So anyone who knows about raising goats is probably laughing right now because it is a LITTLE bit late in the season for kidding.  But hey, you do what you can, right?  We bred our goats late because I wanted some adjustment time after bringing our daughter into the world before I wanted to think about milking goats.  So here we are.

Jokers Wild certainly threw some good kids our way and we couldn't be more pleased thus far.  A week ago we had a major heat wave and I was holed up in the house with Isabel working away.  Kyle got home around 4:30 and announces that we have baby goats!  I knew a few of our does were close, their tail ligaments were getting softer by the day, but I was surprised to hear that one of them kidded without me noticing.  We hopped outside, which was a shock to my system because it was almost twenty degrees hotter that the house, and found Juniper in the shade of a few trees with two tiny babies by her side.  They were already dry and wobbling around.  They are two little bucklings, both tri-colored and I think we're going to be keeping one for breeding.  My husband has already named them Rootbeer and Moxie.

Not two days later my darling May graced us with the arrival of a doeling as well!  I saw her udder was getting bigger and her ligaments were almost gone but she fooled me last year so I wasn't holding my breath on her.  Well, apparently good things DO come to those who wait.  Not only did May produce a beautiful and friendly little girl but she also has a GREAT big udder and fairly large teats.  Pretty impressive for a first freshener I think.  I made my first attempt at milking her just this morning and while I wouldn't say it was easy it certainly went much smoother than any of my attempts last year at milking Chutney.  So I'm excited and hopeful.



Poppy was the third so far to kid this year.  Two days after May's doeling was born, Poppy produced a doeling of her own.  She looks just like Joker and is just a tiny little thing.  Poppy is our smallest goat so I'm not sure how successfully I will be able to milk her, but I'm hoping to do a bit with her and Juniper this year so they'll have an easier time of it next year.  If we could just get enough milk to avoid buying any for Kyle's coffee or my goat cheese addiction then it will be worth the effort.


Still left to kid are Chutney and Willow.  Chutney is looking just as big as last year and her ligaments are hard as rock so I'm thinking she'll give us at least three kids again this year.  Time will tell.  So as it stands we're up to four kids.  The little bucklings were disbudded last night and the doelings will be done before the end of the week.  I'm still waiting for their little nubs to come up.

Things are moving along in other areas of the farm as well.  Our pigs and chicks are growing fast over the pasture, the garden is doing well, the bees (I am very sorry to report) didn't make it through the winter so we're going to wait and try again next year.  I will be trying to blog more often now that we have so very much going on.  I would hate to get too far behind when there is stuff to report on!  Thanks for sticking around, folks!

Again, another month has flown by in what seems like just one long, deep breath.  I am guilty of wishing away the remains of winter and dreaming daily of the promise of green.  We are lucky in that we have enough exposure that the sun has melted away a good portion of the snow around our house and we've been seeing the beginnings of my *shhhhhh* spring flowers.

Although living in northern Vermont means you have to have quite a bit of patience and a BIG sense of humor.  Sure, the calendar says its spring but we're due to get another Nor'easter this weekend.  Whoever coined the phrase about March with it's lions and lambs surely didn't live in Vermont.  Not that this is much of a surprise, last year there was quite a storm up here on Mothers Day.  You just never know.

Things here on the homestead have been idling since the addition of our daughter.  But plans are always in the backs of our minds and soon enough we'll be jumping into action again.  We are beginning to recognize that although we have the best intentions, sometimes we jump a little too hard with our ideas.  So this year we plan on focusing on the motto: small but successful.  This translates into smaller gardens that we can rely on to AT LEAST provide us with the staples to make Isabel's baby food when she begins solids later this summer/fall.  We're still planning on raising chickens and pigs to feed our family but this year we're planning on three pigs instead of four and a few smaller batches of meat birds instead of one big lot of them that would all need to be processed at about the same time.

We're toying with the idea of stepping back from the dairy goats for now as well.  We'll see how milking goes this spring/summer, but at the present they are relatively expensive pets.

We have some plans for better broiler production.  Last year, we kept them with our laying hens and about half of them jumped the fence into the pigs' pasture, becoming supplemental protein.  This was a major disappointment so this year we're planning on making some inexpensive chicken tractors similar to Joel Salatin's (approximately 10'x12'x2') so we can keep them on the lower pasture where they will get plenty of grass yet still be safe from predators (both domestic and feral).

Speaking of which, we had a major loss last month.  Some unfamiliar dogs paid us a visit and much to our dismay they killed off half of our laying hens.  Then, thanks to the pile of dead chickens that we probably should have just processed and turned into dog food, we attracted a fox and some weasels.  We lost another two or three chickens and are now down to just over a dozen.  To top it all off we have at least one weasel living IN our barn.  We see it every time we go out to feed the goats and the chickens.  Needless to say, we have pulled out the .22 and are going to borrow a livetrap from my brother and sister-in-law.

So, that is where we're at.  I'm going to be pulling out the leftover seeds from last year so we can take stock and see what needs to be purchased for this year.  I'm hoping to get some of our seeds started this weekend. But, in an up coming post I am hoping to detail our plans for food production in a little bit more detail.  Thanks for sticking with me folks!

Hi folks!

We've just been in a whirlwind of activity the past month or so and I am falling desperately behind on posting about our home renovations.  Progress is being made and I'm excited to share pictures with you.  I'm hoping to get a few posts up this week regarding the hearth pad and the dining room especially.  But as I still need to upload some pictures I won't be able to get to those topics today.  Instead, I just want to make quick introduction.

Blog friends and family, we are pleased to announce our newest addition to the farm, one that will enable us to keep pushing forward in our dreams of becoming self-sufficient.




This, my dear friends, is NC PromisedLand Jokers Wild, who has come to us from our favorite Nigerian Dwarf Goat breeder, Sharon at Willow Moon Farm.  Joker is the first male to be welcomed to our farm on a permanent basis- he'll be servicing our does in the months to come.  As our girls are not quite ready to be bred, the younger ones especially, we're keeping this sweet little guy up at my Mom's house with her eight wethers where he has plenty of company and generally stays out of trouble.  Once we have our buck house built and a buckling born on the farm we'll be able officially welcome him home.



Isn't he just the cutest?  Ok, so he'll be one big stud muffin in a couple more months but until then I'm going to call him "cute".  This little guy will enable us to breed all our girls later this fall and winter so we'll be milking five does next year.  This should provide our family with plenty of milk and I hope to start dabbling in cheese making and bit of goat's milk soap.

But this is just the start, stay tuned for all the excitement to come!

We recently inherited another ten chickens from our friend who moved a couple weeks ago.  Along with the Buckeye and Barred Rock laying hens were four Buckeye roosters.  As I helped Stu unload them from the back of his truck I was a little nervous; we're on pretty good terms with our neighbors and we'd really prefer to keep it that way.  I stood there at the fence after he left, watching the dynamics of the flock to be sure there wasn't going to be any huge fights, especially with the roosters.  They are still young enough that they haven't developed their spurs so they can't do as much damage.  Things settled down fairly quickly after some dueling here and there with some of the larger Australorp hens and the roosters.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to keep one or two of the roosters so we can replenish our flock, but we'll have to wait and see how noisey they are once they settle in.  It seems like they're doing their job, though, because for the past few days one of the Australorps has been happy to stay in one of the nesting boxes.

The goats are doing well.  Juniper's leg healed fantastically and she's gotten to where she doesn't have a limp and can run and jump just as well as the other two girls.  I feel a small sense of accomplishment with that.  Our attempts at milking Chutney were a bust.  Between her unwillingness to stand still and the small size of her teats due to being a first freshener made it infuriatingly difficult to get much milk.  We've been considering investing in a larger goat that would be easier for us both (especially Kyle since he has larger hands) to milk.  But we'll see how that goes.

The second swarm that stopped by one of our trees left last weekend.  Kyle had just finished building the top bar hive and we placed it under the swarm.  It was getting late in the day and we were both exhausted, so we thought we'd give them the night and the next morning to think about checking out the hive on their own before trying to drop them into the box.  The next morning we awoke and found that they had left.  Our own hive is doing well, though, we're ready to take a few frames out to harvest a bit of honey.  Kyle is hoping it will help with his allergies- the poor guy has been congested for weeks.

Finally, our garden.  I was so excited about the garden this year; I was so determined to make it a success.  Well, my friends, you know the saying about good intentions, right?  Unfortunately we've met some difficulty here as well.  We went down to the garden last week to find something had chewed the stalks of our tomato plants that had been doing so well.  They were lost.  Not only that, the black beans are being systematically attacked by something as well.  They were looking great a few weeks ago, but I checked them one day to find a patch of the bed had been demolished, then a few days later, more plants were gone.  I'm not sure what we'll be left with, but I'm not holding out much hope.

The few plants that appear to be doing amazingly well are our summer squash, carrots, beets, and potatoes.  Of course, its hard to say what is going on underneath the potato plants, but I can only hope they are doing well.  Hopefully we'll have enough to save for seed potatos for next year.  Seeing our difficulty with this garden for the second year in a row, we've decided to re-evaluate our garden plans.  Being such non-green-thumbs, why did we decide to take on such a large plot?  Well, because it is there and we were determined to make it work.  Under other circumstances, perhaps if we didn't have the goats, chickens, house renovations, full time jobs, and a multitude of other things, we could have pushed through and made our garden a success.  But, we're too new at this and it was just unrealistic for us.

So, next year we're going to do a smaller garden.  Smaller, but happier.  We're considering moving it up to be right next to the house, on our small, south-facing lawn.  There, not only would it be potentially safer from critters (because the dogs are up there more often), but it is closer to the spigot so we don't have to drag five hoses all the way down the hill and back to water it when necessary.  But my favorite reason for moving it is that we'd be able to see it easily from our picture window.  When things are ripe we'll know sooner so we can grab them and we'd be more apt to weed more often if we see it every day.  So we'll start small and once we get the hang of that, we'll add another bed or two, and so on until we get to where we want to be.

So thats the plan my friends.  Just because things aren't going well doesn't mean we throw in the towel, we take a step back and see what we're doing wrong and what we can do to improve.  We'll get there.  Rome wasn't built in a day, right?  It takes time.  We'll get there.

What the heck happened to the first half of July!?  We're in the final two weeks of this month and we're getting perilously close to August, the month of school supplies and talk of fall.  Thinking back to what we've done so far this summer, I'm a little sad to say that we've only been out in the kayaks a handful of times, hiked even less, and have yet to pull my bikes out of the work shop.  It always amazes me how quickly time flies, and yes, I'll agree that it gets faster with each year.

But, fall is a great time of year in Vermont.  At least until stick season when everything just looks too bare for comfort.  So there is still plenty of time to get out in those boats, and on the trails, and maybe even wear down some tires as well.  Winter seems to take its time getting here, it hangs on for sure, but real snow fall doesn't show its face usually until January.  Sure it'll be freezing and bitter, and I'll long for Spring to come, but this year we'll have our woodstove.  There's nothing quite like the dry heat that radiates from the belly of a cast iron and hearthstone beast, and I'll smile at its flickering glow each night.

But lets not get to ahead of ourselves, right?  After all, summer is barely a month old now and I'm certainly not showing it the door.  Over the weekend we harvested some lovely little beets and planted a new crop of peas, carrots, and salad greens.  The garden hadn't been touched in (dare I say it?) at least a month and a half and lets just say it didn't look like much of a garden.  My Mom came down to help give me a boost and we tackled it all amazingly enough, and not too soon either because the next day it rained.  The garden is looking lovely again.

The bees have been enoying their 'front porch', as Kyle calls it, lately with all this heat.  Most days when I come home from work there are a fair few out on the front of the hive, cooling off.  I need to get in there and check on the honey stores and the brood to be sure all is well.  Its just so hard to 'suit up' with the sweltering heat, hopefully now with the temperatures regulating again I'll be able to bring myself to get out there.

Things around the farm have been going well.  The absence of the pigs has been felt mostly during feeding time, when the familiar sounds of oinks, grunts, and squeels are decidedly absent.  Juniper's leg has been healing over the past few weeks in her splint.  I'm going to take it off this weekend and see how she does walking without it.  We may set up Ollie's old dog crate for her to stay in to keep the other girls from jostling her around too much during the first couple days.  And of course, the chickens are doing well, they come and go as they please and lately have been spending the early morning hanging out in front of our porch hoping for an early breakfast.  One was at the front door this morning, clucking at me through an open window.

Last night I took some down time in our hammock, with Juniper and Poppy on my lap, while Kyle brought the bigger girls down the rock face to the taller brush in our lower field.  There was something so calming about swaying under the canopies of three giant maple trees with two tiny ruminants chewing their cud, their eyes barely staying open.  Sometimes it dawns on me what my life has come to mean and I am humbled by it.

Our lives need a little drama here and there.  It keeps things interesting.  Without the drama we might not appreciate the little moments of peace that we are graced with every so often.  But sometimes those drama-filled moments are enough to make us sit, place our faces in our hands and just take a moment to breathe and pray for a positive outcome.

Friday afternoon, a couple hours before I got home from work, Kyle was outside checking on the pigs.  We had moved them back under the trees so they could tear up the ground a bit before the meat processor comes to get them next Friday.  While he was outside he heard a scream from the barn and ran to see what it was.  Apparently, Juniper had jumped up on the top of the manger, got her left front foot stuck between a couple boards and then tried to jump down.  We had plywood on top of the manger to try to keep chicken droppings from getting down into the hay, we never thought much about the tiny gap at one end, but these girls' feet are so tiny, they can fit in just about anything.  Needless to say, the manger has been moved, and a new, safer cover has been attached.

But the damage was done.  Kyle thought that maybe it was just sprained because she seemed to be moving around relatively well.  Her adrenaline must have been running because any time we'd go out to try to catch her to take a better look she'd just run.  I didn't want to aggrevate the condition so we decided to leave it until Saturday morning when we fed them breakfast.  Sure enough, Saturday morning brought us the truth.  Her leg was very swollen and obviously broken.  We ran to Johnson Farm and Garden to pick up some rolls of Vet Wrap and a couple wooden paint stirrers.

When we got home I gave Juniper a baby asprin and started icing her leg to try to help the swelling go down a bit.  Then, while Kyle held her, I felt her leg and carefully pulled on her hoof and fetlock to be sure all the bones were straight and where they should be.  Using a clean, old sock, I padded one side of each of the paint stirrers and made sure they were just long enough to extend just a little past her hoof.  With one paint stirrer on the inside of her leg, and the other on the outside I carefully wrapped all the way up her leg with a few lengths of the Vet Wrap.  Once I was finished with the splint we held her up to the higher branches of the surrounding trees so she could get some of the leaves as a treat.

After a few minutes of greedily eating leaves, we set Juniper down to see how she fared with the splint.  She's still working on three legs, but she can put her other foot down when she wants and it won't put any weight on the broken leg.  If not for the leg she looks fine; her eyes are bright, she eats and drinks with as much energy and enthusiasm that we are used to seeing in her, her rumen is working well, and her digestive system is working fine.  It is a relief.

We've had to re-wrap the bandage a couple times already, it kept getting pulled down a little too far, I think its because she drags it when she goes to lay down.  But last night I used a piece of the wrap over the top of her shoulders which I think should eliminate the problem.  She seems to be doing well, though, she can even run around again and climb on things, which is good to see.  We gave her a baby asprin each day for a few days, just to help with any pain or swelling.  But even when we re-wrapped her leg on Sunday the swelling was completely gone.  So I'm confident that as long as we are diligent at being sure her wrap is in place, things will heal well.

I just feel horrible that the cause of her injury was something that we neglected to recognize as a possible danger.  Sometimes it takes some drama to get you looking at things in a different way.  But if you ask me, I'm ready for some drama-free days now, thankyouverymuch.

Hey folks!  I'm not sure if anyone is following the "ticker" on the sidebar for May's due date but if you have (and probably now, if you haven't) noticed that it isn't counting down anymore that is for a very good reason.  We've officially flown past her due date.  Today marks the sixth day since she was due to kid.  I've sent a note to our breeder to ask for advice.  I know it is common enough for goats to kid up to five days early or five days late- but I didn't really think we'd make it this far along.  She still has her tiny udder and her tail ligaments are solid as can be.  I keep expecting to go out each morning to find a new kid in the barn but nothing yet.  I've read that it is possible for does to create an udder without being pregnant, but I just think the timing is too perfect for it to be this.  She started her udder exactly when she should have for a pregnant doe getting into her last month of gestation.  So, nothing we can do now but keep waiting...

Last week we were fully into June and our garden had yet to be planted besides a few cold weather plants here and there.  The major road block was that we hadn't touched our garden beds in weeks and the weeds took up residence with a vengance.  All our lovely rye grass and crimson clover that I planted last fall as a cover crop really burst into life and the beds looked more wild than ever.  As it was a little late in the game to try to cut all this into the soil we decided to just weed it all out and feed it to the pigs.  Oh yes, they loved that rye grass.  They squeeked and grunted as they picked through the piles of grass, finding the best pieces- pigs never save the best for last.

My family took pity on us and our lack of enthusiasm to get the garden in and they came over to help weed and plant.  We managed to get all the weeding finished and our potatos planted before the black flies forced us to retreat back to our porch for a bbq dinner.  Sometimes you just need a little help, ya know?

This past weekend the weather decided to take a break from the rain so Kyle and I decided it was time we finished this project up.  I planted the rest of our seeds while Kyle transplated the rest of the tomatos and peppers that were ready to go.  We still have a good deal of tomato and sweet pepper plants that have been started but just are still too small to move outside I think, they can wait.  I planted the dry black beans, sweet corn, summer squash, spinach, broccoli, bush beans, and our started celery plants.  I'm going to plant another round of carrots soon, once the rain lets up again.

So our garden is officially in.  Of course I still need to get our sunflowers and pumpkins planted, but those are just for fun.  Now its just a matter of getting weeding into my daily routine so we don't let it get out of hand again.

On another note, May is due to kid this weekend, give or take a few days.  Her udder is still small, but she has time.  I think she's just got a single kid in there as she is just so narrow still.  I'm hoping for a buck.  Chutney's doelings are growing strong and Poppy runs up to me each time I go out to the barn.  We ordered our disbudding iron last week so I'm hoping we'll see it soon, their horns are growing and with all the neighbors and small children that we have stopping by to check out our farm we don't want to risk it.

Sorry I've been a little sporatic in my blog posts lately, things have just been super hectic at home the past few weeks and my laptop has officially kicked the bucket.  Kyle and I had to finish up our guest room (YES, it really is finished!!) before my father and step-mom came up for the holiday weekend.  We also had to clean up the house (which ended up taking way more time than I really thought it would) and semi-finish the upstairs bathroom.  On top of all this we, of course, have been working on barn stuff.  Kyle made me a milking stand a week ago which I took out for a test run with Chutney a couple days. 

I was planning on starting the bottle-feeding this past weekend, my hope had been that I'd milk a little bit every day up until then just for us to get the hang of it before we really got serious.  But unfortunately, I haven't been feeling well and trudging out to the barn twice a day to fight with a goat and her teats wasn't high on my priority list.  So I'm hoping to give it another go soon because the kids are getting pretty skittish.

Our pigs are growing fast.  Bricktop is definitely still the biggest out of the four boys but the other three really aren't that far behind.  Kyle and I are pretty sure we'll be able to have them all processed before fall, which would be great.  They haven't eaten any other chickens, as far as I have been able to tell, and I hope that our barracade that we created around the dividing gate will continue to be successful.

Speaking of chickens, our second experience of the Cornish crosses is nearing its end.  Our fifty (or so) meat birds are amazing.  Last year when we raised these birds it was too late to put them outside because the weather had turned too cold.  This year they've had free range of the pasture and all the tall grasses.  We started only feeding them for a short time in the morning, forcing them to forage for the rest of the day.  I am always amazed about how healthy they seem compared to our first batch.  These birds are active.  The most common thing you hear about this kind of bird is that they have heart and leg problems, they really can only walk from the feed dish to the water dish, and the rest of the time they have to sit down because of their massive weight.  We experienced exactly this last year and it caused us to think we'd never raise these birds again.  But what a difference a diet can make.  I'll be posting some pictures when I get a chance.

I really do have a bunch to catch you up on- I really would love to show you some before and afters of our guest room and bathroom.  Oh, and we started our garden a few weeks ago, still have a lot to plant, but we've got a beginning at least.  May is due in a few weeks, she started making her udder a week ago.  So much has been going on I can barely remember it all!  Please bear with me, friends, life has really been getting in the way of my blogging but I hope to make a full comeback soon.

Thanks for stopping by!!
Melissa

I arrived at work at 7 o'clock and immediately started scrambling to get any pertinent items finished.  I had shipments to get out to our manufacturers that I knew couldn't wait until Monday so it wasn't until around noon that I was able to get back home to check on Chutney.  She was calmly munching on hay on the platform in the barn.  After a little while of pacing between the barn and the house waiting for something to change, I decided to open the door to the front paddock that we had fenced off for this occasion.  This way I could sit on the front porch and be able to see the goats.  Sure enough the girls were psyched to get out front where the grass was long and the low tree limbs had yet to be stripped of their leaves.

I tried to busy myself in the house.  After cleaning off our dining room table, which is our catch-all for anything and everything when we come into the house, and starting a load of laundry I decided I couldn't stand it anymore and went back outside.  I sat down in the grass within the paddock and started reading.  I needed to get my mind elsewhere or I would go crazy.  Chutney wasn't progressing at all and I was getting impatient.

The hours dragged on and still no sign from our little doe that she was even thinking of going into labor.  I went to bed restless, worried that they would be born during the night and something would go wrong.  At 3 o'clock in the morning I trudged out to the barn, the air was so warm and I was relieved that the babies would not come into the world in the middle of a hard frost.  I quietly opened the door and found Chutney lying in a bed of straw on the floor, my heart jumped up into my throat at the thought that maybe she was going into labor.  Alas, nothing.  I walked slowly back to the house, enjoying the mild weather, the darkness and quiet of the early morning hour.  But I needed to get some sleep.

Two hours later I gave up on my attempts to "sleep in", got dressed, and headed back out.  I kept wishing I had the same calm patience that my husband has.  Chutney still hadn't started going into labor, but when I felt her tail ligaments I noticed that I must have been wrong yesterday in thinking that they were 'gone' because they were certainly nowhere to be found this time.  She would kid before Sunday, of that I was certain.

Throughout the morning Chutney was obviously restless.  She didn't want to leave the barn, she continually cried out if someone wasn't in the barn with her, she didn't want to eat anything, and her udder was large and hard.  It appeared she was getting ready.  After hours of waiting I got annoyed with myself and went with Kyle to the gas station to get fuel for the lawn tractor, I had to stop hovering.  We got back and I checked her again, still nothing, so I went back into the house to warm up some apple cider before I went back into the barn to continue my surveillance.

Upon my return I found her lying on the floor of the barn and she was obviously pushing.  I ran out, and yelled to Kyle who was mowing the lower yard.  He saw me and calmly waved his understanding and slowly started making his way up the path to the barn.  I don't know how he can be so calm.  I ran back to the barn and arrived to see the front hooves and nose peeking out.  Chutney was about to become a mother.  Two seconds later a tiny, slippery kid came out and I cleaned its face off to be sure it could breathe before I stuck it in front of Chutney.  Her instincts kicked in amazingly and she immediately set to cleaning the kid off.  I was so proud. 

Shortly after the second doeling was born a third practically shot right out.  This one was just as large as the second doeling but was a dark brown color.  I hoped it was a buck, but it just wasn't in the cards this time, a third doeling.  Chutney was still working on cleaning off doeling #2 so I cleaned off doeling #3 just enough to be able to move around until Chutney could get to her.

Once everyone was dried off we moved them over to the heat lamp (Saturday ended up a little too breezy and cool for newborn babies) where Chutney could get fresh water and hay and the babies could nurse without getting cold.  Within ten minutes all had nursed successfully and quickly fell asleep under the watchful eye of our new mama-goat.

Everyone is doing great and we are just as proud as can be with the new additions to our farm.  The doelings, who we named Poplar, Juniper, and Willow, are already bouncing around and climbing on anything and everything they can get their hooves on.

So in about one more month it will be May's turn but until then I'll be trying not to spend all my free time in the barn holding baby goats.  =D

Her tail ligaments are just about gone and have softened considerably since last night.  So I think we'll have some new additions to the farm within a day or two.  I'm home early from work so I can keep an eye on her.  Keep her in your thoughts, please, she is such a little goat with an enormous belly- hopefully her labor will go smoothly and we'll have a healthy mama and baby goats by the end of it.

Whoa nellie!  Am I the only who noticed the coutdown this morning?  We're down to just a week and a half or so until Chutney kids and I have to admit that over the past few days I go out to the barn wondering if I'll be greeted by a bunch of babies.  I've heard that goats are pretty much sticklers for being on time with this kind of stuff, but its just so close and I can't help myself!

The poor girl just keeps getting wider and wider.  I'm certain she's got at least two in there.  I just hope there aren't too many more than that.  Of course, if it is just two, I'm pretty sure they're going to be pretty big kids- and I worry about my little mama-goat.  I just want her to have a relatively easy delivery and healthy kids.

The closer we get to her due date the more I am thinking that I am not ready yet!  Ugh.  I still have to order our disbudding iron (there are way too many little children that come here for us to leave horns on playful goats) and get paperwork/registration stuff ready for new additions.  I have no idea where to even start.  We don't even have a herd name yet!!!  We still need to work that out as well as get a tattoo number/code so we can register the kids once they arrive.  I need a step-by-step manual or a Registering Kids for Dummies book.

On top of that we need to get a new set up for the chicks in the barn.  After moving them out there a couple weeks ago they've been thriving.  It's nice to see them outside in the grass and sunshine instead of shut away in a brooder somewhere in our workshop.  The only downside is that there are 70 of them, which produces a massive amount of chicken poop in one area.  Sure they go outside on occasion but most of the meat birds would rather just laze around in the barn.  As a result the straw is pretty well soiled and we've started seeing more flies in the barn.  Not the optimal conditions for newborn baby anythings!

So this weekend we'll be spending some time cleaning out the barn from tip to tail and hopefully construct some better solution for the meat birds so they don't have to walk up and down a ramp to get in and out of the barn.  I'm hoping for a temporary shelter out in the pasture as they'll only be with us for another few weeks.

So anyways.  Does anyone have any good suggestions for a herd name?

So yesterday I mentioned that I was getting 'itchy' about the garden.  Well, today I'd like to talk about a different kind of itchy-ness. 

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I am very sensitive to poison ivy.  Unfortunately for me, I love kayaking and bringing our dogs down to the river across the road from our house and (as I'm sure you are aware) poison ivy just loves river banks.  It is way too early for poison ivy to be growing right now so Kyle and I happily paraded the pups down for an afternoon swim last weekend. So, on Sunday, when I found an itchy red bump on my ankle my first thought was that it was a bug bite.  Monday I awoke to more of the little red blisters on my neck, Tuesday I had a small patch next to my nose, and by Wednesday the bumps on my neck were spreading up onto my chin.  Lets just say that by Thursday I was throwing everything in the wash from my pillowcase to my jacket.

It may suprise you to know (it sure suprised the heck out of me) that you can get the irritating oil from this plant from more than just the leaves.  Thats right, you can even get it from the roots!  So, word of warning: if you are working in an area where poison ivy resides, even if you don't see any, wear gloves.  The oil can last for a long time on just about anything so you can keep reinfecting yourself through your shoes, your clothing, even your dog if he came in contact with any.  So always wash off anything and everything as soon as you can after coming in contact with this plant.  I've inserted a photo of what poison ivy looks like.  (Photo of Poison Ivy from Missouri River Institute's Online Field)

I'm not the only one suffering from a bit of discomfort lately.  The girls in the barn have some unwelcome guests.  A couple nights ago, while we were all down at the garden, I was checking Chutney to see if she was starting to shed yet and found lice.  The poor girl is bursting at the seams with her baby bump and come to find she's been itchy as heck from these darn parasites.  And of course, if one goat has something the other just has to have it, too.  May has been so itchy that she's taken to rolling on the ground, which I thought was just humorous goat behavior, but now I know better.  So I stopped by Johnson Farm and Garden last night and pick up a bag of diatomaceous earth.  A little sprinkle here, a little sprinkle there, and a big sprinkle throughout the barn (just in case) and hopefully these suckers will be gone in a few days. (Enlarged photo of lice by the University of Kentucky)

FYI!  If you have the same problem please do not use the diatomaceous earth that you got for your swimming pool, ok?  That stuff has been tampered with and not only will it not kill any bugs, it's also very dangerous to inhale.  Not that you want to inhale any DE, but this stuff is laced with chemicals so its worse.  Only get food or garden grade DE for treating external parasites.

Happy spring!

Hey folks!

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was off on a business trip to Texas/Mexico for the week.  But, happily, I am back home and seriously happy that I missed out on the snow that stopped by our house while I was away.  We are getting a head-start on the 'April showers' here and I'm just hoping that our spring flowers, that really got going over the past month, are going to tolerate the weather alright.  Here's a quick update on the farm happenings:

I got an email from our hatchery last week that our order of chicks will be shipping out on the 31st, this Wednesday.  So we'll have eighty chicks peeping away come the end of the week.  I'm definitely looking forward to their arrival but its always a little difficult when we work full-time jobs as well.  I work from 7-3:30 so we get the call from the post office right as I'm getting to work- so Kyle will, most likely, have to deal with them himself.  This isn't usually too bad, but when there are so many and you have to dip all their beaks in water to teach them to drink, it takes some time.

Our bees will be ready for pick up in two weeks- April 12th.  I'm excited to get that new aspect of the farm going.  I'm hoping that they'll thrive and not have any health problems like we've been seeing all over.  Nothing to do but wait and see I suppose.

I swear the pigs have doubled in size since we bought them.  Brick Top is still the biggest and the BOSS over the other boys, Freddy has become quite friendly and I think Kyle and I are going to have an extra-difficult time sending him off to the butcher when his time comes.  We're really excited about the landscaping they've been doing in their pasture and we're looking forward to sectioning it off so we can plant some quick-growing vegetables for them for later this spring/summer.  Their tilling speed and power have really got us planning away at future gardening endeavors on the rest of our land.  Eventually we're going to start fencing off the rest of the land so we can do rotational grazing/gardening a little easier in the future.

Finally, the goats are still working away at growing their babies.  May is finally starting to look a little rounder in the mid-section, so I'm feeling fairly confident that her 'date' was successful.  Chutney is so big I can't even pick her up anymore without fear of throwing out my back.  And she's actually started making her udder.  It is measly right now, but I suppose that is to be expected as she doesn't need it for another month and a half.  I'm sure in the weeks to come she'll really kick it into high gear.  Her mother is still milking after giving birth to Chutney, so I'm confident about her dairy genes.

Exciting stuff.

This is what our little goat looked like last August.  Small, sleek.  Sooo cute.

She was such a little peanut, I could hold her and walk around all day, she was so little.  Well, we're pretty certain our little goat is going to have some kids in a couple months because she's really getting pretty round.  Check out her baby bump!
 

Its hard to really see because she's still so fuzzy with her winter coat, but when she puts her front feet up on something you can really see a big round belly.

I've added a section on the left-hand column of the blog that has countdowns to each doe's approximate due date so we can all be excited and anticipate the new additions together.  Chutney is due on May 19th and May is due June 22nd.

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've been ready for Spring for over a month now.  We started some seeds, which are doing remakably well compared to previous attempts at seed-starting (don't get too excited, mostly just herbs, some hot peppers, and some tomatos to grow in the house).  The little snow we had was melting fast and I would say that half of our land was grass or spotty snow.  Just last week I saw the first of the spring flowers popping up through the ground.  I was getting excited for the girls who must be really looking forward to some nice fresh grass after all these months of hay and grain.

But, alas, we suffered a major set-back in this department yesterday when I awoke to a foot of wet snow on the ground and plenty more falling.  We donned our winter gear and headed out to see if we could get the snowblower going.  After ten minutes of frustration in the realization that the auger wouldn't be able to handle the heavy, wet snow, we gave in and I called in to work.

Though I wasn't exactly psyched to get such a significant snowfall, I have to admit, it was truly beautiful.  After giving up on the snowblower and its deafening noise as it choked through the snow back to its parking spot, we headed to the barn to feed everyone an early breakfast.  The sun hadn't yet come up and we enjoyed some quiet time before the world awoke. 

The girls happily munched away at their breakfast of grain and some nice second-cut hay that we found at Guys Farm and Yard over in Morrisville a few days ago.  The chickens scratched away at the ground, finding grain and bits of stuff we unearthed after cleaning out half of the old straw this past weekend.  The pigs, in their own shed, grunted and squeeked through their mix of grain and food scraps.

There is something just so pleasant about the sound of contently eating farm animals.  I think it is partially due to the frantic moments before everyone is fed, while everyone is demanding their breakfast, that we come to really appreciate the quiet afterwards.  We rush to feed the pigs before their squealing could bother the neighbors, and we quickly feed the goats before we're covered in hoof prints, then finally cast out grain for the chickens before they start trying to steal from the pigs and the goats.  Once its all said and done, and everyone has fresh, clean water, we can sit back and enjoy the peace.

Our life doesn't seem to lend itself to too many moments of peace.  There is always laundry to do, dishes to wash, dogs to exercise, animals to feed, pigs to move from the barn to their shed, water buckets to fill, eggs to collect, reading/studying to do, goats to check on, home renovations to tackle, not to mention our full-time jobs.  So, during these quiet moments before the sun comes up and the sense of urgency to get to work (in one sense or another)arises, we find a second to stand still, hold hands, and breathe deep.

Ok, I just can't stand it anymore.  I mean, I love winter, the snow is gorgeous, it helps keep the house warmer, and it's fun.  But seriously, I can't stand the cold anymore.  Kyle's truck has died and we've spent too much time freezing in the sub-zero wind gusts trying to figure out why (more than likely something related to the cold).  We've lost too many eggs to the frigid temperatures and I'm sick of having to supplement feed with so much grain.  Our kids need grass.  I am ready for Spring!!!!!! 

I know today is Groundhog Day...and Phil has officially proclaimed six more weeks of winter...but I've got a news flash: I DON'T CARE!!  Mwah ha haaa (maniacal laugh inserted here)!   Spring never comes early up here so even if he had forecast an early spring, it wouldn't apply to us folks up here in Northern VT anyways.  Best case scenario: we won't really see Spring until May, we need get through mud-season first.  Regardless, I'm determined to hurry this season along.  It was a welcomed guest, but its time to show it the door.

This past weekend, Kyle and I made a run to Gardener's Supply Company, an awesome, employee-owned, local gardening supply store.  We thought we'd grab some house plants (they're having a sale: buy two, get one free) and while we were there we picked up a handful of seed packets to start inside the house.  I was planning on just doing one big order on High Mowing Seeds website, but I just couldn't wait any longer.  I'll order the rest of our seeds online, probably later this month, but I wanted something in-hand to start right off.  We came home with paste tomatoes, Ring-of-Fire hot peppers, basil, parsley, rosemary, and lavender.  We also grabbed some Provider bush beans, Chamomile and Echinacea that we'll start later next month.

I'm planning the garden alot more than I did last year.  I'm reading more about companion planting and non-tilling, non-weeding options.  The garden was the biggest disappointment of last year.  I make no claims that I am a good gardener- I'm actually pretty terrible at it.  I'm more interested in animal husbandry and I think it shows: my livestock is thriving.  But it also shows in the garden: it's always overrun by weeds and I don't harvest what little there is to harvest in time so some things end up going to seed (which I don't realize until things start sprouting after we've turned everything under for the year).

We've also spent quite a bit of time working on our pig shelter.  Its relatively large, too big really for the size the pigs will be when we buy them.  So unless we really pack it with mulch hay these little piggies will probably spend the first month or two in the barn where it will be a little warmer.  We're planning on picking up the new additions to the farm this Saturday.  I'm pretty excited about it.  I know they're going to be meat for our table, but until then they can till our garden and enjoy the dappled sunshine in the little grove behind our house.  They will be happy, which makes me happy.

This is going to be a big, busy year.  It will be the first time keeping bees and raising turkeys and pigs.  It will be the first time our goats will kid, so it will be the first time bottle-feeding babies and milking goats.  I've worked at a dairy before, so I've done the twice-a-day milking, but never in conjunction with raising so many other animals, gardening, and beekeeping.  And of course, on top of that we're still renovating our house and working full time jobs.

Do I feel overwelmed?  Nope.  Well, not yet, give it some time.  Spring is rejuvenating after waking up from a long winter slumber.  I'm ready to wake up.  How about you?

I used to be extremely obessive about keeping my car clean.  Minus the head-on collision it had been in, it was practically brand new when I bought it a few years ago.  After a few months and about a thousand bucks in parts, my little red Scion XA was as good as new thanks to my husband and father-in-law.  It was the newest car I've ever owned (only a year old) and it wasn't teal green, unlike my previous two cars.  I had a 'no food or drink' rule for the longest time for fear of spoiling the spotless interior.  I even put down blankets when we would lay down the back seat for the dogs to ride in the back.  Those days are no more.  (Note: this image was snagged off Motor Trend as I don't have a photo of my car- it looks exactly like this minus the hubcaps which were lost during an unfortunate encounter with a Melissa-sized pothole.)

For about a month now I've had a tarp and a layer of gently-used straw in the back of my car.  We brought all 'the kids' up to my Mom's in Montgomery on January 1st for a late Christmas celebration and I never cleaned out the car after we returned home the next day.  At the time it was just from sheer laziness, then I reasoned that we'd have to bring May down to the breeder soon so we might as well leave it.  But now that she's been bred and I have no current plans to cart my girls around I have no excuse.

But I'm going to tell you a secret:
            I do have an excuse- I just like it there.

I got out of work Monday afternoon in a less than perfect mood.  It had been a long day and I was bummed about the rain which was spoiling my plans for the evening.  I trudged out to my car and as soon as I opened the door to escape the 'liquid sunshine' so intent on permeating my jacket, I was greeted by the smell wafting out of my car.  The hay and used straw had been steeping in the confined space of my small vehicle and the relative heat from the past few days had exponentially increased the aroma.  It's a sweet smell that strikes a chord in my heart.  That heavenly smell brings me back to childhood days in the horse barn with my Mom and reminds me of the beautiful things that I am a part of now.

It is so easy for me to get stressed and anxious (trust me, I do it all the time: I'm an expert) but when I think of the life we are bringing to our farm and the potential we are creating from our own hands, it brings me such peace and happiness.  Taking care of so many lives and running our home is no easy task.  We worry about sickness and disease.  Are our goats going to have healthy pregnancies and will their kidding be easy?  Will our garden be successful this year or will we continue to have to buy our produce?  We worry about things that would keep some people from venturing into a life like ours at all.

Things that used to seem so important are so trivial now; homesteading will do that to you.  It brings you back to earth and shows you in black and white what life is.  Its never easy and I can tell you for sure that we've still got a long way to go and a lot to learn, but I love it.  I love my life, and I love my dirty, straw-ridden car that smells like the barn.

Well I had all these grand plans for today.  Kyle was working in town in exchange for some new cross-country ski boots so I was flying solo for the day.  My plans included doing some laundry, painting my bee hive, working on the guest bedroom (sanding the mud on the drywall around our built-in shelves), working on a new knitting project, place my bee order, and spend some time with the girls in the barn.

It started out as a lazy morning.  Kyle and I had slept in to almost 7:30 after a night out in Stowe celebrating the marriage of our friends, Anna and Matt.  Kyle had to leave around 8:15 and I sat down to my computer to work on a few blogs and read up about gardening.  Before I knew it an hour had passed and I hadn't even been out to the barn yet!!  The girls always have plenty of hay and water so they are fine but I like getting out there right off to get them a bit of grain on these chilly winter days.

I threw my coveralls on over my flannel pajama pants and slipped on my muck boots and jacket.  Ollie followed me out to the barn, as usual, and as soon as I went through the door the chickens were right on me.  They are a little more demanding of my time- ever since we started feeding them our kitchen scraps they've been absolutely rediculous.  Even when I drop a glove on the ground they fall on it like vultures on yesterdays meal.  Anywho.

So I'm going about my business, checking the water level in their bucket, tossing grain around for the chickens, and grabbing eggs before they can freeze.  As I'm about to leave to get some breakfast of my own I do a quick check of the goats.  Chutney was bred a month ago and the jury is still out as to wether or not it was successful, so I've been keeping an eye on her to see if she goes back into heat.  May on the other had, hadn't been in heat ONCE since we got her back in August and we were, frankly, a little concerned that she had some 'problems'.  But when I checked her over she actually had a little discharge which made me think that she could be in heat.

Now, not having any boy goats on site (neither buck nor wether) it has made it very difficult to really tell when the girls go in heat.  They don't have anyone to flirt with or moon over so I have to go by the little things.  May had a tiny bit of discharge and was holding her tail up in the air, wagging it ever so slightly on occasion.  Bear in mind that it takes me an hour to get them to the breeder so I didn't want to be wrong and bring her all that way for nothing.  But on the other hand, if she was in heat I'd have to wait another three weeks or so before she went into heat again.  Suddenly that possibly-a-waste-of-time drive to the breeder sounded pretty good.  So I called up Sharon at Willow Moon Farm in Plainfield and she told me to bring her down right away.

I still had the tarp in my car from when we brought the girls up to my Mom's house a few weeks ago so I just tossed in some hay and lured May and Chutney into the back.  They're getting really good at car rides, instead of pacing around the whole time they'll actually lay down and munch on the hay, which is really nice.

While I was there I got to see the new babies that have come around over the past couple weeks.  I just couldn't believe how little they were: literally smaller than our cats- Elvis totally could have taken one down if he really wanted to.  Lucky for Kyle they were all spoken for so I couldn't buy one.  But, hopefully in another four months Chutney will kid and in five months May should be due as well.  At that point we'll be able to start milking the girls and making our own cheese and maybe even butter.  The prospects are very exciting.

The whole way home, May was so tired.  She kept falling asleep in the funniest positions.  I wanted to stop the car to get a picture of her at one point but anytime I came to a full stop both the girls would stand up to see where we were.  As soon as we got home, May stood outside the car looking for her boyfriend and crying over and over again.  Chutney followed me straight to the barn but I had to go back and persuade May to follow me.  I'll be keeping an eye on her for the next couple of weeks- just to be sure she doesn't go back into heat.  But lets keep our fingers crossed that we'll have some babies on the farm this summer!

New years eve, Kyle and I had a lovely evening of bonfires, margeritas, hors d'oeuvres and Alfred Hitchcock movies.  Standing around the fire, being dusted by snowflakes, we played fetch with Ollie until he could no longer find the frisbee in the dark and the snow.  The girls were warm in their barn, watching the festivities from the comfort of their window seat.  The new year was rung in without bells or whistles.  No ball drop, party hats, crowds, or bar bills.  Just us kids down here on the farm, standing around a fire in our muck boots, drinking frozen drinks out of authentic German steins in the crisp winter air.  In hindsight it probably would have been a little more pleasant if we were drinking hot drinks- like mulled cider...oh well!  We've got plenty of winter left for that.

We were gifted a beautiful, homemade, cedar storage bench that Mom made herself.  It is taking up residence at the foot of our bed and it is just absolutely beautiful.

The rest of the weekend was spent snowblowing (both with the john deere and the wind), shoveling, and staying cozy in the house when we could.  We brought our tree out to May and Chutney on Sunday but that was about as ambitious as we got.  The wind and the snow made spending time outside a little less than lovely.  I had grand plans of working on the guest bedroom but settled for making some awesome breakfast burritos, spicy homefries, and mamosas before spending the rest of the day in sweats with Kyle, watching Psycho and back episodes of Lost online at Netflix.

I did start shopping for our seeds for this year's garden.  We're going to be buying them from High Mowing Organic Seeds just a few towns over from us in Wolcott.  They're a great local company that sells organic seeds at fair prices- we like them.  Now my only challenge is going to be to wait to start the seeds once they arrive...I'm ready but if we start them now we might have a full-fledged garden in our house before Spring even shows its lovely face- not a good idea when you've got cats and dogs just dying to find something new to dig in.  Although, maybe I'll start some herbs and hot peppers just to get my gardening fix...good idea, I think I'll spend my break shopping.