Nexus Farm

Win some, lose some

2011-02-25T08:49:00.003-05:00

It's been a roller coaster of a week. On Tuesday, Star gave us a buckling, but we lost her to birth complications on Thursday. We named the buckling George, as he was born on Washington's birthday (not the President's Day holiday). Very cute little guy! He did manage to get colostrum from mom for two days, and is doing well.

On Thursday, Karma gave us a boy and a girl, which DH found and got to name. He called them Sonny and Cher.

So we're left dealing with one singleton who needed company, and a stressed out doe. I decided to put all the babies together and bottle feed them. I wasn't entirely certain that Karma was allowing the babies to nurse, and it was easier at that point to put the babies all in one room.

So I put Karma up on the milking stand, which she wasn't crazy about (last time she was up there I trimmed her feet). And Tuvok isn't helping, he's in the stall one wall away (can't see us) hollering to beat the band. She wants to go back to him instead of paying attention to me! I ended up restraining her head, and tying her feet to the back of the milking stand (two pieces of baling twine with slip knots on them so she can't pull her feet forward and knock over the bucket). I start milking her, and one side of her udder has a big, hard lump! Mastitis, first time out of the gate!

I milked as much as I could, and when I got back to the house found the boxes of mastitis treatment that I have put away. I pulled out two tubes of a medication called "ToDay" (for lactating cows) and administered one tube at last night's milking, and the other at this morning's milking. The lump was better this morning. It's not nearly as hard, and not extending down as far into the teat, so hopefully the treatment works perfectly and all will be well. I know she's NOT happy with me milking out that side, and I can't say I blame her. I'm just hoping it's over soon. She's already stressed enough, between losing her sister and me taking the babies away. Once she settles down, she'll realize she gets extra grain on the milking stand and as her milk comes in more, it will feel good to get up there and have the milking done.

The babies are eating well. I'm feeding them four times a day at this point - 7 am & pm, when I go out to milk, and again around 11 & 3. The three of them are almost finishing off a 16 oz bottle at this point. I'm sure I'll be doing separate bottles for them very soon. Cher is the smallest one of the bunch, and absolutely *adorable*!

We're waiting on one more - Gloria. Can't wait to see those babies!

Valentine's Week

2011-02-15T09:34:00.002-05:00

The soda is done, and in the fridge. DH said the ginger ale didn't taste much like ginger ale, but said he liked it anyway. The root beer (made from a commercial flavoring) apparently came out strong. I think I need to increase the amount of shredded ginger root that goes into the ginger ale (and some recipes call for the addition of a little lemon juice) and decrease the amount of root beer flavoring next time.

Today I started some alfalfa seeds and chickpeas for sprouts. The chickens loved their wheatgrass. When I did the wheatgrass, I did one tablespoon per tray, but I think that could have been increased. This time I did two teaspoons of the alfalfa seeds. For the chickpeas, they came in a 50-gram envelope. Upon opening that I found two 25-gram envelopes, so I soaked one entire 25-gram envelope overnight. I set them in the trays this morning.

Yesterday was 50 degrees, today we'll be lucky to hit 20. The rest of the week, though, looks like maple tapping weather! I will hopefully get my equipment cleaned and get my trees tapped tomorrow, and start collecting and boiling on Thursday.

No goat babies yet. Can't wait to have goat milk for milk, and cheese, and hopefully butter, too!

Make-Your-Own Soda

2011-02-11T06:38:00.002-05:00

Last night, listening to news reports about how bad diet soda is for you, DH and I were discussing alternatives. He drinks one 2-liter bottle of diet soda per week, occasionally another small bottle if he gets one when we go out. Regular soda, besides having artificial colors and flavors, generally has high fructose corn syrup as well. He did find one brand that uses "all natural" ingredients, and there are a few others that aren't as bad - Jones soda, Squamscot soda (which has the added benefit of being locally produced).

This led me to try making some soda, something I've been intending to do off and on for quite some time. Last week I bought a piece of ginger root at the grocery store to try homemade ginger ale, in fact. (After having a piece of ginger root dry up and shrivel on the counter, I had decided it was best kept in the freezer.)

Following instructions found online, and repurposing empty 2-liter soda bottles, I made one bottle of ginger ale and one bottle of root beer (using a root beer concentrate previously purchased). The instructions for ginger ale are at http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/ginger_ale_ag0.htm and the instructions for root beer are at http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/ROOTBEER_Jn0.htm. I now have both bottles under a cabinet, hopefully carbonating away. We'll know in 3 days. Well, they will know, anyway; I don't drink soda. I might be talked into trying the ginger ale but I hate root beer, so DH and DS will have to do the taste testing and let me know how they turned out.

In the meantime, I have been researching how to grow your own ginger root. Apparently, you can plant the part of the ginger root that has "eyes", and grow it as a houseplant to make more. I don't know if this root will grow because I had it in the freezer, but I may pick up a new one at the grocery store today and try it.

Sprouts, Day 4

2011-02-04T07:55:00.002-05:00

I think we're just about ready to eat these! Here are the alfalfa sprouts at Day 4. They have gotten quite tall! I'm going to be adding some of these to my salad tonight.

These are the broccoli sprouts. Not so tall, not so many of them, but I just wanted a sample anyway.
And here is the side view. You can see all the roots of the alfalfa sprouts hanging down, as well as the height of the alfalfa sprouts.

When these are done, I'm going to use one tray, maybe both, to try sprouting some wheatberries for the chickens. I hear they love them.

Sprouts, Day 3

2011-02-03T08:45:00.003-05:00

OK, so Day 3. So far I've remembered to rinse them twice a day, as well as taking pictures in the morning.

Here are the alfalfa sprouts. They are starting to get some length to them, and if I had to guess, I'd guess they'll be ready to eat - not tomorrow, but Saturday, so on Day 5. In actuality, they're probably ready to eat now (length can be better seen in the third picture) but I'm basing my observation on the size and length of the sprouts I've bought at the grocery store.

These are the broccoli sprouts. Definitely less growth, even considering that there are far fewer seeds in there. They will likely need an extra day or two more than the alfalfa sprouts.

Here's the side shot. You can see some of the length developing on the alfalfa sprouts, and how small the broccoli sprouts are by comparison.

OK, so Day 3. So far I've remembered to rinse them twice a day, as well as taking pictures in the morning.

Sprouts, Day 2

2011-02-02T08:35:00.003-05:00

Day 2 of sprouts. Today not only are the sprouts a lot more developed, but I noticed you can actually see some of the roots beginning to extend below the tray, for the alfalfa, at least. This made a difference when I was rinsing the seeds this morning. The broccoli seeds, which are growing more slowly, do not have roots below the tray yet. When I rinse them, they move around the tray. When I rinsed the alfalfa seeds, a small bunch on the edges (either slower sprouting, slower growing, or unsprouted seeds) moved around, but the rest stayed put.

This brings to mind one difference between using this flat tray sprouting system as opposed to a homemade jar system (canning jar with mesh or cheesecloth cover). If you're using the jar, you have to put water in and dump it out. Using the tray, you run water through the tray, and the seeds are less disturbed. (The lecturer was talking about all the long sprouts getting tangled together with the first system, as opposed to growing straight up and staying in place with the second.)

So here are the alfalfa sprouts this morning.

Here are the broccoli sprouts.

And here is a close-up of the sprouting trays, from the side so that you can see how the roots are coming through the bottom of the tray.

Sprouts, Day 1

2011-02-01T09:04:00.002-05:00

I was contemplating whether this was day 1 or day 2. After all, I started these sprouts yesterday. Yesterday was not day 1, however, because it had not been a full day of growing yet, so I figure yesterday was day 0 and today is day 1. Anyway, this is a close-up of the alfalfa seeds after 24 hours' growth. See the little sprouts starting? I kept checking on them yesterday; I could see more and more little sprouts starting every time I looked!

These are the broccoli seeds sprouting. The seeds are the tiny dark-brown little balls. All the lighter colored bits are sprouts!

And this is a shot of my sprouting container, on the sink.

Now yesterday, when I initially dumped the seeds in (they had, prior to that, been soaking in a jar of water) it looked like there was a lot of water in there that hadn't drained, so I set each tray individually on a kitchen towel to soak up some of the excess. Last night, when I did my rinse, I didn't do that. I think that way leaves too much water in the seeds. Again this morning when I did my rinse (after I took these pictures) I set the tray on a kitchen towel momentarily to wick away some of the excess water. I don't know if I'm *supposed* to do that or not, but the guy giving the lecture had said that excess water was not good. He was speaking specifically about water left in the bottom tray after rinsing, but I'm choosing to extrapolate. More research may be needed.

Adventures in Sprouting!

2011-01-31T08:32:00.005-05:00

I attended the Sprouting class at Lake Street Garden Center yesterday, and came home with a bunch of things. Among them were a sprouter and some seeds!

This is the brand of sprouter I got. They had another one, but I liked this one. I found out afterward that they have a website, and you can apparently get more individual trays to add to the system.

These are the sprouter trays, all set up. The instructions state to wash each part individually, before first use and after each set of sprouts.

I separated them so you could see them all. The bottom is solid, to contain any liquid; the trays have very narrow slits to allow water to drain while keeping seeds in. I was concerned that the alfalfa seeds were too small and would go through the slits but, as you'll see, this didn't happen.

These are the trays nested in two sections - one tray and the solid bottom, and the other tray with the slotted top (for airflow, I presume)

We were told in the class that you start by soaking the seeds overnight. I soaked both broccoli seeds (which are fairly expensive - 5 grams of seeds for $2.99, as opposed to alfalfa seeds at 50 grams for $3.99) and alfalfa, which are the sprouts I usually buy in the grocery store. I also bought seeds to sprout lentils and chickpeas.

These are the broccoli seeds, soaking in an 8-oz container (half-pint wide mouth canning jar).

I used just under a teaspoon of broccoli seeds.

These are the alfalfa seeds soaking in a regular half-pint canning jar (jelly jar). I used 1-1/2 teaspoons of alfalfa seeds here.

After soaking overnight, you empty the seeds into the sprouting tray and allow the excess water to drain off. These are the broccoli seeds. (The trays are 5-1/2" square)
These are the alfalfa seeds. I was interested to see how full the tray was - the bottom of the tray is pretty well covered! The instructions we were given said to use up to a tablespoon of seeds, and I used half of that (1-1/2 teaspoons - measured. In case you didn't know, one tablespoon is equal to 3 teaspoons). While I felt like I used maybe half or close to half of the 5 grams of broccoli seeds that were in the package, I didn't even make a dent in the package of alfalfa seeds (50 grams). I may be ordering broccoli seeds, if it turns out I like them, in bulk from the Sproutman website. (One of the ladies in the class recommended that one).

Here are the trays stacked up with the seeds in them. We were instructed to rinse twice a day (the guy conducting the class said he does it at breakfast and dinner) by pouring a cup of water through the tray, letting it drain, and returning it to the stack.

There was some discussion of sprouting times; most edible sprouts will begin sprouting in 1 to 3 days, and be ready to eat in 2 to 6 days, depending on type of seed. Some sprouts will taste different if they're left too long before eating, due to the development of chlorophyll. I took from the discussion that this is most likely to happen in legumes - lentils and beans. This can be mitigated by allowing them to sprout in the dark - in a cupboard or closet. He said you can also reduce a strong chlorophyll taste by putting them in the dark if that develops.

One inexpensive way to begin without a sprouter is a canning jar (he had one-quart ones) with a piece of cheesecloth held over the top with a rubber band. The main issue with this is that it doesn't have the same amount of airflow as a sprouting system. It might be worth experimenting with some leftover plastic food containers that might nest together (yogurt? hummus?) and either cheesecloth or maybe even plastic canvas (depending on the size of the seeds). I think something short and shallow would work better than something tall and narrow. I may try sprouting some wheat for the chickens. I've heard they love sprouts, especially in the winter when other greens are non-existent.

Day by day

2011-01-29T14:02:00.004-05:00

Friday, 01/28 - Trimmed hooves on five goats. Sally, our boarder, was picked up that afternoon.

Saturday, 01/29 - Went to Tractor Supply for new muck buckets (got 4, all they had) and picked up some grit and oyster shell for the chickens, and a double-sided mineral feeder to add to the chicken coop. They don't like to go outside much to get any grit or minerals this time of year, and the new young'uns I added to the coop recently are still too scaredy-cat to venture out at all. I put up the feeder and left them with a fresh supply of grit & oyster shell. I also cleaned out the "growing pen" in the back of the barn, and vacuumed all the cobwebs in there, and put down fresh shavings. I looked at the goats - one of them seems to have far less ligaments if any; I'm hardly an expert at telling when goats are due, but I think one of ours (Karma? Forgot to check which one when I was feeling ligaments...) may go soon. Looking forward to babies!

I also pulled their Christmas tree snacks out of the snow. They had eaten all they could get to. Made them happy to have fresh tree to chew on!

Sunday 01/30 Found out that a local shop, Lake Street Garden Center, has some interesting free classes! There's one this afternoon on sprouting and micro-greens - I'm going to call and see if I can get into that one. Then there's one next Saturday on indoor herbs, and one March 12 on seed starting.

Managed to get into the class on sprouting; very interesting! I've only ever seen this stuff online. I came home with a sprouter (small, two trays, about 4" square) and several different types of seeds to sprout, including alfalfa & broccoli. I also got some new "starter size" houseplants to replace some of the ones that died off. We could use some new plants to clean the air in this stale, closed-up winter house.

Self-sufficiency skills

2011-01-29T09:17:00.004-05:00

Lately I've accomplished a few things. One thing has been setting up and doing some weaving on the new (old) big loom I got for Christmas (see my crafts blog, http://fiberarts.typepad.com). I've also been doing a little knitting - some cotton dishcloths and a little knitting on some socks when we went to the movies last week. In this tough winter weather, I'm also looking forward very much to maple sugaring, which should be sometime next month or early into March. Last year I managed to pick up a full set of 10 maple sugaring buckets (a set consisting of a sap bucket, lid, and the spile or tap for the tree). Last February I set four buckets (homemade from plastic paint buckets purchased at the hardware store) and boiled the sap down to five pints. This year I'll have 10 buckets out there! I'm looking forward to this so much!

I am also learning to make pasta! I bought a pasta/food grinder attachment from a Craigslist seller that fits on my KitchenAid mixer (one of my great finds - picked it up at a yard sale for $30). A few weeks ago I made spaghetti with it, following the egg noodle recipe in the instruction manual. I had two issues with that - first of all, they tasted very "eggy", as egg noodles should; and second of all, when the pasta is extruded, it would stick together. I spent a lot of time separating the strands while the pasta was drying.

Yesterday I tried a different recipe, and a different die in the extruder. I made lasagne. The recipe was:

2-1/3 cups flour (I use organic unbleached flour that I buy in bulk, but I want to try this with home ground soft white wheat)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup water

I started by combining the eggs, olive oil, and water, and whisking it together. Then I added 2 cups of flour and stirred with a large fork until I had a dough. Then I stuck my hands in, and squished until all the flour was incorporated. At that point I added the rest of the flour (1/3 of a cup). This was too much. I kneaded a bit, then took the dough ball out of the bowl (leaving the excess flour behind) and kneaded it on the counter until all the extra flour was incorporated. Then I added a bit more flour from the bowl, until it was a smooth dough.

I set up the pasta extruder and started feeding the dough in. I set up my cooling racks (I have three that set up on top of each other) for drying the pasta.

At one point I stopped the machine. The die itself makes a pasta ribbon that looks like a large letter "C". I needed to turn the die so that the slot in the "C" was facing down, because the noodles I was getting were collapsing in on the edges. Turning the die solved the problem. I also stopped it every time I had to cut a noodle off. That made it easier to get a clean(er) edge, although what I got still wasn't great (cooked and tasted great, though!)

I let the noodles dry while I went out to feed the animals in the barn, then started a pot of water when I got back.

The first time I used this, with the spaghetti, I did not use oil in the recipe. I will continue to use the oil, I liked that addition. I use extra virgin olive oil (bought in a one-gallon size) in a lot of my cooking. I am delighted with this newly learned skill and looking forward to using it more in the future!

Winter with a vengeance!

2011-01-29T07:53:00.006-05:00

It seems winter has arrived with a vengeance, and is staying PUT! Since Christmas we've had at least one snowstorm a week, and last week we had three. At one point DS only had one day of school - the Monday was a holiday, Tuesday and Friday were snow days; he attended on Wednesday and had a dentist appointment on Thursday. Wow!

Two weeks ago, I managed to snag some Christmas trees at the dump for the goats to snack on. This is Sally, our temporary boarder, enjoying one of the trees.

Sally was here for a month, to be bred to Tuvok. He is turning into quite the handsome buck. It seems sometime in December he stopped looking like a kid, and started looking like a full-grown goat!

Quinn is now 4-1/2 months old, and growing like a weed! She was 24 lbs when we went for our last vet visit. She is now finished with her shots for a year, and a very healthy little girl. She is definitely going to be bigger than Zoey, who is fairly small at only 35 lbs and maybe 18 inches tall.

This is our gray kitty, Diva, now almost 7 months old, and due to go in and be spayed in early February. She was watching the big fat snowflakes during our last storm. They were coming tantalizingly close to the window, and she wanted to chase them.

Finally, I moved all the chickens together recently. We had a very cold snap earlier this month, and the bulb in the growing pen went out (second one) so I put all the chickens together for warmth. The Chanteclers look like full-grown chickens now, just 2/3 the size. I still can't tell which ones are pullets and which ones are cockerels, but someone else wrote about their Chanteclers and mentioned that it was difficult to sex them until after they hit four months of age. I'm sure we'll be able to tell soon enough.

Yesterday Sally was picked up. Before her owners came to get her, I trimmed nails on all five of the goats. That left me a little tired and sore! I was happy to be done, though. They all needed it. Karma and Gloria are looking especially fat. I'm thinking next month we'll have baby goats running around, and I'll soon have my goat milk supply back! I'm looking forward to learning to make more cheese this year, and hoping for a cream separator for butter...

Snowstorm!

2011-01-13T10:01:00.004-05:00

Tuesday evening was the beginning of the first big blizzard of 2011. We had adequate warning, which meant that all the animals were locked in (it's easier to dig out and open the doors afterward than it is to clear snow out of the stalls). I also decided that it was time to combine the two chicken coops. The chicks are now between 2-1/2 and 3 months old, and look like smaller versions of the adults. They have been kept separated up until now, with a light (which they haven't been using for the last couple of weeks) and were switched over a while back from mash to crumble feed (larger pieces).

This was the scene Wednesday afternoon, near the end of the blizzard, when DH started snowblowing. At that point, however, I wasn't ready to begin digging the animals out.

This morning I took a yardstick out with me. I got a measurement of 13" in the driveway, 6 or 8 feet behind DH's truck.

This is behind the barn, which is rather sheltered (doesn't get a lot of wind to create drifts). The snow here was 19" deep.

And this is the side of the barn, the outside door to the goats' stall. There was a lot of drifting on this side. After I opened the door, the goats charged out onto the path I had shoveled, and stood there, clearly confused about the pasture that had disappeared!

The chickens are, of course, terribly confused by the sudden addition of the 11 young ones. The young ones are confused to be somewhere other than their usual living quarters. Here, one young Chantecler is checking out the snow. (I shoo'ed her back into the coop after taking this picture.)

11-11

2010-11-11T18:38:00.004-05:00

Today is 11/11! I just realized that! It's Veteran's Day as well, and DS has no school, today or tomorrow. As a result today feels like a Saturday and I keep thinking we have church tomorrow. Not the case!

Today we sold Tesla. Someone contacted me yesterday and said she had two alpacas, both older, and had lost one suddenly. The one left behind was inconsolable and she needed a companion quickly. She has two younger girls (maybe 10 and 6), and they liked him immediately. I did give her the information she would need to register him, if she decides to do that.

Yesterday we picked up a new puppy. She's another Border collie, and her name is Quinn. She's 9 weeks old today and was born on 9/9/10.

We have also finished hatching. Out of the 15 eggs in the styrofoam incubator, we hatched out two, and only one of those survived. We had two batches in the wood hatcher. One batch of 15 eggs yielded 9 chicks - our best percentage. The other batch of eggs - 10 - gave us two hatchlings. All of the chicks from the wood hatcher survived, leaving us with a total of 12 new chicks. I think the last batch had a lower hatch rate because at that point the temperatures were (and still are) getting colder, and the eggs may have been chilled after they were laid and before I got them into the hatcher. Regardless, today I moved the chicks from the brooder cage to the stall in the back of the barn. Not only were they starting to get a little tall for the brooder cage, but they were going through food and water too fast for the small feeders that fit in the brooder cage. In the stall, they have their red light in one corner, and the large-size (about gallon-size) food and water containers. We're going to need a second bag of chick starter very soon!

Details and Updates

2010-10-26T10:57:00.005-04:00

It's been a long time since I've posted a comprehensive update. Today I decided (in part because I wanted to write details of our cabinet incubator and our current hatching) to update details of just about all the animals currently on the property.

We currently have three alpacas - two girls, and one boy. Milk is the black girl in front, Angel is the white one. Both are ARI registered, and of breeding age, although not currently bred.

The boy is a yearling, as of the end of July. His name is Tesla. He's related to Angel, but not to Milk. He currently lives with the goats because, even though males supposedly can't fertilize females until they're at least 2 years old, I don't want him practicing. He got to the point that he was harrassing the girl alpacas, so he was separated.

This is what happens when you call the goats from across the pasture! I love the flying ears! I wish the picture was better, but this is the best my cell phone can do (and the cell phone camera is better than the digital camera!)

This is Tuvok, our baby from earlier this year (born April 1 - easy to remember!) and Gloria, who was Shammy's baby from April 2009. My friend Wendy, who had bought her and her brother, decided to switch to Nigerian Dwarfs - smaller and easier to handle - so Gloria came back. She's still one of the prettiest babies we've ever had! She's 3/4 Nubian, 1/4 Alpine.

Karma, Summer's baby from 2008

And Star, her sister. Hopefully both of them will be giving us babies next spring.

These are two hens we brought home from the Deerfield Fair this year (end of September/ beginning of October). The one on the top step is a Silver Spangled Hamburg, the other one is a Light Brahma. Besides these, we have about 9 Chanticler hens (on ALBC's Critical list) and another five or so Ameraucanas (love those green eggs!)

In September I decided to try hatching some of the Chanticler eggs. I had let several broody hens set eggs all summer, and they hatched out ONE chick between the lot of 'em! That chick lasted two days in the henhouse before it disappeared, so even though the hens did a good job setting the eggs, I just left them too long; some eggs broke and got the rest all dirty, and nothing hatched after that. I decided I would try for myself. It's important to me, having a rare breed, to hatch some chicks and help keep the breed going.

I took my styrofoam incubator and collected eggs, and set 15 eggs. After three weeks we had two eggs hatch, of which one chick survived. In the meantime, we had found a cabinet incubator for sale for an astonishing $200. In late September we went and got it.

It's a Sears model 228 "Super Hatcher." I've had no luck at all finding instructions or an operating manual for it. We did end up replacing the thermostat "wafer" to get it going (it was working when we bought it, but not consistently.) I got the thermostat wafer from Poultryman Supply. I also found that the instructions for GQF incubators will work for understanding how this one works. They offer instructions, manuals, and wiring diagrams for free download for many of their models. They're not exactly the same, but close enough to understand how to operate this one.

I set two more batches of eggs in the Super Hatcher - one set of 15 eggs, due to hatch around Oct. 27, and another 10 due to start hatching next Wednesday.

It doesn't have an electric egg turning tray, so I have to open it up two or three times a day to turn the eggs by hand. Yesterday I moved the eggs that are close to hatching, and put them in a tray closer to the top of the unit. I'm supposed to stop turning them 2 to 3 days before hatching. I went out this morning to turn the last batch (the set of 10) and found three chicks already hatched and dry! I took their picture, and put them in the brooder (silver thing with the red light, on top of the wooden hatcher in the picture above) with the one lone chick from the first hatching. The old hatcher has already performed three times better than the old styrofoam one!

I'll post a hatching update in a day or two. There were at least three other eggs already pipping when I grabbed these three. I'll see, when I go out to turn the last set of eggs tonight (around 6 or 7, when the rest of the animals get fed) how many new chicks we may have!

Kids & hens

2010-04-17T08:38:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine gave me a pretty little bantam rooster she couldn't keep. He really is pretty, and too small to bother butchering. I left him in the "bachelor pen", but figured he was lonely, so I put a couple of the Ameraucana hens in there to keep him company. Yesterday I picked up the eggs - four eggs (one each from two hens for two days, that's good), but two were green & two were brown! One of my Ameraucanas is not laying colored eggs. Now I need to figure out which one is laying brown eggs; that one will stay with the banty rooster. I may have to put all the Ameraucanas in there until I can figure out who's laying what for eggs. Maybe I'll have to segregate the Ameraucanas entirely, and cage them individually for a day or two until they lay an egg. I can get some leg bands, or mark them with a marker, or something, once I know what color eggs they're laying. The ones laying green eggs can go back in with the Chanticlers, the others will stay to keep the banty company and eventually find a new home.

We've pretty much decided the girls aren't going to kid at this point, so we started looking for bucklings. I found one incredibly awesome colored one up in Vermont - he was spotted! - but it really was a *looooong* drive - 2-1/2 hours according to Mapquest. We subsequently found some more babies in Topsfield, MA, and ended up getting a baby from Valley View Farm in Topsfield. He is a Nubian, of course; Valley View makes goat cheeses. We got to meet lots of their milking does, and saw bunches of bouncing baby goats. We're going to call him Tuvok, because of his interesting eyebrows. He has a big star on his forehead & a snip on his nose, two white side splashes, and "boots" on his front legs. He was born April 1st.

No babies, no chicks

2010-04-15T08:00:00.002-04:00

Not a great spring so far. The goats were supposed to be due around April 4. Unless someone is hiding a baby really well (alpacas are excellent at that), it doesn't look like there will be any goat babies around here this year. We'll have to try to get an inexpensive buckling this spring, to make sure the girls are bred next fall.

As for the eggs, I had the incubator running for about three days when, in my world-class klutziness, I managed to knock the whole thing over and smashed or scrambled the whole lot. I'll have to try that again soon as well, because I really wanted to hatch out some more Chanticlers.

I do have a couple of new lilacs to plant, however! My mother got me two "Reblooming" lilac plants! I can't wait to plant them! I love lilacs. They do take at least 5 years to start blooming, though. Lilacs are definitely a long-term proposal.

Worms & Eggs

2010-03-26T07:55:00.003-04:00

Yesterday afternoon DH & I drove up to Rollinsford, NH to Red Worms for a Green Earth and picked up a worm bin and a pound of worms (this is supposed to be approximately 900 to 1000 worms). I set it up over a couple of hours yesterday, using coconut fiber (enclosed with the kit, soaked for 2 hours as instructed), shredded paper, and dried leaves. I left the worms in it along with some eggshells (I'll need to crush those) and a coffee filter with some grounds in it. I can't wait until I have seed-starting worthy soil!

I also set 19 Chanticler eggs in the incubator. I ran the incubator for an entire day first, and was maintaining temps between 98 and 100. Now, with a little water and some eggs in it, it's running around 95 to 96 degrees right now, and I'm trying to slowly raise the temperature without cooking the eggs. I started keeping track of the eggs with a piece of paper next to the incubator this morning. I can record every time I check (and/or change) the temperature, when I turn the eggs, add water, etc. This may be helpful in the future to figure out how to best use this incubator (Little Giant styrofoam incubator - no fan or egg turner right now).

Spring is springing!

2010-03-24T18:19:00.002-04:00

Today I brought my styrofoam "Little Giant" incubator into the house and plugged it in. According to all the instructions I've read, you're supposed to have it going for a day or so in order to fine-tune the temperature before putting eggs in.

I've collected 14 eggs from the Chanticler hens over the last couple of days. I may wait and collect a few more tomorrow afternoon before setting them in the incubator. Not all will be fertile; some will have gotten too cold in our current cold snap, for instance. Actually, temperatures are now "seasonable" - more normal for this time of year - but boy, did I enjoy the 50s and 60s we had last week!

I've recently "met" someone online who lives nearby and also has Partridge Chanticlers! I emailed asking about buying some hatching eggs, and she has instead offered to sell me a rooster! I am delighted and can't wait to go pick him up! Right now I have 7 Chanticler hens, 1 rooster, 2 bantam hens, and 8 or 9 Ameraucana hens. Looking forward to finding out how my hatching eggs do. I'd love to increase the Chanticler flock, even if I have to thin out the number of Ameraucanas to do it.

We are currently down to three alpacas - two girls (Milk, the bay-black one and Angel, the white one) and Tesla, Castanet's surprise baby from last July. Those three are for sale. I think I'd be happy to be down to just goats and chickens right now, and the angora bunnies, of course.

The goats are supposed to be due around April 5. If they're pregnant, they're likely only carrying singles. They're not very big. One of them looks more likely to be pregnant than the other. Their mother didn't carry very big, either, though, so I'm still hopeful that we'll have baby goats, and goat milk, soon.

I planted some herbs in the house a few weeks ago - basil, oregano, and rosemary. The basil is growing like a weed, and needs to be repotted and probably split. The oregano could follow likewise. The rosemary is off to a slow start, but growing. Someone told me that rosemary likes heat, so it will likely do better as things warm up around here.

I actually tapped the two maple trees out front this spring, and managed to gather enough sap to end up with five pints of syrup! I'm still astonished at the process. I'll be tagging more trees this spring (they're much easier to identify once they have leaves on them!) to tap next winter. I managed to score ten buckets/covers/spiles at a farmer's market for $7 a set! Between that (if I even use all of those) and milk jugs, I should be all set next year!!

More goats

2009-12-15T09:31:00.003-05:00

Well, just about two months after selling our goats, we have been blessed with more. These two are Summer's babies from June 2008, so they are about 2-1/2 years old. The person who had bought them was no longer able to keep them, and asked us to take them back. They are wonderfully personable, although after only a couple of days they're still a little taken aback at their change in circumstances and wondering who the heck I am. They have been bred to two great bucks from Deborah Goodwin Potter's Hollow Tree Hill Farm.

Karima (front) was bred to Nick (*B Jesta Farm Nick of Time) and Sitara (back) was bred to Oblivion (Saada Royal Oblivion), who looks a lot like our Lucky. I guess I'm not done with goats yet! They were bred on or about November 4, so babies are due around April 4.

No more turkeys

2009-11-17T08:45:00.003-05:00

Last week I spent three days, and butchered a total of eight turkeys and ten chickens. Six turkeys were mine, and two belonged to a friend. Three of the chickens were hers also; the rest belonged to another friend.

By the end of it I learned:

1) Give me heritage breed turkeys any day! Mine dressed out at between six and ten pounds. My friend's turkeys (I believe they were either mixed-breed or broad breasted bronze) started at 32 and 35 lbs, respectively, and finished at 23 and 25 lbs dressed. They were so big and so heavy that it was difficult to lift them, get them into the killing cone, scald, move them to the table, etc. For home butchering, the smaller heritage breeds are definitely easier to handle.

2) By the end of the 2nd day I figured out that plucking was much easier if I had the water much hotter than I thought I needed. Into my second year of processing birds, you'd think I'd have discovered this much sooner. If it's just under boiling, plucking is not much more difficult than scraping the feathers off with your hand. If it's not hot enough, you end up actually having to pull feathers out, pretty much individually, and it takes about three times as long. If I'd had the water hot enough all along, I could have been done in two days instead of three.

3) Butchering is hard work! By the end I was very tired, and really muscle sore from standing for so long.

I thought I was done, but as soon as my other friend's chickens were finished, I ended up pulling several roosters from my chicken coop. One was a white bird (a homeschool hatching) that was fighting with some of the others - being white, the fact that he had blood on him was very noticeable! The second was a red rooster, another homeschool hatching, that chased me every time I went into the coop. The third was one of my Ameraucanas that turned out to be a rooster instead of a hen.

With those three out, I'm down to three Dominique cockerels and one Chanticler. After last night there are now two Dominique cockerels in the coop. While doing food and water last night, I observed one of the Dominique cockerels chasing the other chickens away from the food and water and pecking the hens - not mounting them, actively attacking and chasing them away. He, too, now resides in the former turkey pen, currently dubbed the "bachelor pen." I have a friend (the one for whom I butchered seven of the chickens) who is ready to learn to butcher her own birds. They will be our practice birds. It will have to be after Thanksgiving, because my freezer is currently full.

Baby chicks

2009-11-01T13:39:00.003-05:00

Our two most recent hatchlings - almost 2 months old now (hatched on or about Sept 6), along with one of my handsome Dominique cockerels. The little chicks no longer look like fluffy little chicks, but like tiny chickens.

More roosters, & killing cones

2009-10-31T18:26:00.002-04:00

Last week a friend of mine told me she had way too many roosters, and they were becoming far too bold for her liking. Besides fighting with each other, they had begun challenging her when she went in the coop. She asked if I would butcher them for her, and offered to pay me or let me keep one for my trouble.

After doing some online searching, I set up an empty vinegar bottle on a piece of wood to use for a killing cone. I used that for her three roosters. It was a bit of a drag, because it was a very rainy day. I did the killing outside, had water boiling on the stove inside for plucking, and was doing the actual plucking & eviscerating out in the barn, out of the rain.

I discovered that using a killing cone makes things dramatically easier, and immediately afterward ordered a chicken size and a turkey size from a seller on Ebay. Can't wait till they get here! I don't have any more chickens to butcher right now (although I have two cockerels growing up for later) but I'm sure it will be loads easier when it's time to do the turkeys. Their turn is coming soon!

The same friend who had the problem roosters has two turkeys they've been raising for the holidays, and she offered to pay me to butcher them as well. Her grown son had thought to do it himself, and now doesn't want to. Turns out she has an outdoor (gas-fired) turkey roaster that I'd love to borrow for scalding during processing! We may be able to work out a deal here.

I'm pretty sure that once this batch of turkeys is gone, I won't be raising another group; at least not without a separate outdoor run for them, and I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. With that in mind, I'm planning to sell the turkey cone as soon as I'm done with it. I paid $22 for it (plus shipping). I'm pretty sure, with the distinct lack of anywhere to get a killing cone around here (that I know of) I should be able to sell it for $20. I'll keep the chicken cone; I think that one will definitely see use in the future.

In the Barn update

2009-10-23T10:42:00.004-04:00

It's a darn shame that raccoons are such vicious killers (and rabies carriers) because they really are seriously cute - until you see all their sharp, pointy teeth, anyway.
The big red rooster is no longer with us - at least with feathers attached. He now resides in my refrigerator, where he will be transformed into Sunday dinner this weekend.

In other news, I caught another raccoon! I went out the other night to feed (getting dark earlier and earlier here!) and surprised a coon in the barn. I'm pretty sure he (it?) was after grain. The issue, I think, is that I need to start feeding grain in the morning instead of at night, so there's nothing left by evening for the scavengers to get. I started that today, after finding this guy in my trap:

Goats & roosters

2009-10-09T09:57:00.003-04:00

I've sold the goats. I wasn't tired of milking, exactly, more like I'm tired of doing all the work all by myself. I had no help at any time - not for feeding, watering, unloading hay & grain, milking, nothing. DH does help a lot as far as keeping the fencing in order, but none of the kids are/were willing to lift a finger and I'm just tired. I still need to feed & water the alpacas, chickens, & bunnies, but with three goats gone, the workload (and feed bill) are definitely cut down.

I have to say, I don't think I'm done with goats yet - I like them too much. I'm just done for now.

The rooster - well, I have this big Rhode Island Red rooster. A few weeks ago I lost a couple of chickens from my rare breeds - the Dominiques and Chanteclers - and I noticed loose stools, so I dosed them with Di-Methox for a week, thinking Coccidosis. That stopped the birds dying off, but then I noticed a few more gone; peculiarly enough, these were all my mixed-breed "spare roosters". These were hatchlings from the homeschool groups that were given back to me because they were roosters, and the person who took the hatchlings didn't want to deal with that (rightly enough, I'm sure). I suspect that Big Red has taken to killing off his competition. I took him out of the chicken coop two nights ago, and put him in with the turkeys. We'll see if that has stopped the dying off. I certainly don't want to lose the few Dominique and Chantecler cockerels that I have! If this proves to be the case, Big Red will definitely end up as Sunday Dinner (or chicken stew, as the case may be - he may be a little tough to chew at this point).

EEE in Alpacas

2009-09-09T16:17:00.002-04:00

There has been a lot of talk on the news lately about EEE (Eastern Equine Encephalitis). Last year (or maybe 2007) there was a local woman who contracted EEE and died; this year, an alpaca cria died from it.

Yesterday I had to take Zoey to the vet for her yearly checkup and booster shots. She weighs 31.8 lbs (or thereabouts), and was far more upset about having to hold still than she was about getting shots. While I was there, my vet informed me that a protocol has been reached for vaccinating alpacas for EEE - 1 ml of vaccine, 3 shots, 1 month apart; yearly boosters after that. He was kind enough to sell me the vaccine I need to innoculate my animals, which I shall begin to do this weekend. The vaccine is, I believe, the same one used in horses. I'm not sure if I paid more by getting it from my vet or not, but the cost of the vaccine is minor compared to the fact that A) he's a very good vet, and B) he's the one who has (and maintains) the knowledge base.

Oh, and there's a new Tractor Supply opening in Derry on Sept. 19! I hardly think they'll have the EEE vaccine (or other vaccines, for that matter) but I'm pretty sure they carry the Ivomec Plus that I've had to mail-order until now!

Baby chicks!

2009-09-06T08:24:00.002-04:00

I have a little black bantam hen with startlingly white earlobes. (Did you know chickens have earlobes?) She looks a lot like this picture:

This is not my hen, it just looks a lot like my hen. This picture is from The Feathersite, specifically from http://feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/BRC/BRKRosecombs.html.

Anyway, she's been broody for, oh, just over 3 weeks now. (It takes 21 days to hatch an egg.) This morning, after doing my morning feeding and milking, I was ready to leave the barn and thought the chicken coop sounded awfully noisy. I opened the door and found out that my little black hen had hatched out two teeny chipmunk-colored chicks! They are already fluffy, and so cute! I'll have to try to get a couple of pictures. There are 7 or so eggs left in the nest. I don't think she'll be going back to them, as she has already brought the babies down onto the barn floor to teach them to eat and drink. Now I have to decide if I'm going to let her raise them in the coop, if I'm going to segregate her and the babies for a while, or if I'm going to take and brood the chicks myself. We've only had one other hen successfully raise one other chick. There have been other broody hens, and other hatchlings, but the hatchlings have (except for the one) always sadly disappeared. I'm not sure I want to wait and see how good a mum this hen will be. She seems very motherly at this point, however, making all those adorable clucking and chirping noises to her babies.

Turkeys will be turkeys

2009-07-28T14:08:00.003-04:00

The baby chicks are now about 1/3 grown, and doing very well in with the hens. The turkeys are another story, however. A couple of weeks ago I let them out to free-range. They did well one night, coming back to the barn, but then decided they liked freedom better than safety. I lost two birds to predators before I got them locked up again.

We ended up with a surprise baby alpaca on July 23rd - five days ago. It's Castanet's baby. I had let them out on the back lawn to graze, and noticed a white bump in the back that afternoon. Sure enough, it was a small white male, still slightly damp.

His mom is taking very good care of him, but she's always been a good mom so that's no surprise. We've named him Tesla.

Here's Got Milk's cria, Rocky (Rocky Road, born May 10, so he's 2-1/2 months old in this picture) checking out the new baby.

Just sold the two baby girls...

2009-07-13T20:33:00.002-04:00

We are now down to four goats - Summer and Sukey, my two milkers; the last boy from this year's kids, PC; and our buck, Lucky. Just sold the two girls, Mac and Panda. I hope their owner will be pleased. They live five miles away, and they want them initially for brush-clearing, but may want to breed them for milk later.

I removed PC from the girls' stall; that means I will definitely be milking twice a day from now on. He is now in with Lucky and our male alpaca, Feldspar, and hollering his head off. That will only last a day or two. He eats hay and grain now, and at 2-1/2 is probably close to old enough to start breeding his own mom and "aunt", and I'm not ready to have them bred yet.

Chicks & turkeys, growing up

2009-07-09T09:07:00.003-04:00

The other day I moved the baby chicks in with the big hens. For two days now, the big hens stay far out of the way of the babies, up on perches, as if thinking, "What are those noisy little things?"

They're starting to mingle somewhat - the leftover bread I tossed out last night helped. I saw two chicks in the doorway to the outdoor coop yesterday, wondering what's out there.

Today I opened the back door of the barn to let the turkeys free-range for the first time. They tend to fly a bit (mostly up) so we'll see if I have to round them up tonight or if they all find their way back to their coop. I have no idea yet how much trouble they're going to be, and the amount of trouble they give me will determine if any of them make it past the holidays or not.

No milk

2009-06-27T13:38:00.003-04:00

Forgot to go back out to the barn last night and move the mama goats over. This morning I only got about half a quart of milk, that was it. Time to seriously consider weaning those babies!

Farm update

2009-06-26T12:38:00.004-04:00

Time to update!

Goats:
I didn't end up leaving the moms and babies separated. A couple of the goat babies caught on to the bottle feeding, but the little white one (big white one, really!) did not do well with the bottle. She was looking like she was losing weight, so I put the moms and babies back together. Instead, so that we end up getting enough milk, I take the moms away at night, and put everyone back together in the morning after I milk.

This is just about a moot point now, as the babies are ready to wean anyway. Everyone is drinking water from buckets, eating hay and grain, and grazing well. I have decided not to keep any of these babies this year and will plan to keep a baby for breeding next year. Sukey is giving copious quantities of milk, which almost makes up for her escape-artist tendencies.

Oh, and this is what happens when you fence off the backyard to let the critters eat the grass for you.

Alpacas:

No baby from Castanet. Still can't tell if she's pregnant or not. I know we bred her later than the others, but don't remember when her last breeding was; I just recall that she showed interest well over a month after regular breedings took place. Oh, well. Next time. I'm thinking I might try to trade one of my girls (Seven, the youngest white one, who's ready to be bred any time now) for a different herdsire - I'd really like better fiber, and more options.

We lost Andy on June 15. If he was a child, it would have been called "failure to thrive." His appetite wasn't increasing, and he didn't seem to be growing or progressing. I went out one morning and found he'd passed. We spent some time wondering what it was we didn't know, that maybe his mom knew and if that's why he'd been abandoned. It's one of those things only God knows, I'm afraid.

Chickens:
We currently have 13 laying hens and one rooster. We also have, as of June 15, 36 baby chicks! I ordered a bunch at the feed store. We wanted to concentrate on some of the more rare breeds, so that we might contribute to a flagging population. With that in mind, I had asked the feed store to locate Dominques for me (10 pullets & 2 cockerels). We also got 12 Ameraucanas, which may turn out to be more than we need. My intention was, with Dominique cockerels and both Dominique & Ameraucana hens, that all the brown eggs would be "purebred".

I had also asked for a dozen Chanticlers, if they could in fact find any. All of the hatcheries I contacted were sold out until 2010, so I didn't have much hope, except to get on a waiting list somewhere. Chanticlers are very rare, apparently. So of course the feed store found some for me, and we ended up with 36 chicks!

We really don't have room for 36 chicks! I really want to keep these, however. Bearing that in mind, I may sell off most of my laying hens (except for just a few) and just put these babies in the coop far earlier than I usually would.

Turkeys:
Turkeys are getting huge! We still have all 8 that we started with, and they are now about
2 months old. They are starting to develop coloring on their feathers.

I had purchased 8, thinking that they might not all make it to adulthood (they all seem to be healthy so far!) and if they did, that I might keep a breeding pair. Right now I'm thinking that we really don't have enough space to keep turkeys for breeding at this point. I'm not sure yet if I'll sell off a couple or keep them all for butchering.

Trading spaces

2009-05-12T08:38:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I separated moms (Summer and Sukey) from babies (Panda, Mac and PC). I was getting very, very little milk at milking time, and the babies were far too skittish. A couple of reasons for bottle feeding include making babies more friendly, and being able to monitor how much babies eat. If someone suddenly loses their appetite it could be an early sign of illness. So far Mac has really caught on to this drinking from a bottle thing; the other two have only gotten a little bit of milk. I'll give them a couple more feedings to catch on. When I was watching them while feeding them this morning, I came to the conclusion that drinking from the bottle must use different mouth movements than drinking from a teat. They seemed to be chewing on the nipple to try to get milk out. What they need to learn to do is suck on the nipple.

This is Sukey on the milk stand. She is becoming a very good milk goat. So far she's only put her foot in the bucket once, and that was my fault for not paying more attention to her body language while I was milking her.

Here are the three babies sitting out in the sun yesterday. From left to right, they are Mac, PC, and Panda.

We have decided on names for the alpaca babies. This one is Andy (as in Little Orphan Andy, instead of Annie)

And this one is Rocky Road, for the ice cream flavor - chocolate with marshmallow coloring suits him.

Yesterday and today I have also locked the alpacas out of the stall, including little Andy. He has been hanging out in a corner of the stall since he was born. Now he has Rocky to follow and emulate, and learn to be an alpaca instead of a wallflower. Besides that, he needs the Vitamin D. It's very important to growing crias. Rocky's mom is making sure he gets plenty!

Baby pictures!

2009-05-11T13:27:00.002-04:00

This is Milk with her new baby boy - still working on a name.

Isn't he cute? He has the most gorgeous color, too! I can't wait to be able to spin some of his fiber!

This is a "mystery" baby born May first. I wasn't going to talk about him until I was pretty sure he was going to make it. He was abandoned; we have some idea of when he was born, but it's only an idea. It could have been overnight or very early in the morning; he was dry when he was found, and had slid down a hill. His mom wouldn't claim him. I don't know if it's because he disappeared (slid down the hill?) right after birth, or because he was born with a weak suck reflex. Either way, I bottle-fed and force-fed him for about a week before he would reliably drink from a bottle. I tried to get him to nurse from his mom, but he wouldn't. She stays by him outside, but he doesn't nurse, so I continue to bottle feed. He's a good size, and a sweet baby, just orphaned through no fault of his own. He's bottle-feeding well now. I think we may call him "Mayday."

An unexpected Mother's Day gift

2009-05-10T20:57:00.002-04:00

I went out to feed everyone tonight, after spending almost all day at the NH Sheep & Wool festival (and coming home with goodies!) and found one last Mother's Day gift! Milk, our bay-black girl (and easily the one with the softest fiber on the place) had her baby! It's a very cute medium or dark brown boy, with a white streak on his forehead, a small white patch on one lip, and one nice-sized rear sock. He is a gorgeous color! Now we just need to come up with a name...

So far I like Kenobi (for Obi-Wan - the brown is reminiscent of a dark brown Jedi robe), Jedi (same reason), Groucho (because of the markings - eyebrow, and "cigar")... It would be great if I could relate Mother's Day to a sci-fi related name, but I'm not sure I can put the two of them together. Alternatively, something that relates the color or markings to sci-fi, or something that relates Mother's Day to a male name.

I'll post pictures in the morning!

Green & growing

2009-05-08T11:09:00.004-04:00

These are the fruit trees we planted last year. They made it through the winter very well, and most have quite a few blossoms on them!

This is our self-pollinating peach tree.

This is sour cherries, but has very few blossoms (yet!)

One apple tree. One is red apples (MacIntosh, if I remember correctly)

This apple tree is Yellow Delicious, for cross-pollination purposes.

The lilac bush.

Last week it occurred to me to try to propagate this bush. This is the only one left, as far as I know, from my grandmother's house. I would love to have more from this particular bush. I looked up the information online, and found they would root from softwood cuttings dipped in rooting hormone. I have started two of them, one with four cuttings and one with three. If they take well, I may start more. I'd love to have a whole line of lilac bushes down that side of the driveway. They are very slow-growing. This one is at least 10 years old.

I read on another blog about someone's lilacs that had not bloomed last year because of a late frost that killed off the buds. Maybe that's what happened to mine last year. It's wonderful to see the blooms this year!

These are my current starts, getting some sun near the deck. In the back, in plastic bags (open at the top) are my rooting lilacs, along with some tomato plants and oregano I picked up at the Portsmouth Farmer's Market last weekend. In the tray to the right of that (last one on the right) are some squash plants - zucchini, pumpkin, and winter squash. I don't think the winter squashes are going to come up. I ordered some new ones of the Buttercup variety, a new favorite of ours, and will plant those instead if these don't show some growth after today.

Middle tray on the left - some peppers (also purchased at the Portsmouth Farmer's Market) and some louffa gourds. Middle tray on the right - some herbs and peppers. Again, my paprika peppers and rosemary are not coming up. Basil and oregano are doing well. I may have to pick up some rosemary starts, but I'm hoping the sun will heat things up enough to help the peppers sprout. I know they are supposed to like heat.

Bottom on the left - peppers, louffa gourds; bottom right - three different varieties of tomatoes.

Goats - the babies are growing up! Someone will be buying Kes and Neelix, the two bottle babies, this weekend. I guess that means we'll plan on keeping the white doeling, Panda, as a replacement doe. This is Sukey, mom to Panda, and Kes, trimming part of the backyard. It's cute to see the babies imitating the adult goats!

Sukey and Kes again. Kes really is gorgeous, and I absolutely love the expressiveness of her ears!

I need to disbud the two babies before they leave. It's one of those things that I hate to do, but needs to be done, and nobody else is going to do it for me. Sigh.

Babies, babies everywhere!

2009-05-06T10:28:00.002-04:00

May 1st was a very busy day, and I've been increasingly busy since then. Both does, Sukey and Summer, ended up giving birth on the first. Sukey had that lovely little white baby, Panda. Summer had twins, a boy and a girl. DH found them so he got to name them. Meet PC (the boy, brown) and Mac (the girl, black).

PC looks like his daddy, Lucky, and Mac looks like her mama!

Kes and Neelix are doing well, as is Panda. Neelix has proven himself a right sneaky little nurser, always sneaking a drink from one of the does until they figure out that he's not one of theirs and push him away!

And on Sunday I made a drive up to Barrington (with a requisite stop at Calef's Country Store for cheese!) and picked up eight Royal Palm turkey poults! I'm looking forward to watching these babies grow, and having fresh turkey at Thanksgiving!

New baby arrives!

2009-05-01T14:43:00.003-04:00

Sukey gave us a big doeling this morning! She only had the one, and it's as big as either of the other two, who will be two weeks old tomorrow! The color is startling, too.

This is the mom, Sukey. She's half Alpine, half Nubian.

The dad is a "frosted" brown buck who doesn't have much white. Same dad for this one, and for the previous two (as well as for the one still left to deliver). No current picture of him at the moment. I'll take care of that soon, though.

And here's the baby - named Panda by my daughter, who found her. (The one who finds the baby gets to name it.)

New roosters

2009-04-27T15:54:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I got an email from a friend who had two roosters and wanted them gone. I called and we discussed options, and I ended up bringing them home.

Now, it's interesting that the raccoon attacks we suffered happened right after I gave away the four roosters previously living here. I was talking with someone else who had a similar story; her roosters were chasing her children, and became dinner. Shortly after the roosters were gone, she suffered devastating attacks on her flock, again by raccoons.

I think roosters might be a good thing. And to be honest, I've missed the cock-a-doodle-doo.

Here's one of the handsome fellers who've joined us here (for now - until the Dominique cockerels I've ordered are old enough to do the job). They're both Rhode Island Reds, and the girls were quite happy to see them! I kept picturing the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon with the spinster hen. The girls crowded around them, and you could practically hear them cackling over these fellers' good looks - Look at those wattles! Did you see the comb on that one? Hey, buddy, never mind her, come over here and talk to me!

Egg production is back up!

2009-04-25T19:39:00.003-04:00

The hens have not been laying well since the three raccoon incidents, as I'm sure anyone could imagine. We went from getting 8 or 9 eggs a day, to being down a dozen hens, then added four who are just beginning to lay.

We now have a total of 16 hens, and the 12 from my original flock are in at least their second season of laying (or older). Since the four new hens joined the flock, we were getting three or four eggs a day. Four days ago we started getting five at a time, and tonight I got 8 eggs! I feel like I can breathe a little more easily now, and maybe boil a dozen.

DH with babies

2009-04-25T14:34:00.003-04:00

DH snuggling with baby goats on the couch. It's hard to believe they're a week old already, and growing like weeds!

Bread from home-ground flour

2009-04-24T07:12:00.000-04:00

OK, so I admit I'm an oddity (for those of you who didn't already know). I enjoy making bread from flour that is ground in a Nutrimill right in my own kitchen. One of the reasons is because we enjoy the taste of real whole wheat flour. I know that bread from home-ground flour doesn't always work, especially if you're trying to follow a recipe intended for commercial flour. For those who might need a starting point, here is my bread recipe using home-ground flour.

I do use a breadmaker, although I originally learned how to make bread entirely by hand. I also have a gas stove. This has the advantage of maintaining a consistent 98 degrees in the oven, because of the pilot light; perfect for rising bread.

I use both hard white and hard red wheat, purchased in bulk from a local food co-op, and kept in five-gallon buckets protected with Gamma-Seal lids.

Start with 3 cups of hard white and 1/2 cup hard red wheat. Grind.

To breadmaker add:
1 cup + 1 TBSP water (lukewarm - too hot will kill off the yeast)
3/4 cup measuring cup - crack an egg into this and top off with water, add to breadmaker.
1/4 cup honey (local honey is best)
1/3 cup + 1 TBSP olive oil

Add all the ground flour, then
2 tsp salt
1 (slightly heaping) TBSP instant yeast (I use SAF yeast purchased in bulk)

I run the bread machine on the "Dough" cycle. When it's done, I take the dough out and divide into two batches. Take each and knead it a bit (I knead for just a couple of minutes), shape, and put in loaf pan. Put both loaf pans in oven to rise.

Let rise 45 minutes or so, then bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

This may not be the perfect recipe for everyone, but it's a good starting point. You can add ingredients to your taste, add and subtract water and/or oil by the tablespoon to accomodate your location, preferences, and current conditions.

Hope this helps someone. If I can help at all, please comment or email.

Sad news

2009-04-23T18:17:00.002-04:00

Today we lost Shammie due to complications following kidding. I did my best, but yesterday she would no longer get up. I waited, treated with antibiotics and a calcium supplement; she seemed to rally for a while, but still was not able to get up, so we made the decision earlier today.

The babies have been bottle-fed from the start, so except for missing their mom for a bit, they should do just fine.

It seems every year we lose someone. Last year it was a buckling I drove 4-1/2 hours up to northern Vermont to pick up; we lost him to urinary stones. He never recovered after surgery. Once it was a baby buckling, not even 24 hours old. I still have his twin brother. A few years ago we lost a six month old male alpaca cria, without any warning that anyone was ill. It's never easy.

Got one!

2009-04-22T06:43:00.002-04:00

Found this one in the trap this morning. I called a friend of mine who came and took the trap away, no questions asked. It was not an easy phone call to make, though. They really are intriguing and magnificent looking creatures up close. If I had changed my mind and let it loose, however, I was not only further endangering the welfare of my chickens, but making sure this one would be wise to traps and would never get caught again.

Chicken update

2009-04-20T08:15:00.003-04:00

After the chicken slaughter by the raccoons last month, we got the chicken coop entirely secured. We patched all the holes - where the chicken coop hit the rafters of the barn - with wooden boards, and will need to do the same to the small area in which we keep the baby chicks when we get them. We call that the "growing room".

Two weeks ago we went to a semi-local "chicken swap" and I ended up getting four Red Star pullets, just starting to lay. We got a bunch of eggs for a couple of days, and then everyone backed off again. With 16 hens, we've only been getting 3 to 5 eggs a day for the last week or so. Nobody is broody, so I'm not sure why, maybe just waiting for the Red Stars to settle in.

I have ordered some new chicks; we wanted to add a heritage breed, and we needed some "fresh blood" after all that's happened. I ordered 10 Dominique pullets (they are on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's "watch" list) and 2 Dominique cockerels, as well as half a dozen Ameraucanas and a dozen Cornish cross meat birds. I think they'll be in around May 15 which, coincidentally enough, is shearing day for the alpacas. We need to have the growing room ready by then, anyway - predator-proof.

Speaking of meat birds, I just came across this website: How to Butcher a Chicken. Definitely much-needed information, and I'm linking it here so I can find it later! Maybe some day I can build a home-made plucker... for now I usually skin them because plucking is a pain, but plucking makes for such a nice-looking freezer chicken!

I also found a photo essay on Flickr for making your own killing cones! I really need to try that one, too.

Baby goats!

2009-04-19T21:13:00.004-04:00

The first of our three girls to kid presented me with two baby goats yesterday! I went out to let the chickens out of their coop at 7 am, and the two babies were already up and dry, so they were born very early indeed.

The mum is Shammie, who is 1/2 Alpine and 1/2 Nubian. Dad is Lucky, our buck, who is purebred Nubian, so babies are 3/4 Nubian, 1/4 Alpine, totally adorable!

The brown one is a boy, and the two-tone one is a girl. Their names are Neelix and Kes. I found them, so I get to name them!

Birthdays are so tiring!

Springtime is creeping in

2009-03-23T15:33:00.003-04:00

No luck capturing the raccoons yet. I spent a lot of
time up in the loft cleaning things up, securing the covers on the feed cans, etc. Went up the next evening for feeding, and the covers were off again. The cans are now wedged under the edge of a table so that the covers cannot be removed without pulling the cans out from under the table first. I've seen no sign of them since then.

Mama kitty had three babies on St. Patrick's Day. DH and I have decided that we need to get her spayed; I can't handle placing babies twice a year, even if she does only have small litters. I'm wondering if she and Shadow, however (other barn cat; her son, and yes, he's neutered) are responsible for keeping the raccoons away. I've seen Mama Kitty go after one of the dogs, and this was before she had those babies, and she was so ferocious it seemed there might be more than one!

Here's a picture of Sukey, Alpine/Nubian cross (left) - she will theoretically be the first to kid, and will be a first freshener; and Lucky, our Nubian buck on the right. He's about 9 months old right now, and is just about the same size as Sukey, who's still only 3/4 as big as my older girls.

This is a shot through the outside part of the coop; you can see some of the chickens, Sukey again (it's hard to get pictures of goats that always want to run toward you as soon as you go outside!), and the girl alpacas, who are hoping there's food involved.

Here are a few of the chickens. Yesterday was nice enough to let them out, and they appreciated the chance to scratch around in the backyard. I've missed having the hens loose; the snow on the coop roof creates a very effective barrier closing off the door of the coop in the winter.

We've ordered some new chicks from the feed store. I'll be getting some more Americaunas (green eggs; dare we hope for some blue ones as well?) and a dozen broilers as well as Dominiques. We wanted to get a heritage breed, so we've ordered pullets and a couple of Dominique cockerels as well. They are on the ALBC's "watch" list. I've asked for Chanteclers as well, if they can get them, but they are very rare and seem to be hard to find, unfortunately. Once the Dominiques are old enough to start laying, we'll re-home our other brown egg-layers so that we'll know which eggs are "purebred". I'll keep white egg layers, colored egg layers, and the rest will be Dominiques. I might even try hatching some eggs again!

Winter is almost over, but not fast enough!

2009-03-03T07:31:00.002-05:00

Here's a picture of one of the barn cats, Mama Kitty (aka White Paws). She's a very nice kitty, and loves pats; she just won't let you pick her up. The barn cats are the main reason I worry about the raccoons that showed up in the barn.

I've had no luck catching the raccoons, but I did start bringing the dogs out to the barn with me several times a week. Abby and Q would be most likely to do some damage to predators, so they're the ones that accompany me. They spend a lot of time sniffing all over the loft of the barn. I'm hoping their presence will convince the coons to visit elsewhere.

I also found information that may help. I was looking for a food with which to bait the trap, that raccoons like but cats don't. The answer may be marshmallows. I need to remember to put that on my grocery list.

Here are two of my hardworking farm dogs, taking a snow day. Notice that Zoey is cuddled up with a toy sheep! She has become quite expert at de-stuffing and squeaker removal, so we're usually in the market for new toys.

Raccoons! Now what?

2009-02-13T06:28:00.002-05:00

It's been a heck of a winter. I think once we had a "normal" snowfall, if there is such a thing, of a couple of inches. Everything else has been a whopper of a storm, and those have come with distressing frequency.

This week has been a wonderful hint of spring - temps in the 40s and 50s, and the sun even showed its face a few times. I'm hoping winter is truly over and we'll be having an early spring. (That Punxatawny Phil character can't be trusted, anyway. Of course he saw his shadow. Did you see all the movie camera lights out there?)

Yesterday I went up to the loft to feed, and surprised two raccoons. I knew something had been disturbing the cats' food and some other stuff up there, and I had suspected raccoons. I also found a pile of dung in a corner of the loft - never noticed that up there before! I definitely don't want permanent raccoon residents. Chicken is one of their favorite foods, and I don't need to encourage that.

I pulled out my Hav-A-Heart trap and baited it with cat food. I'll probably catch one of the barn cats. Now I need to look for other ideas for raccoon bait, hopefully something that won't attract cats.

I should have pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture while they were crowding themselves under the eaves, but I wasn't thinking that fast.

Winter is in full force

2009-01-11T10:33:00.003-05:00

First it was ice, then a snowstorm, then a little more snow, now another snowstorm. I am really sick of this winter, and that doesn't usually happen til February.

Why is it that ice-filled water buckets feel heavier than just water-filled buckets? I know a five-gallon bucket full of water weighs about 40 lbs. I know that when water freezes, it expands, but I believe (speaking in terms of what I understand of physics) that it only increases in volume. It's not possible for it to increase in mass just by freezing (without adding more water), but for some reason ice buckets always feel much heavier than water buckets.

Under ice

2008-12-13T10:51:00.002-05:00

We are in the midst of an ice storm and have no power. I drove 20 miles to my sister's place this morning to check email and pick up a bigger generator from my dad. Our furnace uses forced hot water, and if we have no power we have no heat. We also have no water. This morning I hauled water by the bucketfull from the brook in the pasture, which is gushing at full power thanks to melting ice. We collect four to six five-gallon buckets at a time to use for things like watering the animals, heating on the (thankfully gas-powered) kitchen stove for washing dishes, etc. We do have bottled water, but that is being rationed very carefully for food and cooking purposes.

Frosty morning

2008-11-26T14:20:00.002-05:00

I took this lovely picture this morning. The air was just a little misty, the ground was frosty, and the alpacas looked calm andpeaceful.

Then I noticed the goat in the picture. One of these things is not like the other...

Then I noticed the broken board.

This afternoon DH went out to look at the board. He came back in and said,
I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that there's mesh wire on that section of fence, so the pasture is not open to the outside world.

The bad news is that you've got a goat with his head stuck in the fence! [The little buckling who keeps forgetting how big his head is lives just to the left of where this picture was taken.]

Sometimes it's just too much help

2008-09-23T13:57:00.003-04:00

Abby, our farmcollie, is a wonderful asset to our farm. She lets us know when things are out of place - the baby buck gets his head stuck in the fence, the chickens are going down the driveway instead of staying in the backyard, etc. We're still learning to listen to her when she's trying to get our attention. She usually has a point.

For the last couple of days she has been hanging around the long-unused grill on the deck. I finally noticed this, and opened the lid. There was a wad of wool (gee, I wonder where that came from? LOL!). I moved it, and disturbed a mama mouse and some babies. Well, we have quite enough mice around here already, thank you! That's one reason we have barn cats!

One baby fell out of the body of the grill. Abby pushed it with her nose, and I have no idea what she would have done if I hadn't called her back in the house! Her maternal instincts already run to taking care of kittens (well, someone has to clean their ears, right?) and baby chicks. I don't need her playing nursemaid to baby mice!

I left the cover of the grill open, and before long mama barn cat and her son, Shadow, took care of the whole issue. The wool nest has now been tossed over the side as well. Until then, though, Abby really wanted to go back outside to take care of those babies! Sometimes she just wants to help a little too much!

Early September

2008-09-04T20:28:00.004-04:00

Karma and Star left last weekend, and it seems much quieter around here now. Lucky was quite unhappy for a couple of days, but he seems fine now. He shares his stall with Shammie, my dry Alpine/Nubian cross doe, and Leo, our yearling alpaca boy.

This week the hens have been laying up a storm! I think most of them have finally gotten over being broody, and the new pullets are starting to lay. I've been getting two or three green eggs a day, and I'm delighted to have colored eggs again!

Yesterday I butchered seven of the remaining cornish cross birds. I sent two home with my father, and put five in my fridge. I still have seven left to go, most likely next Wednesday. I've gotten the butchering (I'm skinning the chickens, not plucking feathers) down to about 10 minutes a bird, when starting with a dead bird. When I include getting the bird from the barn and killing it, it's still less than 20 minutes per. I plan to cook one tomorrow (Friday, Sept 5). I was going to cook it today, but it was so HOT (mid to high 80s!) I didn't want to heat the kitchen up even more! We had one of them when I butchered a bunch for eldest DS's wedding a few weeks ago, but none since then.

I've named the two gray angora bunnies Romeo and Juliet. They'll be due for shearing in the next week or two, after which I'm sure they'll look as funny as the alpacas do after shearing!

Additions & Changes

2008-08-21T08:42:00.002-04:00

The baby goats have grown *so* fast! They are difficult to photograph because they are so friendly. As soon as you walk outside they are running to the door for pats, and to see if you brought bottles for them to drink. In this picture Star is on the left, Karma is on the right, and Lucky is in the middle.

For anyone who's wondering, Star's leg did straighten out. I think it was crooked when she was born because of a cramped birth position. I did let her start out nursing from mom, but about a month ago separated kids and adults. She didn't take any time at all catching on to nursing from a bottle.

Star and Karma have now been sold and will be going to their new home as soon as they are weaned. Lucky will be staying as our new herdsire (which means his mom, Toggle, will be sold as she is related to him.) We lost Leon, our beautiful little Nubian buck from Vermont, to a bladder obstruction.

We have a few new additions as well! On August 8 I drove up to Maine, almost all the way to Bangor, to pick up Zoey! She is a Border collie puppy (now 13 weeks old), and hopefully my new competition prospect. It was amazing to see her, first time out in the barn, assume a classic Border collie herding pose and attempt to round up the chickens! Instinct is indeed very powerful.

These new occupants arrived last night. This is a Bunny Condo!

It currently has three residents. This is the story -

Last week I was reading some blogs, and started thinking about angora bunnies. After all, their fiber would blend *so* nicely with alpaca! I started researching care of angora bunnies, and emailed a friend to find out if she knew anyone who had some bunnies. I wanted to talk to someone face to face, to ask questions, and observe hands-on interaction with bunnies.

Well, my friend referred me to someone I already knew, and that wonderful lady not only knew of some bunnies needing homes, but she had this wonderful bunny hutch, above, that she was willing to give me! I went from research to owning three bunnies in the blink of an eye! I think I was truly blessed to know these wonderful ladies and to get these bunnies.

One bunny is a lynx point, I think it was called. It *looks* white, but has darker gray edging around eyes and ears. It's lovely! That bunny (no picture yet) is named Chuck Berry, and was recently sheared. He looks as funny as the alpacas do when they are recently sheared! He's about 2 years old.

The other two are 10 weeks old (they look full grown to me!) and are an incredible color called "Blue Silver Marten". It's a gorgeous blue-gray color. They are so beautiful!

I'm on a steep learning curve now, learning not only to care for these bunnies, but all about fiber production and shearing. These bunnies are German crosses, and need to be sheared (in my case, clipped with scissors) rather than plucked (the fiber sheds). The breeder is the wonderful Chris of Woolybuns, to whom I am very thankful.

Three babies left

2008-07-10T14:12:00.003-04:00

So I made it through Vacation Bible School, even with running home to feed baby goats between sessions. One day after birth, though, we lost one of Toggle's boys. I came home to a baby goat that was floppy and barely alive, and I wasn't able to save him. The other boy, now named Lucky, is doing great.

Summer had two girls and a boy, all black with white and/or tan points, just like her. Last week our homebred alpaca boy, Thor, went to live in Massachusetts, and the family that bought him also took Summer's boy as well. They have Nubian goats, and like me, were not having great luck taking them to be bred elsewhere. The boy was bottlefeeding very well at the time and I'm sure he's doing great.

So now we're left with Toggle's boy and Summer's two girls. One girl (Karma) is being bottle-fed. The other (Star) would not drink from the bottle. Summer is letting that one nurse. Star has not been as active as the other babies, though, and I've been a little worried about her. She seems to be catching up now, though. I noticed yesterday, when they all ventured outside and were popping around like popcorn, that Star has a crooked front leg. Of course it's not noticeable when she's curled up in a corner of the stall. I'll need to check her out further.

This is Lucky, Toggle's boy. Looks just like his mom! She won't nurse him at all, however. She came to us from a goat dairy where the kids were always removed at birth and she was never allowed to nurse them.

This is Karma, one of Summer's girls. Again, she looks very much like her mom. Summer was happy to let her one kid last year, Sunspot, nurse. Now she is nursing Star (no picture) but Karma seems to wait for the bottle (at least I haven't *seen* her nursing).

This is Thor, the boy we sold. This picture was taken last fall. He has the nicest fleece of anyone on our place except maybe his mom, my black girl Milk.

They're here!

2008-06-24T18:07:00.002-04:00

We've been having on-and-off thunderstorms for days now, and we had a few roll through this afternoon. I went to church to work on stuff for Vacation Bible School, which is this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (I'm helping with the crafts). When I got home DH told me Toggle had her babies! She had two boys, and both of them are the same taupe-y tan-brown that Toggle is, with the same black dorsal stripe.

As if that weren't enough, I just came back from the barn, and three hours later Summer has also delivered! Again, her babies look just like her - black with assorted tan and white markings. She had three! There are two girls and a boy. I already told DH I want to keep one of them - she's very dark, with no side markings (the other two have patches and/or splotches on their sides). She has a white underbelly, white knees in the front, tan stripes down the sides of her face, and a white star.

I already milked Toggle. Her udder was so full and heavy that there was no way the babies were going to be able to get a mouth around a teat. Now I'm waiting for Summer to finish passing the afterbirth so I can clean her up and make sure her babies can nurse. She looks quite heavily bagged up as well so she may need to be milked out too.

The babies are unbelievably CUTE!! Pictures as soon as I can get some.

Goats, goats, and more goats (to come)

2008-06-19T17:01:00.002-04:00

Summer and Toggle are both pregnant, but Summer is the only one who bothers to go outside much anymore. Both of them look like absolute whales, and waddle and sway when they walk. They may need extra door clearance if they don't deliver soon! I'm looking forward to having our milk supply available again, too.

The baby goats are now almost four months old, and about half the size of the adults. Sukey is on the right in the picture below, and Leon, our future herdsire, is on the left.

Close-up of Leon because he's so cute!

And here we have the hard-working farm dog, who also excels at being silly!

Melting

2008-06-10T09:27:00.002-04:00

It is hot here! Far too hot to be moving unnecessarily. We are in day four of a heat wave, and fortunately the temperatures are supposed to moderate tomorrow. It's far too early in the year for temperatures this high. Then again, last winter started way too early and lasted far too long as well.

The garden needs weeding, and I still have plants to put in. Those will get done tomorrow. The only thing I've done recently was to move chickens. The pullets went in with the hens, and the broilers have been let out of the brooder and into the "safe room." Besides regular feeding and watering, that's about all I can stand to do right now.

Rainy days are catch-up days

2008-05-31T16:46:00.003-04:00

Things have been busy around here. I've been trying to get all the plants I started out into the garden.

A few days ago my friend the Tractor Guy came over to help me plant my trees. He dug the holes, I put the trees in, slit the plastic planting containers, and slid the containers out leaving the trees and dirt in the hole. Then I filled in around the trees.

Tractor Guy was looking at what I'd done so far - mainly potatoes and peas, but also a row of Swiss chard - and mentioned that he could remove some of the stumps in my garden. He worked really hard at it, too, and got two of them out! I think it's some kind of testosterone thing - that stump's not going to get the best of the Tractor Guy!

The stumps were somewhat close to my potatoes, but I think at most I might have lost one or two potato plants. And I gained a good bit of planting room!

Here are some of the poles I put in the ground, with some of my beans growing at the base of them. I have three of my four sets of beans planted - Maine Yellow Eye, Hidatsu Shield Figure beans, and Black Turtle beans are planted. The Jacob's Cattle beans are still inside, but I had to re-plant quite a few of them. My green beans (Kentucky pole and Blue Lake) are also slow to sprout. One of those (the Kentucky ones, I think) were pre-treated with Thiram (sp?). Those definitely sprout *much* faster than the others.

Besides the beans, I still have other stuff left to transplant - bell and paprika peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers (slicing and pickling) as well as a few squashes and pumpkin plants.

Abby was close by for most of my planting efforts, determinedly watching for squirrels.

I called the feed store on Wednesday, asking about my order of broiler chicks. They told me they were behind, all their suppliers were running late, and my order of 18 (due in this past week) wasn't expected to be available until June 23. Well, if the broilers were just for my own use, June 23 would be fine, but I'm supposed to be supplying half a dozen broilers for my eldest DS's wedding on August 5. For that time frame June 23 just won't do. On Thursday I called every hatchery I could find, and ended up getting 25 broilers from Mt. Healthy Hatchery in Ohio. I had a choice of 15 or 25, and decided more was better than not enough. The chicks were shipped out the day I called, and today we got the phone call from the distribution center to go pick them up!

Here is my box of chicks. This box is not much bigger than 10" or so - DH guesses it at 10" square.

Here are all the chicks! We were a little worried about some of them trying to hop out, so this was a very quick picture. The hatchery actually sent 26, and all of them arrived busy and chirping up a storm.

They are now in the brooder cage in the chick room. The older chicks have not yet been removed and are sharing space with the brooder cage for now. Tomorrow I need to clean the henhouse and get the pullets moved in with the hens. The way broiler chicks grow, they will not fit in the brooder cage for long! Abby has visited them once already so far and is beside herself at the prospect of new chicks to watch!

I'm actually a little behind right now, in barn work and planting. The reason I'm behind is that I'm suffering from a horrendous case of poison ivy. I'm terribly allergic - more so every year, it seems. Right now my arms are about half covered, and I have some on the tops of my feet, a little on my legs (behind my knees is especially painful/itchy), and even have it on my face. I've already decided that we're not going to church tomorrow. I would feel dreadful if I came into contact with anyone as susceptible as myself and passed it on. As much as I hate to, I think we're going to be getting some heavy-duty brush killer and trying to get rid of as much of the poison ivy as I can. It's mostly along the dog fences - where I planted my louffah gourds and the sunflower seeds. Some of it also lurked around the stumps that Tractor Guy pulled up.

Trees! We have trees!

2008-05-24T17:08:00.002-04:00

Memorial Day weekend is "official" planting time here in New Hampshire. This morning, after a trip to see the new Indiana Jones movie (which I enjoyed) we stopped by Lake Street Garden Center in Salem to look at fruit trees. I had written to the experts at the UNH Extension Service earlier this year to find out where to get fruit trees best suited to our area and that was the recommendation.

Here are the trees arriving home in the back of my pickup.

This is the future location of said trees - just below the two maples.

This one is a North Star Dwarf Tart Cherry. This variety is self-pollinating so we only needed to get one.

One caveat about cherries - I have read that *wilted* leaves are toxic to livestock. That would be leaves that are torn off (branches that break off) - not new leaves, and not dead leaves that fall off in the fall. For this reason, the cherry tree will be planted in the spot farthest from the animals.
This is a peach tree - Redhaven variety. The hang tag says it is the world's most widely planted standard peach. It is also a self-pollinating variety, which means we have more room for other trees! Peaches happen to be one of my favorite fruits.

The apple trees were not of the self-pollinating variety, so we had to get two of them. The garden center had very helpful signs up, telling you which varieties would work together and which ones would not. This is the first apple tree, a Macintosh, definitely a standard in New England.
Our second apple tree is called a Pristine. This one produces yellow apples. It's not a variety I'm familiar with, but the tree is huge - easily twice as tall as the other trees, and even more exciting, it already has blossoms! The guy who wrapped them for transport told me there's a good chance this one will actually bear fruit this year!
After I unloaded the trees and spaced them more or less where I want them planted, I continued getting my hands dirty. I had to go to the dump - um, transfer station (we don't have trash pickup where I live), and had a chance to talk to our tractor guy. He's going to bring his tractor over sometime and scoop holes to plant my trees. Then I started some of the outdoor planting I want to get done this weekend. I planted the birdhouse gourds at one end of the property, the louffa gourds as far away from them as I could (alongside the dogs' chainlink fence so they'll have something to climb on), two tiny Love-in-a-Puff vine seedlings, and a bunch of sunflower seeds. I also spent some time weeding in the garden. My potatoes are coming up! The peas are looking good as well. Tomorrow and Monday I'll have to do a lot more work in the rest of the garden (the lamb's quarters are staging a takeover), prep areas for the beans and veggies that still need to go in, and get them planted. I think when I put my seedlings out I'll be adding a few more seeds along the way, depending on the amount of room I have.

Now I'm tired.

They're all growing up!

2008-05-20T13:40:00.002-04:00

Last night I separated the alpaca moms and babies for the first time. I put the boy, Leo, in with the big boys, and the girls, Ash and Seven, in with the goats. The boy wasted no time pulling a Houdini and is somehow back with his mom. I'll try again tonight, this time putting him in with the goats and the other girls.

Here they are, missing their moms. Seven, the white one on the right, is visiting with her mom, Angel, through the fence. Ash's mom, Milk, is nowhere to be seen. She's done raising this one, and more than ready for weaning! I think the difference is that this is Angel's first baby.

The baby chicks are also getting big! They're 7 or 8 weeks old now, and about the size of my bantam chickens; about 2/3 the size of full-grown hens. What's amazing is comparing them to broilers - Cornish Cross chickens bred to grow *fast*. They are pretty much grown and ready to start butchering at 8 weeks!

These are my indoor plants! They wer just little nubs yesterday! The tomato plants are finally coming up, too, and some of the squashes have little nubs pushing through. Besides the squashes, I think the only ones not putting up shoots yet are the Jacob's Cattle beans. They seem to be moving a little more slowly.

The picture below is my "grocery gitter." Today I pulled my biggest load ever, starting with my (refilled) five-gallon water-cooler bottle, which weighs about 40 lbs when filled. The carriage behind the bike was a craigslist find for $35. It has been modified with a "floor" of MDF, and a Rubbermaid tote to hold groceries. The carriage is rated for 100 lbs and today I pulled probably 75 to 80 lbs in it, between the water bottle and the regular groceries I got. And it uses ZERO gas!

Growing things

2008-05-19T15:34:00.003-04:00

I was out in the garden for quite a while this morning, checking on my peas (which have started to come up) and potatoes (none yet). I spent a lot of time digging up these weeds.

It turns out they have a very large tuberous root. Many were beyond the scope of my trowel and I had to resort to a shovel (which meant putting on shoes!) to dig them up. I have sent off an email to our local university extension service to try to get an identification. They certainly are very prolific!

In the meantime, my beans and cucumbers have started sprouting, but no sign of the squashes or tomatoes yet.

A good farmdog!

2008-05-16T14:42:00.003-04:00

Abby is now 18 months old, and seems to be finally coming into her own. Earlier this week she helped me break up a fight between the boy alpacas and herd them back to the barn. She was doing a great job heeling. Only twice did the alpacas stop and consider rebelling, and Abby ran back to me. (I guess they're scary when they stand up to you!)

She's still a little timid around the adult goats, but has helped me get the baby goats from one side of the barn to the other as well. I'm glad she's finally acquiring some confidence.

Today we saw another sign of Abby's growing abilities. She made her first kill today! She actually managed to chase down (OK, not kill, but fatally injure) a chipmunk! She's been enjoying a new pasttime of treeing squirrels for a couple of months, but now she's apparently fast enough to *catch* them! It was an exciting chase, around the corner of the house, behind a trash can and the propane tank, turn around at the cellar bulkhead, back through all the obstacles and under the porch steps, where Abby finally caught it.

It's quite the dog who can herd the critters, take care of the babies, *love* the kitties, and still kill the vermin! (And she's Daddy's bestest walking partner, too!)

Today's agenda

2008-05-13T09:20:00.003-04:00

I've already started washing up one of the two fleeces I brought home from the Sheep & Wool festival. DH asked why I was buying wool, when I just dropped off over 100 lbs of alpaca fiber to be processed into roving. Well, first of all, because that's alpaca and this is wool! Second, I don't have any gray alpacas (yet!). I'll keep hoping. Meanwhile, grays are my most favoritest natural fiber colors! (Purple is my most favoritest dyed color.)

This fleece is only 2 lbs, a Romney cross. Everywhere one looks at a fiber festival are fantastic rare and exotic fibers, and the occasional bargain. This one was only $4.00 a pound.
This one is a 3 pound Romney/Corriedale cross fleece. It has a lot more color variation in it than the first fleece (ie the brown tips) but the grays are darker and richer, and it has fabulous crimp. This one, too, was only $4.00 a pound, from Jeff Jordan's shearing barn. This one has now been divided in half, and half of it is in my washing machine.

I also plan on starting most of the rest of my seeds today. Here we have tomatoes (four different varieties), cucubers (also four varieties although I may not plant all four), squashes (winter, acorn, zucchini, and pumpkin), pole beans (aka "green beans"), and dried beans (Jacob's Cattle, Black Turtle, Maine Yellow Eye and Hidatsu heirlooms). I also have some sunflower seeds in there, but I've learned they don't like to transplant so I'll have to wait until I can plant them outside. Memorial Day is our traditional planting day here in southern New Hampshire.

Here are some of the ones I've already planted. My louffa gourds are getting new leaves!

These are the California Wonder bell peppers and some Love-in-a-Puff vines, just for fun.

Festival!

2008-05-11T15:41:00.006-04:00

This weekend was the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival. I look forward to this with great excitement every year. I missed it two years ago because of flooding problems which resulted in not only most of the roads to the festival being washed out, and also because my parents were flooded out and spent that weekend here.

This year I spent a great deal of time there both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday I went with DH and DS. We got to see just about everything, and had a very good time. On my way in I had spotted the truck collecting fleeces to go to Zeilingers Woolen Mill for processing. I had intended to collect all of my alpaca fleeces to send out to be processed into roving but that was just one of the things I hadn't gotten around to yet. I came home with two new spindles (a turkish spindle made from bamboo, and a lightweight mid-whorl purchased with the intention of using it for cotton, because I couldn't find an akha spindle) and small amounts of luxury fibers - cashmere, yak, and a baby icelandic blend. I'm not particularly fond of icelandic but lamb of almost any breed tends to be quite fine.

I spent a couple of hours last night sorting, re-bagging and labelling my alpaca fleeces, and went back this morning to spend some more time at the festival. I had over 100 lbs of fleece (the person collecting the fleeces said I should have my rovings back sometime in July). My DD and a family friend went with me today, and ambled off on their own while I wandered the festival. I did find an actual akha spindle, and bought that and a small amount of dyed cotton in oranges, so I'd have something to keep my hands occupied. Now I'm back; bread dough is in the breadmaker, eggs have been collected, animals have hay, laundry is out on the line. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Some of the outside vendors. One of these is Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Fiber Studio, where I found the akha spindle, and also saw some lucets from the Rouge Lucet that made me want to come home and dig out my own. She does such beautiful work!

First building, which housed not only the fabulous Bosworths, but my friend Nancy Zeller of Long Ridge Farm (she has CVM sheep, which produce my favorite wool!)

Second barn. Some gorgeous stuff here! The booth directly to the right (where the man in the red jacket is standing) had some adorable small distaffs (distaves?) made from twigs with the bark peeled off. I need to go out in the backyard and try to find something similar.

There were four indoor barns and three (double-sided) rows of outdoor barns. There were a lot of vendors, fiber fanatics, and fiber animals.

This woman was trying out spinning wheels. She had on wonderfully colorful hand-knit socks!

She had the most awesome messenger bag!

These are Russo wheels. They are indescribably fabulous, and pictures can't do them justice. Even more incredible, they are still selling for less than $400 each!

More Russo wheels. The one in front has gold lacy circles (perhaps brass? gold-colored regardless) inset in the wheel.

Sunday was the sheep-to-shawl contest. Teams had four spinners and one weaver, and had to start from fleece (which could be pre-washed) and a pre-warped loom. Then they have to card and spin the wool, and someone has to wind the wool onto weaving bobbins, and the weaver weaves the shawl. They have a total of four hours from start to finish. I participated in one of these once, and it was loads of fun!

Team number two (of three). The third team was on break when I was taking pictures. This team had two adults and three kids. The third team was all kids!

Outside tent, a fleece sorting/skirting class. Nice fleece on the table, but I'm always partial to grays.

Insanely gorgeous (and expensive) Golding spindles. The Rolls Royce of the spinning world.
I really wanted one of the spindles that appear in the bottom left of this photo. They were tiny, and about a half-ounce, but were $64 each!

The spindles below (especially the ones with the heart cut-outs) were my second choice. Small ultra-lights, these were only $40 or so apiece. None of these came home with me either, but I shall lust after them nevertheless.

Very, *very* tired Border collies! These were the dogs doing the herding demonstrations all weekend. You'd never know they were tired to watch them at work, but boy did they know how to take advantage of their downtime!

Spring work - and lots of it!

2008-04-26T15:49:00.003-04:00

It's been one of those non-stop days today. I started out by going to the dump at 9 am. We live in a very small town, and we don't have trash pickup; we have to bring it ourselves.

After that I planted my peas (eleven "teepees" with three legs each, and three sets of seeds around each leg) as well as some wonderful Kennebec potatoes that DH got for me when he went to the feed store. I planted 16 potatoes, each cut in half, for 32 plantings.

I took new pictures of my gourds. Here are the louffa gourds:

And here are the birdhouse gourds:

They grow so fast, I'm sure you could watch them sprout up if you had time to sit!

Besides the regular farm chores and the planting, I've been washing up some fleece. I have three shopping bags of this. The bags are marked "Cocomo, Corriedale/Rambouillet". The fleece is gorgeous, a fabulous variety of grays with only a little brown in it. I love grays and have a serious weakness for gray fleece from almost any species of fiber critter. Here is a before-and-after-washing comparison. Before washing is on the right; after is on the left. Look at the difference in colors!

Here's a close-up of the fantastic crimp in this fiber. This picture was taken before washing, while the crimp and lock structure was still intact.

I have bread rising in the oven right now. I make most of our breads and school snacks, using home-ground organic wheat berries. Have you ever read labels in the supermarket? High-fructose corn syrup is used in an astonishing array of food products (like bread!)

Yesterday I butchered two roosters. It was my first time doing my own birds. Last year we raised a few meat birds for ourselves, and paid $4.00 a bird to have them butchered. With current fuel and heating oil costs, as well as rising grocery prices, I really don't want to have to pay the extra. We'll be getting our meat birds next month. I want to have them ready to butcher in time for my oldest DS's wedding, August 5. I have offered to provide chickens for their potluck dinner, and he estimates they'll need 6. I'm only providing the birds, not cooking them!

Anyway, this was Rocky. He got very aggressive as he grew up, to the point where he would attack my 10 year old (or the backs of my legs) if we went to get eggs when he was in the henhouse. He turned out to be a good-sized bird. The brown leghorn that I butchered second isn't good for much but soup, but I'm sure he'll make a great soup.

What a difference a day makes!

2008-04-23T17:36:00.003-04:00

OK, the pictures yesterday were taken in the morning, and these were taken about 5 pm, so it was more like a day and a half, but still... here are the louffa gourds! They grew a tremendous amount! Granted, it's been about 20 degrees above normal here the last couple of days. Today it was over 85 degrees! Normal is in the 60s.

Regardless, here are my gorgeous future louffas!

Here are the next plants to put in an appearance. These are birdhouse gourds! I'm looking forward to learning how to turn these into actual birdhouses this fall.

Here are the alpacas. They are paying v-e-e-e-e-r-r-y close attention to the barn cat! From left to right we have Castanet, Milk (Got Milk, because of the white chin), Seven (daughter of Angel), Angel (taller one on the right), and Ash, Milk's daughter. The only one not in the picture is Leo, Castanet's son.

Gettin' busy around here

2008-04-22T16:30:00.002-04:00

My louffas are coming up! I don't know if you can see it, but there are four plants growing in this picture.

This is my lilac bush. I've had it since 1997 (boy, lilacs are certainly *slow* growing plants!). I dug up several suckers from plants at my grandmother's house after she passed in '97. Last year was the first year we had blooms. I'm looking forward to seeing the lilac flowers again this year. This is definitely my favorite plant, although lilies are a close second.

This is the garlic and onion patch. My gardens were a total failure for a number of reasons last year. The garlic came up, but I was too slow in the harvesting, and most of it just refused to be pulled, and stayed in the ground. Hopefully I'll do a better job this year.

The baby chickies are growing like weeds! Theyre about a month old now (approximately) and almost fully feathered. Their heads and necks are still a little fuzzy. We're turning out the light during the day now, and I might leave it off tonight. Then again, we're still having temperature fluctuations from the 50s to the 70s. It was in the high 70s today, but is supposed to get down to 50s and 60s toward the end of the week, so I'm not ready to remove the heat lamp entirely yet.

Baby goats are growing like weeds! I have found that it is difficult to get pictures of baby goats, because they just don't hold still long enough! The one in the front is Sukey, DD's little doeling. The one in the back is Leon, my little Nubian buckling. Two days ago I had to re-burn one of Sukey's horns that I apparently didn't do well enough the first time. I hope I have done a good enough job this time! If it didn't work, she'll either have a scur, or we'll have to have the vet out to do it.

Barn kitties are also growing like weeds! It's funny to go up in the loft and watch them scatter. They sure can move fast for such small critters! This one is waiting to launch himself over the wood
and this one is hiding inside some tomato cages!

Upgrades, changes & seed starts

2008-04-17T08:47:00.004-04:00

The baby chicks have been moved out into the barn. Last year we had a problem with a predator killing two batches of baby chicks, so DH built them a "safe room".

It has a very nice, sturdy door, with a wonderful plexiglass panel so you can look in on the chicks.

The does are now being milked only once a day, and this weekend I'll drop down to not milking them out completely. I wanted them dried off by the end of this month.

The baby goats are now being bottle fed only twice a day. They are eating hay and grain very well. They were recently moved from the room that became the "safe room" to the goat stall with the big girls. For now they still have their dog crate sleeping quarters.

Baby barn cats are growing fast, and will be ready to go on or about May 9. One of the four has already shown hunting instincts (he was crouching and stalking DH's arm quite nicely) and has already been claimed.

Yesterday and today I started some seeds. Right now I have louffa gourds, birdhouse gourds, and paprika peppers. I just ordered some fresh multi-colored organic bell pepper seeds, and some more paprika pepper seeds, and I'm looking for information on when to start or plant sunflowers. To those reading this, do you know how long of a growing season they need? Should or can they be started indoors? (We're zone 5b.)

Spring has sprung!

2008-04-10T14:17:00.003-04:00

At least it has for this week...

It's been lovely, in the 50s and 60s this week. The chickens are now allowed to free range in the afternoons, and I've been able to hang my laundry outside! The picture below illustrates what I consider a near perfect slice of country life.

The girls look like they're about ready for shearing! I've scheduled shearing for May 3rd. That means I have a couple more weeks to get the barn aisle cleared out. :D

The baby goats are very playful, and can be quite the escape artists. I've been feeding them as much as I can get them to eat, hoping they'll get too big to squeeze out their escape routes very soon! They are eating grain, but only a little bit right now.
This is a picture of Abby watching part of the flock - just in case I might ask her to round them up! (She knows to leave them alone until I ask.)

We've started drying off the milking does. We've been getting less and less milk lately, and have been down to about 3/4 of a quart (three cups of milk) at each milking - from *two* does. Yesterday I only milked them in the evening. It shouldn't take long for even those milk levels to drop. I'm thinking we'll be done milking in about two weeks. New babies are due in June!

Barn cat babies are getting busy. The four kittens are now just over a month old (born March 9) and are starting to explore the barn loft. We have to be careful where we're stepping when we go up there now!

Also, we've been selling hatching eggs. I donated a dozen (actually 16) to a school teacher a little over a month ago. Two were infertile, four started developing but didn't progress, and twelve hatched. The chicks will appear in the school's science fair, then will be donated to a farm program. Since then, two other people have contacted me to buy hatching eggs. With five roosters out there, I'm absolutely certain most of them are fertile (with the exception, perhaps, of some of the bantams).

New chickies

2008-04-01T07:40:00.004-04:00

When we went to the feed store last week they actually had Araucana chicks, so we had to get some. I love my colored egg layers! The minimum purchase for chicks is a dozen, so we got six Aracaunas, four Buff Orpingtons (supposed to be superior broodies, and the one old Buff hen we have has such a calm, quiet personality), and two black sex links (Daddy chose those). Abby, our farmcollie, absolutely adores them and can spend hours staring into the brooder.

Last weekend was Maple Sugar Open House here in New Hampshire. We visited two local sugar houses, and had a great time. One product I've enjoyed so far has been granulated maple sugar. DH and I tried it on our oatmeal yesterday and loved it. Did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap from a sugar maple to make one gallon of maple syrup?

I would love to try tapping the trees in our neighborhood some time.

Shammy and Comet

2008-03-24T08:37:00.003-04:00

This is Shammy, our Alpine/Nubian cross.

Comet is the buck that we borrowed in January. He was here for three weeks, after which he went back home.

Well, a couple of weeks ago his owner called and asked if we'd like to keep him, so we brought him back here. Now, he's a nice buck - not great, but he has a very nice personality. He's a little on the small side, for a buck, but that makes him a little easier to handle. From what I've seen he also throws small kids - which was the reason I made the trek to Vermont to get Leon. We're planning to find Comet a new home as soon as Leon is grown. In the meantime, Comet lives with the boy alpacas, while we consider where we're going to build the buck pen or where he's going to live later on. We don't want him with the boy alpacas when he becomes... shall we say, more fragrant... this fall.

Regardless - this morning I went out to milk as usual. Summer goes first - open the stall door, she walks to the milking stall (the next room over from the goat stall) and gets up on the milking stand. No problem. Next is Shammy - I open the stall door, put Summer back, and Shammy, who knows she's next, usually goes in and gets up on the milking stand. Not this morning. This morning she went and stood in front of the boy alpacas' stall, making googly-eyes at Comet. She appears to be in heat! Now, I was really hoping all three of my girls were pregnant and should be due in June, but Shammy thinks otherwise.

She is now in with the boys, at least for the next couple of days.

Shammy and Comet:

Disbudded the babies

2008-03-23T16:19:00.003-04:00

I was very brave yesterday and disbudded the babies. I have a commercial dehorning iron,
but it's still a scary thing.

I put the kids (one at a time) in the kid box, after pre-heating the iron. Just like everyone says, they were fine until they realized they were stuck, and then they started bawling. They kept it up until I let them out of the box. Sukey was easier to do, because she was just the right size for the kid box and was held in there pretty firmly. Leon was more difficult because he had enough room to wiggle. Both were just fine as soon as they were back in their stall.

Anyone know what kind of hen this is? She was given to me... she seems to be trying to go broody - spends a lot of time in one particular nest box, but doesn't stay there consistently yet. If she decides to brood there I'll make sure she has some eggs to hatch. She's a speckled black with an unusual comb - it makes a straight line (with those little spikes) and then has a small circle at the back, almost like an ankh or a stick figure without the arms.

We took a walk today, and almost all the girls (with the exception of Castanet) lined up to keep an eye on the dog. From left to right - Milk, Seven (Angel's daughter), Leo (Castanet's son), Ash (Milk's daughter) and Angel.

Is it still March?

2008-03-19T17:08:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was wonderful. Today we woke up to this - again.

Farm dog waiting to go to work. I have submitted her information to the AWFA (American Working Farmcollie Association) and am awaiting her designation. Unlike AKC, which is a registry based on bloodlines, the AWFA is a registry based on working ability.

Thor was smart enough to spend this wet, dreary day inside.

The goats are always happy to see you!

Even the girl alpacas and babies were indoors today. They spend almost all their time outside, and if the weather is too bad (and they don't want to come in) I will lock them in.

New babies!

2008-03-18T11:32:00.002-04:00

I drove to Vermont last week and came home with new babies! (Our girls aren't due until June.)

This is Leon, a little Nubian buckling. Isn't he adorable? He was born on Leap Day, too! That's got to be lucky!

We also brought hone this pretty little Alpine cross doeling, who now officially belongs to my almost-16-yo daughter. DD has named her Sukey. She is a fast grower!

How about some alpaca pictures?

2008-03-04T06:48:00.007-05:00

I had my cell phone with me when I went out to the barn yesterday, so I snapped a bunch of new pictures of the alpacas and babies.

First of all, here are the barn cats hanging out in the driveway on a warm day.

Here are Castanet, and her baby Leo. Leo is showing us his "What ears?" look.

Even though the alpacas tend to be skittish (compared to something like goats, who want to be in your lap) if you hold still long enough their natural curiosity just may get the better of them. This is Seven, Angel's daughter.

Here's almost the whole group - Castanet in back, then Seven (white), Ash to the right (light fawn, hiding behind Milk, her mom, who is black); Leo, right behind Milk, and Angel's butt.

Milk and Ash enjoying the hay I tossed outside.

Close-up of the babies - left to right, Leo, Angel and Ash.

Close-up of Ash. Look at that face!

And this is Thor. He's the one I need to trade right now. He's related to all of my girls - Milk is his mom, Castanet is his grandmother, and he' s therefore also related to Angel, who is Castanet's daughter. I wish I could find another alpaca as nice as him to trade for!

Looking for alpacas?

2008-01-15T17:45:00.000-05:00

I have decided that we need to sell Thor. He's lovely. In temperament, he's probably our most pleasant alpaca. He leads, he eats out of your hand (although he still doesn't like it if you're reaching for him) and he stood quite calmly when we trimmed toenails last week. He's gorgeous, with that short head/face that I really like, and has that all-over fluffy look, including a ridiculously fuzzy face. He has color on both sides of his pedigree, too - his dad is a medium fawn, and his mom is black (and goes back to gray! I'm still waiting for a gray cria...) Anyway, in my opinion he'd make a fine herdsire - good temperament, great looks, lovely fiber, and a marvelous pedigree to boot. But he's also related to our three females, and is now "coming into his own" - those hormones are waking up, and he and Feldspar fight a lot. Besides that, I'm going to need the space when Leo is ready to be weaned. I'd like to hang onto Leo for at least one or two shearings - his color is awesome!

OK, this is not an ad - really. My point (and I do have one) -

I've had several people contact me about him, because he *is* nice and he would probably be a very nice herdsire. I'm probably asking a paltry fraction of what I should be asking, but that's a discussion for another day. Some of the people who have contacted me live quite far away, at least by my standards. Now, I have no problem selling (or buying) alpacas out of state, but one of the people who is (was?) interested is looking for fiber alpacas.

Unless you're looking for a particular type of alpaca, or particular bloodlines, transporting long distances really doesn't make much sense. A better option, if you really want that particular alpaca, is to contact a transport company. Another idea would be to see what other alpacas might be available in your area. Unless you know where to look, that might be easier said than done. One place to start is at Alpacanation.com. You can enter your own search criteria - what state you're in, your price range, the type of alpaca you're looking for, male or female, and several other options. I looked and found close to a dozen alpacas in one particular area. If the person who contacted me wants fiber alpacas, he or she could get at least four for the price I'm asking for Thor and the cost of gas to and from the midwest. (I like to log on once in a while and just admire the gorgeous alpaca pictures!)

Voting day

2008-01-08T13:44:00.000-05:00

It's voting day here in NH, and DH and I went out early to make our choices known. Maybe now the incessant phone calls will stop.

We have already been through the snowiest December on record, but today - 1:50 pm as I type this - it is 60 degrees outside! The snow is melting at a prodigious rate. It sounds like it's raining on the deck. My chickens are pleased as well - I got ten eggs today! I really enjoy the variety of sizes and colors I get.

The colors from my camera aren't great. You can see the two colored eggs - one is more greenish, the one to the left on the bottom is more of a blue. The blue one is also quite a bit smaller. Another one of my Ameraucana hens is starting to lay!

You can see the dark brown egg on the right (from my one remaining Cuck00 Maran hen - I woudn't mind a few more of those) but on my monitor there really isn't a lot of color difference between the remaining eggs. In actuality they are varying shades of light brown, two are white, and one is such a light brown it almost appears to be a pale pink.

Here's the happy bunch of hens. You can see the wall of snow that still blocks one side of the coop. If this weather continues, it won't be there much longer!

Chicken Coop under snow

2008-01-02T09:12:00.001-05:00

Our chicken coop has a corrugated plastic roof so the chickens can still go outside regardless of weather. Among other things, the roof sheds snow very well! This is the wall of snow that has built up under the lowest edge of the roof. It does provide quite a nice windbreak for the chickens, though! I throw scratch out every day and they go outside a lot. The cold doesn't seem to bother them much, although they hate the snow that does creep into the coop!

Here's the coop in the summer. You can see a corner of the roof in this picture.

Chickens and nest boxes

2007-12-30T07:04:00.001-05:00

Rosemary left me some questions in the comments, but no email, so I thought I'd answer her here. She wrote:

So, do you use those 5 gallon buckets for nests? Are they attached?

Can I ask how many chickens you have?

Yes, the five gallon buckets are the nests. I had read about someone using those on the Chickens101 list on Yahoogroups and decided to try it. At that time we had a bunch of baby chicks just a month or two old (DH was still working on the coop) and were looking for nest box ideas. I had my doubts that they would be big enough, but they're fine. I've even seen two chickens at once in them when they get pushy about where they want to lay their eggs! They're not tied down, but the handle of the bucket is underneath to keep it from rolling. There are shavings in the bucket and on the shelf, so that helps, too.

Right now I think we have about 18 chickens - I'd have to count to be sure, and I know we lost one when the weather turned cold at the beginning of December. Several of them are bantams (banties) - a pair of Silkies, and a pair of Polish, and one bantam Brahma, although she's really not much smaller than a regular hen. Oh, and three of them are roosters - one Silky, one Polish, and a huge Barred Rock.

Barn cleaning & rearranging

2007-12-29T11:08:00.001-05:00

It has been a very cold and snowy winter so far. The weather service says only three winters have had more snow, going back to the late 1800s. I don't care - I've seen enough snow.

The last few days have been fabulous, though - above freezing, and this morning it was raining! Yay! Melt that snow!

I've been taking advantage of the weather to catch up on some barn cleaning. First it was the goat stall, then the extra pen in the back of the barn (used for babies, storage, chickens, or whatever we need). Today it was the henhouse. The chickens hate it when I clean out the henhouse! It's like they just got those shaving arranged the way they like them, and I took everything out!

I lock them out while cleaning, and let them in when I'm all done and everything is put back in place. They spend a lot of time clucking and scratching and checking everything out.

Here are the shelves, and our very expensive five-gallon-bucket nests, and the marvelous chicken ladders my wonderful DH build.

Here's the coop from a straight-on viewpoint. You can see the main perch (a tree branch balanced on milk crates), the door, and the feeder and waterer. Some of the smaller chickens also like to hide in the milk crates. There's also a window that's not in the frame, just above the door.

I called a local lady today about possibly renting a buck for my girls. That necessitated a rearranging of living quarters. I haven't decided whether the two babies will be bred yet or not. From what I've heard and read, they are certainly big enough, but they don't seem mature enough to me. I moved the two babies out of the goat stall (and into the stall with the boy alpacas), and put the two milkers in there with Toggle, the dry doe. If I get a rent-a-buck he'll just go into the stall with the girls I want bred - much easier that way.

Summer missed her buddy Toggle, and was very happy to see her again! The two of them engaged in some joyful headbutting that I was lucky enough to catch!

My 15 year old daughter has been warned that we're going to be very busy on New Year's Day, and she's going to be helping. We're going to be doing shots all around, and trimming hooves (and for some, teeth) on the alpacas. We're also going to worm the chickens, with external application of ivermectin. It's probably going to take a couple of hours at least (I've made up my list of which critters need which immunizations, and the babies will need a different schedule as well as boosters).

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T16:45:00.000-05:00

Today I received a very unexpected Christmas gift! Thanks to the generosity of a family who could no longer keep them, and the tolerance of my wonderful husband, we acquired two new goats! They are a mother/daughter pair of Alpine goats. The doe is currently in milk, and they have been having the same difficulty we have with the baby continuing to nurse long after she should have been weaned.

The doe is Shammee, and she bears a stunning dark and light brown coat pattern.

The doeling is Chestnut, and she is varying shades of light brown, with a dark dorsal stripe and dark lower legs.
My apologies for the poor quality of the pictures. I adjusted as best I could in Photoshop, but they're still not great. Hopefully I'll get some better pictures later.

Shammee is now in with Summer, as they are both currently milking, and Chestnut is in with Sunspot and Toggle. Both of the new goats have been subjected to sniffing and attempts by their stall mates to get them to play. I'm sure they'll be happy to play in a day or two, as they adjust. We are pleased to be able to give them a good home, and their owners are welcome to vist any time they like!

Barn kitties waiting for their milk

2007-12-01T18:58:00.001-05:00

They don't actually have weird glowing eyes. That's just what the tiny light from my cell phone camera did when I took the picture.

Goat pictures

2007-11-30T08:26:00.000-05:00

I have Sunspot up for sale, mainly because she refuses to be weaned. Every time I put her mum back in with her, she's nursing again. She's a very persistent girl. Right now Summer, her mum, has a half-stall in the back of the barn, and also has access to the boy alpacas' side of the pasture. Every time we let her into the girl alpacas' pasture (which borders the goats' area) she was standing by the gates letting Sunspot nurse again! DH finally put 48" 2x4 mesh fencing over the gates; maybe Summer can have more room to roam now (not that the boys' paddock isn't big enough!)

Sunspot was born April 10, and both of her parents are registered Nubians, so she could be registered if desired. Here are some pictures of her and her mum.

Sunspot on November 1:

Sunspot just this morning, Nov. 30. By the way, she loves vanilla wafers. This picture was taken through the chicken coop wire, otherwise she would have been on top of the camera trying to see what I was doing!

And here's her mum, Summer. Summer is one of the sweetest creatures I've ever known. She's a total love bug, and has been an easy and consistent milker.

The barn cats have adjusted well, by the way. We had them in the cage for four days before we let them out. White Paws promptly went down the stairs and outside the barn door! She returned 24 hours later, thank goodness, and has seemingly been happy in the barn since then. They are getting absolutely spoiled with warm, fresh-from-the-goat milk twice a day. Shadow has even gotten to the point where he'll let me pat him while he's drinking!

Barn cats

2007-11-20T16:22:00.000-05:00

We've been dealing with a rodent problem in the barn all summer. I put out rat poison several times, and picked up half a dozen dead (and very large) rats. I really don't like using poison, though, for fear that animals we're not trying to kill will also end up dead. I've been trying hard to convince DH that we needed to move to more natural methods of rodent control - barn cats.

We finally picked up two barn cats - a black and white female (White Paws) and a kitten from her latest litter (Shadow). White Paws has been a very successful barn cat at a friends' house a few miles away, and has raised and trained another generation of barn cats on their farm. We were told that she catches mice, rats and even squirrels.

The two cats have been acclimating in a cobbled-together set of dog crates since this weekend. White Paws seems to be a sweetie - she rubs on the bars, tries to rub on my hands when I put food in there, looks very loving. Shadow is shy - I would definitely call him semi-feral. Today DH and I took them out, one at a time, to give rabies shots - I'm sure they haven't had any shots at all. She was not so lovey-dovey then! In fact, she was one very angry ball of fur and sinewy muscles, and very strong!

I plan to get some cat vaccines from Valley Vet, but I haven't decided which one(s) yet. I'm sure, being semi-feral, they won't see the vet very often. Against my usual spay-and-neuter-everything policy, we plan to let White Paws raise at least one more litter of rodent controllers before we get her spayed. Bob, who gave us the cats, says she's at her best when she's teaching her young'uns to hunt. They'll be in the cage at least a couple more days before we let them loose in the barn. I hope they stick around. Two of our three cats are indoor-outdoor cats, but ours don't go in the barn!

Fenceline finished!

2007-11-08T09:52:00.001-05:00

Yesterday DH finished putting up the fence boards. The only thing left now is the wire mesh, which I picked up yesterday.

Fencing

2007-11-05T16:46:00.000-05:00

DH has been re-doing part of the fencing lately - actually, a good deal of fencing! We were having problems right on the edge near the road, where first the horses and now the alpacas would stick their heads out and eat the grass on the other side. (The grass on the other side is always better than any grass on this side of the fence, of course.) Over time this eroded dirt right at the edge of the fenceline - you can see it clearly below. Some of the old fenceposts started leaning precariously, and DH finally decided to fix a bunch of them. The picture below is the fenceline along the road.

This is the fenceline along the driveway. We had at least two fenceposts that were leaning dangerously. DH made sure to dig very deep postholes when he put these in! Summer can be seen in this picture, right at the edge where we have a welded-wire panel blocking off the fenced portion from the open portion.

Once the boards are up (three on the driveway side, four on the street side, which you can see in the top left of the above picture) we'll be adding 2"x4" wire mesh to keep them from sticking their heads through (and continuing to erode the hillside).

Update... finally!

2007-10-31T18:12:00.000-04:00

Phelan reminds me that I haven't updated this blog in far too long.

Castanet did finally have her baby, on October 10, a lovely medium fawn boy we have named Leo. He seems small, especially compared to the other two girls, but we remind ourselves that Seven is two weeks older than he is, and Ash is about five weeks older. They certainly are bouncy at this age!

From left to right, Leo, Seven (you can just see that white head between the two fawn babies) and Ash.

Left to right, Seven, Leo and Ash, Got Milk (the black one - Ash's mom) and Angel, Seven's mom.

Leo and Seven, giving me a nice close-up. They are surprisingly curious, until their moms call to them and tell them to watch out for those humans!

All the girls and babies, even though Seven is barely visible. Can you spot the white tail?

Baby gains weight

2007-10-09T16:10:00.000-04:00

Here's a picture of all the girls out in their pasture. Castanet has still not had her baby, but looks like she could go any day now. DH was watching them this morning, and noted that the babies were inordinately interested in sniffing Castanet, even though she was doing her best to discourage them. The babies tend to hang out together quite a bit now - very cute!

We weighed Seven last night, and are pleased to see she's gaining weight - not as fast as I'd like, but a gain is a gain. Considering the slow start she had, I'm thrilled every time I see Angel making like a statue so that Seven can eat!

Our one broody hatched out one egg from the four she was setting. The baby is now about a week and a half old, and mom has it outside foraging with the rest of the group! It's so cute to see her scratching and showing baby what she found!

More babies, more work

2007-10-04T07:49:00.000-04:00

I worked the last four days of September at the Deerfield Fair, spinning and talking about spinning in the Farm Museum. I came home on the last day, Sunday Sept 30, and found a new baby in the pasture. It's a little pink-skinned white girl, and she was born to our white maiden female, Angel (it was Angel's first baby). The baby has been christened Seven-Up, or Seven for short.

This arrival was not without its problems, however. Seven was two to two and a half weeks overdue, and it really showed. Her legs looked like they were hyperextended at the knee; her tendons were rubbery, and she looked very wobbly. Angel, being a first-time mom, didn't seem to have a clue what to do with the baby, either. She sniffed her, and hummed to her, but wouldn't let the baby nurse.

I have some frozen cubes of goat colostrum in the freezer from when Summer gave birth to Sunspot last April. I started thawing those, and fed it to the baby with a syringe. I looked up all the information I could find on feeding an orphaned cria. And I kept encouraging mom every way I knew how.

I confined the two of them, mom and baby, in a stall overnight. Besides allowing them some bonding time, it also made it easier to catch and feed the baby. I gave Seven fresh goat milk at milking times, and thawed, reheated colostrum at the other feedings. The baby was as confused as mom; she kept circling around the stall, looking for an udder under every bucket and feed pan. I opened the stall door the next morning so they could mix and mingle with Ash and the other two girls. I was hoping that Angel would get the right idea if she saw Ash nursing (and I hoped her mother, Castanet, might pass on some motherly advice).

I've been feeding the baby for the last four days, as well as continuing to encourage Angel. I tied her up a few times to see if Seven could find the udder; I expressed a little milk hoping it would help Seven find the "milk bar". She found her way there a few times, and Angel would move away, even trying to kick her a couple of times. I finally got to the point where I braced Angel against a wall and held up a back leg so she couldn't kick the baby away. Seven managed to nurse briefly.

Yesterday I fed four times. The last two times the baby was adamant about when she was done eating - letting the milk dribble out of her mouth, struggling to get away. This morning I milked the goat, put some of the milk into another container for the baby, and grabbed my oral syringe. I herded Angel and Seven into the stall, put Angel's halter and leadrope on, and waited. If the baby wasn't hungry enough to be syringe-fed, maybe she was finally starting to get milk from somewhere else? I stood at the end of the lead rope. Sure enough, Seven walked up to mom and began nursing, and Angel stood still and let her! Halleluiah!

I'll be watching them carefully today to make sure Angel lets her nurse out in the pasture as well as in the stall. Hopefully the worst is over now, and baby and Angel have their roles figured out. I'll also be watching for consistent weight gain in the baby, indicating that she's eating enough to keep growing well.

By the way, her legs have straightened out beautifully, her tendons have firmed up, and she is now every bit as bouncy as Ash. I really need to get a picture of the two of them going nose-to-nose in the pasture - too cute!

New baby!

2007-09-18T08:20:00.000-04:00

I was out when DD got home from school yesterday, and she called to tell me she found a new baby! Milk presented us with a light fawn female cria, 17 lbs and already bouncing! DH is astonished that crias are born pretty much "ready to go"!

Baby pictures:

The Noisy Days of Summer (and Sunspot)

2007-08-16T10:59:00.000-04:00

It's been a little noisy around here lately. We finally decided that baby Sunspot was not going to wean herself (and Summer didn't seem inclined to help either) so we took it upon ourselves to separate them. Neither one of them seemed to think it was a good idea, although Toggle doesn't mind at all. We rigged up a pen of sorts for Summer in the back of the barn with a cattle panel, and left the baby with Toggle for company. They ran around hollering for a few days, but things are finally starting to settle down. We'll leave them separated for at least a week, maybe two.

I've been busy printing out forms from Zeilinger Wool Company today. I'm hoping to get my alpaca fiber sorted and sent off within the next week or so for processing. I'll have several batches - fawn or light beige colored roving, from Castanet and the two boys that were sold last year; white, from Angel, Thor, Feldspar, et al; and suri, if it's still good, from a Suri fleece I got for free when I purchased my fiber boys a few years ago. I'm going to toss it all on the skirting table, one fleece at a time, and sort by color and type first, then quality (firsts or seconds). The cria fleeces (Angel's and Thor's) will go as one batch because they have so much chaff in them.
I expect I'll have four or five separate batches; after that I'll be selling off what I can, on Ebay and maybe on Etsy. These animals need to help pay for their upkeep.

If there *are* alpaca babies (which is still not certain) we should find out sometime next month. This week I also have to give shots. I think I'm going to try to get one of my eldest son's friends to come over here and learn how to hold an alpaca so I can give shots. It will make things a lot easier than waiting for DH to help...

Home Improvement Project

2007-08-09T11:06:00.001-04:00

OK, this one was a first for me. It has been extremely hot and humid lately, and one of DD's window screens was torn beyond repair. I had to go to the hardware store yesterday, and impulsively picked up the materials to repair this screen. Follow along as I learn something new!

This was the state of the screen before I started. I laid it out on this large wooden table that resides on our deck so that it would be flat and easier to work on. (I'm getting too old and creaky to work on the floor!)

These are my materials - a package of spline (the rubber line/ filler that helps hold the screen in place within the frame), a package of fiberglass screening material, and a spline tool to help assemble everything.

I didn't know whether to buy the aluminum or fiberglass screening, so I got fiberglass because that's what we already have. It was available in 30" and 36" lengths; I was pretty sure our windows were 32" wide - I know I measured them when I made curtains, and I think that's what it was - so I got the longer length. I also picked the wood-and-metal spline tool over a plastic version. Everything together cost under $12.00. I know this hardware store tends to have slightly higher prices than the mega-stores, but it's closer and I like the people who work there.

The spline tool has two different wheels - one is rounded and kind of pointy (almost like a very dull pizza wheel) and the other has a U-shaped groove in it.

First I had to remove the old spline. I looked around the edge of the frame until I found the starting point, at a corner. I pried up the end with the tip of my scissors and just "unzipped" the old spline.

After that it was easy to remove the old screen. I'm saving this for future use - it's helpful for keeping the dirt from falling out the bottom of plant pots, for one, and this size piece might also work for a screen repair for a smaller window.

Then I rolled out the new screening, leaving a couple of inches on each side.

I cut the new screening to size, and started laying out the new spline.

The instructions say to use the pointed wheel first, to create a groove in the screen where the spline will lie. Then you roll the spline into the groove using the U-shaped wheel. One thing that was not described anywhere is that the spline has ridges in it that accept the edges of the U-shaped wheel. If you don't align the wheel with the grooves in the spline, you can run off the edge of the spline and cut the screening. I don't think this would be as big a deal with aluminum screening, but it was fairly easy to put holes in the fiberglass. Fortunately, I discovered this when I cut a bit of the screening on the *outside* edge, where it would be cut away once finished anyway.
I took a picture while inserting the spline but it didn't come out. I also have to admit that I found the new gray spline too difficult to work with. It seemed a lot softer and squishier than the old black spline I pulled out. Maybe there are different sizes (and densities?) of spline and I didn't notice. I'll have to look next time I go to the hardware store. Anyway, after finding out that the gray spline wouldn't stay put, I re-used the old black spline that I originally unzipped. Because I unzipped it all in one piece I was able to re-use it easily.

I didn't get everything perfectly straight, but it was very close. I put the spline down two sides, then started pulling the screening flat on the third side. I ended up with a few minor "soft" spots, but most of the screen came out quite flat and even. Once I switched to the black spline everything went quite quickly. By the way, I used the point of my scissors to squish the spline down into the corners where the round spline tool wheel wouldn't reach. I started and ended the spline on either side of a corner.

After you put the spline in all the way around, you cut off the excess screening.

Tada! Here it is all finished! Right now it's back up in DD's room, allowing for increased air flow.

Tough summer - especially for chickens

2007-08-07T11:35:00.001-04:00

Well, despite my early season enthusiasm, gardening efforts, etc, things haven't turned out quite as expected this year... but then again, when have they ever turned out as expected?

The chickens have had a rough summer of it especially. We've lost a few to a fox, for starters. Abby, our wonderful farmcollie, is now ten months old.

At one point we found a pile of feathers from where the fox grabbed one of the chickens. She was intensely interested in that, and at another time actually chased the fox off the property. Since then she has learned to make frequent perimeter checks to look for the fox. We haven't lost any more since she started doing this, but we lost a Welsummer, a Cuckoo Maran and a Black Australorp.

I gave three other birds (the second Australorp as well as my two Ameraucanas) to a friend who lost her whole flock. I was sorry to let them go, but they were the roosters' "favorites". They had no feathers on their backs, and even had some red, angry-looking sore spots on their shoulders. My friend has no roosters so they should recover well while living with her. I miss the Ameraucanas - they were my best and most consistent layers, and everyone loved to see the green eggs.

Penny, the Barred Rock, eventually hatched out one chick. She stayed on the nest for several more days after that, but setting duties were eventually taken over by three other hens, who divided the eggs amongst them - or so I thought, until I realized egg production was unusually low. Now, I know that setting hens won't lay eggs, but still. I finally figured out that the three broody hens had been stealing the eggs, so I broke their broodiness... I had asked at the feed store if I could replace the eggs with chicks and fool the hens into thinking they had hatched out the eggs, so that life could return to normal. I was told it sometimes works, and had in fact recently worked well for one of the feed store employees. I brought home a dozen chicks, a combination of Barred Rocks and Rhode Island Reds.

It didn't work for me. None of the hens bought it. Instead I had to put the chicks in the brooder (aka stock tank!) I did break up the broodies, though. I cleaned off the entire top shelf where they were nesting, turned over the nesting boxes (five-gallon buckets) so that they were inaccessible, and threw out all the eggs - eighteen of them, some of which were no doubt highly rotten (one exploded when I tossed them in the trash can).

I had the worst luck with those chicks. First of all, I ended up taking Penny's chick away and putting it with the new ones because the hens kept making a mess of the feeder I put in there with chick starter feed. So I had thirteen chicks in the stock tank. They had a brood light, but started dying off one by one... every time I went out to the barn, it seemed, another one was dead. I upped the wattage of the brood lamp, and we eventually stopped the die-off (I don't know if the light was at fault or I just ended up with unthrifty chicks). We ended up with eight chicks, of which Penny's chick was one.

In the meantime, the broilers I was raising (eight out of ten survived) went to the butcher. I cleaned out that pen to use for the baby chicks.

Sunday night 15 yr old DD came home, put her bike away in the barn, and left the barn door open (I always close it after evening milking). Something got in and killed all of the chicks - only Penny's chick somehow escaped slaughter. We spent yesterday running around trying to find replacements. We did find some, and they're close in age to the ones we lost (I didn't want Penny's baby being picked on after all that). We have four NH Reds, two White Leghorns, and two brown mystery chicks left over from a school hatching experiment. Whereas the originals were all supposed to be pullets, these are all unsexed. They did, however, survive the night.

Penny's baby is the little black one in the middle of the picture below. This one needs a name for sure, for making it this far! You can also see a hint of the brown shading around the neck of the other black chick - it reminds me of the markings on my Ameraucanas. Both brown chicks (and they do look dark brown, not black like in the photo) have those lighter neck markings.

And here's Sunspot! She's about 3/4 the size of her mum (Summer) already! I did get around to transferring the registration on Summer and Toggle, but I have not yet registered or done the ear tattoos on this one. She still nurses a little, but I have nowhere to separate her to, and no companion to separate with her. Summer currently gives us around 1-1/2 and sometimes close to 2 quarts a day, even with what the baby takes.

Saturday morning surprise

2007-06-30T07:55:00.000-04:00

This morning DH and I were both up early, and he asked me if I had heard the goats making noise this morning. I told him I hadn't heard anything; the goats don't generally make a lot of noise, and certainly nothing I can hear from the house. I decided to go out and milk a little early (only by about half an hour) just to check on things.

When I got out to the barn, Sunspot baby was loose in the aisle! Strangely enough, all the stall doors were still closed and locked; I have no idea how she got out! I let Summer out and onto the milking stand, and grabbed the baby and stuck her back in the stall with Toggle. I have no idea how long she was loose! Thank goodness all the barn doors are closed at night.

The good news was that Sunspot didn't get all the milk this time! Instead of getting 1/2 to 3/4 of a quart (our usual), we got almost a half-gallon of milk! I told DH that we need to find some way to separate the baby, at least until she's weaned, so we can get more milk! Most goat babies that are bottle fed are weaned between 2 and 3 months, and Sunspot is about 2-1/2 months old now anyway. I have no idea how long Summer will keep feeding her if we don't separate them, either. When the broilers go to the butcher on July 15, I plan to start putting Sunspot in that pen overnight.

More fun with chickens!

2007-06-25T07:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday DS went out to collect eggs; when he came in he told me there was a White Rock hen in Penny's nest! Poor long-setting Penny had gotten up to eat and drink, and a white hen stole her nest!

I went out to check shortly afterward, and the white hen was in the nest, and Penny was trying to cram herself back in there as well! I removed the white hen but I don't know if she laid a new egg in there or not. Without candling the eggs I wouldn't be able to tell if one was new or not anyway, so I just left them all there. If all works out, Penny's eggs should start hatching around July 1st.

It looks like we have a new broody as well! The one remaining Cuckoo Maran hen seems to have gone broody! She was in a nest right next to Penny all day. I removed the wooden egg and counted five eggs, then added the three that I found in other nests. DS had brought two in the house, and this one is now setting on eight eggs. If this hen stays broody, her chicks should hatch around July 15.

We're planning to keep a few replacement hens, and eat probably most if not all of the roosters. As far as the roosters we have now, I'm still planning to get rid of the Silver Sebright (he has a crow that sounds like rusty rollerskates, and for such a tiny bird, is very loud!) and probably most if not all of the Polish roosters (there are at least two, if not three Polish roosters). I'd be OK keeping the Silkie rooster and maybe one that grows to near-full-size from the two batches of eggs being set now.

First day of summer!

2007-06-22T20:28:00.000-04:00

OK, so I'm one day late posting about the first day of summer, but I did take the pictures yesterday!

The first lilies to bloom.

The boys, sunning themselves!

Baby Sunspot hanging out with Castanet. To my surprise, the girl alpacas really seem to enjoy the company of the goats. This picture was taken through the wire of the chicken coop. I tried after I took this picture to go around and line up the shot sans fencing, but Castanet saw me coming and moved.

We're starting to get a little more milk on a regular basis from Summer. This morning we got about 3/4 of a half-gallon jar! Tonight we were back to half a quart, but I have hopes that the baby is at least beginning to be weaned and we'll eventually get more milk!

Broody hen, sewing clothes

2007-06-19T10:04:00.000-04:00

Broody hen continues to set her eggs. 9 yo DS came in from gathering eggs the other day and told us she was off her nest, but apparently that was only temporary. When he went out a couple of hours later she was back in her bucket. I know she must get up occasionally to eat and drink and poop, but I was worried she would abandon the nest. I've been waiting a long time for a broody hen to raise up some babies for me!

Our broiler chicks are huge, but their butcher date isn't until July 15. The garden is growing like mad ... at least, I think it is! Most of it is so covered in weeds that I can't tell what's out there besides lamb's quarters. The peas and lettuce and potatoes appear to be doing very well, as are the garlic and onions. The garlic plants have produced scapes... long curly tubes ... you're supposed to be able to cut off the scapes and chop them for use in stir-fries and other stuff. I have emailed the place where I bought the seed garlic (Gourmet Garlic Gardens) for some more specifics on when to cut the scapes, and which part(s) of the long tubes can be used, and for what. I broke off a couple of scapes, and they certainly smell heavenly! I feel like I'm falling *way* behind with the garden, though. I really need to find some time to go out there and pull weeds. Part of the problem is that the last few times I spent time weeding I ended up with poison ivy somewhere - once on my arm, and the last time on my nose and under one eye. I know that the last one happened when I wiped sweat off my nose while pulling weeds and tying up the pea plants.

I've been making clothes lately. I made DH a new shirt, not an easy feat, as he takes a size 3XLT. We've kidded him since the Harry Potter movies first debuted about looking like Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane). Here he is modeling his new shirt.

I'm now working on a matching shirt (in a much smaller size, thank goodness!) for 9 yo DS. DH likes the shirt so much, though, that he's "ordered" several more! He always said that the store-bought shirts, even the ones from the Big-and-Tall stores, are never long enough!

Sunspot baby and broody hen

2007-06-16T14:50:00.000-04:00

Sunspot baby at two months, now fully 2/3 the size of her mom.

Broody hen is now setting on a full dozen eggs. For two days I saved all the full-size eggs to tuck under her. I can't wait to see some little peepers!

When we sheared the alpacas on Wednesday afternoon I took a few minutes after shearing, while they were still on the floor, to trim toenails and do vaccinations. They got 3 cc Ivomec, sub-q, for meningeal worm prevention, and 2 cc Covexin-8 sub-q vaccine. Unfortunately I ran out of rabies vaccine, and need to order more.

I had enough rabies vaccine to do both goats, and I also gave Sunspot, the goatie baby, her first CDT vaccine (with the same Covexin-8 the alpacas got). Sunspot will get a booster in July, as well as her first rabies vaccine. I'll be ordering the rabvac next week (I usually use Valley Vet, but have been known to use other suppliers). Next week I'll be starting her on Sulmet, orally, per the directions on one of my favorite goat information sites, Fiasco Farm. I still need to tattoo the baby and send her registration papers in, too!

Naked alpacas!

2007-06-14T09:46:00.000-04:00

Our alpacas were finally sheared yesterday! Unlike last year, when I actually had time to take pictures, I was the shearing assistant this year and didn't have time to take any. Instead we have the fun post-shearing pictures! DH now calls the alpacas "Q-tips". The first picture is the two boys; the girls are in the second picture, although you can only see part of "Got Milk" (my bay-black girl).

We may finally have a hen going broody! This hen has been in this nestbox (aka five-gallon bucket) since yesterday. If she's still there this afternoon, I'm going to give her all the eggs that are laid today. We've been getting 8 or 9 eggs a day lately. We would love to have a broody hen raise up some babies for us!

And here are a few garden pics! I've spent quite a bit of time outside weeding lately, and spent an hour tying up these peas a couple of days ago. The weather here has been strange, ranging from mid-summer-like hot and humid 90-degree days to rainy 50-degree weather like yesterday. The garden doesn't seem to mind much. The peas are getting tall, and we're starting to see flowers on some of the plants. The garlic (not shown, but it's huge - I'll try to get a picture up by this weekend) is at least two feet tall!

The lettuce is doing well too. I need to plant a new batch; we'll be eating this with our dinner tonight!