Growing Little Ones!

First off, I am sorry that I am just now realizing that I didn't post about this sooner! These precious little ones were born on May 30, 2015 (the first one hundred degree day of the year), to Lone Star South MsMcallie and Jaune Ranch Pygmies Powerstroke. As of this morning, they are 16 days old. The little buckling (more silver of the two) has been larger all along. Here is today's update on weight...

This morning, the silly little family HAD to have the fresh pellets, not the ones the knocked over last night. 

This is the little doeling i the weighing bucket. She is so sweet and loves to cuddle! 

I don't know why I cannot get this photo right side up, but weight today is 3 lbs 12 oz. Late last week she was 2 lbs 4 oz. So while she is markedly smaller than her brother, she is still growing.

And here is the little buckling. When they were last weighed, he was at 3 lbs 14 oz. 

This morning, here he is at 4 lbs 14 oz. Oh, goodness, he will be a big one!

We had been supplementing the little doeling with additional milk early on, when she was having trouble i the heat of the day. At this point, she hasn't wanted the extra milk, though we continue to offer it. Both little ones are eating some hay, and enjoying the crumbles from mama's hay pellets.

Such a treat watching them grow!

Sexing Goslings and Other Fun Times at Our House

Chock it up to yet another thing on the list of things I never knew I would learn in this life. Last night, the boys caught the young goslings and I worked on determining boys and girls. Yup, sexing geese. I never thought I would be able to add that to the list! Seriously, who puts that on their career goals, anyway?

The geese around here are interesting. Not overly friendly, but not mean. They keep the hawks and owls from attacking. From times of losing chickens even through the roofs of pens, we have not had one loss like this since the geese came to live with us 2 years ago. They are pranksters, trading pranks with the puppy and the goats, and busybodies, always with their nose in someone's business. But they do their job.

Each year in the Spring, Mother Goose nestles in to hatch babies. I set her up with her own food and water, over behind the swingset near the old greenhouse. Twice a day Uncle Wiggly gets her up and they fly around to the goose area to eat and drink before he walks her back. He looks out for her, and is an attentive father as babies hatch as well as with rearing them.

We keep several small water containers with their food so they have easy access to water without letting the little ones get in over their head in the good area.

The baby geese have the sweetest little voices! I hope you have the volume turned up! While they are beginning to get the orange in their bills and legs, the voices are all baby!

They are rather used to free run of the property! They meet me at the feed shed in the morning and ask to be fed before the other animals on my list.

Shadow Paws, who normally pranks the adult geese in exchange for them pranking her, maintains a safe distance to keep the geese parents happy while they are raising the little ones. 

However, we DO NOT need EIGHT GEESE. Goodness! We have a few folks that requested to be called first for little ones once they were sexed, and I will do that today, and give them until the end of the week before I open it up to others. But in calling, the first question is often, are they males or females?

So after dinner last night, the boys caught the little ones, one at a time, and I working on determining sex.  This little female really relaxed int he process.

He stood her back up, and she registered her complaint!

This one had even more to say!

I love the attitude form this one. By the way, curious about the plant pot on what used to be my clothesline? There is a fake owl there that the puppy thought looked VERY destructive. We had hoped the pot would save the clothesline from the puppy, but it blew off, and now Wyatt put it back on.

This one took its attitude straight to Charlie!

I am not going to claim to be anything approaching an expert at sexing chicks or goslings! But so that you know, here is what we did...

Vent sexing. And I have to admit, I had to ask for help with the camera since my hands were occupied, and clearly that didn't work out very well. I will add more photos later for better reference. This one is a female. If you could see more closely, the vent relaxes and begins to separate, leading to a little open there, showing you either (n this case) the folds just inside the vent and nothing else,

or in this case, a little corkscrew of a penis protruding out.  One of them didn't relax well for me, and while I think it is a girl, I will double check all of the girls to make sure one boy didn't sneak through. Our best educated guess right now, though, is One young gander, four young geese. At most, I believe I could be wrong on one of the girls.

I bet you always wondered about that, right?  Well, I will call folks this afternoon and give them the option of picking up geese, and I will admit we will likely be keeping a little female.  (We will work on naming her once all the dust is settled!) 

We will catch you up o more later. So, what things have you learned to do that you never though you would need to?

Obediah's Adventure

One of the things about being a farmer is cultivating and growing things, only to let them go. This is certainly true about breeding livestock. We work with the best livestock we can find, and do our best to match them with others who will complement them in the best interests of the breed standard and future generations.  Some, we train to visit nursing homes and schools, some are show animals who are also breeding stock. Some of the little ones are sold as show animal projects for 4Hers, or as breeding stock for other farms.

One of the hardest things we do is to say goodbye to these friends who are certainly a part of our farm family, but in order to move forward with our breeding goals, or to function as a farm, we have to say goodbye and let them move on. Some animals will grow old with us, like the rather senile and goofy Treasure, or Huey who happily lived out his years with us. This fall, Obediah moved on to another 4-H family.

Obediah loved being an uncle and cousin at Patriot’s Dream, but he loves to go to shows and meet people, too. Since Bailey has been working more with the therapy animal program, he wasn't getting to do as much of the travelling and visiting and showing that he loves.   Obediah moved on to live with friends of ours, where he will be shown in 4-H and is doted on by four youth and their parents. He has also become buddies with a miniature horse named Frankie.

When Obediah first moved, it was a big change for him. He had never seen a miniature horse before! Within a week, though, they were teaming up to pull pranks and sneak into the chicken feed. While this sounds crazy, pranks are a hallmark of the pygmy goat personality, and let us know he was settling in just fine. The family’s neighbors had somehow no idea that a goat and horse lived there.  I find this quite surprising, since Obediah had long known to come running when called\. This means that anytime we stop by. or anyone comes through the yard and says Obediah, he runs to the gate of their pen talking and demanding an ear scratch!

At Patriot’s Dream, we free feed alfalfa pellets, so that there is always food available. So Obediah has never worried for food, he would just go get a mouthful when hungry, then go back to playing with his buddies. Some of you likely know that this doesn’t always work with horses, and Frankie gained weight having Obediah around. So he new family put the boys on a feeding schedule.

Frankie takes his food very seriously, and Obediah takes fun pretty seriously, so he started dragging the feed bucket while Frankie was trying to dig in! Obe’s new mama asked whether he was being a bully, or something was going on. They had already asked that anytime we were by, Bailey check and make sure he wasn’t getting too chubby or skinny with the adjustment to life in his new home.

It turns out Obediah had lost a little weight with this feeding schedule thing, so how were they to up Obe’s feed without letting Frankie get too fat? These are the moments that my friend Kate talks about being a flock or herd social director! We came up with a plan of stashing some pellets in a spot where Frankie could not get tot hem, but Obediah could get them anytime. Unfortunately, either Obediah was helping Frankie get tot hem, or something else was off kilter there, so Obediah’s new family as giving him extra a couple of times a day by himself. Frankie isn't too sure about this notion, but Obediah loves the extra attention, so there is a good bit of attention for the animals to keep everyone happy!

Another thing Obediah is loving about his new home is that there are several chickens who wander his pen every day. He and Huey used to let chickens ride around on their heads. After hawks moved in to the field down the road from us, we had to keep the chickens under a much closer guard, where they are only free ranging under supervision. So Obediah is enjoying have chickens around again, he loves anyone to play with. Before he left our house, he gave some young Polish pullets a ride...

So as much as we would love to have our animals with us forever, for others to enjoy the love and fun of goats, there have to be breeders, and for the animals to have full lives, they need homes with devoted families. And we are glad that Obediah has found a special one. I heard someone talking that they will be looking for a friend for him, too…

What Have We Been Up To?

And the farm animals take over the blog! Clearly, the humans have been too busy to blog lately, with their homeschooling and church and cleaning pens and stuff, so we thought we animals would share a few words on what we have been up to around here!

We finally got some rain around here, and the "goosies on the loosies" as that house mama calls us like rain better than any of the other animals! Why? To play in, of course! But also, because weeds mean that we eat fresh greens that the other animals don't reach. Mama says that means we are brats telling everyone else about it, but we are the guard geese after all, so we should get some perks!

House mama, also known as the feed lady, she tried to pull some weeds down by her garden recently. We told her this was unacceptable, as they were the salad bar we hadn't gotten to yet. Finally, we got her to leave the piles for a couple days so that we could munch a bit before she did more work.

She still has more to prep for our eating. We are done with the other piles, so she had best get busy!

Just because the geese roam all the time doesn't mean they are the only ones with good treats! Despite getting our own salad bar in our pen that Wyatt keeps stocked and growing for us, we still get baskets of sprouts!

It is like a party when the red baskets come out in the middle of the day!

We even share with the guineas! (Well, most of the time, anyway!)

Breakfast time is the best time in our pen! Okay, well, we think we get the best dinner, too! We have the house mama and our Bailey trained to bring us bottles twice a day, and then Daddy Powerstroke lets us have the feeder . This is our look that says, "We are cute!" We know you agree, and the Brahmas that share a fence with us in the grow out pen sing along with us.

The house mama is always excited to see melons doing well. What we like about melons, is that the chickens get lots of melon and then they are in better moods!  They complain less about us singing at night when they are in good moods, and I think I heard this kind of melon called a honeydew...

Just in case you were missing out on some of my cuteness, I am Freedom's Prayer!  I am pretty sure the world is here to cuddle me!

Did we mention we are masters as coexistence? The goats might say we complain about them singing, but we keep our rooster in line, and also have a pet snake in our pen. If you look closely, you will see his tail over by the old feeder we like to stand on.

This guy doesn't bother us hens, and our nesting boxes and new feeder are up off the ground. The desert comes with mice, so we let this guy wander around so the mice don't bother our nests, and in turn we nest up high and only try to sit on eggs up in the loft where Wyatt keeps our straw. The added bonus- the bigger our Wyatt gets, the funnier it is when he tries to get eggs from us up there! Then we all stand around in the door to our hen house and watch him... Did I mention bonus points for anyone who can get him stuck up there so he has to call for help?

Why yes, the chickens tried to take over! But guess what! We are just too cute to ignore!

My brother was being silly and trying to wrestle with our Dad, so I decided to play peekaboo from my favorite house. Dad also likes to pose. Don'e tell the house mama, but he leaves a pile of poop near where he poses on purpose. She says he wasn't well socialized before our Bailey brought him home, but Bailey says that means he will do just fine in our family of homeschool goofballs. Not sure what that means, but she always scratches our ears and brings us food. And, if we cry really loud, she will come out over and over to check on us!

Well, that is the world according to the bucks, the geese and the Big Pen. We dare the does and the others to outdo us!

Late Summer Garden Refresh, Part Two

This is Brown Seeded Simpson lettuce. I have AMAZING luck with it. It grows more like a stalk, which can be a bit odd, but if you let the last of it go to seed, the seeds gather easily and any you miss will automatically reseed and sprout when the temperatures are favorable. This variety has kept us in lettuce far more than any other, and that makes it a winner in my book!

Part of the end of Summer refresh meant weeding the tree sprouts volunteers out, as well as adding in a couple other varieties and a little broccoli.

This was a volunteer melon plant in the other planter, but I am a little worried it might be too late int he seaosn to get anything out of it. Still, I am going to let it go and see what comes of it since we stay warm so long here.

Shadow like to supervise me. I cannot miss her when she sits on the dirt pile.  She knows it, and she wants to make sure to be in the middle of the action.

Unfortunately, what you see here is me finishing off the last of the rainwater. The storm didn't come, again, and we are careful to use the water wisely, but this was draining hte last of this barrel into a watering can. Bummer.

These are purple heirloom tomatoes. Just about ready to pick... YUM! Ever tried them?

A pepper plant and some peas, winding up the trellis.

Another bell pepper plant. We love those...

And the strawberries are coming back into production since the heat dropped a bit, too...

Bailey was chatting with me while I worked, and jumped in to take on cleaning out the water barrels.The screens just aren't enough, they are good, but dirt still accumulates!

After another round of chores, sprouts, and more, a beautiful evening settles in and we head in to the next task.

We are making little forward steps with out projects around here, but always have more to do, of course. What are you doing in your gardens and livestock pens this time of year?

End of Summer Garden Jump Start

With all of the crazy weather and in and out internet service, I went to work to get caught up on Saturday. It was a good thing, because despite the hour and a half on a Saturday afternoon spent away from the many things at home calling my name, I am caught up for the first time since the semester began. THer ewill be plenty more for me on Tuesday when I am in, but I will definitely feel better without the leftover list awaiting me!

On my way ther, I stopped by the local aquaponics store for some items I needed to add more capacity to the water harvesting project. I found a different solution to bulkheads, which will be a second prototype to compare, which I think will be interesting, and I will show that when I get more done with that tomorrow. 

On the way in the door, however, I saw some new organic heirloom plant starts, and couldn't help myself. Many of you will recall the project we have had to get the feeders up off the ground to reduce waste and keep pesky rodents out of the feed and away fro the livestock. The project has been successful and positive, but the mice were then hungry, and with my garden in containers and my plant starts ion the table on the back porch, they went straight for my plant starts and the main garden, devouring everything they could get to. It will be a bit before I can get the greenhouse rebuilt, even though I have been collecting the materials and creating plans. 

Out lavender was diminished some by age and other factors, so I was so excited to see lavender, peppers, lettuce starts and more!  I did my best to exercise restraint, but gave in to two lavender plants, and a few heirloom peppers, lettuce and broccoli. I think this photo shows as much restraint as it does bounty!

Sunday night during evening chores, I started on the additional water capacity, and then when it was too dark to do more, I took the lavender out front for a little foodscaping...

I had planned to get to these planters once the monsoon had brought consistent rain, but it never really did, being mostly family with a few days of overload until the last week or so. So I just never really got to it. This planter was rather overgrown with dead stuff! 

Hard to see in this photo, but there was a little green with a lot of dead stuff here. The green were fun little flowers that actually looked rather good in that planter, and might still get some little blue Marguerite daisies for the cute little goat pot. We will see.

This planter has housed more solar lights than anything else in recent years.

I cleaned out the dead stuff in this one, and added a little soil conditioning/ amendment so that I could decide about those daisies...

This one got fully cleaned out and some lavender. While for years, I enjoyed blue and white everything out front, I really needed a good spot for the lavender and better use of the planters for hte food and medicinal plants!

This one brought the second lavender plant and more soil amendment. 

Well, here is to hoping they flourish and bear seeds for lavender! Now back to finishing off an order, rigging a jack to finish the kids bathroom and having the additional rainwater capacity finished today and the other starts in fortified surroundings before the storm is due in! 

Hope you all have a truly blessed week!