course. I am just giddy at the thought of having a real barn with a real milking parlor. Strange that these things make me 'giddy', huh?

The fruit trees and grape vines are producing and the garden is exploding. We've had some successes and some failures, and I will definitely be back to share those stories with some accompanying photos.

The new chickens are shooting out eggs faster than we can eat them, so I'm once again on the hunt for egg recipes. And of course, now that we have more friends, we have more people with whom we can share eggs...thankfully!

Work is the same for both of us. We joke that if we ever come into enough money to pay off our mortgage, we'll probably get a divorce fighting over who gets to quit their job first! It's not that either of our jobs are so dreadful...it's just that we've both finally found so many other things that we'd rather be doing that work just gets in the way. I guess it's nice to have such a full life. I should not complain. :-)

Vanishing photos, policemen with rifles and biking

2010-04-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

What do all these things have in common? My next blog post!

My husband bought me a netbook for an anniversary present (I think it was just convenient that it was anniversary time as he's been wanting to get me one for awhile so that he could have my desktop for some project). It came with Windows 7 Starter which is so full of limitations that it really sucked. He upgraded it to Windows 7 Home Premium last week and in the process, erased every single digital photo we had taken in the past two years. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I hadn't had a chance to back them up yet as I'd only *just* moved them from my work computer the day before.

When he informed me of this, I seriously thought it was just pulling my leg. He wasn't. Usually when you upgrade, the software will ask if you want to delete old files - that didn't happen this time. We think it's probably because he named my new profile the same as my old one so it just wrote right over it. Because of this, I have no more 'before' photos of anything on the farm or in the house. Not a single photo of Sass (who is now living on a different farm)...and every single photo I've taken with my new camera save the few that are still on it are all gone too. It was all I could do not to burst into tears while fixing dinner that night.

Luckily, because of a recent virus problem on my work computer, I have two profiles on it. I'd deleted all the photos out of the current profile because I wanted the space, but I forgot to delete them from the old profile that still exists on my laptop. I went searching and they were still there! I don't have any photos taken between when that virus struck and when I did the transfer (basically anything taken with my new camera), but it's better than being completely without anything since we moved in. Phew!

So, later that same night, as we are about to sit down to eat, my huband notices cop cars in front of our house. Two of them were out there with lights flashing and it looks like they were blocking off our road. OK, we figure there was an accident at the corner (it's happened before). Then we notice lights at the corner and further back on the other cross-street. Odd. We sit down to eat and not moments later the dogs start going crazy and we notice a cop in our backyard. My H puts on his jacket to go outside and see what is up and when the cop sees him, yells for him to take the dogs inside and stay there. Lovely.

I go to look out the guestroom window and there are now no less than a dozen town, county and state cop cars blocking our road! Flashing lights everywhere!

When I look to my right, I can see one cop standing half-hidden by one of our apple trees with a rifle in his hand. From a different window, I can see another cop squatting down, also with a rifle, using our greenhouse as cover. Holy crap.

Then we notice about 6 more cops with a HUGE black german shephard heading towards our back yard. They are combing the whole space - terrifying the goats. Luckily, by this time, the chickens were already in their coop or they'd be making a hell of a racket. We had to lock our dogs in the bathroom where they had no windows because they were also going ballistic at this point. A different cop finally had the courtesy to ring our bell and let us in on the story. Turns out, some lady reported that her car was shot at from the abandoned school building next door and when the cops went to investigate, someone was there and he ran from them. They were hunting this person down. I heard LOUD shots as I was cooking that evening - we hear them all the time - but I remembered these as odd because they were so loud that I heard them over the TV in the other room. Country living at it's best, right? To this day, we don't really know what ended up happening. By about 9:30 pm, they were all gone and we haven't heard any updates since then. Strange!

So lastly, about the biking. Last weekend we didn't make much farm progress because we spent a lot of time biking. On Saturday we met up with some friends and biked the route that my first triathlon will take in a few weeks. After the ride, those of us doing the tri also ran the race route for the run portion as well. It was my first brick and other than one fleeting desire to just sit down as I started the run, it went well. My plan is to do another one this weekend and then one more next weekend. On Sunday, we did a ride that we enjoy just north of us. We ended up doing just over 33 miles and it was a really great time. The weather was spectacular and we really enjoyed it. My sit bones were screaming at me (they aren't used to this much riding yet!), but it was worth the pain.

The hope is that this weekend we can manage at least some riding AND some farm progress. We've got some transplanting to do and the chicken coop needs to be cleaned. Fun! ;-) We are also working on relocating our compost bins so that we can build a new garden shed on the current bin location. I took some 'before' photos of the move - but they were among the missing so I'll just have to be content with posting 'during' and then 'afters' once we have them.

The New Chicken Run & Coop

2010-04-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

One of the new chicks peeking out the front door of their new home.

So we hatched new baby chicks in February and while we enjoyed watching them grow up, they were getting entirely too big to be in the brooder in the garage. Additionally, they were getting too much dust on our bikes! ;-)

My husband spent a couple of weekends in a row (I only marginally helped) building a new run for them. We purchased the little coop for them off a guy on craigslist who builds them and painted it ourselves. Then, once the run was completed, we butted the new coop up to it, arranged the chicken wire, and let them explore. The base of the run is lined with cedar shavings for now, but we'll probably keep it full of straw or spent hay from the goat shed as time goes on. We figured that cedar shavings were a good bet since that's what the chicks had in the brooder and we wanted it to be somewhat familiar to them.

Here you can see the whole run and the coop.

It's located in the corner of the goat area, so to free range the birds, we can just open the door and not have to worry about the neighbors dogs chasing down our birds.

The coop opens from the side for cleaning and fetching eggs. The nexting boxes slide out (they are in the garage for now since it'll be awhile before these birds are laying).

This was when the new chickies first started to investigate! I think here they are saying to each other "you want me to step over this gaping hole right here? Really? I don't think I want to go outside that bad...".

So far, this arrangement appears to be working out just fine. The chickies have learned that their new coop is 'safe' and they go there when scared. They also put themselves to bed when it gets dark, so all we have to do is close up the coop (lifting that ramp and latching it to the side of the coop).

Now to just wait for the eggs to start....

Granola

2010-04-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

Granola ingredients stored in Ball jars on the shelf of my new kitchen island.

A few months ago, I decided to try a recipe from Tosca Reno's Clean Eating Cookbook for granola. I'd never made my own granola before, but it seemed simple enough. That first batch was made with our own honey, dried pears from our own trees and mixed rolled grains from Bob's Red Mill Store on the other side of Portland. It was so delicious and so cheap that we decided that we were never buying store bought cereal again! Since then, I've played around with the ingredients using different sweeteners, different dried fruits, different nuts and even an experiment adding orange zest and maple syrup. So far, I've only had one failed batch for over-cooking the syrup. Out of the 10-12 batches I've made, I figure that's pretty good!

The basic recipe calls for 1 cup each of 4 different rolled (flaked) grains. I typically use a combination of oats, wheat, rye and either triticale or barely. For seeds, it uses sunflower and sesame. For nuts, it calls for almonds (I've used both sliced and slivered) and I often add or substitute pecans. The syrup that you toss the ingredients with is a combination of oil (canola or olive), sucanant (I've used date sugar or brown sugar as well), honey (or maple syrup), vanilla extract and a dash of salt. This part gets heated gently and then everything gets stirred in a big bowl and then spread out on a baking sheet with a good lip.

You bake it for 40 minutes at 300F. And you MUST stir the mixture every 10 minutes. The recipe then calls for the addition of the dried fruit at the end just prior to cooling. I added it at the beginning the first time I made it because I didn't read the instructions carefully and I actually liked it better that way. I think the flavors blend better and the fruit is a tad chewier in texture which I enjoy. Now I usually mix it in with 10-20 minutes left to bake as a compromise.

Granola baking in the oven.

Dried cranberries and date nuggets awaiting addition. I use unsweetened cranberries for more zing.

Finished granola! I like to add the dried fruit with 10 or so minutes left to bake as I feel like it better incorporates the fruit.

This stores beautifully for a week or two in an air-tight container. It's SOOO much more delicious than sore bought cereals - and much healthier, too.

The two best batches we've made were the first one and the one pictured here. Both were made with local, raw honey. The first one was our own honey, the one pictured here using honey from a friend. Wow, what a difference GOOD honey makes!

I don't want to break my promise.

2010-04-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

I said that I'd have photos to share...and I do. I just can't get to them at the moment. I moved all my photos to my new netbook. I'm at work and I cannot put the netbook on our wireless network so I thought I'd copy a few photos off the netbook, onto a memory stick, and then use my work computer to post them.

The memory stick is only 128M and my photos are too big. That's what I get for not adjusting the settings in my fancy new camera. Super-duper resolution means photos won't fit on old memory sticks.

Ok, no problem. I'll just edit them and shrink them on the netbook first. Ah, no go. Windows 7 Starter does not support Microsoft photo editor and there is no other photo editing software on the netbook. Fine. I search for a simple but free software - download it off my work computer onto said memory stick and then try to run it on the netbook. Software is compatible with Windows 7 Starter, but Google tool bar which is apparently a key component is not. Lovely.

Now I have my computer genius husband researching the possiblity of putting XP on my netbook. It can't run the full version of Windows 7, so that's out. What a pain!

Of course, now that I've typed all this, I just occurred to me that I can take a few photos at time and at least have a few things to share...

So that's what I did:

The entrance to the chicken coop from the new run with a few of the new birds peeping out.

Charlie running! It's not the clearest photo ever, but looking at it just makes me smile - he is so happy!

Springtime sunset on the farm.

Another gap in updates

2010-04-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

And I have no excuses.

So, let's see...what has happened? I'm going to start by apologizing for not having any photos to accompany this post. I received a new netbook for an anniversary gift from my wonderful husband, and all my photos have been transferred to it. Unfortunately, this update is coming via my work laptop - and there are no more photos in my photo folder!

So yes, we had our 7th anniversary since I last posted. I can't believe it's been 7 years - it seems like only yesterday that we were putting the wedding together. It's been a wonderful 7 years full of adventure and love.

Speaking of love - Skylark is still off getting hers. We took her to the farm where we bought her to be bred. As of last weekend, she still had not gotten any. She actually wasn't showing signs of estrus, so the herder was going to put a marking harness on her and put her in with the bucks. A marking harness is a contraption used for goats and sheep (and perhaps other animals?) where it leaves a colored mark on the female once she's been bred. This color will correspond to the buck with whom she copulated (at least, that's how I've read it works - we've never used one). So, we are hopeful that we'll get her back to our farm soon. In the meantime, Buddy and Pepper seem to be bonding well enough. Funny thing is, Pepper has gone into estrus twice since we got her, so it's odd that Skylark has not. We are tracking Pepper's cycle on a calendar so when we find another buck, we'll know when to set up her date.

My H finished the new chicken run and we set the coop up outside last weekend. I did take photos - so I'll do a photo 'show and tell' post later. It's a cute little coop for the 5 new birds and the run is in the corner of the goat area. Once they are a little bigger (and once the weather clears), they'll get to free range with the other chickens, safe from the neighbor's dogs.

And the neighbors dogs... they have three. Two pure bred jack russells and a very old lab mix. The lab is like 15 years old now? He's pretty deaf, but he gets around well and seems happy. The two jack russels are a terror. One of them is obsessed with our chickens. She got ahold of one once and did some damage to it (it survived), but since then, she's crazy about them. She's also pregnant. The neighbors didn't get her (or her half brother) fixed soon enough, so there is a litter of jack russels on the way. At least they are purebred - hopeful they'll be able to find homes for them. She offered us one, but with chickens, it would be a disaster. I am looking forward to puppy breath though!

We have been steadily planting, transplanting, pruning and cleaning in prep for the growing season. Our greenhouse is full of tomato and pepper plants, our boxes have lots of spinach, lettuce, peas and onions planted and sprouting. We also put out the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts & kale) already. And we had one brussels sprouts plant left from last year that is about to flower. I'm thinking that I'll save the seeds since it's the only brassica we have that's flowering - it think that will work. Normally, brassicas all cross-pollinate and need like a mile of separation - but since this lone plant is all that we currently have at that stage, it might work. We'll see. The garlic is doing well and the few onions from last year are now blooming. I'm not sure what to do with them except pull them up. I think a little research is in order.

ALL of our fruit trees are budding like mad! We should have a bumper crop of pears, plums and apples this year. Look for a post about me losing my mind come next fall! ;-) We have added a number of trees to our orchard this year. In fact, I think we are now officially out of room! We have planted a nectarine, a peach, two honey crisp apples, a red d'anjou pear and two new sweet cherry varieties (I forget the specifics) trees. We also have a fig tree and a green/black tea bush to arrive next month to be planted. Lastly, we have purchased some asparagus root stock and will be putting in our first bed very shortly.

In the meantime, between all the planting, building and tending to animals...we are getting in shape. My husband is working on weight lifting and cycling in an effort to drop a few pounds to ride the Crater Lake Century in August, and I'm kind of putzing along on my triathlon training. I'm eating as he is, also hoping to lose weight, but my training is centered on swimming, running, biking and full body/core weight training videos. My first tri is May 8th and I hope to do two others this summer (reserving the right to back out if I end up hating this one!) and the Crater Lake Century as well. Wow, that sounds exhausting, doesn't it? Good thing its FUN! I can't believe I'm about to make this public - but it turns out, I REALLY like swimming. Who knew? Certainly not my swim coach back in 8th grade! :-b

I've got all kinds of photos to post (taken with my new birthday camera!), so I'll come back and do that as soon as I get a chance. Look for photos of the new coop/run (and the new birds!), of garden progress and of things blooming all over the place...

Power Outage

2010-03-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

Monday after work I stopped at the pool and swam for about 45 minutes. I showered afterward (usually I just rinse and shower at home, but for whatever reason, I decided to do a full shower at the pool this time) and then drove home. As I pulled into the driveway, I could see the candles in the wall sconces in the living room were lit. Is my husband getting all romantic on me? Then I realized that our big overhead light (outdoors) wasn't lit and I could see that the brooder light in the garage was out. I glanced across the street (and across the field) and confirmed that our neighbors were also dark. Power's out.

My first thought was for the chicks. Without power, their brooder will be cold and they are not yet fully feathered and it was unusually cold out, too. Upon opening the door to the house, the first thing I noticed was that the woodstove was lit and that there was a box infront of it. Yep, my husband is one smart cookie! The chicks were soundly sleeping by the warmth of the fire.

My next concern was how I was going to use my Neti pot. I started using one as a way to cleanse the chlorine from my sinuses. I get nasty reactions if I don't use it within a couple of hours of swimming. So I pulled out the tea kettle, filled it with water and set it on the wood stove. Not 3 minutes later and it was already scaldingly hot! I mixed it with some cold water to get the right temp and did my duties. Phew.

Apparently we had a freakish wind storm that afternoon. It actually ripped the front awning off the goat shed and not long after that, knocked out our power. The power company said they'd already received over 800 calls about outages by the time my H contacted them. 800 homes out where we live covers a LOT of territory! This happend at about 4pm, so H hadn't even started dinner. We debated firing up the grill but opted to run out to a not-too-local restaurant (our whole town was dark - we had to go to the next one for food!). On the way back, we could see emergency crews, flood lights and activity on the main road that goes through our town. My guess is that some tree or branch took down the power lines and that was one of the spots. It must have happend in multiple locations because it was so widespread.

When we got back from dinner, we sat around talking by lamplight until it was time for bed. As I was trying to set my cell phone for a wake-up alarm, I noticed a light from under my husband's office door. The power came back! Good thing, I was worried I'd have a hell of a time getting ready for work the next morning with no power.

Anyway, this little incident made us realize a few things. First of all, we are too power dependent. We do conserve pretty well so our bills aren't high, but we still have too many things for which we require power (like laptop computers, clocks and the freezer/fridge). We've got non-electric light and heat covered, but we still need to work on food storage and communications. We also need to do something about the pumps in the basement. Lucky for us, this wind came during a slight dry spell. Had it been raining like the last two days, our basement would have flooded without the sump pumps. That's something else we need to take care of as soon as possible. Secondly, we need to make sure that we have plenty of lamps and candles that are not scented. Nothing is worse that getting stunk out of your own house by too many scented candles all at once! ;-) Lastly, we'll have to make sure to only hatch chicks in the summer so that we won't need a lamp to keep them warm!

Making Soap and Candles

2010-03-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

Homemade candles! Soy candles in purple, melted beeswax tea lights, and rolled beeswax candles plus some of the beeswax 'foundation' sheets awaiting the next project.

This past winter, we signed up for a couple of classes at the bee supply place that we use. They were offering both soap making and candle making as ways of utilizing beeswax. We signed up for both and learned so much!!

The first class was soapmaking. We brought our own 'safety equipment' like goggles, aprons and old towels, but the class provided the lye, the fats, the scents and a basic soap mold. We had so much fun! We opted to make two different batches of soap from our mix. Both had the same oil/fat mix and the same lye, but when we got to 'trace' we split them up and scented them different. To over simplify, when you make soap from lye and fat (and beeswax in our case), you mix them together in very precise quantities (using a digital scale), stir until you get to the 'trace' stage, and then add scents or additives. Then you pour the mixture into a mould of some type and let it dry. You need to keep it warm (the reason for the towels) so that it sets properly and doesn't crack or bubble.

Soap cooling in the homemade mould (piece of pipe with a cap on one end). Once hardened, we slid it out of the mold and sliced it with a sharp knife.

This is the other 'scent' of soap - also hardening (usually takes 24 - 48 hours).

Once set, you slice it up and let it dry further. There is no need to let it sit for months and there is no danger of burning your skin IF you use the correct formulas. In the old days, when lye came from wood ash stirred over a fire, it was a very inprecise science. Soapmakers had to basically guess the strength and estimate the mixing quantities. Today's lye is so pure and regulated that it is very easy to calculate the right mixture and avoid creating soap that takes off more than dirt!

Soaps sitting on parchment paper to further harden. It is useable immediately, but it will last longer under water if allowed to harden up some (otherwise it disolves really quickly).

The two types we made are pictured above. The yellow colored soap is scented with zucchini flower and the browner looking one is scented with a mixture of scents including sandalwood and also has cranberry fiber added for a slight exfoliating effect.

We are both looking forward to formulating our own soaps at home soon. We are particularly interested in making goats milk soap that has it's own challenges and rewards.

After the soap class, we had the candle making class. This was a bit more difficult for my husband who now was the only 'boy' in attendence. He is secure enough in his manhood to laugh it off and I think he ended up having a good time. We made a couple of beeswax candles as a group (and took home some of the tea lights), a soy candle and we learned how to roll candles out of the beeswax sheets that are often used as foundation in hives. Of course, when they are used in hives, they aren't tinted such pretty colors!

I enjoyed all of it and even purchased extra sheets to make some roll candles as gifts, but I think the most helpful part will be the melted beeswax candles. I cannot wait until we get to harvest honey and an start saving up that beeswax for our own projects. Beeswax is wonderfully versatile and when used as a candle, burns steady and clean. It's really an amazing product and I'm thrilled that we have our own source for it.

More New Farm Friends!

2010-03-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

Pepper and Skylark - half sisters (they shared the same mom) and our herd matriarchs.

We would like to welcome Skylark and Pepper to the crazy world of our tiny farm! These two half-sisters are Nigerian Dwarf does. Skylark is the one with the blue eyes and she is 3 years old. Pepper is the smaller all black goat and she is only two and has never been bred. Both are super sweet and we are pleased to have them as the founding members of our Nigerian Dwarf herd.

Yes, you read that correctly. We've finally decided that it's time to do what makes the most sense for our land/space and our goals so we are changing our goat herd. We will be keeping Buddy as a companion goat (he's our Pygora wether) but Sass is going to a new home.

We met a couple who operates a CSA a few towns north of us (near where I work, actually) last summer and they have a few goats already. They include the occasional homemade goat cheese in their CSA shares. I forget which breeds they currently keep, but they are not the heavy producer that Sass is, so they are excited to have her join them. She'll have a wonderful home where she will get to breed and where she will have other full sized goats to keep her company. Plus, we can visit her! We are not selling her as this isn't about profit - we just want her to have a good home. We plan to be clear about the fact that if their situation changes and they can no longer keep Sass, then we'll take her back. I think she'll have a great time there, actually!

We are also investigating our Nigerian Dwarf buck options at the moment. We may opt to keep one on site someday, but for now, we just need stud service. Nigerian Dwarfs cycle all year round, so our plan is to try and get Skylard bred at the end of March so that she'll birth in late August. Then we will breed Pepper sometime after that so that she'll kid in the spring. From there, we don't know what our plans are, but we are excited about our new decision.

seed starting 2010

2010-02-25T17:17:00.000-08:00

Seeds stared last month that have been transplanted and moved into our greenhouse.

We had to replace a lot of our seeds this year because so many of our stock are old. I did a lot of research and was much more selective than in previous years. We ordered most of our seeds from Abundant Life Seed and from Territorial Seed. These two companies are owned by the same people and are based here in Oregon (actually in the Wilamette Valley like us). Abundant Life carries a slightly larger variety of OP and organic seeds, but Territorial carries them too. We also ordered a couple of plants that we won't receive until close to our last frost date.

The seeds arrived and it took everything I had not to rush into planting them immediately! We started our seeds near the middle of January. We did this last year as well and as long as we have the greenhouse to move them to when they get big enough, it seems to work well. Our tomato harvest last year started early and ran all summer and into the fall!

This year I planted 5 types of peppers (both sweet and hot), leeks, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli and kale. I also planted 5 types of tomatoes from store bought seeds and one type from the seeds I saved from last year. We had a delicious meaty tomato (I don't know the original type since our seedlings got tipped over and mixed up) that did very well for us. I saved some of the seeds last September and then planted them with the purchased seeds in January. So far, they appear to be doing just as well as the 'new' seeds!

Tomato seeds 'saved' from the last sauce batch. I let these 'ferment' or 'mold' in the containers, then I rinsed them and then dried them so that they could be used this year.

All of the seeds get started in our basement. We have a little tray that holds these peat inserts that you soak in water prior to planting. The tray then sits on a heating pad set to 'low' until they sprout. Once we see sprouting, we have a grow light on a timer that keeps them green. When we see the first set of 'real' leaves, they get transplanted (peat core and all) into peat pots and moved to the greenhouse. Lucky for us, the sun is still very low in the sky (if it shines at all), so the tiny seedlings can handle it. As we get closer to summer, we have to be more careful not to fry them! So far, everything is looking good. Out of 50 cells, only two did not sprout, so we are well on our way to having a garden again.

We will start more seeds of more types of veggies as we get closer to our last frost date (May 15th). It is still to early for many varieties. I'll also plant some swiss chard, peas and spinach directly in the garden in the next couple of weeks. I would have done this already except that I still haven't planned out what things will go where yet and I need to get that done first.

I can't wait for the first veggies of 2010!

More updates!

2010-02-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

Plum tree confusion - it's spring, right?? It sure feels like spring.

We've had a couple of spring-like days lately (following an unusually warm winter), so it's forcing us to kind of take stock of where we are and where we plan to go this year. Since my last major update post, we've made some small progress.

We cross-fenced our goat area and moved the goats to the non-muddy side for the winter. Then we reseeded the other side. The warm weather and sun over the past week has finally sprouted the grass and with any luck, it'll keep growing even though winter weather has kind of returned. This new cross fencing basically puts the goat shed on the dividing line between each area, so that when it's time to switch, we just move one cattle panel and the shed will now be accessable from the other side. We also added an overhang to the goat shed. We wanted to do something more permanent, but considering that we are still planning on building a barn, we opted for a quick fix. My husband sunk two 4x4 posts in front of the shed and then we extended a tarp between them and the front of the shed above the door/opening. This gives the goats a little more protection from rain besides just hanging out inside the shed. I'll take pictures this weekend.

Speaking of sheds and a new barn - we've formed a plan. We purchased plans for a saltbox type shed from a book we bought and we are going to build it this spring. This new shed will then house our gardening supplies that are currently in the rundown shed that came with the property. Once we can move everything over, we will shore up the old shed to be housing for meat chickens (assuming we can get all this done in time). This works out really well because the old shed is smack in the middle of our 'orchard' which is great place to range meat birds. Additionally, building this shed from plans by ourselves will give us the practice we need because our ultimate goal is to build our own barn. So far, we haven't found the perfect barn design yet (it needs to be small but versitile), but we have time. We are also talking about how to set up a mini solar PV system (complete with batteries and an inverter) to power the shed/greenhouse and again, as practice so that we can do our own work to power the house one day (or, to at least speak with some experience when we hire someone).

On the animal front: we do plan on raising meat birds eventually. Additionally, we are now raising 5 more laying chickens - any cockrels of which will be meat as well - for eggs. We are painting the new chicken coop (we needed more space) and I will have pictures of that to share this weekend. We are also currently without goat milk. We dried off Sass late this past fall and we did not breed her. When she finally went into estreus when we were around to observe it, we were too late. The local family who had the buck we used last time had already sold him! In some ways, I think this was probably not a bad thing for us. We've been debating switching to a smaller breed (Nigerian Dwarf) goat and this might be our opportunity. I don't know what we'll do with Sass. I know of a couple of local farmers that might be interested in her, so that's a possiblity. We also might just keep her around - we've gotten kind of attached to her. We'll see. It is clear that our property really is better suited to the little goats, particularly if we hope to one day be fully self-sustaining.

Lastly, I received a new camera for my birthday! I'm so excited because I was really getting tired of fighting with my old point and shoot to get even passable photos for this blog. The new one is great - totally automatic or totally manual with tons of options. It's weakness is low light conditions but it does have an on-board flash. It also has a decent video capability, so I will try to capture short clips for the blog when appropriate. I finally got a good sized memory card on order because I'm dying to capture Maggie and Cooper 'fighting' together - it's great fun to watch!

Home improvement gets personal

2010-02-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

So yes, it's been ages since I have been consistent with my blogging. Where have I been, you ask? Besides all the work on the farm and around the house (and at the job), I've added one more task to my plate.

While it's not really anything pertaining to homesteading, sustainable living or being green, I've decided to sign up for my first triathlon. I've been an on-again, off-again cyclist for the past 6 years and I've always been somewhat of an athlete, so it's not really that big of a stretch...or so I thought. Turns out, swimming is hard! I find that I am remembering a lot of what I learned or knew as a child in terms of technique, but cardiovascularly, it's a challenge. I'm also not much of a runner. In fact, I have had foot trouble (or shin splints) most of my life and it's the main reason I started biking. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to ramp my running up to the necessary levels without pain, but I have since made a few discoveries that have helped.

My first race is May 8th. I'll be doing a 'sprint' triathlon and this one has a pool swim. I'll be swimming 500 yards, then biking 12.5 miles and then running a 5K. My goal is to get a time that I can be proud of...I have no illusions of winning anything including my age group (which I believe is one of the most competitive ones for women). I'm actually really enjoying the training. It's fun to have 3 sports to train in knowing that I'll have to perform in all three of them this spring. I'm also trying to get in some regular strength training, too. Lastly, I'd still like to drop some weight - but to be perfectly honest, I'm not focusing on it right now. I'm trying to eat well and make good choices, but I cannot bring myself to count calories or points or carbs or anything else, right now.

I'm debating about what will happen for me after this tri. There are others in the area that I am tempted to try. There is another sprint distance one in June that has an open water (lake) swim for which I may sign up. I've also got an Olympic distance try picked out in September that I might do. Olympic distances are typically twice the 'sprint' distances. The one I'm considering has a slightly longer bike ride (30 miles) and a slightly shorter run that is on a trail (5 miles), so it really appeals to me.

I mentioned above that I've found a way to avoid foot pain when I run. That method is to run barefoot. I started by learning the Chi Running technique which is a method of running that uses a midfoot strike (as opposed to a heel strike) and that was working to some degree. I was still running with my highly structured orthotics in my highly stabalizing shoes and to be honest, it was hard to get the right form down. I took off my shoes and tried it barefoot for a few minutes. Wow, what a difference!! The correct form was so much easier! I have been very careful to s l o w l y ramp up the minutes barefoot to allow my feet and calves to adjust to it. As a result, my feet are stronger and the pain is gone. I've also removed the orthtics from my shoes when I do run shod and I'm amazed at how little pain I am experiencing. Knock on wood, this trend will continue. I'm only up to about 3 miles and I'd like to be able to run further, but for now, this is good.

Anyway, that's what has been occupying my non-homesteading time. That and occasionally hanging with good friends or going out with my wonderful husband. Life is good.

The other new additions!

2010-02-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

Baby chicks born on the farm!

In January, we decided to expand our flock - literally. We picked out 7 eggs and set them up in our new little incubator. We started with 3 brown, 2 white and one green, but due to a mis-assembled turning disk, we cracked a couple. The final assortment was 4 brown and 2 white which actually suited us well since we like the Rhode Island Red chickens the best and wanted to have more of them. We like the idea of this small incubator because we really don't want to get in over our heads and hatching more than 7 birds at once could get us there!

The 'mini' incubator loaded with 7 eggs.

The first chick was born on Valentine's Day.

Approximately 21 days later, we heard cheeping in my husband's office. We kept the incubator in there because it's the warmest room in our house (small room, many computers). The first bird born on Valentine's Day was one of the white ones. We named her Una.

Una a few hours after birth.

We ended up with 5 new chickens. One died in the shell (not strong enough to get themselves out) and one drowned in the water dish in the brooder the first night after being born. We were worried about that, so next time, we'll create some type of 'staging area' for the birds to rest after the ordeal of hatching. They are just exhausted after birth, but our incubator isn't really big enough for them to rest in it. Clearly the brooder (amongst other already hatched and rested chicks) is too dangerous.

Anyway, they are all doing very well. It was warm and sunny today, so we took them out for a little exploration time and they seemed to really enjoy it.

Chicks learning to 'free range'.

We are trying to be sure to handle these birds more often so that they are friendlier to humans than our current birds. We also find it funny that the 4 brown eggs from Rhode Island Red mom birds are all yellow chicks (normally, Rhode Island Red chicks are brown). I guess the White Leghorn rooster is more dominant in terms of coloring? We can tell them from the one 'pure blood' White Leghorn chick because they all have small black spots on their backs. Odd. We are both really curious as to how they'll look once they get their adult feathers.

Clear view of one of the chick's little black spots identifying it as having a Rhode Island Red mother.

Anyway, it's fun to have babies on the farm again!

New Addition to the Farm

2010-02-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

So, 3 and a half months later, I'm finally blogging here again. Ooops.

Anyway, quite a bit has happened in this time frame. It'll take me a few posts to get through it all. Let me start with one of our new family members. Meet Cooper:

This was Cooper the day we picked him up from the shelter.

This is him a few days ago - he's growing like a weed!

Cooper is a shelter kitty. We met him the day after Christmas but had to wait a few days for his surgery. The day we picked him up was the day of our one and only snowstorm this year. For a brief moment, we considered naming him Blizzard or Stormy but opted against it. He was listed as a stray and spent some of the earliest part of his life in a foster home. He must have been well treated because he is a wonderful, loving cat. He's affectionate to humans and much to their discomfort, to dogs. He's smart, he's playful and he happily drinks water out of a bowl and doesn't demand we turn on the faucet for him. So far, he hasn't really ventured outside, but I'm sure that exploring the great outdoors can't be too far into the future as this cat is fearless. It's not really a good trait for a country cat, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Cooper and Maggie are great friends. They play all the time. One of these days, I need to take some video of it to share because it's really amusing. Charlie tolerates Cooper, but I don't think he's a big fan. He'll play with him on occasion, but for the most part, just tries to ignore him.

We named him Cooper after one of the characters in our favorite TV comedy. Anyone want to guess which show?

RIP Kitty

2009-11-05T14:38:00.001-08:00

This is Kitty back when he was a much younger cat.

Kitty was a different cat after his last disappearance. He was significantly friendlier and he rarely left the house for more than a few hours at a time. He also enjoyed hanging out with whomever was willing to be outside with him (humans or dogs). He became a pretty involved member of the family. Prior to his accident, he was more stand-off-ish and was afraid of all people except us. In fact, most people didn't believe that we had a cat because they'd never laid eyes on him! When my parents were visiting at the end of the summer, I think he even went so far as to rub up on the legs of one of them (to our shock!). He was a great lover of goats milk and would risk the dog's growling for a taste.

He retained many of his annoying habits after his accident, too. He still prefered to drink out of the bathroom sink and would sit there and meow until we complied. Luckily, he never felt the need to drink from the kitchen sink! He also got into the VERY bad habit of bringing us dead mice. Dead mice on the floor - good kitty. Dead mice on our bed? BAD KITTY!!

When I returned from Cabo late Monday night, he came in to greet me. He was also there the next morning 'helping' with my chores. If I wasn't up too early, he'd come out and walk with me as I did my morning chores. I believe that was the last time we saw him.

We keep hoping he'll just show up one day because he had been on 'walkabout'...but knowing his recent behaviour, we are pretty sure he wouldn't go far anymore. We are pretty certain he's met his untimely death. I only hope he didn't suffer.

RIP, Kitty. We'll miss you.

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

2009-11-02T17:36:00.000-08:00

5 of 7 of us at dinner on the first night (I'm on the left)

The pacific ocean crashes into the rocks along the beach.

The famous Cabo arch.

All but one of us set to head out for a birthday dinner celebration!

No, this post is not about anything even remotely sustainable, or green, or projects or recipes or anything homestead-like. This post is about mental burn out and the way to recharge....

CABO, baby! ;-)

Yes, I went on a trip to Cabo San Lucas with some women, most of whom I'd just met. The only person I had known for more than a few hours when we boarded the plan was the girl whose birthday we were celebrating. In fact, most of us on the trip were about the same age and that alone made it special. Add to that the fact that there were more non-mothers than mothers and you get a totally unusual dynamic. We had a blast!

We were there for 4 days and it wasn't enough! So much laughter, so much fun...so much sun, surf and smiles. I feel like a new woman. It was worth every penny (and we didn't spend many!) and every stressful minute leading up to departure.

And while I missed my husband, the dogs, and the goats (the cat and the chickens, no so much!), I'm glad I went. Even more importantly, I'm also happy to be home.

The Wood Shed

2009-10-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

The completed and filled woodshed as it looks today. There is room to stack the wood higher, but we don't anticipate needing that much wood this winter.

When we moved in, there was a good size pile of wood stacked up against the fence on one side of our property. It was held in place by t-posts and covered with a tarp. Last fall, we purchased additional wood entirely too late and had to pay a premium. We had to search far and wide because many of the normal sources were out. This was partly due to our late timing, and partly due to the downturn in the economy. How does the economy affect wood, you ask? Well, first of all, the rising cost of oil freaked everyone out, so those that might only have gotten a small supply of wood as supplement got more just in case they couldn't afford oil or natural gas. Secondly, because of the downturn in the housing market, less new homes were being built. Quite a bit of the wood sold as firewood is actually cast offs from lumber created for housing. When there aren't new houses, the demand for lumber goes down and so does the supply of 'cast-offs'. And lastly, when the lumber business falls off, workers get laid off. Less workers, less trucks, less lumber in general means less firewood available for burning.

We actually didn't know any of this when we first started looking, but I was hoping to find a local source anyway. We ended up lucking out - we found a tree farm not too far from us that sells firewood from their farm. Last year they delivered to us and we were able to make it through the winter with wood to spare.

This year, we opted to use the same farm. Business has been good for them, so they've now managed to secure a bigger truck with a dumping feature. My husband was happy to hear that as last year, he had to help the guy unload the truck by hand. This year, we got some wood from our neighbor, some from the apple trees we lopped off and two cords from this farm. This is what two cords looks like after it's dumped off a truck:

Cut and split wood awaiting stacking.

And this is our woodshed prior to stacking it. My H built this shed basically around the old pile. In fact, in this photo, you can still see the t-posts that held the old pile together. the wood already in the shed is what we had leftover from last year. The small pile in front is mostly our trimmings from our apple tree pruning.

Woodshed awaiting the bulk of the wood. A few hay bales are barely visible in the right most section. There is a low wall between the wood and the hay.

Since we don't know when a small barn will be in our budget, we intentionally built a small space to the right of the wood within the shed to house hay for the winter for the goats. We also are currently keeping the feed (both goat and chicken) as well as supplemental minerals in there, but as it gets wetter around here, that will have to change. I think we are going to look into some type of bin to store the grain in to keep out moisture. We don't keep all that much on hand, so they won't need to be too large. The 'floor' of the hay area is made of wooden pallets that we scavenged from the 'free' listings on craigslist. The floor of the wood area is dirt. We also planned for a sizeable overhang on the roof allowing us space to stand in front of whatever is stored but still remain out of the rain. The walls were left mostly open because the fence behind the shed will keep out most of the wind blown rain.

This year, our wood will stay nice and dry (and so will we as we bring it in!).

Plum Jam

2009-10-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

Beautiful red plums awaiting 'jamming'. I actually had to pick and process these all in one day because due to a sudden summer rain storm (unusual around here), they were all starting to split on the tree.

Washed, cut, pitted plums sitting in the bowl of my food mill. Aren't they a gorgeous color?

Plum puree exiting the food mill into a stainless bowl.

Jam being cooked.

For this recipe, I used the regular certo pectin and quite a bit of sugar. The jam turned out delicious but a tad sweet for my tastes. Next time, with this variety, I'll use either the low sugar pectin or Pomona's Pectin which sets with calcium, not sugar. I just bought a couple of boxes and I'm anxious to try it...too bad all of our fruit is past! I might just have to buy something at the store so that I can give it a shot this year.

I still need to take photos of the finished product but it is just beautiful! The red color looks so stunning sitting there on our shelves! These plums are probably my favorite item that we grow (right now, once the blueberries are mature it'll be a toss up). I just love these. When my parents were visiting, my father loved running out to the tree every morning to pick a few for his breakfast. They are spectacular for eating and *almost* as good in cooking. I've frozen quite a few bags of these, so I'll hopefully get the chance to use them in a few more recipes this winter.

We have recently been discussing where to put an inside drying line for once the rains start (like today!!) for laundry. As much as it's super convenient to use the dryer, once we are on solar, it'll be virtually impossible (only for emergencies). We are trying to learn to live with less NOW...so that means using a clothes line for more than just big quilts and bicycle clothing. ;-) And since this is so timely - I love Sharon's response on this very topic - to a NYT article... "If you think flapping underpants are scary..."

Where have I been?

2009-10-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

Cuke and tomato salad with fresh basil and oregano - 100% garden fresh treat!

You-know-what must be freezing over...here I am, to post once again! Can you believe it?

So yes, I've had to take a little time off from posting in this blog. As I mentioned in my last post, things have been nuts at work and it more often than not, spills over into my 'real' life creating havoc. Throw in out of town visitors and trying to get back into shape on top of the typical farm stuff (and fall harvest) and you've got the chaos that is my life these days. Ah...the joy of the small farm.

Let's see - what has happened since my last post?

My parents came to visit at the end of August. We spent 4 days together mostly doing projects around the house but getting in some dinners out and a visit or two to a local winery. As a result, our back deck is now no longer an embarrassment! We also managed to get quite a bit of 'brass' out with the trick of using metal paint (on heat grates, light fixtures, etc). The master bath no longer has any pink in residence (we did this prior to their visit) and we have pictures/artwork on the walls in many places were blankness reigned supreme earlier this year. It was really fun to have them here and they were a great help not only with projects, but also with picking plums, blackberries and zucchini. And the winery visits were a blast too - a quick internet search revealed 119 wineries in our immediate vicinity (seriously - less than a 50 mile radius!)...we visited 2 of the closest ones. 2 down, 117 to go! ;-)

We have since seen our first few frosts, so finally, months after they almost overwhelmed us, the zucchini has been put to rest. Of course, we still have humongous ones that we are slowing feeding to the goats, and a bag of smaller ones in the fridge that we will eat over the next few days. I picked all the remaining cukes last week, the peppers over the weekend and we are still harvesting about a quart of strawberries a week. The blackberries are done. The apples (we only had one tree produce this year) are done. The pears (very small harvest) are also done. I've got small sugar pie pumpkins all over the house (dining room, basement, kitchen, laundry room...) and we should be harvesting the remaining tomatoes this evening (quite a few are green). We still have swiss chard, carrots, parsnips, brussels sprouts, mixed greens and the monster kale still growing in the garden. Oh, and a few straggly broccoli plants as well. I just harvested the rest of the beans yesterday as well. The only thing that was a major dissappointment this year was the corn. We made a few mistakes, but we hope to do better next year.

Next on the list of things to do with the garden is to get the chicken coop on the weeds and get the garlic bed set up and planted. That will hopefuly happen this coming weekend. I'd also like to try doing some lettuce indoors again this year, so we'll see how that goes. We may still have enough daylight to do it in the green house over the next couple of weeks, so if I can get something going in there, it will be worthwhile.

Sass is doing well. She's had her first estrus cycle of the season about a week ago, so we are watching for the second one soon. We've already arranged her 'date'...so we should be good to go when she is ready. We weren't 100% sure we wanted to breed her again because we aren't really sure what our future holds in terms of goats. I think we may consider going to a smaller breed (Nigerian Dwarfs) since we have so little land, but we love Sass and would have a real difficult time both selling her, or forcing her to 'retire' when that's not what goats want to do (in nature, they keep producing basically until it kills them). We haven't made a decision yet, so until we do, we are going to continue with our original plan. If she has girls, and we decide to change breeds, they will be no problem to sell. In fact, we know a woman locally who is thinking about getting into a better milk producing breed (they need more volume) and Sass is amazing at it. In fact, just last Friday, she gave a full gallon at one milking!

The chickens are hanging in there. A couple of the reds appear to be molting, so the egg production is falling off a bit. This is to be expected this time of year with birds that are over a year old. We expect to have very few eggs this winter (if any)...but we'll see. We did buy a small incubator that we hope to utilize next spring. I'd like to get a couple of heritage breed bird eggs from a hatchery, and then do a couple of our own. The incubator only holds 7 eggs, but since we are a small operation, anything bigger than that would just produce too many chickens. Our plan is to do a few dual-purpose heritage breeds. These are birds that do not grow at the freakish lightning pace of the Cornish X (typical bird used in industrial chicken houses), but they are more natural and healthy. A dual bird means that they bulk good for eating but that they are also good layers. We'll hatch a straight run, butcher the boys at the right age for the freezer and keep the girls for layers. Lather, rinse, repeat. This way, we can provide our own birds over time. I don't know if there is a inbreeding danger with chickens, but we will research this before we get to that point.

Let's see...what else...

Still riding when I can but I haven't done much commuting at all. I did finally find my headlight mount, so I hope to do my first fall commute this week. It's dark until just before I arrive at work in the mornings right now, so good lighting is essential. (damn daylight savings!)

We are doing some research into solar power and water. We are trying to set up some appointments to talk to a few companies. Basically, we know that a barn is our first priority in terms of needs, but with all the incentives for solar out there, getting panels up may be a 'low hanging fruit' for us. Oh if only we would win the powerball! (I guess you need to buy tickets to win, huh?)

The woodshed is completed and stocked full of wood. We have plans to put up cross-fencing and start re-seeding the goat area as soon as the rains start (we need the ground to be a bit softer). We have also planned out the addition of a covered area to the front of the goat shed so that they have a rain-free place to hang out besides just inside the shed. We have also tried to determine when we want to fence in our front side yard. It's a big, wide open space that would make both good goat grazing and good chicken free-ranging, if it weren't so close to the road. The plan is to put up a privacy type fence along the road and then the typical wire/t-post fence on the insides so that we can use the space for more than just fetch with the dogs. Lastly, we have been discussing our chicken housing. We want to alter the current coop a bit, build a new one, and create a temporary one in our existing shed for the meat birds in the orchard.

Oh yeah, and because we don't have enough to do - we purchased a 1971 VW Super Beetle to restore! The good news is that this purchase forced us to get our garage organized and cleaned out. The bad news is that we haven't had much time to do any work on her yet (her name is Betty). I know...we are nuts. Go ahead, say it. I can take it. ;-)

When it rains, it pours...

2009-08-13T15:15:00.000-07:00

Or, in our case, when it doesn't rain, it pours! Does that even make any sense? No? Figures.

OK, I apologize for my absence, but I've been swamped as usual. Last month, my boss left our company for other opportunities and my team lead took his place. When this happened, I took over all but one of my team lead's products in addition to my own, and now I'm up to my armpits in work. It's a special challenge because I've got no less than 10 totally different products all at varying stages of development and all of which require my constant supervision. It is a balancing game, to be sure. In fact, my personal organizational skills have been forced into a major overhaul in the past few weeks and luckily, I seem to be coming out ahead. But barely!

On the homestead, things are buzzing along nicely. We have a beautiful tomato crop just starting to ripen, gorgeous red plums that we are devouring as fast as possible, blackberries just coming ripe and of course, the never ending supply of zucchini. This weekend, I'll be making MORE zucchini bread, freezing bags of it, and making a huge plethora of plum recipes. We had our first rain of the summer yesterday and as a result, all of our nearly ripe plums are now splitting open. It's going to be a mad dash to pick them all and save them before the birds and bugs get to them!

We also have one apple tree that is just about ready to start harvesting. In fact, I'm sure we'll be picking the first few bushels this weekend. Time to pull out the apple peeler/slicer and the food mill!

We have installed a new drip irrigation system initially to keep our tomatoes happy, but as we've discovered how well it's working, we've expanded it. We now have it in most of the boxes and half the row garden with plans to further expand. I'll do a whole post about it this weekend once I've had a chance to take some photos. It's really an amazingly simple and helpful system and we are both kicking ourselves that we didn't start this sooner!

Lastly, we are actually selling eggs faster than our chickens are laying them, so we are contemplating expanding our flock. We probably can't order layers right now (at least, not without ordering WAY more chickens than we have room for), so we are thinking about trying to hatch a few of our own eggs in an incubator. I also saw that there are a couple of 6 month old pullets at the local feed store, so we may take those off their hands. We just need to work on the logistics, first. Apparently, you can't just toss a couple of new chickens in with a flock without some prep work/controlled introductions ahead of time. Doing so would be cause for a chicken riot and probably cost us the lives of the new birds!

We are also selling goats milk occasionally, but all of our animals are thankful that our demand for goats milk has not yet outstripped supply. They LOVE that they all get the extra!

Lastly, both my H and I have been working very hard at getting healthy again. We've both let the craziness of the past year be an excuse to slack off on our own personal health and we decided jointly that enough is enough. We are eating better (and less) and we are actually working out in addition to the 'farm chores'. It's been about 3 weeks or so and we both feel SO much better. Now...if we can just keep this up until all our clothes all fit again, we'll be golden! ;-)

Zucchini invasion!

2009-07-24T13:00:00.001-07:00

Our first 'quantity' zucchini harvest awaiting the knife...

It’s that time of year again. You know, where people who live in rural areas start locking their car doors for fear of finding extra zucchini squash left on their front seats. I’ve pretty much always loved zucchini. I remember my mom growing a few plants, and I remember her saying that they were easy to grow, but I don’t remember bumper crops. My guess is that she had them, but that she found ways of disposing of them before they took over the countertops where I might have noticed them.

The last three summers that I’ve been gardening, we’ve only had a few. I had two plants in NC, but didn’t get a great crop due to lack of sun in the area of our garden. Last year, we had 3 plants, but again – not much of a crop. We planted very, very late though – and we weren’t great about watering.

This year, it’s a different story. My guess is that our success is partly due to experience and good weather, and partly due to the fact that I actually have been known to say “I don’t think you can EVER have too much zucchini”. Oops.

The above picture is our first crop. Since then, we’ve had that same number of squashes on our counter twice – and the size of them is increasing. In fact, yesterday, my H picked a couple of ‘baseball bat’ ones! Luckily, I’ve got tons of ways I plan on using them up.

Last weekend we dried slices in the dehydrator. It was quite quick and easy. I just sliced them using the mandolin slicer, laid them out on the trays, dusted them with seasonings and set it to dry. In about 10 hours later, we had chips! I did one tray of garlic, salt and pepper, one tray of adobo seasoning, one tray of hot adobo seasoning, one tray of just sea salt and 4 trays of plain. They were all delicious! Next time, I’m going to try a rosemary garlic combo and perhaps a barbeque type. I’d also love to try one with Tabasco, but I’m not sure how to do that yet.

Then I used up a few zucchinis in some baked goods. I made lemon zucchini muffins and cranberry walnut zucchini bars (brownie style), both of which were delicious! Lastly, my H made a zucchini and linguini baked casserole that is pictured below.

The zucchini casserole just after it came out of the oven.

This delicious recipe was from The Victory Garden Cookbook and is the second successful recipe we’ve made from that classic book. The casserole was made with my H’s homemade ricotta (or farmer’s cheese), spaghetti, sausage and tons of diced zucchini (we had no linguini on hand). We are still eating the leftovers!

This coming weekend, I’m going to make zucchini chocolate chip cookies, another zucchini bread recipe, zukamole (guacamole with zucchini instead of avocado), and a mock crab cake recipe that uses zucchini instead of crab! I will also be dehydrating more chips and a bunch of shredded zucchini so that we’ll have plenty to use come next winter. I also often toss diced zucchini pieces into pasta sauces or chili just to up the veggie-factor, so I may dehydrate some in cubes as well. We will also be eating it – sautéed, grilled, roasted - all YUMMY!

See, zucchini is so damn versatile that I just don’t see how it’s possible to have too much!! I’ll probably be eating those words (mixed with pureed zucchini) in about a month. ;-)

Making ricotta!

2009-07-10T09:45:00.001-07:00

Scooping the ricotta cheese curds out of the whey on the stove.

Last month, my husband made a great batch of fresh ricotta cheese from our goats milk. He did it using apple cidar vinegar (store bought but perhaps we can make our own this fall) and it was surprisingly easy. I don't remember all the temperatures or specific steps, but I can outline a general recap using the photos I snapped during the process.

Basically (like most cheeses), he heated up the milk and then added the vinegar. Once it curdled, he began gently scooping out the curds as shown in the above photo.

Ricotta curds in the cheese-cloth lined collander.

The curds went directly into a cheese cloth lined collander set in a stainless bowl. Because this is a soft cheese, the curds were only strained for a short while and they were not pressed at all. After straining, he stirred in a little salt and a little melted butter. Voila! Fresh ricotta!

Fresh ricotta cheese - ready for the lasgna!

We stored the ricotta covered in the fridge. I did taste it and it was more light and delicous than the store-bought variety. The next day, he made us a big pan of lasagna with the ricotta and it was delicious! The next goal will be to make our own mozzarella for the lasgna. And then...when the tomatoes are ripe - our own sauce from our backyard! Mmmm, I can't wait! Maybe that can be a goal for when my parents are visiting in August - truly homemade lasgna.

Show and tell

2009-07-09T16:01:00.001-07:00

This is our new bedding. I'm so excited to have a bed that looks inviting again! I'm not normally into the 'country' style, but there is no denying that it fits in this house.

Stirfry made with veggies from our garden. I was experimenting with an asian flare and some odd vegetables: peapods, swiss chard stalks, kohlrabi, garlic scapes, onions and broccoli. The only thing we didn't grow ourselves was the broccoli - that came from the farmer's market.

Our first zucchini! I made a saute using traditional green zucching and an unusual yellow zucchini. The green was delicious - the yellow was overpoweringly strong. I think we'll let the next batch grow a little bigger before harvesting. That'll take what, a day? ;-)

Artichokes! Our neighbors gave us a bucket full of artichokes from their garden. They are obviously not the green globe variety, but with any luck, they'll be just as tasty. The are certainly dangerous - those spines are sharp!

Seeking simplicity

2009-07-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

Red blackberries (or perhaps logan berries?) - these are just ripening, ahead of the blackberries. They taste like tart raspberries and I'm thinking that they'll make a amazing pie or jam.

As I sit here and type this on a fancy laptop, using wireless internet, while drinking imported coffee (sort of – imported from Hawaii) and wearing New Zealand wool…I can’t help but feel like a bit of a hypocrite. A big part of our ‘Simple Metamorphosis” is the idea of simplicity. Scaling back on things to make life simpler and ultimately, easier. This sounds like a virtuous endeavor, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Part of this movement for me was disposing of the ‘disposable’ lifestyle. This means that I refuse to buy clothing items that fall apart after a few washings or tools/equipment that are not built to last. Sometimes this means buying things that are not made in the USA. If I can find local products to rival the quality of the products I am buying from overseas, then I’m willing to spend a little more. Unfortunately, it’s often not a cost issue, but an availability issue. We bought a cream separator made in India because it was the only hand-crank one we could find. I have a lot of clothing from Ibex and they source their wool from New Zealand (though many of the items were at least made in the US) because there is just not as much US wool available (though, this is changing). I figure that buying one, good quality item once (even if made overseas) is better than buying a crappy item and having to replace it over and over again as the discarded versions end up in a landfill.

In addition, I struggle with wanting to use hand tools for everything. I’d like to always choose a whisk instead of a mixer, a hoe instead of a tiller, a bicycle instead of a car, a paint brush instead of a sprayer, and a goat instead of a lawn mower. The problem arises in our ever too dwindling time. Doing everything by hand takes much longer. And goats don’t mow lawn very well, either. ;-) So in trying to find a balance between work and play and between the office and the farm, we’ve made some compromises lately. In retrospect, I think we’ve done a little too much compromising. I can joke that we are ‘stimulating’ the economy, but in reality, we are getting away from our original purpose.

In the past month, we’ve bought a gas-powered weed trimmer (the rechargeable electric one held a charge for a whopping 15 minutes!), a riding lawn mower and a power painter. We are also talking about buying a gas-powered chain saw because when H gets the opportunity to go ‘logging’ with our neighbor for firewood, our plug-in electric one is not going to work. While all of these tools have saved us massive amounts of time (particularly the painter) that can now be spent on other pursuits, it’s still hard to come to terms with the consumerist spin that our life has taken, lately.

How does one effectively simplify? I guess that in our case, selling the farm would help. We could get out from under the mortgage that forces us both to keep our existing jobs. If we didn’t have that debt, living off a small farm income might be possible. Of course, having sold the farm, we wouldn’t have that small farm income to rely on, would we? We could continue as we are (with two full time jobs), working towards a day in the future where the mortgage is paid off, but to manage both, we need to make some compromises (like buying time-saving tools). There isn’t much else that we could do without – we have internet because my husband works from home, so it’s required. Our only magazine subscription is to Mother Earth News (the other two we get: Cooks Illustrated and National Geographic are gift subscriptions). We can’t give up our social life, our travel, our ‘toys’…because we don’t have any. We can’t consolidate debts to pay them off better because we don’t have much else besides the mortgage.

When I break it down into its small parts, it’s obvious that we are living pretty simply for a typical American couple with two incomes. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with doing the best we can as we strive to improve. I’ll take solace in the fact that nothing we’ve bought has been superfluous…and that someday, when neither of us has full time jobs, we can work towards cutting our grass with a scythe and washing our laundry by pounding it with rocks in the stream.

Honey harvest!

2009-07-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

One side of the frame full of capped honey.

So this weekend, my husband harvested our very first honey from our bees! He was waiting for them to basically fill the hive, so that they wouldn't be short come winter before we took any. Even then, we only took one frame and replaced it with a blank one so that they could immediately work on filling it up again.

He brought the frame into the kitchen were we took some photos. It is amazing how heavy it is! And so neat looking, too. (click on the photo to see it larger)

The flip side of the same frame from above - before honey comb removal begins.

Then he set about scraping all the honey comb off the frame. He put a small section into a plastic container to give to our neighbors, and the rest went into this stainless bowl. He then proceeded to mix it, making sure all the comb was well broken up.

Comb and honey are deposited in a bowl as they are removed from the frame.

Then he filled a 2 quart ball jar with it, stretched a clean nylon stocking over the opening, secured it with a ring and then inverted the jar on a second clean jar and taped them together.

About to begin straining!

About 5 minutes later, honey was already straining through the nylon hosiery and into the bottom jar - free of wax. When it's done (about 24 hours in a warm spot), we'll transfer the honey into small jars for storage and figure out how to clean up the wax. That'll also get saved for other uses.

The honey was delicious. It actually had a hint of flavor to it, but I can't place it. My first thought was almost a tangerine type taste, but that wouldn't make any sense. I'll just have to try more later (and keep trying) until I figure it out! ;-)

Bee's rock!

The calming effect of lists

2009-07-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Maggie doesn't make lists...but she does have a calming affect on me.

18 months ago, my husband and I learned of peak oil. A year ago, we relocated to the PNW and bought our 'homestead' (if you can call it that: a somewhat isolated 1 acre plot out in the country surrounded by large farms). When we moved here last spring, we saw the gas prices going up and the economy coming down. We felt tremendous pressure to get 'set up' for the worst. We scrambled to buy the house, get in a very late and meager garden, harvest every last apple and pear that we could, and acquire all the 'tools' we'd need. We were suburban DINKs who had no idea where to start and we were horribly overwhelmed. We'd make runs to Coscto to stock up on any food that we felt would keep regardless of if we'd ever eat it. I readily gave up new clothing and shoes (and sold my 'fancy' car) so that we could afford a water filter, cords of wood and fencing for the goats. But, I felt like I was in a constant state of panic. When I broke down one afternoon because I couldn't get the apple cider press to work and I thought the hundreds of pounds of apples we'd washed and readied were going to go to waste, I knew I’d hit a turning point. I knew then that I needed to take a step back.

Eventually, we came to realize that we couldn't do it all at once. We were only two people and we both had full time jobs. We also realized that if we didn't put in 100% (or more) at work, we'd be in danger of losing those jobs. Some things on the 'farm' would have to wait.

We ended up making a huge list of all the things we needed and wanted. This list included things like a grain mill, a pole barn, a well, a pressure canner and even tile to resurface the counters in the kitchen and the bathroom. Then we spent some time prioritizing that list. We divided things into what we needed and what we'd like to have: things that were necessary and things that were a luxury. We also took the time to decide if we could make do with some things to allow us time to save cash for others. This list was constantly changing - the day we found out that our siding was trashed and had to be replaced, the entire list shifted around. Then we discovered that water damage over the front overhang was going to require another shift so that we could pay for the repairs. A larger tax refund than we'd ever before seen allowed us to shift again (in a good way).

We still use this list. Every time we think of something else that would make our lives easier, it goes on the list before we make the purchase. And every time we stumble upon a deal, it helps us knock one more thing off the list and a chance to shift things around once again. For example, we really need a small barn. We need a better way to keep and separate the goats (particularly before the next kidding season). We also are pretty sure we are close to needing a new roof on the house. These things will go on the list and get prioritized appropriately. There is also an advantage to this in that it allows us to keep track of how far we’ve come. Nothing gets deleted – things just get crossed off. This also gives me a sense of purpose. I can forgo buying a new sweater knowing that we have a goal for something I do want more (like a barn) and that each sacrifice gets us one step closer.

Over the past month, I've been slacking on the list-making. Not only adding things to the big one, but just my little day to day lists. My husband makes fun of me because I am constantly making lists. My boss just discovered that I do this and joked that his wife will put something she's already done onto a list just so that she can cross it off. Yep, I do that too! While the idea of listing out all the things that need doing sounds like it could seriously stress a person out, it has the opposite effect for me. Once it's on paper, I don't have to hold it in my fore-brain anymore. I'm free to think of other things. Plus, having it all spelled out means that I can effectively prioritize the things that need doing and therefore make the most of my time.

I have no idea why I got away from this habit lately, but I now realize that it is a MAJOR contributor to my stress-levels. I've been making small lists again and I'm about to organize one for all the things that need doing into one big pile. I also think I need to update the list of items to accomplish in my sidebar as well.

Even thinking about making a new list is helping me relax. Good, just in time for the long weekend! ;-)

One thing leads to another

2009-07-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

A somewhat limited view of our garden area before there was a garden.

Despite what I said in my 'end of rope' post from a couple of weeks ago, things are going well. I had my little breakdown and as I normally do, I dusted myself off and got back to work. We've made some nice 'sanity saving' progress since then.

First of all, we have been slowly fixing things up around the house. I realized that having a half-done home makes me antsy, so this has definitely helped. My husband has also put some of his focus into getting the outside of the house fixed up, so he's been working on painting. This will be a big project for us this coming weekend (see to do list).

Lastly, we've shifted from predominantly planting to predominantly harvesting in the garden. As evidence of this, I present the following picture story....

First, we start with what you see in the above photo - a field.

Then we build boxes and fill them with dirt and seeds. Water regularly.

Wait a few weeks to get this:

The boxes are overflowing with greens! Swiss chard, kale, spinach, lettuce, mustard greens...

Which leads to this:

Freshly harvested and washed swiss chard

Which in turn, leads to this:

Swiss chard and artichoke dip

And this:

Swiss chard and tuna salad

And through a trade with friends for their abundant cherries, this:

My first ever cherry pie!

It was delicious, but I think I can do better and a different friend has promised me some sour cherries...so I'll get a chance to try again later this month.

In the meantime, we are working towards giving away or eating as much of our harvest as we can (much to the delight or pain of our digestive systems!) so that nothing goes to waste. When all else fails, I dehydrate the item and hope to find ways of using it later on when things are less hectic.

Towards that end, this is our tenative to do list for the coming long weekend -

Garden:

Harvest as necessary

Put up bean arch and cuke trellis

Transplant the last seedlings from the greenhouse

Add mulch from goat shed

Mow lawn

House:

Finish painting the trim

Scrape the eaves in prep for painting

Pressure wash anything not already done (including the deck)

Tape plastic over all "non-blue" items

Rent sprayer and paint everything not covered!

Order house numbers

Put up dining room lighting

Animals:

Worm goats

Clean out goat shed for mulch

Set up cross-fencing

Wash milking stand

Fun:

Definitely one and maybe two bike rides

Set off fireworks on Saturday

And that's it. Not bad for a three day weekend's worth of work, right? I'm confident that we can get all this done without too much headache.

The Magic Mill

2009-06-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Our "Magic Mill" grain mill! This is the engine side of it. The wood top lifts open and there is a hopper there for the whole grains.

One of the items on our original 'to buy eventually' list was a flour mill. We are working towards having a working pantry (meaning that it's stocked with the things we use and that we are using these things on a regular basis). There a number of reasons for this. First of all, we live out in the country. There is a market about 3 miles away, but it's very expensive and very small. The next closest is about 8 miles away. If we run out of something, it's no longer just a jaunt down to the corner. Secondly, we need a place to store the things we preserve. This goes along with the idea of being sustainable, too. The more we can store, the less we need to buy from other sources. Lastly, we want to have plenty on hand for emergencies. All grocery stores work with very little back stock. If you were to cut off the supply trucks, those shelves would empty in a matter of days (or hours if there was a panic). Think about the water/battery supply in FL when a hurricane approaches....or the milk/bread situation in the northeast when a blizzard is forecasted...it's not fun, is it? I'd rather not contribute to that. If our supply lines got cut off tomorrow, we'd have plenty of food for us and the animals for at least a month or more. I'd like that time frame to be 6 months eventually (easy for humans - harder for animals).

Anyway, as part of this storage plan, a grain mill can really help but the good ones are quite expensive. We prefer whole wheat flour to white for the nutritional benefits. Whole wheat doesn't keep very long before it goes rancid due to the fact that it contains the whole wheat berry - fats and all. Additionally, keeping on top of flour stores is annoying and I admit that if I can cut corners, I will. This means storing the whole wheat berry in it's intact form. These berries keep WAY longer than ground flour, so we don't have to be as dilligent about rotation. We can grind what we need when we need it. Plus, fresh ground flour? How cool is that?!

We were at dinner at a friends house a couple of months ago and jokingly made mention of a good place in their kitchen to put the grain mill. When they mentioned that his parents had one that they used we asked if maybe they wanted to sell it. A week or so later, we find out that they didn't want to sell their current one, but that they had an older model that they no longer use and would be willing to part with! Score for us! So we bought it from them and we love it. It's a Magic Mill grain mill in a wooden cabinet. They stopped making these in the 70's, but it's definitely good quality. They even had the owners manual to it! It is both electric powered and it has a hand-crank which while I know it won't be an easy task, it appeals to the greener side of me. So far, we've only done the one test batch, but it worked well and we look forward to stocking up on whole grains for future grinding.

The flour falls into a stainless steel pan - pulled out the back so that you can see the flour.

This is the back side of it. The little door that I am holding up is where the pan goes. The grains get dumped in the top.

Independence Days Update #6 (ish)

2009-06-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

1. Plant something – This past weekend, we planted the balance of the corn and some beans in places where no beans sprouted. Other than that, not much. We do still have a few cherry tomato plants that need transplanting and a few squash varieties (winter ones) that can go out into the garden any time now. We hope to get these out this week.

2. Harvest something – Tons and tons of kale, swiss chard and spinach. Also a few herbs here and there, a couple of strawberries as snacks while in the garden and a handful of peas (our first!).

3. Preserve something - Dried two dehydrators full of kale and spinach this weekend. The rest got cooked (see #7). I did one batch by blanching it first and the second batch by just drying. Then I rehydrated a leaf from each to see which turned out better. Both worked well enough but I think the blanched version was more successful. I also finally tasted the milk that I canned a few weeks ago. It tasted totally different than I thought it would! From the color, it looks a bit carmelized, so I expected it to be a little sweet. It totally wasn’t at all. It was almost cheesy tasting. Certainly not good for just drinking, but I saved the jar I opened and I’m going to try using it for cooking to see how that works. The taste wasn’t too far off, so I imagine it’ll work fine. The texture was at least good – which is more than I can say for what you get when you freeze raw milk. Ick.

4. Reduce waste – This was pretty funny. After I’d removed all the tough stems on the kale to dehydrate it, I had a huge pile wrapped in a dish towel. I went to take it out to the compost but walked by the goats on my way. I thought ‘lets see if they like this’ and sure enough, Sass almost knocked the whole pile out of my arms in her enthusiasm so gobble it up. Ok, note to self, goats first…compost second! We have also been diligent about keeping on top of the milk production and anything too goaty for us goes to the chickens. This reduces how much feed we need to buy. In fact, we found that throwing the leftover whey from yogurt and cheese making into old milk makes a nice gloppy mess that the chickens go nuts over!

5. Preparation and Storage – We moved our little wine fridge down to the basement (where it’s cooler and therefore has to work less) and then removed all the wine. Our basement is the perfect 60 degrees for red wine (year-round), so we don’t need the cooler. Instead, we lowered the temp until it was at 50 F and now use it for ageing our cheese which needs the slightly cooler temps. Excellent!

6. Build Community Food Systems – We traded goats milk for a big ole bag of cherries off a friend’s tree. Our cherry trees aren’t really producing yet, so this was a huge help to us (plus, they can only eat so many!). I made a pie and hope to dehydrate some with the next exchange. Our friends are using the goats milk to make yogurt.

7. Eat the Food – Cherry pie: delicious! Swiss Chard tuna salad: YUM! Swiss chard and artichoke dip: awesome!! Kale and corn: from this book "A New American Plate Cookbook".

End of Rope in Sight

2009-06-19T14:40:00.001-07:00

One of our multiple peony plants - aren't they just gorgeous?!

Yes, I see the end of the rope that is supporting me...and it's rapidly getting closer. I'm close to falling off then end into the abyss as I appear to lose a little more of my grip each day. Ugh.

This is why I have been remiss about blogging. I'm overwhelmed and dwelling on just about every subject on which I could write a blog post only serves to heighten my sense of panic.

What the hell am I talking about, you ask? Ah...well, it seems that trying to run a homestead is a full time job. Unfortunately, I already have one of those and so does my husband. I've spent the last year of my life trying to tell myself that not only can I do it all, but that I'm loving it, that I'm deliriously happy, and that it's ok if everything isn't perfect. First of all, I'm a liar. It's not ok if everything isn't perfect - or at least it's not ok when absolutely nothing is perfect. Secondly, I cannot do it all as clearly evidenced by the state of our house, the state of my body and the state of my sanity. And while I do love a lot of it, I am not deliriously happy. I'm stretched so thin that instead of a letting a few things slide, everything is suffering. My typical do it all type A personality is having major issues with this.

Between the animals, the garden, the rest of the property, the house on the outside, the house on the inside, my job, my fitness, my health and my marriage, I am pulled in a lot of different directions at any given moment. Every one of these items deserves my undivided attention (or at least, SOME undivided attention) and it's not happening. I'm doing everything I do only partway because that's all I can manage. That's not good enough and not only is it tough on all those different things (you should see our house!), it's tough of my sense of self-worth and my sanity.

So what is the answer? Beats me. If I could do whatever I wanted, I'd quit my job and homestead 100% of the time. I think my husband would choose to do the same thing. That's not an option (at least, not financially anyway). What are the other options? I'm not sure yet.

We need to do some more talking, some more thinking, some more figuring. The main question is, am I capable of living both lives simultaneously in the present for the chance of living the life I want in the future? When we started this endeavor, my answer was an easy yes. Now, with first-hand knowledge of what this actually entails, the yes does not come so easily anymore.

One less chicken

2009-06-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is Caesar and possibly Bonny behind him. I don't have any recent pictures of Bruno as he was basically incapable of standing still for me. If we were around, he was in 'attack' mode.

We said our goodbyes to our extra rooster on Monday. We tried dilligently to find him a home but no one wants an extra rooster and certainly not one with an attitude problem. This guy was begining to be a real issue for us. He was constantly attacking us. He'd wait until we turned our backs and then would fly at us with his spurs aimed for damage. Luckily, these spurs are still fairly small and don't do much damage....yet. More than once, he'd run at me only to be intercepted by the other rooster. The bigger, calmer one has saved me so often that I lost count. I don't let the mean rooster push me around, but roosters are not like dogs - they can't be trained.

Plus, having two was just too much for our 9 girls. They were getting way more 'attention' than they should and it's hard on them and disrupting for the flock.

My H put the rooster down with the shotgun the other day. He neatly burried him before I got home and then it took him a solid 20 minutes before he'd convinced me that he'd really done it. I was a bit bummed because I really wanted to use this rooster as practice for when we have to butcher our own birds, but this is probably better. First of all, he was probably too old to eat without cooking the crap out of the meat and secondly, we've got enough things on our plate that we just kept putting it off. The flock is much calmer and more peaceful now. The main rooster (Caesar) is doing well and is plenty capable of watching over this flock on his own.

RIP Bruno. I'm sorry that you couldn't learn to play nice and hopefully you are in a happy place with your own flock to watch over now.

Independence Days Update (#??)

2009-06-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

Some of our boxes as they looked last weekend. Growth has just exploded in the past two weeks for everything!

I'm more than a little behind in my updates, so this one will attempt to cover everything we've done since the last update in one big mess...

1. Plant something - Pretty much our entire garden is planted and awaiting mid-July for the fall items to go in. We still have some starts in the greenhouse to transplant (mellons and a couple of tomato plants) but everything else is happily growing already. We've got multiple types of tomatoes, peas, greens, beans, melons, squash, cukes, onions, carrots, parsnips, beets, brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, etc), strawberries, potatoes, lettuce and corn in the ground and sprouting. We've also got herbs, sunflowers, marigolds and things to chase away bugs, help the bees and beautify the place.

2. Harvest something – herbs, green onions, kale, green apples, spinach, garlic scapes, strawberries, eggs and milk.

Strawberries (Hood variety) from a local farm stand that I pass on my way home everyday.

3. Preserve something – Canned milk for the first time last weekend. We haven't opened one to try it yet, but it looks good. I've heard it'll taste a bit sweet and slightly cooked. Hopefully it'll be good for making oatmeal or cooking if not for drinking. We've got so much milk that we are considering buying another small fridge for it. We are making cheese every spare minute we've got, so hopefully we'll be able to keep up. We are also selling it to a few friends and giving it to our neighbors.

4. Reduce waste – I have been saving my dish water (I hand wash the milking equipment because we can't run the dishwashe that often) to use for watering plants. We also have started saving the whey from cheese and yogurt making to feed to the chickens. We've heard that too much into the septic system will cause trouble, so we are trying to avoid it. Our yardsale pile is growing and we really, really need to get organized enough to hold one.

5. Preparation and Storage - Dehydrated strawberries and canned strawberry jam along with the milk I mentioned above. We are making plans to expand our rain barrel system to include the goat shed and the new wood shed that my H built. This weekend, I'll be dehydrating kale as it is taking over the garden right now. I'm also going to try my hand at extracting pectin from the green apples. We've thinned quite a few from a few trees to feed to the goats, but there are TONS more that need to come down. I've done some reading and will try making pectin this coming weekend for the late summer jam season.

6. Build Community Food Systems - We have been sharing eggs and milk with our neighbors and they in turn have given us tons of delicious strawberries to devour. We have also made arrangements to trade a day's worth of physical labor for all the wood we can haul for our woodstsove next winter. Yay!

7. Eat the Food - We are doing lots of this! My H made a delicious goats milk ricotta last week and then turned it into a fabulous lasagna using ground beef from our CSA. It'll be even better when we can make it using our own tomatoes and basil later this summer! I also made a spinach and cheese strata for the second time but I made a few of my own modifications. I used our garden spinach (8 cups worth!) , 9 eggs from our girls, 3 cups of fresh goats milk, fresh organic french bread from the local market (yes, I could have made the bread but I only have so much time) and pork sausage from our CSA. It turned out delicious! Tomorrow I'll be making a stir fry with some kale, some garlic scapes, some green onions and some mustard greens - all from our garden. Oh, and I'm a BIG fan of goats milk yogurt, strained so it's a bit thicker, with a tablespoon of my fresh strawberry jam. The jam is a tad sweet on it's own but it is just perfect with the tang of the yogurt. I've been snacking on this every day this week! Eating the things we produce is definitely my favorite part of this whole farming thing we've got going on here. ;-)

Country living is dangerous

2009-06-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

Kitty in his happier, healthier days... (he no longer wears a collar because it's too dangerous and could get caught on things around the farm)

We have an indoor/outdoor cat. He's been with us since we got our dogs, so quite awhile and he's always been able to come and go as he pleases. He is also quite timid, so he rarely goes far and certainly not for very long.

On Wednesday, I noticed that he didn't come bug me for water when I got up. My routine includes feeding and watering ALL the animals, cat included, so when he was absent, I noticed. I was up super early though, so I figured he was still out hunting or he was sleeping. When he wasn't around for dinner that night either, I asked my H if he'd seen him and he said he'd fed him during the day.

We didn't see him Thursday or Friday either. By Friday, my H admitted that he may not have seen him on Wednesday either..that he might have gotten the days confused. We have lots of coyotes around here, so we pretty much figured he was dead. I kept hoping that he wasn't lying in a ditch somewhere in pain. On Friday, we talked about getting another cat but that we had to wait at least a month in case Kitty did come back.

On Saturday morning, I came in from milking and my H called me into the bedroom. He had Kitty in his lap and he was purring up a storm. He was in bad shape though - we assumed coyotes. His head had a huge gash/puncture in it with a hunk of missing fur, he had a big puncture in his side about 2/3rds of the way down his body, and one eye was bulging out a bit.

We have not been able to get him to drink or to eat at all. He sleeps a lot (which we encourage), but when he's awake, he's either walking in small circles or walking against a wall or furniture. He's also abnormally affectionate to both us and to our dogs (much to Maggie's discomfort!). He didn't even want goats milk and all our animals are normally super excited about it. We have been feeding it to him with an eye dropper for the past two days, which he seems OK with, but he will not take it on his own.

The more we inspect him the more we are sure of two things 1) he has brain damage and 2) he was not attacked by coyotes. First of all, how could he have gotten away and secondly, how could he be virtually free of blood and injury outside of two punctures, if it was a wild animal that did this? No, we are pretty sure some asshole shot our cat.

My H is taking him to the vet today. We are prepared to have him put down if he is as internally damaged as we fear. He's clearly not enjoying life and if it weren't for his constant purring anytime we are around, we'd have written him off sooner. I am glad that he came home so that if he does die, at least it will be in relative comfort. My H found him hiding under corner of the tarp that covers our woodpile. I would hate to think how awful I'd have felt if he had died there and that's where we found him next fall when we started using that wood again.

Think 'pain-free' thoughts for our poor beat up kitty, would you?

UPDATE: The vet doesn't think it's a gunshot wound...he thinks he was hit by a car or something. What we didn't notice (that the vet did) was that he's missing a tooth (one of his fangs) and the place were it used to be is totally infected. That is also the same side of his face where is eye is bulged out - the vet thinks there was some trauma there (obviously enough to cost him a tooth) and with the combined infection, he's swollen affecting his motor skills. We have noticed slight improvement since he's been home, so it all fits. My H was sent home with pain meds and antibiotics and with any luck, Kitty will be back to his old self before too long. He did chow down on the can of special wet food we bought him yesterday when they got home, so things are already looking up.

Yay!

The Goat Babies are Gone

2009-06-03T12:11:00.001-07:00

All the goats sharing a little grass - both boys, Sass and Buddy (in the back).

Yes, today our little goat 'boys' (they aren't really babies anymore) were picked up by their new owners. They are going to live with the family from whom we get our grass-fed pork and beef on a farm in the next town. The family has 6 boys, some of which are quite young, so they'll have lots of humans to climb on (until they get too big, of course!). I shed a small tear for them when I said goodbye this morning. I was walking away and little Pepe stood there watching me like he always does and it tugged at my heart knowing that he won't be there when I get home.

My H said that they didn't cry or anything and that once both goats were in the small horse trailer, they weren't upset. I know they'll have a happy life full of all the blackberries they can eat!

Oreo after cleaning up any leftover grain in Buddy's dish.

Pepe looking like his usual sweet self.

The two boys sharing Buddy's leftover grain. They get along really well for brothers.

How we usually see Pepe - up close! This is also how I'll remember him. He's always the first goat to approach humans. He's very friendly and likes to be in a human lap.

We will both miss these guys a lot. The first animals born on our farm are now on to greater adventures. I'm really looking foward to the next kidding season now!

Slammed with Spring

2009-06-02T16:08:00.001-07:00

My appologies to all my readers for my absense. It's amazing how quickly life can fly by when you are busy, no? I cannot believe that it’s been almost a month since I last posted!

I’m not going to recap all that’s happened during that time but in summary: lots of planting , a little bit of harvesting, some dehydrating, some hair cutting, some eye surgery and some biking was had by our little household. And now for the photos:

One branch of my favorite plum tree - full of plums. We are going to have a bumper crop of these babies this year!

The 'row garden' area. The mess down the left is potatoes, in the distance you can see garlic, tomatoes and where the beans are planted (the fencing/trellis in the middle). The black covers to the right are the sweet potatoes.

The grape arbors as they just start to show leaves (and a few tiny grapes) with our greenhouse at the end of the first aisle.

CD's hanging from twine to scare away birds. Garlic in the foreground, tomatoes behind. You can see how close our boxes are to the edge of the row garden, too (in the distance).

The field of boxes - mostly planted at this point. I need to add one more trellis for the cukes and plant a few random items, but these are pretty much done until mid-summer when we plant the fall items.

Independence Days Update #3

2009-05-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

1. Plant something - We spent entirely too much time first mowing and then biking that the weekend planting got delayed. I'll be doing most of it today, after work. The plan is to get some more carrots and parsnips planted, and some more lettuce. We also need to sit down and plan out what goes into the last couple of unplanted box and how we are going to organize the row garden area before next weekend arrives. I spent quite a bit of time hoeing up weeds in the row garden area in prep for next weekend's marathon planting session AND we covered up the bottom of some of our potato plants that are already getting big. I also discovered that the rosemary that I cut from our neighbors bush has taken root, so I'm very excited about that.

2. Harvest something – outside of cutting some more lilacs, there hasn't been much harvesting going around yet. I did cut down many (painful) armfuls of wild black berry canes to feed the goats. Not quite a human harvest, but a harvest none-the-less!

3. Preserve something – no preservation this week.

4. Reduce waste – Switched out my autodish soap this week. I was using this HUGE canister that I'd bought at Costco over a year ago and it's finally gone. I've now moved from little tablets in plastic bags, to Ecover biodegradeable detergent that comes in only cardboard packaging (that is recycleable). I also have started using baking soda and white vinegar in place of fabric softener. As soon as we run out of laundry soap, I'm going to refill the big canister from the auto dish soap with a borax mix (recipe from a book I got for Christmas) to use instead. Eventually, I want to replace all my cleaners with homemade ones - reducing what I need to buy and what we need to throw out. If we can only find time to make goats milk soap - it'll reduce one more thing we'll need to buy, too!

5. Preparation and Storage - I am signed up for the food storage class. We also got out on the bikes this weekend - after a tough day of farm work, we had a tough day of biking. I can barely move today but what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right? We also stocked up on some pet food - but I need to invest in a better storage method for it besides just stacking up the feed bags in the garage. It's fine for now while it's cool in there but it's not going to be a good method when the summer heat hits.

6. Build Community Food Systems - Not much to report on this front. Local farmers markets open next weekend though! We are actually thinking that we may need to sign up for a booth later this summer so I'm going to make a point of looking into how we do this before next weekend.

7. Eat the Food - We skimmed 6 quarts of goats milk on Sunday before our bike ride, so I'm excited to have plenty of milk to drink this week (I can't drink it whole except in my coffee...it's an issue I have). I also finished another jar of apple butter this morning, so I'm looking forward to opening a new one from the pantry! Oh, I got a cool book from some friends of ours about cooking within season from local foods, so I'm hoping to set aside time to make a recipe or two from that this week.

RIP Little Maple

2009-05-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

Sweet little Maple last winter - We are going to miss this girl.

We had our first real farm casualty today. I was in the kitchen cleaning up a little before heading out to work on the yard while Rick was letting the chickens out. We free-range them in the fenced in goat area to keep them safe from the neighbor's dogs. Instead of letting the goats out while we heard the chickens in, Rick takes each one out of the coop and gently tosses them over the fence. He tossed Maple over, and then went to pull out another bird. By the time he was back with another one, Maple was lying on her side and kind of flopping around. Her eyes were open, but something was clearly not right. By the time Rick had run around the fence to the gate and into the pen to check on her, she was dead.

He brought her to the back porch where we basically said our good byes. I then burried her in the yard in an area that she liked to hang out in. We have no idea what happened to her. She was always the smallest bird (by a lot), so we think she may have had something defective about her. None of the other birds are showing any signs of any malady. Of course, neither did Maple until the last minute of her life. :-(

Maple was the one girl who had a really distinctive personality. She was actually pretty smart (for a chicken). She was friendly, adventurous, and always curious. She was a consistent layer, and she layed the cutest little green eggs. Her yolks were always the darkest (probably because she was always the first chicken to get the worms!). When she was a chick, she was tiny. When we sold three birds (one of each type), we picked out the smallest ones to go except for Maple. Even as a chick, she was friendly, so I wanted to keep her even though she was small. Of all the chickens, we had the most affection for little Maple.

She will be missed.

Maple as a tiny little chick The 'easter egg' birds were easily the cutest chicks of the bunch!

10-mile meal to become a 100-foot meal

2009-05-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

Blackberry topped goat's milk yogurt

For the past couple of days, I've been having a breakfast that is currently about a 10-mile meal. I'm having home-made yogurt made with our raw goat's milk (and then strained to make it a little thicker), topped with blackberries that we picked last summer and froze, and then drizzled with honey that comes from a farm up the road in the next town. I bought the honey because it was 'local' but I didn't know how local it actually was until we passed the farm when out biking a couple of weekends ago. I figure that if we drove directly there, it would be about 10 miles from us. This meal is not only a wonderfully filling and refreshing breakfast, but it brings back sunny memories from last summer. And if I have this same breakfast next spring - I'll be using our own honey and will be calling it a 100 foot meal!

This past weekend, we did a bunch of planting. I put in seeds for some more kohlrabi (the previous seeds were pretty churned up by baby goat hooves...so I doubt they'll sprout if they are even still in the same location!), some different lettuces, turnips, beets, parsnips and carrots. Because carrot seeds are so small, it's hard to not just dump them in the soil and then keep them thinned. But I suck at thinning because I just hate to terminate the life of those little potential pieces of food! I got this idea from a forum I belong to for planting carrot seeds. They were using newspaper, but since I didn't have any readily available, I used TP. I gently spread out the carrot seeds on a dry strip of TP. Then I folded it over the seeds into thirds and lightly misted it with water. Then I layed them on a piece of tinfoil to carry them out to the garden. It worked really well! Now lets see how well they sprout. :-)

Carrot seeds in TP strips prior to planting in the ground.

We stopped by ACE to use up the last of a gift card we had to buy another rain barrel. While we were there, I decided to see if they had canning jars yet. They didn't, but they were so helpful in letting me order some that I decided it was time to start stocking up again. I selected 3 wide mouth pint cases and 5 wide mouth quart cases for now. We'll need more later on, but I can wait for local sales for futher purchases. ACE called me two days later to say that my jars were in, so we picked them up last night. I always feel better with more jars available to me. I'll feel even better once these are full of home grown produce and safely tucked away in the pantry!

The canning jar 'tower' awaiting a trip to the basement.

Independence Days Update #2

2009-05-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

1. Plant something - We had to replant a few things that our goats took out, but in addition to that I started seeds for summer stuff like okra, melons, sunflowers and also for some fall items like winter squash (pumpkins, acorn squash, blue Hubbard, etc). I also direct sowed kohlrabi, spinach and lettuce and I transplanted some other lettuces and some Brussels sprouts. We also received our sweet potato starts and our sunchokes via mail - those will be planted a little later.

2. Harvest something – does cutting some lilacs to make our house smell WONDERFUL count?

3. Preserve something – I don't think I did any preservation at all this week. That's not good. Next week, we are making cheese - so that will count towards preserving some of our milk, right?

4. Reduce waste – I know this is silly, and I should have done it sooner, but I started washing for reuse all of our veggie bags this week. We are good about using cloth for the main bags, but for some reason, if I needed a plastic veggie bag, I used one. I try to avoid using any bag, if I can, but when you are buying a bunch of green beans, they need to go into something! This week, I decided it was high time I started reusing those bags for more than just picking up dead mice that the cat leaves for us. I washed and dried some and immediately put them into our cloth grocery bags for the next trip.

5. Preparation and Storage - We ordered and received a hand pump for our cistern well. If all else fails, we will be able to hand pump water and then purify it in our Berkley filter. I am also going to sign up for Sharon's Food Storage class if she's still got space available.

http://sharonastyk.com/2009/05/05/food-storage-class-syllabus/

6. Build Community Food Systems - Our goats got out last week. My H was out of town and I was at work and luckily, our neighbor's dog alerted them to the fact that there was something odd going on. They put the goats back in their paddock before they could totally destroy our garden. I'm not sure if this counts as building community or not, but we did promise to share with them some of the veggies they saved! I also shipped two jars of blackberry jam from last year to my mom. One for her and my dad and one for her to give to another friend of hers. It's not local, but it is building community!

7. Eat the Food - We are working towards using up what is in our pantry before we start filling it again. I used up the last of last years tomatoes (frozen) in the chili I made over the weekend. We are still enjoying canned pears, apple butter and miscellaneous other goodies from our pantry on a weekly basis. This morning, I had a 100-foot meal (almost). I had freshly made goat's milk yogurt with frozen blackberries (from last summer) and drizzled with honey. The honey is local but store bought for now...by next year, it'll be our own!

Garden updates and escape artists

2009-04-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

We got the garden almost completely done. I still need to add a low edging barrier at the ends of the aisles so that the rocks stay in and don't end up in the grass. We obviously still need to do some planting as well. See all the little plants at the far end? See how everything is nicely growing? Yeah...that was yesterday. Today, it's different. Read on and you'll learn why...

This is the area of the row garden that I hoed (is that a word?) and then covered with composted manure. It's ready for planting this coming weekend.

This is where my main herb garden will go. Or at least, where my initial one will be....I may have to expand to a sunnier area eventually. We will be adding a gate at the top of the steps and a fence pretty much at the front of this photo to keep the dogs out (they are the reason there is nothing else growing here anymore!).

Our potato experiment - growing potatoes in a garbage can! (holes drilled in the bottom for drainage).

Our garlic - doing very well. I'm excited! (I didn't check to see if its still there after today's little episode. I certainly hope so!

This is the 'early' apple tree. It was the first to ripen last year and now we see why...it's in full bloom before most of the other trees have any blossoms at all. Gorgeous!

This is Pepe. He's generally the instigator and likely the goat at fault for today's garden debacle.

And this is Oreo (at 4 weeks old). He probably didn't start the problem, but he definitely contributed to it.

My husband got home from a business trip today around 5 pm. He calls me at work and asks what happened to the garden. As I had just toured it this morning, I had no idea what he was talking about. I did see some evidence that our stupid cat is using the dirt as a litter box, but he usually doesn't disturb sprouted/growing plants. My H said that there were plants eaten, dug up, pulled out, etc. Small footprints in just about every box, too. I had no idea what to tell him but we were both ready to blame the cat.

I get home from work about an hour and a half later, and he says he knows what happened. Apparently, he spoke to our neighbors. I had told them that he was out of town for a few days, so when they saw our goats roaming our property, they thought something was wrong. They managed to get Sass back to the goat pen, only to find that the gate was still securely latched! We think that the kids managed to slip under the lower part of the gate and once they were out, mom had to follow along. She must have squeezed her big body out of the gate! Wherever Sass goes, Buddy has to follow - so now all 4 goats were free to roam. The only obvious damage was to the new plants in the garden. They destroyed about half our strawberries, most of the kale, some of the collards and all the celeriac leaves. They did not touch the celery (no surprise - they won't eat it when we offer it to them!) or the peas (thank goodness). The kids left footprints everywhere, so we think we'll need to resow all the seeds we planted, too. What a pain! I am glad that it happened now while we still have time to replant, though. We are super pleased that our neighbors took it upon themselves to help us out. I'm going to bake them something yummy as a thank you and take that to them with a fresh container of goat's milk this weekend.

This weekend's todo list? Neuter the kids, replant the garden, and rethink the goat gate!

Cast-iron fun and my herbal future

2009-04-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

The cast-iron cornbread pan - would make great banana bread as well, I think!

So over the weekend when we had to make the trip to go pick up our CSA share, we decided that a quick spin through the Joe's sporting goods store was a good idea. They are going out of business, so we figured they might have some good deals. They carry a little of everything (from guns to camping gear, to athletic shoes, to generators to motorcycles) and I can't help but wonder if half their business problem might have been an inability to commit to one customer base! Anyway, we got this cool cornbread cast iron pan for cheap. It came with a mix which is what you see in the photo, but also some yummy sounding recipes. We do have corn meal in the pantry, but we are both looking forward to creating our own meal from our own corn next fall. When we do, we'll make sure to pull out this pan and whip up a delicious batch!

Of course, fresh cornbread goes GREAT with farm fresh eggs and a little bit of thick sliced pepper bacon from organic, grass-fed, local pigs. It was a yummy breakfast indeed - missing only some fresh berries (only a few months away!).

Farmfresh breakfast! Eggs from our girls, fresh baked cornbread and thick sliced pepper bacon from our CSA share. YUM!

Tuesday night I got home and had plans on watching my one TV obsession. I don't know why, but I just love watching The Biggest Loser. I think I like seeing all these people really transform their lives. I don't normally like reality TV at all, but this one has me hooked. Anyway, it wasn't on because of the basketball finals (the blazers are in it, so that's what we get to watch) so I opted to find something more productive to do. I finally got my Dad's b-day present packed up and sent off (sorry it's so late, Dad!), I got a couple of jars of blackberry jam sent to my mom, and I started some more seeds.

Seedstarting on the stove top (just for the photo). I love using the papertowel rolls because they make transplanting so easy, but I felt I ought to reuse the other containers as well.

I used some of the soil mix left-over from the weekend garden marathon. I mixed it with water in the wheelbarrow in the garage (it was rainy and cold last night) and then filled all the extra containers I had laying around from the first round of started seeds. I set it all in a box from the garden center and then diagrammed it in my notebook. Then I planted numerous types of winter squash, some summer squash, okra, a couple of types of melons, some lettuce, marigolds, sunflowers and nasturtiums. I moved the whole lot into the greenhouse first thing this morning. It always feels so good planting seeds...like getting a fresh start.

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading about herbs. It started out as a small research project to decide what to put in my herb garden, but it's blossomed from there. While I have a good idea of what cooking herbs I want to plant, I didn't really know what other types of herbs were useful. As I've been researching making my own herbal remedies, herbal cleaners, and herbal/floral potpourri, I'm really finding it fascinating. The herbal wormer and herbal healing salve that I get from Molly's Herbals is working wonders for the goats, dogs and myself (I used the healing salve on a healing cold sore and was stunned at how quickly my skin recovered!). I really find myself wanting to learn more, so I am seriously considering signing up for a course or two. There are quite a few alternative medicine programs in my area (not surprising considering the 'alternative' nature of my state!). I've been researching what's available and trying to decide when the best time would be for me to sign up. It sounds like a good 'winter' project for me, but at the same time, I'd like to be able to apply what I learn in the here and now as things are growing. But, I do think it would help to have some of my own experience growing things before starting. There is still so much information for me to read on my own that I expect that I'll hold off on the class for a little while longer. Either way, I'm excited about this. It's such a fun topic!

Independence Days Challenge

2009-04-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

We've joined a 'challenge' that I've read about in the past, but decided to do something about this year. Based on Carla Emery's ideas, this is a challenge to do something, every day, towards your own independence. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be earth shattering...it just has to be progress. Do it and record it...this will allow us to see forward momentum and that's something that is not only priceless, but reassuring. Anyway, you can read more about this challenge at Sharon's blog in my side bar (Casaubon's Book - great blog, by the way!).

I'm going to do a weekly recap on Mondays but since I only signed up today, this week is a day late:

1. Plant something - Gosh - where to begin with this? We planted quite a bit this past week. For seeds: spinach, peas, mustard and kohlrabi. For transplants: broccoli, cauliflower, celery, celeriac, onions, strawberries and cabbage. I also transplanted some daisys from our neighbors yard to ours.

2. Harvest something – not much to harvest just yet. I do hope to grab some cherry and apple blossoms for drying this evening.

3. Preserve something – I dried 3 lbs of asparagus and 2 lbs of carrots in the dehydrator this weekend. Unfortunately, this was purchased produce, but preservation is preservation.

4. Reduce waste – Daily recycling is a habit for us so I'm going to have to come up with additional ways to do this. Oh! We did discover that the defrosted milk (that is permanently seperated into solids and liquid) is great chicken food. They LOVE the solids, so instead of tossing it out, it is slowly getting fed to the chickens. That's reducing waste, right?

5. Preparation and Storage - We actually made a big run to Costco this week. We stocked up on lots of basics (things we don't grow ourselves). I always feel good when the pantry gets plumped up after a good re-stocking! We also had our grass-fed beef & pork CSA pickup this past weekend, so we are well stocked with meat again.

6. Build Community Food Systems - I gave 2.5 dozen eggs to our neighbor in exchange for some clippings off her rosemary bush and some daisys.

7. Eat the Food - I used some of my neighbors rosemary and some store-bought garlic to make a flavored marinade for some of that CSA meat. And we also enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of home raised eggs with CSA pepper bacon on Sunday. YUM!

Spring Gardening

2009-04-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

I love this tree. It's some type of willow and it's just gorgeous when it blooms in the spring.

So much is blooming and growing around the farm! I'll take my camera out this evening (if it's not raining) and try to get some new photos. Spring is really a beautiful season. It's particularly exciting for us as we see things popping up that we have never seen before (this is our first spring in this house).

This weekend was a busy one. We had a goal of getting the garden done so that we could get lots of things transplanted outside. Time is running out on some of the spring veggies, so we didn't want to delay. I don't have updated pictures yet, but we got the balance of the garden boxes completed. We now have 5 boxes, comprising 200 square feet of gardening space. This 200 sf, took 120 cubic feet of soil to fill. This soil was 'made' by mixing peat moss, compost and pumice/vermiculite. To fill all the newly expanded boxes, we went and got a truckload of compost from a local nursery. Unfortunately (both for us and for our little truck), neither I nor the girl at the register, were confident enough in our calculations. For whatever reason, I was thinking that a cubic yard is equal to 9 cubic feet and so I used that to make our calculations. It wasn't until we got home that I realized that we had purchased 54 cubic feet of compost instead of the needed 18. Ooops. Now we have some compost to ammend the row garden area as well. See, I was planning ahead! ;-)

With a lot of sweat and hard labor, the soil got mixed and loaded into the boxes. The last truckload of river rock got filled into the aisles between the boxes. Part of the row garden area got hand weeded and then covered with some of the extra compost. The rest of the garden will be done as the week progresses and that huge pile of aged dairy poo sitting in our yard will eventually dwindle.

We planted brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, more spinach, mustard greens, kohlrabi, a few left over onions, kale, celery, celeriac, a few more strawberries, chinese cabbage, and more peas. Tonight I'll be starting melon, multiple types of winter squash, and pumpkins. Next week, lettuce and carrots get planted. We are also planning out the row garden area. This will house predominantly, potatoes, corn and beans...but also some tomatoes, some green beans, some lettuce or other greens (in the shade of the bean trellis) and probably some winter squash. Right now, our greenhouse is full of tomatoes, peppers and some early started melons (in pots). We also have our two dwarf citrus trees out there and they are doing really well (navel orange and meyer lemon).

I'm pretty sure that we are making a classic mistake in that there is little doubt in my mind that we are overdoing this. I know that come late summer and early fall we will be innundated with fruits and veggies. Somehow, in the dark of early spring, that is just too hard to comprehend so we over-plant. At least this year, I hope to have family visiting in the summer. They get to help us harvest AND eat our bounty! Anyone else up for a visit? I'm sure the apple harvest could use more hands (and mouths). :-)

Goat Babies in Action

2009-04-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

These are slightly aged videos (a couple of weeks old) but it's getting increasingly difficult to get photos or videos of the kids as they get bigger. They just don't hold still! Just about the only time they hold still for a second or two is when they are peeing...so not good video material, right?

The above one is why using cattle panels to fence in baby goats is useless. Live and learn.

The below video is Pepe's first successful attempt at climbing and balancing on the cinder block. Now, of course, he's capable of leaping up onto mom's back...or the waist high table, or the milking stand, or us...(as evidenced below). When you listen to it, turn down the sound or you'll get an earful of me laughing as Oreo climbs onto me while I was video taping his brother!

I'll try getting some more updated shots this evening if I can. They sure are cute little guys!

Rick with both babies on his lap while mom looks on - he is their favorite jungle gym and they will choose to climb on him over all other humans.

Me with Pepe on my back. I'd squatted down to look at something Oreo was doing and Pepe took the opportunity to jump on my back! Let's hope they give up this habit once they are full grown or there are going to be a lot of sore humans around! ;-)

Garden Progress

2009-04-16T12:35:00.001-07:00

This is what our 'field of boxes' looked like last year after our initial planting.

This is what they looked like as I began the long, tiring process of moving them this spring. You can see how the grass was a problem at the edges - it spilled over into the boxes pretty badly as well.

This is what they look like now - about 75% of the way completed. The first three boxes have all been planted (peas, spinach and strawberries).

Last year, we planted 8 square foot gardening boxes and about 1/3 of our row garden area. This year, that's changing. We didn't plant as much as we wanted to last year because we got into the house late in the growing season, and really ran out of time to plant and still hope to get harvest before winter. Mid-July is waaaayyyy too late to be planting when you live this far north (cold winters or not - you run out of daylight before the plants mature!).

We also had a real problem with keeping the grass in the pathways between the boxes under control (despite my planning the aisles the width of two lawn mower passes). The aisles were too wide as well, creating a lot of wasted space. This year, I planned out how I wanted them to be arranged and the best way to make the move (it's not easy since they have only weedcloth on the bottoms) before tackling the task. We also liked how the base of our greenhouse turned out so well that we decided that we wanted to use river rock in the walkways. This will allow water to still soak into the ground, but it will discourage the grass and make foot travel to the boxes easy.

We still need a couple of loads of rock and to mix up some more soil before we are complete, but it's coming along nicely. I also will need to reinstall the trellises, but that's quick and easy. They are currently all stored in our shed and installing them means only to insert 1/2 inch rebar into the ground in the right locations and then to drop the trellis over the rebar (the trellises use 1/2 inch electrical conduit for their frames).

This area is parallel to our row garden area in which we've only planted potatoes and garlic so far. The row garden area will also house some beans, corn, some winter squash, and the quinoa. We may also duplicate some of the other items we have set up for the boxes just to see which items do best in which location. I purposely wanted these boxes to be in the same general area as the row garden because depending on what the future holds, we may eventually want to fence them both in to keep the chickens out (currently the chickens only free-range in the goat area to keep them safe from the neighbors dogs). Luckily (knock on wood), we don't have a deer problem like so many of our neighbors do. We think that the 8 foot buffalo fence that surrounds us on two sides and the 6 ft privacy fence on the third side really discourages them. Four dogs in our two acres (between ours and our neighbors) and a road where nighttime speeds exceed 70 mph - and we are pretty well protected from deer as long as there are other more easily ravaged gardens to keep them happy. ;-)

A quick hello!

2009-04-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Our cherry trees are blooming!

I just wanted to drop in and say a quick 'hello!'. Last week (the day after my last post, actually) I was assigned a new part at work that is beating me down. Another member of my group couldn't meet the demands, so they gave it to me. Ugh. It's been keeping me hopping, that's for sure.

This past weekend we finally got our new fridge and oven (yay for being more energy efficient!!) and we started the massive project of reworking our garden beds. This entails weeding them, shoveling out the soil, relocating them, shoveling the soil back in and adding more, building new boxes and filling those with soil (which is mixed using peat moss, compost and pumice), and laying a ton of weed cloth. Lastly, the aisles between the boxes are getting filled with large river rock, so we have to get one truck load at a time and shovel that into it's respective places. We did this on Sunday (mostly) in the POURING rain. Literally, downpouring almost the whole time we were out there! We got it almost done before we had to call it quits and try to dry off. At least we can now get our onion sets planted and many of our seedlings now have a place to go when we get to plant them this coming weekend. I did take photos - but they are still in the camera (well, no 'afters' yet since it was raining too hard).

The goat babies are doing well. Tomorrow we start milking Sass for our own use (we will share with the babies for the next 6 weeks and then they get weaned). I'm just thrilled that we got a nice sturdy shelf installed in the goat shed (out of goat reach) so that we have a place to store the brush, the goat wipes and any other misc. items. The silliest little things make me happy! ;-)

I promise to post more later this week once I've had a chance to catch up.

The Bees move in!

2009-04-07T13:06:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer - I know very little about bees. We have a couple of books, and I plan to educate myself eventually, but since this is my husband's project, he's the expert right now. With his reseach and a lot of help from Ruhl Bee Suppy, he's quickly getting up to speed. Anyway, in lieu of a wordy post, here are a few illustrative photos.

The hive/box with a few frames removed (I'm sure there are more correct terms than 'hive/box' and 'frame' but whatever) and the bees awaiting installation in their new home.

10,000 Italian bees with a queen in there somewhere...

My husband in his 'bee suit' spraying sugar water on the bees to calm them before putting them in the hive.

The bees in the hive. Sorry about the quality of photo - but I was standing pretty far away at this point and using the silly little zoom lens on my point and shoot camera. It was also getting dark, so it's hard to see the bees flying around.

Since these photos were taken, my huband has reduced the size of the boxes. He's taken out the bottom one because apparently that's too much space for so few bees and they get confused. We can't have confused bees, can we?

Beekeeping

2009-04-06T14:02:00.001-07:00

This is a photo from the Ruhl Bees site. That's the company from which we are getting our bees!

Beekeeping was one of those things that we felt was a good idea as we move towards self-sustainability. Not only are are bees a great way to provide a ready made healthy home sweetener, but they are essential for garden and orchard pollinization. We have so many blooming fruit trees that we felt it was a good idea to supplement the native Mason/Orchard bees with honey bees.

This one is Rick's baby. While I don't have issues with bees (I'm afraid of wasps and hornets), I also haven't had time to research them like he has. He made the variety choice, ordred all the equipment, and is on his way to pick them up this afternoon. We ordered our bees from Ruhl Bee Supply which is not only a 111 year old company - but local to us here in Oregon. http://www.ruhlbeesupply.com/

My only experience with bees in any quanity was when I was a kid. We lived in Topsfield, MA in a 100+ year old home. The front of the house was flanked with two huge hives built within the walls of the house. Random bee stings were a fact of life. I have two distinct memories of that time related to the bees. One was of my little brother waking up at night after it had been raining like mad crying because his bed was wet. My mother told him to 'move to a dry spot' thinking that he'd been the one to wet it. What a surprise to discover the next morning that his whole bed was pretty much wet with water and diluted honey! The rain was leaking through the walls and it ran right down his window shade and into his bed. Poor kid! My other memory involved the third floor. This house had a ton of rooms, most of which were not used by our little family of 4. There was an entire third floor of bedrooms (and presumably a bathroom, but I don't remember) that we pretty much kept closed off. I had a big doll house that I used to play with that was housed up there at one point. Anyway, I don't know why I was up there, but I remember standing in the doorway to one of the bedrooms staring in awe at the hundreds (or more likely thousands) of dead or dying bees lying everywere. It was like something that nightmares are made of!

Anyway, we hope that our bees will give us happy memories in the years to come. Once Rick gets the hive set up, I'll make sure to take some photos to share.

Spring planting continues

2009-04-03T13:06:00.001-07:00

My favorite plum tree - blooming already!

Spring is HERE! We have baby goats, flowering trees...and planted seeds as proof. I had so many little updates after all our hard work last weekend that I decided to do one big 'picture post' to cover them.

So last weekend we got a lot done around the homestead. I was off Thurs & Fri and between those two days and a weekend with only a little rain, we were able to be very productive. First off, we finally got those codling moths out into the apple trees. I still need to make a few more, but we are pretty well covered now.

Codling moth traps hanging in our apple trees.

Then we set about using the rope hand-held chain saw that I ordered to remove a few high branches. Our neighbor to the south lives on a very, overgrown piece of land. The trees are super tall and a couple of them had HUGE branches that hung over and shaded one of our apple trees. We wanted to cut them down, but they were so high, they were well out of reach of our ladder. Even a ladder combined with a chainsaw on a pole might not have been enough. So I searched online and found the nifty little tool we used. http://www.cspoutdoors.com/higlimropcha.html

While I've seen lots of people complaining about this tool, it worked great for us. One branch split before we'd sawed all the way through, but it was not 100% heathy to begin with...the other branch worked great. One of us sawed while the other pulled on a rope tied further out on the branch to keep it from falling directly onto the apple tree. I can't wait to see how this tree produces now that it'll get some sun!

The tree we were trying to help is circled in blue...and the branches we cut in red. If you click on the photo - you can see it larger.

Then we went to work in the garden. With the hay I cleaned out of the goat shed, we mulched the berry brambles.

With some extra compost we had, we 'fed' the grape vines.

Then I moved one of the square foot gardening boxes. I have created a plan to move almost all of them eventually. I want to move them closer together, add another row, and then put down mulch or gravel on the walkways inbetween. Having to mow that grass is a pain and I was annoyed at how much grass started growing in the boxes. I think we'll be better off getting rid of a lot of it. Anyway, I planted in the one box that will remain where it is and then I moved one more box so that I could plant there as well. I planted 5 different kinds of peas (snap peas, snow peas and peas that you shell) and three different kinds of spinach in the boxes. I also left space to plant more next week so that we stagger the harvest a bit.

The boxes in the middle of the move. Only the one in the foreground has changed so far - it moved to the left to make room for another box next to it.

The box where I have spinach and peas planted. The 4 squares that look a little drier than the others is where I'll plant more spinach next week.

Rick set about planting our potatoes. We did two garbage cans full of them (which I will post more about later) and one long row in the row garden area. Rick dug that row last weekend (while the ground was wet and reasonably soft). He then planted multiple types of potatoes (Yukon golds, russets, red, etc). We even planted a few potatoes that we'd grown last year (as an experiment). We did it differently (and in a different area) than last year. Instead of planting them in the ground and mounding dirt on top of them, he dug a trench, losened the bottom soil and then planted them in it. Then, as they grow, we'll cover them with the soil we dug out of the trench. I can't wait to see how it all works!

Rick planting potatoes in his beautifully dug trench.

The full trench - after all the potatoes have been planted. Sweet potatoes will go elsewhere (it's too early for them).

Lastly, we spent a little time taking stock of all that is growing in our greenhouse. This coming weekend, I'll be planting more tomatoes (starts) and a few other things to supplement what we've already got going. Our tomatoes from the first planting are doing really, really well. I hope we can get them into the ground before they start fruiting!!

Our mish-mash of plantings. Every time I see this shelf, I think 'a rag-tag fugitive fleet' from the introduction to the original Battlestar Galatica. I don't watch the new verision - I wonder if they use the same line?

Our first tomato seedlings - now almost full plants. How cool is that?

Lastly, just because they are so darn cute...another goat baby photo. This is Sass taking care of Oreo and ...wait for it... Pepe (after Pepe Le Pew). Both boys are getting playful and curious already. I forsee a full time job of keeping track of those guys in our near future!

Goat babies are here!

2009-04-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

Meet the two newest additions to our herd (for now)!

What a night!

Sass was bleeting all day on Monday, so we knew we were close. She was constantly changing positions and barely stood or sat still all day. As it got dark, we made a point of checking on her every 30-45 minutes. By 11:30 pm, we decided to try and get some sleep since she hadn't gone into full on labor yet. We had the baby monitor in the bedroom and I remember asking Rick what sounds he thought we ought to be alert to. He said, loud bleating. Not 2 minutes later, the loud bleating started! I told him to stay in bed and that I'd let him know when she was going into labor. Sure enough, I was out there maybe 10 minutes and she laid down and started to push. I told Rick to come out and grab the 'kidding kit' on his way.

We both sat there with her for about 30 minutes when we felt that it may go on for awhile. Contractions were pretty far apart, so we didn't think she was 'serious' yet. I told Rick to go get some sleep and that I'd call him when something happened. Two hours later, I went inside to use the bathroom and check the clock. When I realized it had been 2 hours, I checked some of my internet sources to make sure this was still ok. They all said that if it was going on that long with no apparent progress, something was wrong. I also read that if the initial discharge was red (and not typical amber colored) that there may be a dead kid involved. Ugh. I was worried.

I woke up (he wasn't really sleeping) Rick and sent him out there while I scrubbed up. When I got back out to the goat shed, I saw what I thought was a nose poking out. It was furry - and goats are supposed to be born feet first, so whether it was a nose or a butt...it wasn't good. I 'went in' and discovered that it was definitely a butt. I had to push it back in and turn it around so that it could be born. Unfortunately, this was the first baby, so there was no room inside (the others were obviously still in there!). My lack of skills didn't help matters, either. Rick started to get really concerned. He was starting to worry that we were going to lose Sass and the babies. As much as I didn't know what I was doing, I was determined that we'd get it straightened out and at the very least, save Sass. While I stood there with goat goo up to my elbows, Rick ran inside to check photos of a breach birth to verify that we were doing the right thing. We were, so we set about getting this to work. Just as I was about to give up and let Rick take a shot at this, Sass managed to deliver the baby in it's new position - shoulders/head first. While we were cleaning up that baby and getting it in front of Sass, she delivered the second one. This one came out backward (which is fine) and was out in a flash. We had both babies sitting before Sass so that she could clean them, and we helped dry them off. It was a real mess, actually.

We then got each kid to nurse a little. It's best to get the colostrum into them as early as possible. Since they seemed willing, we helped them find the teet and they both took a good drink. While this was going on, Sass started contracting again. We expected to see the afterbirth, but when I saw fur, I knew there was another baby on the way. This one was kind of coming out backwards, but there was only one foot. The other leg was not where it was supposed to be! As she pushed, this baby slipped all the way out and I saw immediately that it was not viable. It was somewhat contorted and the head kind of had a dent in it. I immediately wrapped it up and took it away for fear of upsetting Sass (if goats do that kind of thing). She quickly returned her focus to her existing babies, so I don't think it was a problem.

By 4:30 am, we were ready to leave Sass to bond with her new babies. We gathered up all our stuff and headed inside to shower. About an hour later, we checked on them, and everything was fine. We noticed that they were still a little damp, so we pulled out the hairdryer again and dried them off completely:

Rick using a hairdryer to dry off the goat babies about 3 hours after they were born.

At this point, Sass was pretty much falling asleep on her feet. Rick gave Sass some grain, helped the kids nurse one more time, and then we left them all to take naps while we called the vet for an antibiotic recommendation and located a good dog 'igloo' for the kids to sleep in/play on. Sass needs antibiotics to protect her from infection after our little 'intimate' experience.

And, about 4 hours later, we saw them poking their heads out of the goat shed, so we went to hang out with them. The goat baby #2 is very, very inquisitive. He is going to be a terror! Goat baby #1 seems to be a little calmer. Both are super cute and very friendly. Both are also boys. We've named baby #2 Oreo after his father since he looks a lot like him. Baby #2 still doesn't have a name. Considering that we have a cat named Kitty, we may need help with coming up with a good name! We had hoped to have a girl or two that we would keep as part of our milking herd, but we didn't plan on keeping any boys. One of them is already promised to the family that we get our grass-fed beef from - they want a goat for a pet. We are not yet sure of the fate of the second one, but we are considering keeping him around as a playmate for Buddy. We'll see.

This is Oreo (goat baby #2)...the younger brother and the one that is already shaping up to be extremely mischievous!

This is goat baby #1 until we come up with a better name for him. His coloring reminds me of both cookies and cream ice cream AND a reverse skunk - but neither observation calls forth a good name for a boy (if he were a girl, he'd be either Cookie or Flower!).

Proud (and tired!) momma with her two boys. Good job, Sass...you've done good!

The Waiting Game

2009-03-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Sass this afternoon - soaking up some warm sunshine. It's hard to tell in this photo - but her udder is HUGE. I can't imagine how uncomfortable she must be right now.

We are anxiously waiting the arrival of Sass' kids. Her official due date is Tuesday, but we are pretty sure that she is going to deliver shortly. On Sunday morning, we discovered that her udder had ballooned out to FULL mode. She was already showing some filling going on, but this morning, it was very noticeable. She's also bleeting a lot - she's normally a very quiet goat.

The baby monitor on the kitchen windowsill. This thing ROCKS...I'm so glad we got it.

We purchased a baby monitor to install in the goat shed so that we could hear if she goes into labor in the middle of the night. This also allows my husband to monitor her from his home office, so that he can still focus on his work during the day. We had to splurge for the expensive monitor to get one that would broadcast far enough so that we could hear it in the house (up to 2000 feet!). There are a few locations in the house where it doesn't work real well, but for the most part, it's been great. I love listening to the goats chewing their cud as we fall asleep at night! The worst part is that it also picks up the chickens (and the rooster) and broadcasts it in the house where it seems impossibly loud. That is annoying.

The kid pen with our Quonset hut in the corner. This will allow them a 'safe' place to play where Buddy won't be able to get too rough with them (something we are concerned with...).

The kidding area was finished last weekend, but since Sass wasn't too interested in it, we also spent some quality time off cleaning out the goat shed too. I cleared out all the winter bedding and swept it clean last Thursday. Then I layed down some fresh clean straw that we change out every couple of days. This way, if she decides to deliver in there, it'll be reasonably clean. We got our 'kidding kit' pulled together including some homemade 'goat wipes' and I will be ordering the disbudding iron via overnight delivery on Monday morning. We debated about how to handle the kid's horns...but after much research and soul-searching, decided that quick, permanent disbudding was the most humane option. I'm not looking forward to it, but we do what we have to in order to be respondible goat owners. I'll write more on this later.

So, while the signs that Sass is displaying all point to a very near delivery date, we know that 'farm law' says otherwise. 'Farm Law' is related to 'Murphy's Law' and it basically says that she'll give birth when the weather is awful in a very inconveninet place (like the middle of a muddy field). Ugh.

Eggs-travaganza!

2009-03-28T15:57:00.000-07:00

Like the goat's milk before it, we are getting overwhelmed with eggs. We are now up to 8-9 eggs a day from our 10 chickens...and with just two of us, that's a lot of eggs! We have been selling them to some of the people I work with and we do occasionally give a dozen to our neighbors, but it's still a lot of eggs.

So far, I've been trying out recipes that are egg intensive with the intention of finding good ones and then freezing them. So far, I've made the following:

Spinach and cheese strata - this was delicous and reheated (and froze) really, really well. Egg total: 9

Ham and green onion quiche - not bad but a little bland even though I used some of our local grass fed ham. The crust made it supremely unhealthy - and for that amount of fat, it should be outstanding. Egg count: 4

Dehydrated eggs! (on the right) I used our dehydrator and dehydrated whole, scrambled eggs. I haven't yet verified how well they rehydrate, but this jar holds 21 eggs and will keep, unrefridgerated, for 3 to 4 months. Egg count: 21

I also make a healthy, high protien waffle that uses a lot of eggs. They just look like regular old waffles, so I didn't take a photo. I make a huge batch and then freeze them. They make excellent breakfasts either reheated with syrup or fruit, or toasted and used as bread with apple butter or jam. They are also great with icecream sandwiched between two of them, but that's not good for us! ;-) Egg count: 6 per recipe (12 for a double).

Photo sharing

2009-03-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

The pansies that I planted last fall are blooming just beautifully this spring!

More dafodils in front of our house...

Flowering bushes on the side of our house are about to bloom.

Spring time is definitely here! The main photo in my header was taken in our front yard. We've got different types of dafodils popping up all over the place! We also have tulip leaves peeping through - so I anticipate quite a few of those a little later this spring. This is a good thing since I'm a big fan of tulips (it was our main wedding flower). The cherry tree, red plum tree and our pear trees are about to bloom as well. I'll be sure to take photos as things blossom!

The chickens are enjoying slightly warmer weather as well. They particularly like when it's not raining and they can tear around the fields (here they are taking a water break).

One of our chickens (nicknamed Atilla since she's a terror) seems to like to follow Rick around when he's outside. It's pretty funny, actually.

Here he is giving her a little hug. No wonder she likes him!

Buddy has got a super thick, soft coat this spring. We expect that he'll start shedding it soon...but if he doesn't, we may have to try our hand at shearing!

Moth Traps

2009-03-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

All the 'fixin's' to make codling moth traps...

Prior to moving here and having our own fruit trees, I had no idea what a codling moth was...I'd never heard of one. Well, you've heard of wormy apples, right? Apparently, most of those worms are codling moth larve. There are a number of ways of killing, trapping and preventing codling moths AND their larve. I found two that we will employ both of which are homemade and biodegradable/natural.

You start with a gallon container from milk or OJ. We happen to have quite a few of these since we stopped milking Sass in December. I'd been saving them for something, but until this spring, I wasn't sure what! Anyway, you basically mix water, molasses and vinegar and then add a splash of ammonia (lemon scent is optional!). This all goes into the bottom of the jug. Prior to filling it, you cut a 2 inch hole just below the 'shoulder' of the container. Once it's filled, you hang it from the trees - up to three per tree depending on the size of the tree. When I made these, it was crazy windy, so I held off on hanging them. Here they are all sitting on a shelf in our dinning room.

The completed traps just waiting to be hung from the trees.

I also plan to use the method of wrapping the base of the tree with corrugated cardboard to encourage any ground larve to nest there, instead of in the apples. That'll be something we'll put out later in the season.

Remember my pledge to RE-cycle? Well, on my second ride, I picked up a powerade bottle. My plan is to use it to make another codling moth trap (slightly modified for half a recipe of liquid). I've also repurposed the tray I picked up on my first ride and the CD I picked up on our ride this past Saturday. The CD will be hung from the sprinkler head in the garden as a deterent to birds.

Powerade bottle soon to be used as another codling moth trap.

Plastic bin lid that has been repurposed as a tray for seed starting - this is now in our greenhouse.

CD hung on sisal twine ready to go out to the garden to scare birds away from my seeds.

Goat babies are on the way!

2009-03-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

This is what Sassafras looked like last summer.

This is what she looks like today. The poor girl can't hop up onto the milking stand without help right now!

We are definitely seeing signs of our impending goat babies. Sass is huge, of course, but we are also beginning to see some small changes to her body that are alerting us to the arrival of her kids. She's had twins the last few times she's been bred (prior to coming to live with us), so we expect at least two. By the size of her, I'd guess more like 5, but we've read that the size of the goat really doesn't mean much in terms of number of babies. If she had one girl and one boy, we'd be thrilled as we already have a home for a boy (and we'd like to keep one girl).

This weekend was about getting ready for the birth. We started with the purchase of the remaining necessary items to build our version of a 'kidding stall'. Basically, we fenced off a small portion of the goat area using cattle panels and t-posts. We found a gate at our local feed store that was on sale because it was dented and installed that as well. We relocated the pole that we'd originally sunk to hold the goat's water bucket (last summer) and used that to hold the gate. And then we added a hook to the inside of the Quonset hut to hold the water bucket. All we have left to do is figure out a way to offer hay (inside the hut so it stays dry). We normally use a hanging net and we have a spare that we were going to use, but the hut isn't tall enough for the net. I don't think we'll need to have that much hay in there, anyway and will probably just settle for another large bucket.

The plan is to start keeping Sass in the kidding area at night starting on Tuesday. That is 7 days before her official due date, and that way, if she does give birth at night the babies are protected from a potentially rambunctious Buddy and they are born in a clean and fairly sanitary area (as opposed to the field where the chickens free range).

After we got the fencing installed, we gave Sass her 'birthing haircut'. Basically, using electric clippers that we bought for this occasion, I shaved her udder, her tail, part of her belly, the backs of her legs, and around her privates. In some areas, I left 1/4 inch hair and in others, I went more bare. Basically, the idea is to 1) help her be easier to clean up after the event, 2) make it easier for us to see the signs signalling a pending birth and 3) make it easier for the kids to find her teets. Apparently, it's not unheard of for kids to starve because they are sucking on long hair and not an actual teet. We also took the opportunity to shave the little beard that Sass was growing. This not only makes her look a little more 'lady-like' but it keeps her cleaner. That beard gets stuck in blackberry brambles and it can get caked with mud/water/baking soda/goat mineral, etc. In the interest of preserving our goat's dignity, I did not take photos of her 'hair cut' for posting on the internet. That, and I was so covered with goat hair that I was afraid it would get caught in the camera! ;-)

I also checked the list of the items we need for our kidding kit. We have everything, and we just need to collect it all into one place so that we can grab it and go. I'll be doing that tomorrow night after work. I think I'll put it all in an extra rubbermaid bin for safekeeping. I think we are ready!

Good news! When we were at the local feed store buying the gate, we asked about a butcher that will do chickens for us. There is a local one, so we are planning out our strategy for raising a few meat birds this summer. Additionally, we asked about offing our extra rooster, and the woman who owns the store said that she knew of someone who was looking for a full grown one! She has 4 hens who are about the same age as our rooster (8 months), so with any luck, our lower ranking rooster will soon have his own harem and I won't have to be the one to 'solve' the rooster problem. Phew!

5-minute bread photos

2009-03-19T13:06:00.001-07:00

Here I just dumped the flour into the container that I store the dough in - on top of the water, salt and yeast that was already lightly mixed.

This is what the dough looks like after hand-mixing with a wooden spoon for a couple of minutes.

After chilling, I pull a 1lb size hunk off the main dough, quickly form it into a ball and leave it to rest for 40 minutes on a pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal. This is after the 'rest' and after I sliced the top before baking.

Beautiful baked bread is ready in about 30 minutes.

I can never get over how crispy the outside is while the inside stays moist and delicious!

Making bread using the '5-minute' method is so simple and so delicious! And the variations are amazing...here are some photos of the focaccia I made. I basically did the same thing as above but I flattened the dough a little after shaping. Then I spread out some lightly sauteed onions, rosemary, coarse salt, cracked pepper and olive oil on top. Bake (without a stone) and Voila! Focacia!

Before baking...

...and after. Enjoy!

RE-Cycle Challenge

2009-03-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

Examples of my attempt to make use of all things - why recycle when I can repurpose (and then recycle later)?

Yesterday I brought my bike into work with me (in the car). My plan was to leave my car at work and bike home (and then to bike back the next morning). I had an extra day of clothing in the car, an extra lunch in the fridge, and plenty of clothing options for the ride home so that I could adapt to whatever Mother Nature decided to throw at me.

She decided to be kind. It was dry with temps in the high 40’s – very little wind, and daylight until 7:30 pm. Perfect! I ended up really enjoying the ride home. The construction on part of my route is finally complete, so there is now a nice bike lane and plenty of room for both me and the cars. Once I turned off the main roads, it got even better. The birds were chirping, the bullfrogs were singing and it really felt like spring. I even heard what I hope was a horse giving birth (at least, that's the story I'm going to believe)! The only detraction was the alarming amount of trash along the sides of the road. I know that there is always the occasional broken bungee cord, discarded paper cup or dropped glove…but this spring, the amount of trash seems unusually high. So…to do my own little part, I’m pledging to do a RE-Cycle. Every time I ride, I will pick up a piece of trash and either reuse it, repurpose it, recycle it or as a last resort, relocate it (to a trash can). I will try and opt for things that won’t break down (like plastic, metal or glass) and I will avoid food or paper that will probably decompose as fast where it lies than it would in my compost bin.

Last night, I picked up a plastic lid from some storage bin of some sort. It caught my eye because of the color, but I stopped because it was 1) so out of place, and 2) easily reachable by me. It has a nice lip on it, so my plan is to use it as a tray to hold seedling starting pots. I’ll do that this weekend and take a photo to share. In fact, my plan is to take photos of all the trash I repurpose…in case my ideas give someone else an idea.

This morning, on the ride back in (which was also enjoyable, if a bit slow), I picked up an empty Powerade bottle. I actually saw quite a bit of potentially useful trash, but most of it was on the other side of the ditch and today that ditch was full of fast-moving water. Perhaps once we dry out a bit, I’ll be able to safely pick up some of that other stuff. For now, this Powerade bottle will become either a codling moth trap (which I will explain in another post) or I’ll cut off the top (and recycle it) and use the bottom for seedling transplants in the greenhouse. At this point, I’ve used just about every single plastic container that I had saved already. Our greenhouse is fast filling up with future fresh food!

My trip to China

2009-03-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a few posts back that when I don't have time to write in my blog that I ought to at least share photos. That is what I am doing today. These are some of the photos I have from my quick trip to China last October. I went for work, we were there for just 4 days and we had a VERY long travel day to get there due to cancelled flights. My only free time was when it was dark, so my photo ops were either from car/train/boat/plane windows (yes, I rode all of those in one day!) or at night. Either way, here's a small look into the window on Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhongshan, China...and a couple of Hong Kong where I didn't stay but just passed through.

This is my first view of China. That is Shenzhen across the river and we are standing on an elevated walkway in Hong Kong right near the border crossing.

This is a sidewalk in Shenzhen right outside the building that houses customs (at the border crossing). The weather was gorgeous and the air was MUCH cleaner than I expected.

Delivery guy on a bike taking a smoke break.

Billboards line the streets of Shenzhen.

This building (like many in China) was totally covered in scaffolding. There was lots of construction going on. All this scaffolding is made of bamboo!

We drove from Shenzhen to Dongguan. This is part of Dongguan right outside where our hotel was located.

This was the view from my hotel room window (we luckily had time to clean up before meeting our customers - we'd been traveling for more than 24 hours at this point!)

This was the pool in our hotel. I didn't get to use it, but it was beautiful!

This was dinner one night in Dongguan. In this restaurant, you pick out your food while it's still swimming in a tank and then they prepare it for you...

We had MANY dishes, but only a few of the photos are post-worthy. This was octopus.

And lobster. Delicious!

That night, we walked around Dongguan a little near the hotel with one of our customers as a guide. This is a huge mall right across the street from where we stayed. There is actually a Wal-Mart on the other side of this mall (we visited it...just to see). If everything in a US Wal-mart is made in China, was everything in a Chinese Wal-mart made in the US? What do YOU think? ;-)

After a few days in Dongguan, we traveled by car to Zhongshan for a night. One of our customers took us out on the town that night and we visited a part of town called Old Zhongshan. It was very cool - old buildings renovated to be current shops and bars. It reminded me a bit of Ybor City in Tampa.

Me riding/posing in a bronzed rikshaw.

Zhongshan at night.

The next day, we took a car, then a ferry, then a train and then two planes to get back to the US. This was taken from the ferry on the way into Hong Kong. Those are apartments. Can you say 'population density'?

This was taken from the train that took us from the ferry to the airport. It's hard to see, but it's like a bit of OLD Hong Kong tucked admist speeding trains and skyscrapers.

Finally, a shot of Hong Kong (also taken from the train) showing how lush the country is when you step away from the city.

Blueberries!

2009-03-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Today had a bit of a blueberry theme to it.

First off, I joined MyFoodDiary.com again yesterday. It's a site where you can log your food intake and exercise and any number of other things. I had let my account lapse last fall because I wasn't using as much as I should have been. Since it's time I got serious about losing weight, I need to start logging my intake. This site is the best I've found - it suits me and what I want to be able to do. So tday was my first full day of logging. I did well with my calories eaten and burned, but I need to work on the other details (sodium, cholesterol, etc). And the graphic on the main page (and on my 'favorites' link) is a blueberry!

This morning we took a walk around our property talking about the projects we want to accomplish this spring and summer. We will be expanding our square foot garden boxes (adding 4 more), we will be adding blueberry bushes both in the front yard and in the back, we'll need to add some berries to our bramble trellis area, we want to build a goat building (two real stalls and a milking area), we need to prune one more apple tree and take down a few branches off our neighbor's tree that are blocking our apple tree sun, we measured for fencing both for the goat area and for our herb garden near the house, and we talked about where we will be planting our sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes). After that, we made a nice long list of purchases to work towards over the next few weeks and then headed to the local nusery. We purchased 4 red raspberry plants to compliment our blackberries and our loganberries. We bought 8 blueberry bushes (3 for the front and 5 in the back) and we made sure to plan it so that our harvest spreads the entire summer. We bought some seed potatoes and a few lettuce and onion seeds because I think ours are too old (the germination rate sucks). Lastly, we priced fencing at a few places and we think we know what we want to do starting next weekend.

Tomorrow we have plans to go into Portland and see Wicked! I'm excited. I can't wait to see how it compares to the book (which I really enjoyed).

It's not about the bike - except when it is...

2009-03-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

My Terry Classic commuter bike - with the old wheels.

The same bike with my spiffy new Velocity Uriel wheels. These are the same type of wheel on my road bike and I really like them.

And this post IS about the bike! Actually, it's about me on the bike. As you may remember, I live about 20 miles from my place of employment (by bike route - it's a bit shorter by car). Last summer I was all gung-ho about biking to work as a means of transportation, save the environment, save cash, lose weight, yadda, yadda, yadda. In fact, I can't think of a single reason NOT to bike to work, save one. Time. It costs me 3 hours out of my day to bike to work in the morning and then again home at night. That's a lot of time when there are things to harvest and goats to milk, as was the case last fall. Then of course bad weather moved in. Then it got really dark. And then I got out of shape!

So here I am, months later, finally thinking that I need to bike to work again. I've got a couple more good reasons now, too. First of all, the days are getting longer again. Secondly, we aren't milking Sass at the moment or harvesting anything, so there is more time. Thirdly, my bike is all spiffed up with brand new wheels! Yes! My wonderful husband bought me new wheels for my birthday and I haven't yet had the chance to really try them out. My old wheels were touring wheels which meant that they were basically bullet-proof but also very heavy. Rolling weight like that is the first thing to slow you down on a bike (besides a poor 'engine'). While I resisted getting new ones for a long time saying that I just needed to get stronger, I admit that I finally broke down. Not only will these make getting back into shape easier, but they'll make me faster once I am in shape and that means a little less time commuting. Plus...they are HOT, are they not?

Anyway, I am writing about this now because I'm pretty certain that I'm going to ride into work tomorrow. I've been getting up early all week for various reasons, but I'm starting to get used to it. It's also the only reasonably dry day in the foreseeable future (including snow next week!). I'm not conditioned enough to bike the whole way right now, so I'm going to drive to a spot down the road (with my bike) and then bike from there. Total commute will be about 12-13 miles each way instead of 20. Once I get used to that, I'll start doing the whole distance. I'll report back how it goes!

One point of note about my bike photo: Yes, the front wheel on my commuter bike is smaller than the rear wheel. You are not imagining things. The rear wheel is a typical 700 cc size...the front is a much smaller 24" wheel. This combination is more common on a recumbent bike (which is where I ordered the wheelset) than on a diamond frame bike. It's designed that way to allow for a shorter top tube length without sacrificing handling or seat tube angle. I have very short arms and legs, so I need a small bike. My road bike has two wheels that are the same size, but they are both 650 cc wheels...so smaller than a typical road wheel and again, they allow for a shorter top tube (the part of a bike most critical to fit). You can read more on bike fit for women on the Terry Bicycles web site (www.terrybicycles.com) or on Sheldon Brown's site (http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/terry/index.html).

Balance in life

2009-03-03T20:27:00.001-08:00

Roses in our backyard - one of many bushes that I've had to learn how to prune. This photo is from last year, but this particular bush is already sending out new shoots this spring!

My sincerest of apologies to my faithful readers. I didn't not mean to be absent from writing for so long...and particularly during this, the quiet season (on the farm). I just haven't felt very wordy the past couple of weeks and without words, blog posts are quite lacking! I suppose I could have come on an posted the occasional photo. In fact, that's what I'll do the next time my brain goes dry. For now, you'll have to be content with a bit of a recap.

Let's see... We have been focusing on getting the late winter/early spring things done. We've done some seed starting including a second wave of tomatoes (the first wave is doing very, very well!), peppers and onions...and some new things like broccoli and cauliflower. We've been faithfully pruning away at our fruit trees and my H has done a wonderful job on the grape arbors. We've also begun to do some grafting on our apple trees. I got quite a nice selection of apple wood scions from a guy I work with...and we've been grafting it to our red delicious trees when opportunity arrises (we still have quite a bit more to do). I started a small lettuce experiment in the basement (since our seeds are now starting in the greenhouse). We are putting together shelves and trying to get organized as well. Ah, and we ordered quite a few supplies to get our 'birthing kit' ready for the arrival of Sass's babies (end of March).

I've got quite a few photos of the above items, and I'll definitely get them posted in the next couple of days. I was sick with a cold last week, so I haven't been nearly as productive as I usually am. I think it's driving my husband batty - I know it's making me nuts! I did manage to get my new wheels installed on my commuter bike (my birthday present from my husband) but I've been sick since then and have not yet been able to take them out on their inaugural ride!

I've also been working on myself a little lately. In general, I am very, very self critical. In fact, I consider myself quite a bit of a self-bully, to be perfectly honest. Lately, I've somehow let my personal 'upkeep' fall off quite a bit (between gaining weight, not cycling and getting out of shape, not getting my usual summer tan, and generally not really taking very good care of myself) and with all the mini-farm work, I haven't had time to even think about it. Now that I do, I realize that not only have I not been taking very good care of myself physically, but I haven't been taking good care of my psyche either. It makes me a glum person and I don't enjoy being that way (and I'm sure others don't enjoy being around me!) Anyway, I'm working on being nicer to myself (and on getting back in shape). Happiness grows from a balanced life and it's time I remembered that there is more to mine than just making the garden grow. :-)

A Goat that Plays Turtle?

2009-02-20T12:55:00.000-08:00

What a morning!

I got up a tad earlier than usual to make sure I was at work by 8 am. I took care of the chickens, and then fed and watered the goats. Then I grabbed my milk gallon filled with water and headed out to the greenhouse to make sure nothing was drying out. It all looked good, but I gave everything a small drink anyway. The temps in there are perfect right now. We've rigged a long outdoor extension cord to the greenhouse and have an oil-filled radiator in there set to low. It's got a thermostat on it, so it keeps the greenhouse from dipping below about 55 F. It's working well so far.

Anyway, I thinned a few tomato plants from the shelf and set them down. Then I watered everything and then left. I got almost all the way back to the house before I remembered the plants I'd clipped. I went back to get them so that I could give them to the goats while they were still fresh. I'm glad I did, otherwise I would not have still been outdoors to hear Sass. She was bleating quite loudly. When I looked, she appeared to be annoyed at Buddy. He was in one of his rambunctious moods and was butting her, presumably trying to get her to play with him. She butted him back, but when he wouldn't leave her alone, she got loud. She was running away from him and he was chasing. When she started coughing from breathing too hard, I immediately went in to break it up. While I was facing Buddy, I heard Sass jump up on the table we built for play purposes. When I turned around, she was actually lying on the ground, on her back, legs in the air. She must have jumped and fallen! She was squirming around and I assumed she was trying to get up. She's kind of large right now (being pregnant and all) and she couldn't do it herself. I helped to partially roll her over, and she managed to get up the rest of the way on her own. Then Buddy started in again! She followed me out of the gate (not something she normally does in the morning) , so I let her wander around a bit giving Buddy a chance to calm down. When I brought her back in, I calmly stood between her and Buddy until he got the picture and seemed to relax. I wasn't sure if it was ok to leave, but I had to get to work! I kept an eye on them both while I finished getting ready and everything seemed calm enough that I felt ok leaving.

Luckily, I think she's fine. I just keep thinking how awful it would be if she hurt herself either trying to jump on the table, or trying to get herself up, and no one was around to help. I think that this weekend, we are going to have to make adding additional fencing to the goat pen a priority. We need a way to separate them if necessary. We may also have to look into getting Buddy a friend that he can rough-house with...

Confused plants or is it Spring?

2009-02-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

German Extra Hardy, Siberian and Chet's Italian Red are the varietys I planted. I picked them at random - so hopefully they are all suited to our environment!

Last fall I planted garlic. I've never grown garlic before, so I just followed the directions and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it works. I planted three types in one bed, and then covered the bed with about 6 inches of pine needle mulch (since that's what I had in abundance at the time). The garlic bed is marked with stakes and is residing in a corner of our row garden where the sprinkler system doesn't really reach. This was intentional because at a certain point (and I have to do some reminder reading!), you have to stop watering the garlic. Hopefully that point is after June 1st, or mother nature is going to keep watering despite my need for her to stop! I was surveying the row garden area (still full of worms!) over the weekend when I noticed that the garlic is sprouting. I've heard that's normal...but it seems awfully early to me. Of course, we have all kinds of things sprouting around the property. The plum tree is budding, the roses are throwing off new shoots, and all the bulbs are just peeping up. I need to make note of where things come up so that I know where things are when I go to plant my own bulbs next fall. My guess is that these early ones are likely daffodils or crocuses (is that a word?).

Either way, I plan to get tulips in the ground for next year - so I need to map out things this spring. :-)