Farm Happenings, and Stuff

Whew!
Do you know that Wii Sports boxing can burn about 100 calories per 15 minutes?

I kid you not.

The last few nights Ben and I have been looking for something other than movies to do after the kids go to bed. We figured out that our Wii can be used for more than just netflix. ;) We loaded up Sports and actually had quite a good time, bowling and boxing. And it's burning pretty good calories.

My weight has been steadily climbing since my last pregnancy and it's got to stop. I'm sure part of it is the ultra-fatty pasta alfredo, pizza, and fried pork chops we've been eating. So the last two weeks or so I have started cutting down on calories and getting more exercise. Luckily exercise is coming fairly easy now that the weather is (well, WAS) warming up. Mucking out a barn burns a lot of calories!

We found out that the goats are too small still for breeding. :( So now I am on the lookout for a doe that is ready to deliver in a month or so that we can purchase. I found a beautiful Alpine doe on craigslist, but alas, I can't justify spending $300 for a goat.

We have a flock of 8 chickens now - 6 hens and 2 roosters. Ole Red and Popcorn made it through the winter. Roosie Jr. Jr. did not. :( We had three generations of that roo on our farm and now he's gone. It makes me sad.

We have decided to increase our flock - again. We will be going to Tractor Supply during their Chick Days and letting the girls pick out a few. We'll also try to hatch at least one incubator (20-30 eggs). Ben is on the fence about trying meat chickens again this year - we need some equipment, but if we can make/purchase that in time, we'll do a small meat chicken order.

Over last weekend we dug up 12 wild raspberry plants and replanted them in our nice mulched/fertalized berry patch. I also dug up 3 of my grapes that may or may not make it - I can't remember which ones were growing last year. This weekend we hope to dig up all the wild blackberries that we have around - hundreds, easily, and add some of them to the berry patch.

I have fruit trees on order - quite a few, actually, as well as a few more grape plants. I have apples, peaches, pears, and cherries coming. It's very exciting. We have found these large 'cages' that are used with large glue tanks in commercial glue companies. They are about 5 foot square and they keep the goats from being able to eat newly planted trees.

Our bees are alive! We're not sure just HOW alive, but there was definite activity during the few warm days we had. I do hope that the cold snap again hasn't hurt them. Hopefully they got some pollen while they were out and have a tiny bit extra food. We saw a lot of small, tiny bees (hopefully babies = good breeding/hatching going on). Ben has another hive up and ready and we are getting another 4 pound package of bees in April, so we'll have two hives going. And hopefully our first hive will swarm and we will catch it - 3 hives!

We also took out our mason bee house and looked inside, which I will post later because I got some cool pictures of it. We only found larve. :( But we're going to try again. Mason bees and "orchard" bees are great for fruit trees because they buzz around right as most trees are budding and flowering - unlike honey bees, which come out either too early or too late, depending on what kind of tree.

So that's the farm happenings! I love spring.

Spring? SPRING?

I love winter. Really, I love winter.

But you know what? Enough's enough. I would go into all the reasons why I'm sick of it, but, well, I'm sure you know.

Yesterday was a balmy, sunny 45 degrees. The farm jumped into action. I swear, it was like a switch had turned on. The bees came back to life (we were pretty sure they were dead) and were buzzing frantically around, cleaning out their house and starting up life again. The chickens were wandering around for the first time in a while. The goats were nibbling some grass that had come uncovered as the snow melted. Even the birds were chirping.

I saw our hated enemy friend the hawk, sweeping over the fields. I have to admit, he's a beauty. I just wish he would stop eating our chickens. I get sick of watching him dive after them.

Spring is such a frenzied time, even for a small farm like ours. Here's some of the things that need to be done this year:

• Clean out the barn completely. Everything is going. All the bedding, stocked hay, everything. The goats are now corraled in the smaller pen and sleeping in the (empty) chicken house. The barn needs to be completely mucked, pressure washed, and set to rights.
• Fence in the whole pasture with field wire fence, layered with electric lines. We've found that the electric-only works only so-so, and goats are natural escape artists anyway, so we're going to panel it all in field wire before we let the goats out into the main pasture. We'll use the electric lines to keep them from head-butting or rubbing up against the field fence.
• Start up our berry patch in the back. We mucked out about 1/3 of the barn Sunday and all of that wonderful, crappy mulch and straw went back to the berry area. I layered it down nicely.
• Get some grape trellises up and running.
• At least experiment with cold weather crops - lettuces, broccoli, etc. I've never even attempted them, so I'm going to semi-blindly dive in.
• Get some fruit trees going.
• Construction: What I would like to do is construct a new chicken house, complete with roosts and a secure chick area. The chicken house we have now is tiny and not really suited in the way I want it to be (call me picky). The new house will be made of pallet wood and recycled wood as much as possible. I really want to build it myself...
• That being said, I would also like to construct a goat shed with a kidding stall and shelter from the wind. This isn't going to be a complex thing by any means. It just needs to be built.
• Lonnie-the-goat goes to butcher this fall.
• I am on the fence about breeding the girls... I need to do it quick if we're going to do it.
• We will be picking out some chicks from Tractor Supply and also hatching some of our own out here again. We will be butchering 5 or so in fall.

Sooo... yeah, that's it so far! LOL.

Menu Plan Monday, and More

(Check out Organizing Junkie for more menu plans!


Welcome to my first post of 2011!

One thing I have been terribly lax at is menu planning. For our family, when it works, it WORKS. When I don't make one, well, we go through the rush-whats-for-dinner daily.

So here we are again. A new year. Hopefully a new start.

Mon - Sweet & Sour Beef Stew over rice, homemade french bread

Tues - Bourbon chicken (a family favorite), stirfried veggies, over rice

Wed - Spaghetti or Alfredo pasta, more homemade bread, green beans

Th - Chili with cornbread, Broccoli

F - Bean enchiladas, cornbread, lemon garlic broccoli

S - Tamsyn's birthday party! We'll probably have a meat/cheese tray, so we'll finish that off, as well as cake and goodies.

Su - Plain ole' pot roast, french bread, salad


Now the trick: to stick with it!


Tamsyn turns 2 in 3 days (I originally typed '3 in 2 days'. WHOA, there, mommy, back up!). Her GF/DF/EF cake is ordered from Pattycake Bakery, a vegan bakery here in Columbus. I LOVE the fact that they are already vegan. They also take Gluten-free orders on a regular basis, so I'm not very worried about cross contamination. I could, of course, make T's cake here at home - but there is something about birthday cakes that makes me want buy them. Partly for the lovely decorations, done by real people. Partly because I LOVE birthday cake - the kind you get from a real bakery. LOVE it. Love it so much that I am having a 2nd, "regular" cake made for T's party. All for me (but I might share with some guests). After all, her birth day included me, right? So I get cake too!

Ahhem. Yes, I'm 6.


And in a random swing of topics, we sold Molly yesterday. :( For many reasons. The first is that the goats have to somehow pay for themselves... they weren't. Molly was the ringleader, she was a pain in the neck, so she went first.
Connie is up for sale, too. I'm debating on listing Nicky, just because I don't see any real reason to keep him.

I'm also considering breeding the "babies". I guess they're not really babies anymore! I'd like to wait until late January, though. That way they are a solid 9 months old. Connie was 8 months old when we bred her, and I feel that was a tiny bit too young.

Alright, well, time to go do some dishes, bake some bread, and make some yummy stew.

Kudos!

The Babies!

I realized today that I had never posted pictures of the goat kids! How forgetful of me!

Nessa and Nicky were born April 16th. Lonnie and Luna followed on the 18th.

I wasn't there for Nessa and Nicky's birth, but I showed up about half an hour after they were born. They had a rough start, especially Nicky, because Connie is a first time mom and didn't know what to do with them. We stuffed them full of warm water, stuck them on a heating pad, and used a blow-dryer until they were warm.

Nessa is the brown one. She reminded me of a Lioness - hence Nessa. Nicky is the black.

Meet Luna and Lonnie! Luna is on top.


Lonnie was born first and needed some assistance getting out, mostly because his head is HUGE. Luna came a few minutes later with no complications.

The kids go nuts with all the plastic and cardboard we have around the farm. For instance, our rain barrels (that we haven't set up yet) provide hours of entertainment.


Luna there is actually standing on top! The kids' balance and jumping ability never ceases to amaze me.

Nessa is kind of our fireball. She's not real friendly towards us, mostly because she's just very skittish and high strung.


The piles of cardboard we store for our garden (search lasagna gardening) act as a slide.




So that's the kids! We were blessed to have two does and two males. We will, of course, keep the does, and they will probably be bred in the late season next year. We will wether (castrate) Nicky as our companion male. Having a male around lets us know when the girls go into heat, even if he's castrated.

Lonnie will either be sold or sent to market when he grows a little bigger. We haven't decided. I think I would prefer him to be sold, but the prospect of fresh, grass-raised goat meat is also appealing.

More pictures to come, as they grow and play!

Kudos,
Ket

My First Beauty

I love my girls. And I don't mean the goats (although I love them too).

These girls:


These beautiful, wonderful, amazing miracles.


These dirty-faced, muddy-kneed, hay-filled hair, grass-stained hands girls.

Morrigan will be 3 this year, in July. I'm amazed. Where did my little snookums go??


And now look at her!


I refuse to believe that picture A turned into picture B. I think that baby is still around here, hiding somewhere, while this alien almost-3-year-old took over. Yup. That must have been what happened.

We've had pretty times:


"Little stinker" times:


And odd times:


(Yes, that is baby Connie.)

It's been a wild ride. I'm both excited and afraid of what the future will bring!

Kudos,
Ket

Pregnant Goats

Meet Connie:



Connie is a 3/4 Nubian, 1/4 Alpine dairy goat. She's about a year old, and she was born right here at the Doran homestead.


This was Connie a year ago. Heart melting yet? Mine is. When Connie was born, I wasn't here, and her mom didn't take care of her properly. We lost her sister, Smudge, but after a lot of care and a few days inside, Connie pulled through.

Meet Connie's mom, Molly:


She's the one on the far right. She's a 1/2 Nubian 1/2 Alpine dairy goat. Maybe 3 years old, purchased last year.

And then there's Erica, who is the brown one. She's a full Nubian.

It's kidding time in goat world. Time for baby goats. We are 100% sure Connie and Molly are pregnant, and they are due anytime between now and April 20th. We are not hoping for a baby from Erica, though. If she is pregnant, she's carrying a tiny single. But she hasn't shown any signs at all that she is pregnant. Which stinks, because I really wanted Erica-babies. We'll try again next year.

My bet is that Molly will have triplets. Connie twins. I mean, look at these wide loads:


(Please excuse the lack of glamourous face shots... they were eating breakfast.)

This year, we have a nifty little tool to help us be there for the births. A friend ordered a live-action IP camera for his baby's nursery so his friends could see the baby, and it gave us the brillient idea of setting up one of those same cameras in our barn! The cam is on it's way and should be here in the next few days. We're going to set it up in the barn so that we know at a glance if any of the girls are in labor. It will also be hooked up to the interwebz, so our friends, blog-readers, or other interested people can watch. (Fair warning, though, goats are notorious about having 2am births.). It will also be recorded for later viewing.

I'm psyched.


Ummm... girls? You're doing it wrong. Just sayin'

Kudos!
Ket