Posts from — December 2008

I milked at about 4:45 this morning.  Of course it was dark.  I have the light in my “milking parlor” which helps tremendously.  As I was milking, it was quiet except for the metallic sound of milk hitting the pail, the goat chewing the grain and the rooster crowing.

What a wonderful start to the morning.

Until later …

This morning I left Cian up in his run and took Fern and Gel down to work.  When I was through with them, I came back up and took Cian down to work.  Gel and Fern went along as well, but I tied them out to the ATV while I worked Cian.  He was quite a different dog today.  While I did some outrun work with him, I also did a lot of driving.  He’s become quite responsive to my commands and having to think about what he was doing rather than blindly running seemed to take his edge off.

I have been quite busy this morning.  In addition to getting a batch of cheese and buttermilk going, I made some bread using the dough cycle of my bread machine, then took it out and baked it in the oven.  It came out fabulous, as did the scalloped potatoes and ham.  I made one large pan of it as well as several small aluminum pans, two of which I brought up to Red.  In my next run out on the ATV I’ll bring him up a half a loaf of bread as well as a jar of homemade baked beans that I made last week and another jar of turkey stew (which he said he liked).  Red does a lot for me and won’t take monetary payment so food works well.

In addition to cooking and baking I did more cleaning and got a load of laundry out on the line.  It’s been a very good day.  The weather is fabulous!  Sunny and 62 degrees.

Quick update on the cold frame.  I put it together, but the swimming pool I wanted to use is a bit too big so I’ll use two cement mixing tubs instead.  I went to Lowes yesterday to get lettuce seeds, but they are not out yet.  So I ordered three packages from Grow Organic this morning.  They should be here by the end of the week so I can get them planted.

I think and analyze too much … but maybe that is a good thing except of course when it interferes with my sleep.  I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered that when she was younger, Fern used to over flank, just like Cian is now.  Male dogs usually mature a lot slower than females.  Fern no longer over flanks.  She walks in straight as an arrow, except when she has to flank, then it’s a beautiful square flank.

So, the game plan today is to take the sheep down into the back pasture with Fern and Gel, leaving Cian up.  When I’m through working Fern and Gel, I’ll come back and put them up, then get Cian.  That way he won’t stay tied to the ATV swaying back and forth like a drunken sailor.  I don’t care what this open handler said, if a dog can’t lie quietly waiting for his turn, then he doesn’t need to be out there.  I know that swaying and fretting that he’s doing while tied doesn’t help his mental state when it comes time for him to work.

Then, we are simply going to work sheep.  I imagine I am going to get a lot of leg work myself, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

I think Wally is going to go down with me for my lesson with Kevin Evans.  That will be nice: his company will be good on the ride down there and he can videotape my lesson which will be a useful tool after the lesson.  Also, Wally can help me to remember what he says.  I tend to get nervous when going for a lesson with someone I don’t know and if I’m nervous, I forget things (like which way is away and which way is come bye).

My work schedule is good this week.  I work 6:30 to 3 on Tuesday, 7 to 3 on Wednesday and 10 to 7 on Thursday.  That will give me an opportunity to work dogs today, Tuesday and Wednesday; probably not on Thursday, but I’m off Friday through Tuesday of next week and only work two days next week.  Cool!

My sourdough starter is doing its thing.  I stirred it this morning and it’s starting to smell sour.  I have the ingredients put into my bread machine ready to start as soon as the milk gets to room temperature and four quarts of milk in the pot waiting for the last quart (which I’ll get this morning when I milk) to make another batch of cheese.  My refrigerator had become a little bit too full and I found several quarts of milk towards the back of the refrigerator that I had forgotten about.  One had turned, but the rest were fine so I’m making cheese again today.  I finished a batch yesterday.

I spoke to my homeopath last night.  I had only intended to tell her I was coming to Georgia next Monday to see if she wanted to meet me there and get some cheese.  She’s part of a large local slow food movement and she may be able to get other people who may want it.  I have quite a bit in my freezer right now.  Anyway, we spent a good amount of time on the phone.  She said I sounded good and was pleased with my progress on the Selenium.  It’s been quite a while since I last dosed with it and I believe it is still holding.

I am blessed to have Cian here because he is teaching me new things.  While Fern is different than Gel, she shares a lot of his characteristics.  She’s a very nice blend of both Midge and Gel so training her is relatively easy.  I need to free her up on her flanks and get her flank commands down and she’ll be well on her way to a nice working dog.

Cian has so much “want to” it isn’t funny and I love that, but all that want to seems to cloud his brain.  He can be frantic in his work as if he’s afraid he’s not going to get any more.  He has the tendency to run like a fool and gets out of contact with the stock.  I have a pretty good idea of how I’m going to deal with it and I hope it works.

I wrote to an open handler explaining the issues I was having with him and she told me to seek professional help (meaning from an open handler) before I ruin him and that until I admit that I am the limiting factor that I cannot overcome my issues with him.

I admit I am not a very good handler, but I am committed to working with this dog to get him to be the best dog that he can be.  I’ve already made momentous achievements with him.  Recall this was a dog when I first sent him on an outrun he ran right by the sheep and kept on going.  Then I couldn’t get him to come back to me.  Now he can do an outrun, lift and fetch and I can call him off stock.  He has a lie down on him, something that took forever to get.  He’s making progress, but it seems we are stuck in a bit of a hole right now.

We’ll get out of the hole.  Today was light years better than yesterday was.

Some dogs are more challenging than others to train.  I don’t think Cian can be trained using a cookie cutter approach.  He is going to take more time and patience than another dog might.  He’s not going to train up easily.  That’s okay, I like a challenge.  I think he has the ability to be a nice stock dog, but it’s going to take creativity and patience.  I also don’t think I’m off base in my analysis of the dog and am going to stick with that analysis.

I wrote to my instructor in Salisbury to see if she’ll have some time for me tomorrow.  I want her to see Cian and get her thoughts on him.  I trust her opinions.

I spend a tremendous amount of time with my dogs, watching them, studying them and learning from them.  I think I know them better than anyone and I need to learn to trust in myself and my abilities.

As promised, here are photos of the cheese making process:

First you heat the milk to 80 degrees.  Then you add diluted rennet (an enzyme containing substance produced in any mammalian stomach to digest the mother’s milk) and buttermilk starter.  I use my own buttermilk made from goat milk rather than store bought buttermilk.  It takes five quarts of milk to make a pound to a pound and a half of cheese.

After sitting in a warm room (70 to 75 degrees) for eight to ten hours, the cheese curdles.  The liquid that is in the pan is the whey.

Draining the whey.

This is the drained whey which I’ll give to the dogs.  They love it.

After draining the whey, I wrap the cheese into the flour sacks I bought a few weeks ago and squeeze the cheese to drain more whey out.  I do this two times before hanging the cheese.

The cheese hangs in the same warm bathroom for about six hours.  I change the cloth two times during this process.  Chevre is sometimes referred to as “bag cheese.”

The final product which I’ll divide into three equal portions, put in small zip lock bags and then the three into one large zip lock bag and into the freezer.  I add herbs to the cheese prior to using it for cooking or eating it.  Freezing the cheese with the herbs added dilutes the flavor of the herbs.

I’m shamelessly proud of mastering cheese making.  Next on the hit parade is sourdough.  I made the starter this morning.  It will take five days to finish.  Fingers crossed.  Here is a good pictorial of the sourdough starter process.

I added another item to my shopping list for later today: bread pans.  I haven’t made bread in quite a while and that’s because I don’t like how the bread turns out if it’s baked in the bread machine.  My friend Helene uses the bread machine to mix and kneed the dough and then bakes her bread in the oven.  She told me how to do it, but I couldn’t grasp it.  I found this tutorial which sets it in my mind.

Yesterday was a not-so-great day.  It started out rough with the goats (trying to get them to go out and graze), then while I was cutting the screen through my back porch to make a door, I looked down into the back field and there was Cian working the sheep.  I put all three dogs up in their runs, went inside and got angry about all the muddy footprints all over my house.  I ate some breakfast then went out to take the dogs for a run.  I started the ATV, Fern and Gel were right there with me, but when I looked for Cian, there he was out in the back field running like a rocket.  I called him back and put him in a lie down, but he has virtually no impulse control and didn’t hold it.  I put him back in his run and took Gel and Fern out with me with the intent of locating the sheep and putting them back in the back pasture if necessary.  When we found them, I sent Gel after them, but they bolted to the front pasture and he lost them!  He shouldn’t have and I got angry with him, but that was counter productive because he was feeding off my anger and works like shit when I’m angry.  I put the sheep back where they should be, put Gel and Fern in their runs and went back into the house and scrubbed floors for a few hours.

I did some rearranging in my family room and put three crates near the door to the back porch and put towels down around them to keep muddy feet off the floor.  Then I went out and started the ATV, this time keeping Cian in his run until it was time to go.  I made him wait in the open door until I released him.  Then I ran them and ran them and ran them.  I brought my six drive panels from the Christmas Tree Farm down to the back field two at a time.  I put them on the seat of my ATV and sat on them to transport them.  It was a bit precarious, but I drove slow.  Gel and Fern started to slow down, but not Cian.

When we got back, I brought the dogs in through the back porch.  Cian is having trouble understanding coming in through a different door, but he’ll figure it out.  I made cat food and got ready to milk.  I brought Gel into the mud room and left him there in case I needed him (which eventually I did) and had a calm, quiet milking session.  I was going to leave the goats out for a while, but Esmeralda put her front feet up on my car in an attempt to climb on it.  Luckily I was there when she did it.  I quickly got Gel out and put everyone up.

These goats and dogs are getting the best of me … and it isn’t them, it’s me.  I’m still out of sorts from the holiday.  Wally has been away since Tuesday.  Even though Wally and I are just friends, we have a strong connection and I miss him when he’s away.  The last time I heard from Marcus was last Saturday (so yesterday it was a week since I heard from him) and that was upsetting … but it shouldn’t be, it’s just Marcus, he operates on Marcus Time, I don’t know why I expected things to be any different this time around, I guess it is because I’m different this time around, but Marcus is not.  The next time he calls (which he will), I will not be available.  I deserve more than that (I guess).

I need to get to the bottom of Cian.  His work has not been so good lately and I think it’s because he’s getting too much time on his own running laps around the house and getting out to work sheep on his own so his keenness is a bit off.  I put them out around 6:30 and I’ll bring them back in and crate them at 7:30.  I’m hoping to get out and work all three dogs in between rain showers today.  I am now very much looking forward to my lesson with Kevin Evans as I’m hoping he’ll have some suggestions on how to get the best out of my dogs.

Today I am going to try to make a sourdough starter.  I expect it’s going to be a learning process like cheese was.  My friend Helene is getting one from her sister-in-law to take home with her (I’m jealous).  I’ve read that sourdough starters have been passed down from generation to generation.  Did you know that breads made from grains that have been sprouted or fermented (like sourdough) are much easier on the body to digest?  You can buy starters from various sources (like King Author Flour), but I’m going to try to make it myself first.

I need to go out and do a few errands today including going to Lowes to get containers and lettuce seeds for my cold frame as well as a piece of indoor/outdoor carpet to put down under and in front of the dog crates to keep tracking down.  While in the vicinity of Lowes I’m going to go to Barnes and Noble and get a wall calendar.  Can you believe 2009 is almost over?

Until later …

Rain is driving me mad.  I’ve written before that I think she thinks that I’m her baby.  Whenever I come near my door to go out, she starts screaming.  When I put her up and go inside, she screams for about fifteen minutes before stopping.  When she’s out (i.e. during milking time), she’s attached to my hip.

I’d love to be able to push the goats down into the back pasture with the sheep.  It is paradise for goats down there.  Tons and tons and tons of brush for them to eat.  Whenever I push the goats down there (and it all but takes a bucket loader to push them through the gate and then close it, the go berserk.  Rain gets them going.  She starts running the fence line trying to get back to me.  I feel sure that if she wasn’t going nuts, the other goats would settle down and start to eat.  If one goat in a herd is panicked, the others follow suit.  They are herd animals after all.

As I write this, Luna and Penny are out loose.  They are my newest goats and are used to being in a pasture.  Rain and Dawn, Rain especially, were essentially dry lotted before I got them.  Dry lotting means the animal is kept up in a smallish fenced-in area and fed hay and grain (little or no grazing available), so that’s all they know.  Esmeralda had some pasture, but not a lot.  I don’t know about Sunshine.  I think in a few minutes I might take Luna and Penny down to where the sheep are and see if they’ll stay with them, then slowly try to introduce the other goats (except Rain) to free grazing one by one.

It is not healthy for animals to be dry lotted all year long.  They need fresh pasture and vegetation to graze on.  I don’t want to have to worm them every six weeks like so many people do.  The only way I can avoid doing that is through pasture rotation.  Since they dug a well in the pasture adjoining the one I rent, I’m hoping they’ll soon fence it in.  That will fence one whole side of the pasture I rent and a good part of the pasture is naturally fenced by dense vegetation.  It won’t keep predators out and a goat or sheep could get through it if they really wanted to, with sufficient browse and a good livestock guard dog, as long as I’m home, they’d be fine out there loose.

Once Luna and Penny have freshened in February, I might go ahead and sell Rain.  I don’t want dry lotted animals.  Granted, it’s harder to put them out in ElectroNet in the winter months, but as soon as spring comes, I want to be able to put the goats and sheep out in the pastures in ElectroNet.  If I were still working, I would be using ElectroNet now, but since I am able to be home quite a few days out of the week, I am able to let the sheep free graze.  They know where they live and if spooked, they come home.  The last day they were out (Christmas) they came up on their own when it got dark.

I knew this dairy goat business was going to be a learning experience and until I did it, I wouldn’t know what kind of goats I wanted to keep, how I was going to do it, etc.  Now that I have six goats I can decide which ones I am willing to keep (putting up with their individual personalities) and which ones I cannot tolerate.  Because of her short teats, Dawn is hard to milk.  She may very well end up sold down the road as well, but I want to see how her udder is after she’s freshened.

I cut a hole through the side of the back porch that is big enough for a dog to come through.  I can fit through it too.  Now I need to construct a door and mount it.  I’ll put a spring on it so I can push it out, but it will close back up on its own.  This is a project that has been long overdue.  The only exits to this house are on one side which is technically a fire hazard.  Now I have an exit on the other side.  I put crates near the door and put Fern and Cian in them when they came in.  It still isn’t perfected and I need to get a crate back there for Gel, but it is in the works.  I’m tired of red, muddy dog footprints all over the house.

WOW!  It was wall to wall people at Walmart yesterday.  For the most part, they were buying discounted holiday items.  The holiday spirit has officially worn off and the people were quite cranky.  It went well though, well, except for the back-stabbing that was going on by the temporary cashiers who were not kept on.  They kept saying, under their breath, “I can’t believe they kept so and so …”  I felt bad for them, but to some extent, I can see why they were not kept.  I worked my tail off to stay there, never complained and I am very blessed to be staying.

Hard to believe I’m feeling blessed for being employed by Walmart.

I took some pictures of the cheese making process and will post them later on.

It’s going to be cloudy with temperatures only in the mid 50’s today.  Tomorrow it’s going to be warmer but raining.  I’ve been going through ways to keep mud from being tracked in by the dogs and I think I’ve come up with a solution.  My house is actually facing backwards.  The true front of the house is facing the pond that is in the back.  It has a small porch off the entrance that was completely screened in for the previous owners’ cats.  There is no entrance to this porch except for a small cat door which is about three feet off the ground.  There are stairs leading to the opposite side.  I think I’m going to put a dog-sized door on that side and move my bedroom crates into that room.  When it’s muddy I can bring the dogs in through that door, put down towels for them to walk on and load them right into crates until they dry off.  That room, which I call the family room is right off my bedroom.  I can crate Fern and Cian there most of the year at night rather than in my bedroom.  It’s a bit tight in my bedroom with two crates on the floor.  They’ll be close enough to me in the family room so I can hear if they have to go out.

In the summer, all three dogs are going to be crated in my master bedroom.  This is to avoid the possibility of ticks coming off the dogs and laying eggs in my bedroom.  This happened this summer and it was miserable!  I will put a strip of double stick tape in the doorway so that any ticks that escape off the dogs will remain in the bathroom where I will have a better chance of finding them and disposing of them before they can lay eggs.  Too many hiding places for ticks in the bedroom.  Except for a brief time with Cian, fleas are not a problem for the dogs or the cats.  The cats don’t get ticks.  That’s interesting because they spend more time in the tall grass than the dogs.

I tried to use Frontline Plus this summer, but it didn’t work.  The ticks are too bad in my area.  I do have a different spray to try next summer, but I don’t have high hopes for it.  What I am hoping is that eventually my dogs will become less desirable to ticks by continued exposure without use of chemical.  Continually using tick (and flea) preventative is only leading to more resistant ticks (and fleas).  I am going to try to keep my dogs out of the tall grass even if that means I’ll have to exercise them on the road when the back fields are grown up.  I can get up early and run them off my bicycle which will kill two birds with one stone.

I wrote my hosting company this morning to see when he might have time to bring in my newer posts so I can go back to my normal location.  I figured out why I was unable to do it myself and I feel better now knowing that it wasn’t because I was a computer idiot.  There’s a size limitation to files that I can import myself.  The data base from this journal is beyond the size.  Too bad the error messages I kept receiving didn’t tell me that …

Well, my fingers are freezing off being in my office and I need to head out to milk and put the sheep down into the back pasture.

Until later …

Thank you James of Dark French Host for your patience and skill. The new and old posts have been restored and everything is working properly now.

I know the days are not noticeably longer since December 21, but last night, it felt lighter.  Maybe it was because I let go of feeling depressed for being alone.

Thanks to those of you who called and wrote yesterday: you helped a lot.

I find happiness in places that other people would not (Lee, thanks for pointing that out).  The Natural World (or what is left of it) is one place.  I do think a lot of what I saw (or thought I saw) at Walmart is nothing more than perceived happiness.  Spend money on this or that in order to make someone happy … but does it work?  I’m not so sure.

I worked my dogs yesterday and that took my mind off Christmas.  Cian worked weird (he is weird) and I need to focus on trying to figure that dog out.  That’s something misfiring in his brain and I hope I can fix it.  Fern needs some oil or I need to find  a wrench that fits her to loosen her up.  She’s tight: tight moving, not flanking freely, or at least not reliably so.  Gel worked nicely.

I think I’m going to change my plans about who to use for my lesson with Kevin Evans.  I was going to work primarily Fern and Cian, but given where they are right now, I think I’ll spend 30 minutes of the lesson on Gel and then split the remaining lesson on Fern and Cian.  That could change as we get closer to the date.  I wish I could afford two hours with him.

Well, I should go and get a few things done (including draining a batch of cheese) and get ready to go out and milk.  I have to work 9-6 today and I expect it’s going to be crazy.  One more day of holiday craziness then back to normal.