And the Beat Goes On

• I reached my 100th milking a couple of weeks ago.  I only know this because I ran out of filters and had to open another box.  100 milkings.  It's not many, but it seems like a lot.  I've learned a lot as well, like:
1. Minerva is a terrible milker, owing to her CAE.  She's had mastitis twice, and she gives very little.  However, she's the best one on the stand, and is the easiest to milk out.  She goes right up, settles in, and stands like a trooper.  Unfortunately, since she's not a good milker, she will not be bred again.  I'm going to continue to milk her until Dulcinea has kidded and is in milk, hopefully early next year.  Then I'm going to let her dry up and that will be that.  The good news?  Her cart goat training has begun.  She sucks at it.  But knowing Min, she will get it soon and be awesome.  I just have to persist. 

"Look at me!  I'm so smart!"

1. Lilly is an amazing milker, despite her CAE.  I guess hers will not manifest itself in that way, and I'll have to be watching for however it does manifest.  If I get to Lilly before the vampire child named Tallulah, she's good for (I think) about a half gallon+ a day, which I think is pretty good for an FF.  Only every once in a while do I catch Lilly before Tallulah has been there and sucked her dry.  Lately, I haven't been able to do that at all.  Usually I catch her after Tallulah's had a bit, and then Lilly's milk numbers are down.  Tallulah is now 7 weeks old, eating and drinking like everyone else, so I'm going to wean her, and then I'll see.  That kid can drink!  30 seconds on the teat and Lilly's on "e".
2. Lilly also enjoys holding milk back for Tallulah, which makes things especially difficult.  This morning she was pretty full, and I was looking forward to a nice milking.  But I guess Tallulah didn't get enough, according to Lilly, so getting that milk out was a pain in the neck.  I bumped and massaged, but I only got what she was willing to give, which was an ok amount.  I can always tell when Lilly's holding back on me.  Not only can I feel it, but she actually changes position on the stand when she thinks I'm done, and her udder goes up.  It's funny, but annoying.  Needless to say, this morning, after I had gotten everything I could and could get no more, Tallulah ran right up to Lilly and STILL had a nice meal.  Gah!!
3. Lilly was hobbled on the stand up until a week and a half ago.  She was horrendous to milk.  Dancing every which way, and then bucking straight up in the air when she was done with me.  Now she dances much less and when she's annoyed with me paws the stand with a front foot, instead of stepping in the milking bucket.  I know that once Lilly stomps, it's either time to hurry the hell up, or give her something yummy to distract her.
4. No matter what, it's a two week time span of hellish milkings for an FF, until they get the routine and milking can start in earnest.  The first two weeks, though, I just want to cry.  Afterwards, it seems to just be routine and adjusting.  Thank goodness!

Um....yeah...that's pretty much Lilly in a nutshell. 

• What else did I learn?  I hate getting up that early in the morning.  Hate.  It.  But I gotta do what I gotta do.  Still, though...UGH.
• Dulcinea is a "stealth heat" goat, and it's been very difficult to judge when she's in the "mood" to be bred.  When I think I have it, I put her in with Stewart, who is very willing to oblige, and she runs like an axe murderer is after her.  But she's a tease.  He can sniff, she lets him do that, but once he starts blubbering, she gets annoyed, and if he tries to mount, she runs like hell.  It's very annoying--to ME.  She's now in the boys' pen every day, and will stay there until I decide that her will has broken or that she's actually in heat.  She has to earn her living.  As I told her, being sausage-shaped is not a career path here.

"I swear; I will live and die a virgin!"

• Olive is still here, and is not going anywhere.  Despite dropping the price on her a million times, no one was interested.  What did everyone want?  One of my girls already in milk!  Ha!  In your dreams, people!  I assume that all the newbie suburbanite farmer wannabees who contacted me don't want the work of dealing with a goat kid and raising them up until milking age.  Unbelievable, because she's weaned, CDT'd, dewormed and de-coccidia-fied.  Oh, and disbudded.  I did all the hard work here!  Gotta love the lack-of-work ethic.  Anyway, the price got so stupid that I just pulled the ads.  At that point, the milk Olive will someday make (yes people, I can wait, go figure) will be worth so much more than I was going to sell her for.  She stays.  The goat number is now at 9, with 7 girls and 2 boys.  It's a good number right now, and I'll see how it works out.

Still adorable

• The Muscovies (look, I changed the subject!) are very large and very cool duck-goose guys.  They come up to us and wiggle their tails and don't run when you look their way.  It's a nice change from the domestic ducks, who run when the wind blows at them.  I like them, and I'm glad they're here.  They eat bugs out of the air!  Lots of them, too.  That's pretty cool.  Definitely they are a valuable animal.
• The meatbirds are at 4 weeks now, and growing pretty well.  With the cold weather, it is difficult for them to get really big.  This batch is funny, and very adventurous.  Yesterday, unfortunately, we had a hawk attack and one female was injured.  She's possibly recovering, I'll have to see.  Luckily Cassio was in his run at the time and made a ridiculous amount of noise to alert me (and anyone in the area), so I came out to look.  It could have been worse. 
• I have decided the backyard bunnies need to leave.  Since my analysis, I have realized that they serve no real purpose, so away they need to go.  How to do that?  I'm not sure.  I'll let you know...
• The vegetable garden is in it's death throws--about a month too early.  I got nothing on that one.  As I walked through it last week, I could swear by the shape the plants were in it was early September not early August.  Very weird.  It may have something to do with the fact that several nights and mornings as of late have been of October ilk, and definitely not August.  Long sleeves?  Yup.  As of now, I have whacked the heads off of all the tomatoes in order to get any at all to ripen, pulled some things out of the ground that were just done, and put the eggplant under plastic to try to salvage some of the small fruits that were developing before October showed up.  It's a very strange year.  I'm wondering if I should have known when one of the pumpkins in the garden had turned orange by the fourth of July.  Maybe that should have been a tip-off?
• However, the good news is that I have been able to plant nice fall crops like broccoli, cauliflower, peas and lettuce.  I've put more carrots in the ground as well.  Today I will plant spinach.  All is not lost.  But it was not a tomato year, that's for sure, and I got 0 melons.  Next year I will be putting some things in low tunnels to keep the heat up. 

And I think that's about it.  The beat goes on.  And I need a nap.  Take care!!

Sunday Snapshots

Well, three of the kittens are gone, and half of my chickens are sold, and three more ducks have disappeared.  It's been a rough week.  I'd lie if I didn't say that when the people came to adopt the last two kittens I had tears in my eyes.  It's all for the best, though.  And the selling of my chickens has been especially hard, but it was the right thing to do.  As to the ducks?  I have no idea where they went.  They disappeared during the day again.  Truth be told, I'd been thinking about parting with them anyway, as they're fairly useless, won't go in easily at night, and the Muscovies have proven their worth about 8 million times in the short time they've been here.  They've been eating flies like candy, they hardly eat much in the way of feed, and they're always in their house by 7:30 pm.  I could set my watch by them.  Why did I wait so long??

Olive is still here.  I'd like to be upset about that, but I just can't.  No one wants to buy a quality animal right now.  I hear it from many, many people.  Sell them cheap (like Oscar), and off they go.  Sell them for a fair price (not high--she's got no papers), and they sit and sit.  It's not just me--all the ads that were on Craigslist from before I put Olive on are still there, too.  The cheap ones are gone, but that's it.  I'm not too troubled about it.  When the right person comes along, then it'll be fine.  Until then, I'm enjoying the heck out of that little jumping bean.  She and Amelia are now playing with Tallulah, who stays because she's Lilly's baby.  Lilly is an AMAZING milker.  She sucks at standing still, though.  Some days she tap dances way too much and she's put her foot in the milk bucket on more than one occasion, which thrills the chickens (who get to have the milk), but not me. 

Between Lilly and Minerva, we're getting about a gallon a day.  No, it's not dairy standards, but I'm not a dairy.  It's a good amount for us, though I realize that two goats in milk is not enough to produce cheese and other things and still have a ridiculous amount of milk in the fridge for my son -the bottomless milk pit -to drink.  Minerva is still making a minimal amount of milk, maybe a quart a day, but something is something, and I love her so who cares.  Min's got the routine down pat.  She's usually a pleasure to milk (some days, not so much, though.  Tap dancing....you know what I mean??) and I just love that she knows what she's doing.  We're besties. 

Anyway, I have discovered Tallulah is nursing off of Lilly, so she's not a bottle baby like the other two bananas, and therefore is coming around more slowly.  We're making inroads, though.  She's 10 days old and has finally started to come and see what I'm doing.  I still can't catch her to snuggle her easily, but progress is progress.  I'll take it.

In the midst of all the animal craziness (and there's more, oh boy, there's more), I pulled out my back, and so spent the morning puttering in the gardens, which always cheers me up.  I took some pictures, and I thought I'd share.  Ready?

Squash Jungle

 

Bean Beds 

 

 Carrot Forest

I've already pulled out a pound of carrots from here, just in "thinnings".  I'm excited to see how many pounds are in here all together.

 

Small Tomatoes

 

The back garden's tomatoes are developmentally behind the front garden's tomatoes.  I think that lasagna gardening is a miracle.  Though I have been steadily improving the soil in the back garden, the fact is that it's still crappy clay (though enriched crappy clay), and though the plants are growing better than they have in past years, it's still a struggle.  In the front, since I lasagna'd, they don't have the same struggle.  The plants are HUGE.

 

See?  Those two posts that stick up there from the tomatoes are 9 feet tall.  Just for some scale for you.  The tomatoes are nearly as tall as I am.   

So yes, lasagna gardening does work.  Thank you for asking.  :)

Broccoli-Broccoloo-Broccolalala

Front tomatoes

 

Tomato Insanity

Corn

Forget knee high by the fourth of July.  The corn was waist high.  Now it's chest high.  I just read a book about permaculture where the author said that it was sad that all we look for is knee high by early July, when if our soils were as fertile as they could potentially be, we should expect so much more.  It was an interesting thought. 

 

Pumpkin Attack!

 

Trying to Eat the Broccoli

I think the two colors of the leaves are pretty, don't you?

 

My son's "School Cabbage". 

(Don't ask)

The Smallest Bed of Cucumbers.

I just thought it looked so pretty.

And in other areas...

The Berry Patch

These are supposed to be Anne, a yellow raspberry.  However, they're turning red as they ripen. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, methinks....

 

 Blackberries

 

 Red Raspberries

These are ginormous this year.  I think it's because during the fall last year, I mulched them with about a foot of dry leaves.  The raspberries are as big as my thumb, no exaggeration.  So, if you have raspberries, mulch them with a foot of dry leaves.  It seems to work.

Pretty Flowers

A giant pumpkin blossom

 

 Pretty Morning Glories

Rose Scented Bergamot

 Why yes, I do grow bee balm and flowers in my vegetable garden, thank you for asking!  The bees and bugs just love it.

And I don't want to leave you without a gratuitous animal picture of cuteness, so here they are, freshly shorn, so they look crazy, but all the cooler for it, I think.

Pickle

 

 Colette

Or, rather the back of Colette's head.  Those pom-pom ears crack me up!!!!

 

Have a great day!

Full Days

You know how spring is--time to hustle and bustle!  Lots of things are happening here, and I thought I'd catch you up.

*  The kittens are getting big.  They hit the big 3 week mark yesterday, and were all down the hallway.  They spend most of their time under my daughter's bed, but they have started to venture out.  They are cuties, and I think they'd spend more time walking around, but mama cat is a bit too nervous.  She likes to scoot them right back under the bed when they go out, complaining the entire time. 

Which way am I looking???

 When we do see them, they are very sweet.

*  Spring means lots of eggs, so I've been using them the best I can.  Currently I'm working on pasta.

Multi-purpose drying rack!

I have made egg noodles and regular fettuccini.  I think my next thing will be to make pound cakes to freeze.  Then maybe an Angel Food cake.  Or three.  Maybe that'll get it under control.  :)

*  The gardens are nearly planted--I have the dry beans to get in the ground, which I keep meaning to do, and then either something else comes up, or it rains.  I'm hoping tomorrow morning is the morning.  Otherwise, I'm all planted.  I can tell you that I underestimated the number of seedlings I would need this year.  Going from 2100 square feet to the 3000 square feet was a much bigger jump than I thought it would be, and I ran out of lots of things and was sticking things in willy-nilly.  It should work out, it's just not as organized as I'd like.  But that's ok.  Things will still be delicious.

 I've also got it mostly mulched, which is good, because the weeds are out with a vengeance this year.

*  It looks like it's going to be a good year for strawberries.  Though the pipes are doing "ok", the bed is doing beautifully.

Lots of little strawberry-lings popping up make me very happy!

*  The little Muscovies are thriving, which is wonderful.  They are not thrilled with people, but I didn't get them to be pets, so that's ok with me.  They are growing by leaps and bounds, and I am thrilled to say, that small as they are, they are already trying to eat the flies straight out of the air.  I'm just fine with that!  The flies also seem to be out with a vengeance this year.  Anything they can do to help is just ducky (HA!!).

*  And so we come to the biggest news.  The countdown.  Minerva is due in 6 days.  6 DAYS!  Holy crow!!!

Her plug came out last week, which is no big sign, but it was something.  Her demeanor, however, has changed drastically.  She has completely mellowed out and turned back into MY Minerva.  Snotty-potty head Minerva seems to be gone, and she's back to being my sweet girl again.  She let me feel her tummy the other day (for a half a minute), and I felt a foot.  My bet is that she's got either one big one in there, or two at most.  I don't think there are more than that, but I could be wrong. 

Minerva and I have a special relationship.  We know each other, and that's not something I can explain more than to say that.  I know her, she knows me.  I'm not worried about her giving birth, oddly enough, because I trust her to trust me.  Just because she does.  I know that she will let me do whatever needs to be done, if anything at all needs to be done.  Because I know her.  I know, sounds odd.  But if you've ever had a special animal, you know what I'm talking about.  Minerva's my girl.

You know what I am nervous about?

This:

AAAHH!  Stainless steel!  It scares me!!

Ok............. no.

Milking.  Oh boy.  Milking scares the bejeezus out of me.  Lemme 'splain.  Back when I was a little kiddle, my uncle owned a dairy farm in West Virginia.  I don't remember a lot about it--my long term memory is really bad--but I do remember that he had pigs, which I thought stank, he had blackberry bushes that were huge and full of fruit, which I thought were really cool, and he had goats.  'Cause it was a goat dairy, see?  I don't remember what kind of goats they were, but my mother tells me that they were the ones with the "droopy ears".  So, Nubians.

Stewart says "Nubians rule!  Wanna hear me yodel?"

I remember going into the milking parlor and having him show me how to milk and then letting me try.  And I got not a drop.  Not a single solitary drop.  I have no idea how old I was, or even what I did right or wrong.  As is with memories, I only remember the failure.  Now, years later, I have successfully milked a goat--very briefly--I was testing a friend's goat to see if she had let her milk down for her babies.  So I have sort of redeemed myself.  But still the sting of that past failure persists.  I want so much to milk, I am afraid I'm going to have some sort of handicap.

Of course, Minerva wants to hear none of this.  She doesn't care about my insecurities.  All she wants is someone to alleviate that giant udder of hers when it's time.

It's enormous.  Especially when you consider she's a first freshener.   This pic can't even capture it really, it is so full and round.   If I compare it to Lilly's,

who is also a first freshener, the difference is huge.  Of course, Min is a precocial milker, so I'm not that surprised.  Lilly is not.  Still, we'll see who proves out in the end.

Anywho, I worry that I will not be able to milk my girls, and then I really worry that I won't like it.  Having the animals was so natural to me, I fell into the routine of feedings and cleanings and puttings-in like it was breathing.  Now I can't imagine my life without all the animals and all their routines.  How empty it would be.  I am hoping that milking is going to be like breathing--natural.  I'm worried it won't.  I guess I'll find out, either way, next week.

In the meantime, I am prepared.  The stainless steel above is a milking pail, a strainer, and the strip cup.  I also have filters and teat wash and balm and the whole nine.  And of course, I have this:

OHH!  Snazzy!  My millions of thanks to Fiasco Farm, who did all the thinking for me and designed this baby.  All I had to do was build it.  It took me an hour and a half and not much in lumber, and it's beautiful.  And functional.  I figured I'd take it for a test drive before I had to actually milk, so I put everyone in it for a hoof trim and haircut.  Why haircut?  Because it's going to be 90 degrees here on Friday, and my girls and boys are still in their somewhat winter hair.

Here's their before:

And Maxwell and Cynthia too:

They is cutie patooties! 
Don't mind the pen.  It's been raining here A LOT and it's all muddy and gross.  I can't wait for it to dry out!

Lots of shaggy butts!  So I put them in the milking stand like so,

Cleo really needed very little in way of a haircut.  She needed her feet done. 
Max is helping her eat her grain.

trimmed their feet, and shaved them down.  Now they is beyoo-tee-full!

 

So sleek and shiny! 

Lilly actually changed colors.

Before

After

Ok, not really.  That's just the way her hair is.  Light on the tip, dark underneath.  Now that she's shaved down, though, she looks very different.  I think she's a bit self conscious about it, too.  She was hiding when I put them away for the night.  She looked embarrassed.

I had fun, though.  I love working with my animals.  I decorated me,

 and the driveway in goat hair.

But I am hoping they feel better in the heat.  I still have to do their bellies, which I could not do because the trimmer couldn't handle it.  Just a note:  people haircutting trimmers do not work well on goats.  I bought an inexpensive Wahl people hair trimmer to do my goats with, and though it worked, it could not do the long hair on their bellies.  And I burned out the motor.  Ooops.  I think it would be ok on a short haired goat like Cleo, but forget the dairy breeds.  It can't handle it.  I will be investing in a big-girl trimmer soon, so I can do bellies and the spots I missed.

And I think that's all!  Oh, if you are curious about the Replamin I've been giving the goats, this has been my experience so far: it works ok.  They shined up a little, and under the crappy browning, I can tell that they are starting to blacken back up, but it's nothing miraculous.  I'm three weeks in with it, and I'm not seeing miracles, by any chance.  They look a little better. 

I decided a week ago that I was going to redo the entire feeding system and scrap the feed they were being given.  I have given up the molasses-covered gack that they were eating and have put them on a diet of horse pellets, oats, beet pulp, BOSS, and alfalfa pellets.  THEY LOVE IT!  Not only that, but their coats' appearances have improved immensely.  They are glossy and soft again.  The color is still not great, though.  I think it may take bolusing to get it right.  But the feed change is here to stay.  I am thrilled with it, and so are they. 

Ok, THAT'S all the news that's fit to print.  Have a wonderful night everyone!