I got pea and beet seeds in the ground yesterday.  I took my time preparing the beds and putting the seeds in.  Hopefully they’ll germinate and grow better than they have in the past.  Today, I’ll put in rutabaga and carrots.  Then the beds will get covered with row cover to protect them from heavy rain, wind, etc.  It’s a good time to get seeds in because it’s supposed to rain Saturday, Sunday and Monday.  The row cover will prevent the rain from moving the seeds around and it will help keep the moisture in.

This weather is crazy.  Everyone is talking about it.  Sure, it’s nice to be out in the garden in short sleeves the beginning of February, but guarantied we are going to pay for it over the next months.  I hope, hope, hope the summer is not brutally hot or dry.

Today I have a lot to get done in the AM and then I’m heading out to Rock House Farm to spend some time with the Farm Manager to work on future newsletter issues.  I’ve done two so far.  I am going out this afternoon so I can coordinate picking up the coolers of meat at the same time.

Some of the goats are still being difficult.  I wish they’d get back into their routine and stop giving me such a hard time.  I’m going to try a different tactic this morning: I’m going to run them all up into the back of the shelter and then take out the does one by one.  When they are out, I’ll use Gel to bring them into the poultry shelter and then pull them in from that angle.  My left hand and wrist are really bothering me and having to wrestle goats is not helping it.  I need Gel to do the moving and with the babies in the mix, it’s too much of a rodeo.  Starting Saturday night, we’ll be putting the babies up so I can milk everyone in the AM.  That will make things a lot easier.  I don’t want to do it tonight because I won’t have time to milk 11 goats, but we’ll do it Saturday night and get them into the routine.

We kept one doe that we probably shouldn’t have.  I don’t know why we kept her, likely because she was a doe and I’m trying to get into my own breeding as soon as possible.  This doe’s mother doesn’t have all that great an udder and so far, the young doe doesn’t have that great of an udder.  It may improve as her production increases, but I don’t think so.  I have a number of does I’ll be culling this year and she may be one of them.  The older doe that didn’t come into milk still really hasn’t come in.  She’s going in the freezer at the end of the summer.  The only way I’m going to get to where I want to be with my dairy goats is to aggressively cull those that don’t live up to my standards.

Gwen is doing well.  It seems bringing the calf in has made the difference.  Her production isn’t what it was on corn and soy, but it was bound to drop when I took that out of her diet.  This morning, while the million and one thoughts were running through my head, I realized that we were paying $13 for a 50 pound bag of the corn and soy-laden food I was feeding her.  I pay $15 for a 50 pound bag of organic alfalfa pellets.  Granted, the food mixture has vitamins and minerals in it and I have to feed minerals and kelp to make up for the difference, but all in all, it seems much better to feed a whole grain diet and allow Gwen and the goats to get the minerals as they need them, not as some scientist has decided they need.

The crazy Silver Fox doe is getting more aggressive.  I had to take her out of the cage yesterday while I cleaned out the hay she hadn’t eaten.  She kept charging me with her teeth bared.  Being protective is one thing; outright aggression is another.  If she doesn’t straighten out, once her babies are weaned, she’ll be going into the soup pot.  The other two young does are likely going to be just as bad.  Rabbits really need to be handled when they are young.  I don’t want to deal with psychotic aggressive rabbits.  At least she seems to be taking good care of her babies.

The oldest Creme litter is growing off well.  Two of them are really big.  In the next week or so, I may take them out and put them in a separate cage to give the others more access to food.  I’m not really good at sexing rabbits, but it looks like the two largest Cremes are does.  I believe the surviving Chin is a buck, which is good because I need a second Chin buck.  We have four more fryers to process this weekend.  Sunday would be a good day to cook a rabbit for dinner.

Tomorrow morning is going to be difficult.  I need to get a lot done before going to the farmers market.  Wally will help. The rain isn’t going to make it that much more difficult.  Oh well.

I’m dragging my butt and really need to get out there and get it done.  I’ve been tired lately.  I haven’t been drinking enough milk lately.  That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it?

Until later …

It was nice to wake up this morning; actually the alarm woke me up this morning, something that usually doesn’t happen, and to be able take my time making coffee, etc. before rushing outside.  I knew Gwen and the calf were in the yard, the goats were in their pasture, the chickens and ducks where they were supposed to be, etc.  I think the rabbits are through dying en masse as they had previously been doing so I’m not compelled to go out into the rabbit barn to pull out bodies.  I do have a doe due to kindle so I did check her to see if she had babies, but she didn’t.

Milking went almost smoothly this morning.  Gwen’s production is slowly getting back to what it was.  I only had to wrangle three of the 11 goats to get them in the milk parlor.

Today was spent running errands; I did take time to have breakfast with a good friend which was nice and ended my errands with a visit to a local farmer to pick up another bushel of sweet potatoes as well as several bags full of greens.  He is an old-time southern farmer, my favorite type of farmer to talk to.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he did not spray his crops.  The only thing he does which isn’t “organic” is to fertilize the fields with commercial fertilizer.  That’s pretty cool.  I asked him why and he said that what you spray on the leaves seeps down into the soil to the vegetable and he didn’t want to eat that.  Makes me that much more determined to spend more time at his farm to learn what I can.  He’s right up the street from me.  We’ve been buying sweet potatoes from him for many years now.  He has a field full of greens that he’s not going to sell and a field full of greens = good rabbit food!  Especially since it’s not sprayed.

The crazy Silver Fox doe with the kits had changed tactics.  Instead of running from me, she’s now charging me.  I wonder if she realizes she’s a rabbit and not a bull.  The pens full of baby rabbits and mothers are like the Bermuda Triangle when it comes to food.  You put armloads of hay or weeds in there and a half hour later you come back and it’s all gone.  They are like piranhas!  I guess that’s a good thing.

April, one of our Oberhasli does has decided that she’s in charge of running Narley (the Australian Cattle Dog) around the pasture.  Narley made the mistake of running from her the first time so now April knows she can get away with it and she does it every chance she gets.  You’d think that Narley would figure out she’s the one with teeth.

Obviously Narley is still here; we decided that finding her a good home was going to be more trouble than it is to keep her here.  She and Rose seem to have worked out their differences.  Plus, she plays with Gel and Gel plays back.  That’s unusual, in general, Gel hasn’t been interested in playing with other dogs.  Narley is pretty funny, she “pecks” at things.  Last night, she had one of the yard rabbits between her front paws and was pecking at it.  She doesn’t bit, she pecks.  Weirdo!

Off to cook supper.

Until later …

It’s been an eventful stressful 24 hours.  Yesterday about this time, I put Gwen and her calf friend down into the lower pasture.  Around 5:30 PM, Wally and I walked down to bring them up, but we couldn’t find them.  We walked around and around the pasture looking for them.  I went back to the house, got the ATV and started to look outside the pasture.  Again, I drove around and around and no cow or calf to be seen.  It was already pretty dark AND COLD!, the lights on the ATV are not too bright and looking for brown cows in the dark is really not easy.  While I was looking below, Wally took the truck and went out to the road to see if they had headed out there.  We looked for several hours but couldn’t find them.  That meant another night of little sleep because I kept getting up to look out into the yard to see if she had come back.  That she didn’t come up to the milk parlor by 7:00 PM meant that either she had gone off too far to get back, was stuck somewhere or someone stole her.  I had visions of her stuck in the river or worst, lined up at an auction or Brown’s Packing Plant (where she was destined to go if I didn’t buy her in 2010).

I got up at 5 AM and went outside with the flashlight to see if she was back.  Nope.  As soon as it got light enough to see, I headed out with the dogs on foot.  We walked through the pastures, I called her name and Gel cast out looking for her.  Finally we found both Gwen and the calf holed up in the woods in an area of the property where she’s never been.  What I think happened was the calf went through the woods at the lower part of the pasture, Gwen followed and they both wandered further than Gwen has ever gone away from the house.  Needless to say, they are both on house arrest until I can figure out where they got out.

I believe I have created a fussy eater in Gwen.  Wally and I talked about this when he called me later in the morning to see if I found her.  At this point in time, if she doesn’t want to eat what I feed her, then she can go hungry.  We offer her the highest quality grass-based grain and hay and if she’s going to hold out for corn and soy candy, then she can go hungry.

The Goat Rodeo: darned, getting some of those goats back into the milking routine is a pain in the ass.  I forgot how difficult it can be to get does to leave their babies when they don’t want to.  There are some I don’t have to milk, but I really want to get them back in the routine, but it seems the ones I don’t need to milk are the ones that are willing to come out of the pasture; the ones I have to milk because they have single kids on them are the ones that are proving difficult.  It doesn’t help that two of those does with single kids are first time fresheners so they don’t know the ropes at all.

Last year I installed three milk stands in the parlor.  That way I can have three goats in at one time which gives each goat more time to eat.  Well, the third milk stand is cursed, or so some of the goats think.  There are some that will readily get on it, but others, you need a crane to get them on it.  We do not have a crane in the milk parlor and my hands and arms are getting really sore between having to catch goats that don’t want to be caught and picking up those that don’t want to go on the cursed third milk stand.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to try a new tactic:  I’m going to use Gel to run everybody up into the back of the goat shelter, shut the door and then take the does out one by one.  I’ll lead the difficult/over protective does out into the milk parlor and use Gel to move the others.  In a few weeks, it will settle down and become pretty close to seamless, well, as seamless as dealing with goats can be.  Every year it seems to get that much more difficult, but every year we have more does in milk and more babies.  Rounding up 17 babies is going to give Gel a run for his money.  He’s been getting his exercise lately between last night looking for Gwen (Narley ran with us too) and this morning during the Goat Rodeo.

It’s tentative, but I think Gwen’s production has come up some since the calf arrived.  Fingers crossed.  I saved some of the goat milk yesterday, but the flavor is a bit sharp right now.  It always is right after they freshen.  In a week or two, it will taste good; not as good as Gwen’s milk, but raw milk is raw milk.

I moved some rabbits around this afternoon.  A Chin doe, Isabel, is due to kindle any time now; Isabel is the only survivor of a quad of Chins I bought from a local couple.  I don’t know when she was bred because I couldn’t get her to cage breed so I put her in the pen with a buck.  Yesterday I could tell she was pregnant so I went ahead and put her in a cage with a nesting box.  I put the new Chin doe (I named her China) up as well.  She won’t be due for another couple of weeks, but she’s a very calm doe, as is Isabel, so I put them next to the wild Silver Fox does.  I moved the Silver Fox buck and Claude Hopper, the Chin buck, into the outside hutch.  While I have commercial breeds of meat rabbits, I want to get back to just heritage breeds so I’m trying to do all I can to make sure that I have successful litters of heritage rabbits.  I have four Californian/New Zealand X does, hopefully pregnant, in the pen and I may leave them there to kindle.  We’ll see how much digging they do.  I have a Creme doe, Kerri, that is due to be bred next weekend and once she’s bred, I’ll see if she can join the colony in the pen to free up a cage.  Cage space, at least the good cage space, is at a premium.  The babies belonging to the crazy Silver Fox doe are still alive and she’s not quite so crazy; maybe they’ll survive.  Given how inbred they are, it will be interesting to see how they grow out.

Getting closer to getting seeds in the ground.  I worked on the beds a little bit today; but primarily I picked a tub of Chickweed and Henbit for the rabbits.  Amazingly, I’m hoping the garden produces lots of weeds this year so I can feed the rabbits more weeds than grain and alfalfa pellets.  I might take the dogs out for a run this afternoon and look for more sheltered areas where I know there will be ample chickweed to harvest.

I best get my butt in gear and get the afternoon chores done before Wally gets home.

Until later …

Well, we didn’t get done what we wanted to get done yesterday. The day started poorly because I didn’t get enough sleep … again! How do you know when you don’t get enough sleep? When you put udder wash in the milk bucket instead of the bucket it belongs in. The Silver Fox rabbit that kindled yesterday is freaking lunatic! They all are really. She was running like a fool in her cage whenever I went into the barn and her laps landed her in the nest box. I was afraid that she’d injure the babies so we put a longer cover in the nest box so she couldn’t enter it at 100 mph. That worked except then I was unable to get my hand in there to check the babies so I took it off. She’s still acting like a fool. If she kills these babies, she may freezer fodder.  She now has a name: Spook.  Maybe I should re-name her “Fool.”

We did get all of the goats’ hooves trimmed.  Getting the goats into the routine of milking is going okay for some of the goats, not-so-okay for others.  The third milk stand is cursed: few of the goats will get on it on their own, those that I have to put on it don’t milk well on it so I’m thinking about removing it.

The last goat kid was born yesterday morning.  This was the only one that we had to assist with, but our assistance was minimal.  This doe “cooked” the baby (a buck) a bit too long and he was quite large.  She probably would have been able to do it on her own, but we were there so we helped her along.  She’s a first-time-freshener and so far, I’m not to thrilled about her udder, but it may get better.

A friend of mine bought a trio of the Californian/New Zealand cross rabbits and she came over at a very opportune time because we needed to move the outside rabbit hutches outside of the poultry pasture.  While they were in the poultry pasture, the goats would pull the feeders off the front of the cages, which is a PITA.

So, we had do a lot of work to get those cages out of the pasture, but it’s done now thanks to my friend’s husband.  Wally and I couldn’t have carried the larger hutch out, it was too heavy for me to lift.

I culled four chickens yesterday and plan to cull more today.  I’m tired of feeding birds that simply are not going to lay any more.

Gwen and the calf were down in the back pasture most of the day.  I carried water to her several times throughout the day.  Her milk production is still off.  I’m going to try to keep her going for another week or so and then I’m going to let her dry off or just milk her once a day.  I really didn’t want to put the goats in production this earlier, but several of them have single kids so they need to be milked every day so I might as well use the milk.

The goats now have access to minerals 24/7: 1/3 kelp; 1/3 Agri-Dynamics Native Licks; 2/3 sea salt.  They’re eating it and drinking a ton of water.  Gwen and the calf have been getting it as well.  I am sure the animals would be doing a whole lot better if I were to keep minerals available to them all the time.  That’s a good goal for 2012.

It’s supposed to be very warm the next couple of days so I will be in the garden A LOT.  We didn’t get any compost hauled down to the garden so I guess I’ll be doing it.  The compost will need a lot of work once I get it in the beds because it’s very clumpy with a lot of organic matter in it.  Three of the four small beds are ready to plant in so I’ll probably get some peas planted sooner rather than later.  The other beds still need work.

I received a really interesting e-mail this morning from a woman I wrote to on January 9.  I wrote her about feeding alfalfa to rabbits … I was told she had some interesting information on this subject.  I expected her to say feeding alfalfa was wrong, but quite the contrary.  I got an e-mail full of interesting information, much of it I already knew through my recent research on rabbit nutrition.  She’s feeding her rabbits a diet quite similar to what I’m feeding.  She did tell me something that I didn’t know: “The Manna line is produced by Carnation Milling (remember Carnation instant breakfast?) and there ain’t nothin’ special about the commodity grain/hay/byproducts they use.”  That’s interesting because many of the local breeders that I talked to are feeding the Manna line of rabbit pellets and paying through the nose for it.  She also talked about switching my rabbits to a different diet and gave this very funny analogy:  “It’s just like taking a middle-aged woman from the city, where she’s lived on processed food and municipal water all her life, and feeding her fermented vegetables, raw dairy, and country ham, washed down with well water. Do you think she’s going to spend the next three days pooping her brains out? Rabbits are the same way. Except they die easier.”  She said that she’ll do consultations for food so I’m hoping to be able to get together with her and barter milk or cheese for her wisdom.

I can tell you one thing, I’m sick and tired of people telling me that “they’ve never had anything like that happen” to them before.  I am quite certain many of these comments are not true and that they feel like they need to hide the bad and dirty that does go on.

Yesterday was so crazy, the only meal Wally and I ate was breakfast.  It was a good breakfast, but it surely wasn’t enough to keep us going all day.  Need to do better in the future.  I just didn’t take anything of the freezer to cook.

I’m late in milking Gwen so  had better get out there and get it done.  In a few days I’m going to start to get the goats in the AM milking routine.  For a few more days I’m going to wait for Wally to get home to give me a hand.  The sooner I get it going on my own, the better.  I’m trying to keep Wally from having to do too much when he gets home from work.  Not that I don’t work hard, but he’s working at a “real” job.

Until later …

Yesterday afternoon after I came inside and processed the couple of goat pictures that I posted, I went back outside with the intention of going back down into the garden. As soon as I opened the door, Gel looked right at me and bolted towards the side of the property. I thought he was going to the rabbit pen, so I followed him, but he kept going until he got to the gate that went out into the side pasture. Earlier, when I was taking photographs, we went into that side pasture to see if any of the does took their kids out with them. Only one did: Heather, a first time freshener. Most of the does leave their kids when they are this young when they go out to eat, but Heather seems to think hers is some sort of fashion accessory. They were both deep in the brush when we left them. When I opened the gate into the side pasture, Gel made a beeline to where that goat and kid were. I humored him, telling him to “find her” and he started combing the brush. Then he stopped moving. All along, I assumed Heather had taken her kid back with her, but from Gel’s body language, I knew then that wasn’t true. I crawled through the brush to get to where Gel was and sure enough, there lay Heather’s kid, still as a fawn. I picked her up and carried her back up to the goat pasture. Heather greeted me all frantic-like … you found my lost kid! You found my lost kid! I didn’t find her lost kid, Gel did. Good boy Gel!!!

Until later …

In my search for content for both my Facebook page and that of Rock House Farm, I found this Blog.  If you have time, go and read some of his posts.  I linked a couple of them on the Spellcast Farm FB page.  One that really resonated with me was his thoughts on making a living.

He writes:  “I think the process of applying for a job speaks to how inhumane many jobs are. You first find an open position that seems as though it might not be entirely soul-destroying, then put together a resume and write a cover letter for that job–which is, essentially, an act of advertising oneself, often in a whorish manner. Then you wait too long for a response that may or may not come and hope for an interview, which–should it even occur–will often lurch its way through awkward questions and suffer from anxiety and terrifying optimism, quiet desperation and need, and will almost certainly bear no resemblance to normal human interaction. After this interview and perhaps multiple follow up interviews, you finally are told whether or not you got the job. Or not told. Sometimes, you simply don’t hear back, are forced to call and inquire as to your status, and then are told almost in an offhand manner–oh, did I forget to tell you?–that no, someone else was hired.

This is a horrid way to find work. Granted, I realize there are plenty of people out there who experience the above process in a more positive manner and there also are those who feed off the challenge of it. Even so, what is particularly human or humane about this process? There is rarely any sense of honesty or care to it, and it most often serves as a winnowing–a battle, a competition.”

Gosh, how many times have I written about, yes, the inhumane way that you need to look for and apply for a job.  I am so darned lucky to have found the job that I currently have.  Said job has had its hiccups and I hope I can work through them.  I think I now know what I need to do to make it right.  It’s funny, in other work situations, I’ve been the one who was accused of not being a team player, of wanting to take the whole job on myself and not asking for help.  That’s still true for the most part, but for some reason, with this job, I’ve relied on other employees to do what I should have been doing myself.  I’m still nervous about being at the Farmers Market, the cash box makes me nervous in particular.  I don’t like handling money or being responsible for cash.  Plus, I’m still figuring out the product.

We didn’t get much rain last night, but the wind was horrible.  It started around 1 AM and I was up from then on checking for wind damage, i.e. ShelterLogic buildings blowing around the yard.  As best as I can tell, everything seems okay, but I’m tired from lack of sleep.

Kid count is up to 15, I believe 10 are bucks, which is a good thing as they will be milking and meat machines.  Two more does to kid.

I haven’t checked today because I shut the rabbit barn up last night so that the wind wouldn’t damage it, but no rabbit deaths since Sunday.

Yesterday afternoon, I went down into the garden to work on cleaning out the beds.  I found an unexpected bonus: carrots!  Lots of them!  I harvested a huge bucket of them and brought up a tub of greens for the rabbits.  Hopefully today I can get down there and take the composted straw off the three small beds that we let rest over the winter.  I’ve asked Wally to put hoop holders on these three beds so I can get them planted ASAP.

When Wally got home yesterday afternoon, he held Heather, a first-time-freshening doe, while I milked out the side of her udder that her kid is not using.  She was not at all cooperative!  This afternoon, Wally is going to help me get her into the milk parlor so I can milk her proper.  Her udder is FABULOUS!  Hopefully she’ll take to milking as well as the three first-time-fresheners did from last year.  Because we’ve had several does with single kids, I’m going to need to start milking them once a day.  Perhaps I’ll do them in the afternoon.  Gwen was in the way yesterday morning.

Gwen: I hope her production comes back up.  She’s been very difficult lately.  Hopefully bringing the calf in will make a difference.  Hopefully he’ll get here this afternoon.

I guess I had better get out and milk Gwen.  Maybe she’ll surprise me and have her normal amount of milk.

Until later …

It’s been like Christmas around here lately.  Twelve goat kids on the ground and counting.  Still have four more goats to kid.  I brought several of them up into the milk parlor this morning (note to self: have to get the milk parlor back in condition to do the goats as well as Gwen) and milked about a half gallon.  I can’t use it now, but the chickens and dogs enjoyed it.

The surprise I talked about the other day was I picked up five rare Silver Fox rabbits.  I had wanted to get Silver Fox rabbits back when I was getting into rabbits, but I couldn’t find any in the area.  I knew that a girl that I had become friendly with quite a while ago (I bought Beetaloo from her) had some so I looked up her number to see if she had any breeding stock to sell.  I found out that she had gone back to work full-time with an hour commute each way and really hadn’t done much with the rabbits.  She had her original pair and three does (from the original pair).  I asked if she’d sell them all and she agreed.  I trade milk and cheese for several of them so there wasn’t much money involved at all.  The Silver Fox is supposed to be a very calm, easy-going breed, but no one told that to the ones I got.  The older doe is pretty calm, the rest are about as wild as wild rabbits; I sure hope they calm down because right now, they are very difficult to catch and handle.  I got two of them bred yesterday, but one is proving difficult.  I moved her next to the buck so hopefully he’ll whisper sweet nothings in her ears and bring her around.  I cannot breed the daughters back to their father because the original mating is a half brother/half sister so it would be too close.  I bred one doe to my American Chinchilla buck, the other to a Californian buck and the last I’m trying to breed to the Creme buck.

So now I’m full-up on rabbits.  I don’t even know how many does I have right now: a lot.  The first litters are due around Valentine’s Day.  I am still thinking about whether I want to leave the does that are in the pen in there to kindle or if I’m going to put them up.  I am going to take the buck up several days before they are due so he doesn’t re-breed them right after they kindle so I may very well just leave them in there to see what happens.

Gwen’s production has dropped again and she’s acting off.  I think, this time, it’s due to loneliness; I think loneliness may have been part of the problem all along.  I found via Craigslist a weaned Jersey X calf that I’m going to go and pick up tomorrow to keep as a companion cow.  Once Gwen calves again, this calf should be big enough to butcher.  We had planned on getting more Jersey bottle calves once the goats get going, but with a bottle calf, there’s always the risk of the calf starting to nurse on Gwen.  There’s a risk of this calf doing the same thing, but his mother died before he was ever able to nurse so he may not try.  If he does, then so be it.  I had thought about the option of just putting Gwen out to pasture with a calf or two once the spring grasses come in.  I do not want to have to milk her when it gets really hot … or more so, once the flies start in again.

Oh, milking goats again … that’s culture shock I tell you.  When they first freshen and you bring them up and start feeding them grain again, always, several of them mess on the milk stand.  I don’t know what that is.  Once they get going, they don’t mess.  It’s as if introducing a bulk feeding to them after so long of grazing and browsing does it to them.  Weird.  Only a couple of them do it.  Goat pellets are a lot easier to clean up than cow plop.

Note: the goats are not getting corn or soy.  Their “grain” consists of oats, barley, organic alfalfa pellets, sunflower seeds, molasses and kelp.  All of the ones that I brought up to milk gobbled it up.

Last night I prepared a wonderful pasta dish.  I sauteed ground beef (ours) with onions and garlic, then added tomatoes (ours).  I tossed that mixture with some pasta and soft cow cheese (ours) and baked it for about 30 minutes.  It was incredible.  What an accomplishment to finally be able to eat at least some meals consisting of ingredients almost entirely from our farm.

Until later …

Today is going to be a day of running around.  I have to go to Hickory to deliver farm products. Now, not only do I deliver Spellcast Farm products (mostly just eggs right now); but I also deliver Rock House Farm products.  After I do that, I need to drive out to the other side of Taylorsville to pick up my surprise.  I’m still not saying what it is until they are here.

Went out early this morning to check the goats and rabbits.  Billie had two kids last night.  Both seem fine.  All of the rabbits are fine as well.

I’m afraid Narley, the Australian Cattle Dog, is going to need to find another home.  Yesterday afternoon as I was bringing a wheelbarrow-full of hay into the goats, Narley charged in there at the goats.  Rose was in with the goats and took offense to Narley charging and attacked her, knocking me on the ground on her way to Narley.  Luckily I was able to pull Rose off Narley without getting bit.  I don’t blame Rose, she was doing her job.  Narley has gotten too big for her britches here and this is something that has been building for some time now.  I could sense Rose’s tension when the first set of goat kids was born.  Narley doesn’t have a lick of work sense to her, which I didn’t expect that she would.  She’s best suited as a pet … a lap dog is what she wants to be; so that’s the home I’ll find for her.

Tomorrow is clean the house and laundry day.

Best get my butt in gear.

Until later …

I keep going out in short doses to take care of the animals.  The most recent time I went out, I was smart and put on a winter hat and gloves which made a big difference in my comfort.  The hog fuel (coarse-ground wood chips) that we put down around the milking parlor and up to the goat shelter is working wonderfully to keep the mud down.  We need to put another load of it up to the rabbit barn.

Yesterday, we bought a 1,000 pound bale of ORGANIC alfalfa, orchard grass and timothy hay.  It’s beautiful!  All of the animals love it.  I love it because it doesn’t fall to pieces when you flake it off.  Previously, we bought 1,000 pound bales of straight alfalfa hay and that doesn’t work well.  The leaves fall off it during transport to the animals leaving just the stems.  The goats waste a good bit of it.  Gwen won’t eat it.  We still have a full bale and about a quarter of the second bale to use up.  The goats eat it like candy, but there’s a lot of waste which I hate.  The rabbits pick the leaves off and leave the stems which isn’t ideal.

I started to do a good bit of research into rabbit nutrition.  Rabbits have very interesting digestive processes and as a species, they are uniquely adapted to sustainable farming in that they can consume garden “wastes” and forage grown on the farm instead of expensive (and non-sustainable) commercial pellets.  The trick is feeding them properly.

I am fooling around with sprouting grains to feed to the rabbits, goats and Gwen.  We’ll see how that turns out.

I am a little bit lost as to what I’m going to do today.  When it’s cloudy and cold like this, I don’t feel like doing much of anything.  Not that I don’t have a lot of things I should be doing today.  Luckily tomorrow and Wednesday are going to be nice and sunny; but Thursday and Friday is going to be rainy.  It looks like the rest of January is going to be warm and wet so I can probably get the February 1 crops in a few days earlier.

Heavenly is doing better; her babies seem perfectly fine and I may not have to supplement feed them.  Good!  The other does look perfectly fine.  Gwen is doing well too.

The second Newsletter for Rock House Farm is final form and almost ready to go out.  Now I need to work on February’s issues.

If all goes well tomorrow, we’ll have some really exciting additions to Spellcast Farm.  More on that tomorrow if it happens as planned.

Looking forward to sunshine.

Until later …

Okay, the rabbits seem to be doing okay, but every time I go out there to look a them, I expect to find dead rabbits.  I worry every time I put food in their cages, thinking, am I doing the right thing or should I raise my rabbits like almost everyone else does, i.e. feed them commercial rabbit pellets?

Heavenly, my highest producing goat, kidded January 18, but never really came into milk.  What gives?  Am I feeding them wrong?  All of the other goats look fine and I don’t think they’re due for another week or so so they should not be bagging up too much, yet.  We’ve gone back to feeding them alfalfa hay, but do I need to be feeding them alfalfa hay now?  Have I not been feeding them well all year long?  One would think so, but what’s going on with Heavenly?  Could it be that there’s something wrong with just her or is there something wrong with all of them?  Most likely it’s just her so I shouldn’t be doubting myself.  We started feeding her babies last night and unless she comes into milk, it looks like we will be feeding them.  I am going to give her a dose of Jump Start (that microbial gel that helped Gwen so much) and maybe that will do the trick.  If Heavenly doesn’t straighten out, she’s destined for the freezer once she puts weight on.  She’s not off weight, but she’s not at freezer-weight either.

Yesterday at the Farmer’s Market I was seated next to a man who raises pastured chickens.  I asked him if I could come out this week to help him process chickens.  I’d like to learn to do it better and if I helped him, I might be able to score the organ meat to feed to our carnivores.  He gave me his telephone number and said he’d call me early in the week to schedule a day.  I tried to call the number when I got home to let him know that Tuesday was not going to work for me and discovered that the telephone number he gave me was disconnected.  Was that a mistake or did he do it on purpose?  Did he not want me to come out to help him for a particular reason?  We’ll see if he calls; if not, I’ll figure it out, like I always do.

I think I need to chill out.  It’s been a really, really hard couple of weeks and my stress level has about hit the roof.  I cannot expect everything to always go right.  Essentially, things are going well, there’s just been some hiccups (well BARFS when it comes to the rabbits), but that did straighten out to some extent.

Until later …