Goat babies are here again!

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!

Babies and Bounty

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!

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.

The Goat Babies are Gone

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!

Goat Babies in Action

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! ;-)

Spring planting continues

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!

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

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.

Goat babies are on the way!

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!