02/05/2010
Ready for the Snow

It just started snowing here at 9:20am, the start of what they say will be 36 hours and up to 2 feet of snow. The goats have hay, the chickens have feed, and we are ready to hunker down by the woodstoves. We hauled in three times our daily ration of wood; The upper picture is the larger kitchen stove, the lower one is the smaller living room stove.

12/20/2009
Barn Life

I hae me hay, I hae me dog, life is good.

12/08/2009
Ole Man Winter Still Spry

We had our first winter snow a few days ago, a wet, sticky 4 inches. Mostly melted by today, though. But the forecast for tonight is ominous: freezing rain with ice accumulating up to 1/4 inch, followed by wind gusts tomorrow of up to 45 mph. I. Hope. They. Are. Wrong. [Update: They *were* wrong — it stayed above freezing all night so we just got ½-inch of sleet.]

In the center of this picture you can see an open gate. The billy goats (bucks) live behind the gate while the nanny goats (does) live in front of the gate. We thought that we were done breeding for the season, but the bucks thought different. The day after Thanksgiving they head-butted the gate repeatedly until the rhythm popped the one-way gate latch open. In anticipation of the potential ice storm, yesterday we had two large rolls of hay delivered, one for the bucks and one for the does, got the bucks back into their pasture, and chains on all the gates. We will see what damage the bucks have wrought 150 days from now.

07/30/2009
Somewhere Over The Rainbow

The view from the the upper veranda last week.

07/02/2009
Chick Peeps

Our new chicken peeps arrived yesterday -- 15 Light Brahma pullets and 2 cockerels. (Click here for a glossary of poultry terms.) This breed is large and docile and versatile. We got a couple dozen 3 years ago and have been very pleased with them. Their large size means they cannot fly over our fences so they stay in the pastures where we want them to be. They are also the most docile chickens we have ever had; we were very pleasantly surprised at how well they accepted the day-old muscovy duck peeps that one of our duck hens hatched about a month ago. So this year we are trying something new with the peeps: rather than raise them in a separate area fior a month as we have done in the past, we are starting them in a corner of the poultry shed. We hope that in a week or two we will be able to let them mingle with the adults. The cardboard you see in the picture is to keep out drafts from the spaces between the wall boards, and since it is summer, the light is a regular 100W bulb rather than a heat lamp.

05/17/2009
Goat Kids

For various reasons, we decided to only breed a few goats this year. Here we have moms Oona (the white one) and Queen Bee (the brown one) with their little ones. Oona kidded on the 4th, one boy, one girl, and Queen Bee went the next day with this girl (plus one kid that did not make it.)