A Day in the Unfolding of the New Year

Trying to take on a few major projects while my work schedule is lighter, as well as help the kids with homeschooling and their own projects has kept me on my toes, but it has been quite rewarding. I will share more about the projects going on around here in the next few days. Okay, seeing how often I am too tired for blogging lately, how about I promise to do my best, but acknowledge they might be a bit late?

This blue Silkie pullet is one of a few new layers who have been contributing their first few eggs to the family here lately. This morning, she seemed bent on being broody, though she wasn't actually sitting ON the egg. Wyatt wasn't sure whether to be thankful she was making the collecting easy or explain how the whole broody thing worked, but since he was trying to get pens cleaned between storms, I think he was just happy for anything simple he could get!

Shine got to hang out in the house for a while with his buddy Shadow this morning. They haven't had as much of this time lately, since the rain and mud has led to some rather muddy hooves! On the flip side, at least the rain has the barrels mostly full again! Shine and Shadow sure enjoy the companionship, though, they were great friends when Shine was a house goat.

Later, Shine got to head down to visit friends at another 4-H club we compete with sometimes. A number of the youth are brand new to the group, but a few have grown up together showing as a group for several yers now. It is amazing to me to see them so grown up!

The older youth were examples and teachers, as they should be as Senior showmen. They also enjoyed laughing with each other and at themselves, I think!

Shine seems to be settling in to the showing thing, though he seemed to like raiding cookies from Bailey's pocket the best!

I think it is funny that after each trip off to training sessions, meetings and community outreach, both Shine and Shadow stop in the front yard to check all of the statues. 

I am not sure what they expect, but they are usually the only ones who move them!

FOr those of you following the saga of the lonely chick, I gave in this week and arranged for the little one to have some friends. A big thank you to Melanie for sharing some of her purebred Black Ameraucana stock with us, these will likely be te only new poultry stock until after county fair.The four little chicks have taken well to their new surroundings, and the slightly older Java of ours seems to also be taking well to having young charges to look after.

Some of the biggest news these days is that Miss Versie seems to be getting ready to kid. Bailey is spending lots of time out there, and we are tracking her progress. One interesting thing about her, Verse has taken in the last day to stretching out by climbing the fences of the maternity ward with her front hooves. I sure hope that means that the babies are settling well into proper position.

You can barely see Verse in this photo, she was in the corner of the pen after our last check. She really is a sweetheart. While I don't think kidding is truly imminent, I will head out there again in another hour and let Bailey sleep a bit. It never hurts to be on the safe side, these will be her first kids. 

On that note, I think I will squeeze in a short nap. While moping the kitchen is calling my name, I think it can wait a coupl eof hours and help me warm up after I traipse back out to the goat area in a spell. Hope you all have a wonderful night, I will share again when I can! Love to all.

My New Purse

I have been needing a new purse.  But being who I am,  I carry a good bit of stuff with me most days.  Things like batteries for the aerobics microphone and a water bottle and lots of little things like that, to help me attempt to keep up with this crazy life. 

A couple of years ago,  Charlie's unit switched to the new style of BDUs.  When he could no longer wear the style he had worn when I first met him,  I asked Charlie to pack the old uniforms away for future projects, and just in case the kids wanted them.  And I rather thought this project would come along. 

I made a similar purse for my niece last year, and about a month ago, I asked Charlie to sit out a few sets for me to work on some projects with.  As I began to cut this out, We made a few camouflage stockings, and Wyatt even learned to use the sewing machine while making one. 

As luck would have it, the uniform which would become my new purse was one of his favorites, sporting some random paint for character. The outside reveals four pockets,  including two with unit insignia. The inside has six, formed from material from the jacket back and arm, just for fun. 

So here is the finished product, complete with handles found on after Christmas sale at the fabric store!

Here it is,  almost completely loaded,  and with room to spare! Next up? Making one specifically designed for and by Bailey.  AND this next one will have goat patches,  too!  Stay tuned for that design,  coming soon!  Though for now, this edition got Charlie's seal of approval,  telling me that it looked good enough to make for sale. 

It is pretty exciting when he likes my work! But for now, I will be doing most of my work on a by request basis, so that my time is focused on what matters. So I have to ask, if you could design your own purse, what fabric would you choose, and what features would you want?

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!

Up-cycled Projects for Sustainable Farming

This dresser was yellow was it came to Arizona before our daughter was born. It had lived through my family, having been well constructed, though over the years it began to have troubles. We reassembled the drawers, reattached the bottoms, reattached the faces and back corners, over and over and over again. That is,  until this Spring, when I just couldn't get it to go back together again.

I thought hard about how to re-purpose it, rather than give up on something that seemed to still have life in it. I considered adding board for shelves, but realistically, I could see that causing a TON of dusting, without really adding much convenience. I considered the shelves and using the drawer faces like flip up doors, but when I got into the actual design on that idea, it really didn't work. Nothing would fit right.

I poured over Pinterest. That's what I tell the 4H-ers to do.

So it sat on the back porch, waiting for my crazy over attached to tradition self until I finally just realized- the greatest need around here was the organic and sustainability projects. So a plan was hatched- this dresser would be phase one- of the livestock salad bars.

Salad bard for livestock. you ask? Why yes. By creating planters where the sprouts continue to grow, proving more greenery to the chickens and goats, we hope to supplement their organic nutrition with things more naturally eaten in the wild. Besides, what we grow ourselves, when know where it comes from, and it is more economical for feeding organic.

So we took this old dresser, and the kids and I got to work.

The main frame of the dresser went to the doe pen. Sorry, it was getting a bit dark.

Wyatt took the first of the drawers with no base out to the Big Pen.

He picked a spot where the chickens keep digging hols for him to fill (two birds, so to speak.) Not far from the waters, though. We won't water it with chicken water, but we do want to make watering pretty easy!

They filled them mostly full with garden soil from my re-potting pile. They left a bit of room at the top, so the animals would not have enough leverage or grasp to pull the plants out from the root. Then came chicken wire.

I had originally thought to use hardware cloth to keep the from pulling too much, and had been following the progress of a few similar projects. It turns out, at least one person was having trouble with hens getting stuck walking on the hardware cloth and losing toes. Who! I hadn't even though of that! Glad for someone else's honesty and experience. Hope those hens are getting around okay!

This one is outside the doe barn. Once we catch the water harvesting system up, we plan to have one there, too, and stationed this so that there was just enough room by the roof, but against the wall, for a water harvesting barrel, and this could easily be watered from it. She added plenty of seeds that had been soaking for a couple days.

Then she got to watering them two to three times each day.

This is what is coming up. I have some more for her to reseed later tonight.

This is the chicken one in the Big Pen. Too bad I didn't get a photo of this one earlier, since they are REALLY digging on their sprouts! Wyatt will be adding more seeds, but just because they weren't as established as we had thought they would be when the ladies began eating them. They like to work together to get the best grasp on the sprouted grains while one stands on the wire, the other puts her head through to munch!

It is doing quite well, but we will continue to work with it!

Next up, after reseeding? The Bucks and the A Pen! The more natural the food is, the better!!!

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?