At the very Least you'd think I'd be skinny!

There are not too many days that I question the wisdom of our choice to embark on this adventure, but this was one of them, truly the day from Hell. We spent the day worming goats again but this time it did not go smoothly. We had modified the working chute making it narrower so the girls could not turn around in it. That part worked out pretty good but for some reason a good many of them decided they didn't want to walk down it or even if they did they didn't want to go up the ramp to the head gate. This means we have to push or pull them down and up. Not an easy task and very frustrating. Of course it was hot which made it that much worse. Rory was not a happy camper, it made the day very difficult.

But then, that part was over and we let the girls out into the new pasture where they had never been before (remember that fencing part on the last blog). There are plenty of trees and weeds for them and they were sooo happy. Meantime we also weaned off the remaining babies, they were not so happy. There was an abundance of yelling for a couple of days, but they seem to be over it now.

September 25, 2007

Time does get away, so to continue. We have been really busy! The mudding and taping are over and we have to paint before the trim guys get started. Painting is a new adventure in itself. We have a sprayer from our North Carolina days so we thought this would be relatively easy. Ha! According to Leroy and Dave the way to do it is to spray the primer (Rory's job) and then back roll it to make sure the paint covers all the texture (my job). Then you spray the real paint and back roll it and then a second coat if needed. These guys were nice enough to leave their scaffolds for us for a week so we could get the cathedrals done. Remember that we had to have plastic over all the windows and doors and we are now spraying paint everywhere and we have 10 foot ceilings besides the cathedrals. So, now we have spray everywhere plus Rory is holding the sprayer up in the air and I'm trying to roll these ceilings. Of course I can't keep up so he ends up rolling a bunch in addition to spraying.

Believe me at the end of the day it's Miller Time

We estimate that we have about one and a half days left for priming and then on to the real paint. Meantime………….

We had to get the pastures ready for winter and next spring.
This involved brush hogging all of it, seeding all of it and then harrowing all of it. We only had 8 acres ready for this now but it still took us a few days to do. We planted winter wheat, rye, white and red clover, alfalfa and some purple top turnips in varying combinations in the different pastures. With a little luck and a little rain we hope to get a couple of month's worth of pasture for everybody plus have it green up quicker in the spring. This will save us a lot on hay. So far for this winter we have 32 tons of the stuff, runs into a few bucks.

The Brick and Rock guys have been working on and off. Terry had to take a couple of weeks off to go hunting in Africa, poor guy, but now they are back at it and should be finished in a week or so.
They finish the fireplace today and then finish up the windows in front and the front columns and that's it.
It's been a long haul but it looks great!

Garage doors came this past Friday. That install did not go so well. The fellow showed up at around 4pm. I left at 6 and Rory got home about 11:30pm. We had been there since 7:30am. Needless to say he was a bit pooped and the doors still didn't work. But, not to worry seems we got a guy who knows what he's doing and all will be well on Tuesday morning when he returns to install a slight modification on the track system. They look really good and we are happy happy. This is the second time we picked someone out of the yellow pages, first time was sheet rock and mud, and we couldn't have gotten anyone better. Great guys that do a great job. Meantime………..

We couldn't very well spray paint in the house as they were doing the fireplace so we decided to clean up the trees in the front of the house and the upper part of the driveway.
The little girls have eaten all the leaves from the bottom branches so we thought we'd chop them off at least on the trees in front of the house. The rest we'll leave to grow new leaves next year as this is the preferred forage for the goats. If goats can forage above about 1 foot from the ground there are no parasites. Those little buggers are in the grass about 4 to 6 inches up. 8 to 10 inches it the right height to graze the cattle down to about 4 inches. See how this should work? Then you put the chickens (chickens, what chickens?) on and they break up the cow patties, great fertilizer, eat all the fly larvae and all kinds of other bugs and give you great eggs to boot. In the winter the chickens live in the hoop house (hoop house?) under the rabbits (Rabbits, what rabbits?) and they scratch up all the rabbit poop which has the highest concentration of nitrogen of all poop, which now makes the most wonderful compost which you spread on you pastures. But that's another story. Anyway, back to the trees. It took a couple of days but we got all the branches off in the little concentration of trees by the house. Some still had leaves on them so we left them for the baby girls who ate them up with great gusto. We were very tired but it looks so much better.

Our friend Frank arrived from Florida on the 24^th. He'll stay with us a week. He's always such a big help. This trip it looks like the oil will get changed in the tractor, RTV and Rory's truck plus getting the explorer ready to be sold, finally. Frank was on water detail this time. We haven't run the water lines yet. We decided to burn one of the burn piles while Frank was here. 1 down 6 or 7 to go.

New arrivals

We've decided to go in a new direction with the goats and to that end be bought two registered purebred Kiko Billy Boys. This is Romeo. and Casanova
We are hoping to get more into breeding stock instead of slaughter. Kiko goats are hardier, better mothers, livelier kids and more parasite resistant plus having registered animals make them worth a whole lot more. We will be able to register the kids even though they will only be 50 %. These guys are less than a year old and still have a lot of growing to do. We are asking a lot from them this year but so far they seem to be up to the task.

We now have a register black Angus bull that calls the farm home.
We had thought we would borrow a bull from our new friend Lawanna, but we realized that we would not be able to get our act together in terms of transporting cows back and forth this season, if ever. So, we have our own bull and by the look of things we will start having cow babies by the end of June.

October 7, 2007

The days just get away. Breeding season has begun and it is a hoot. We have 22 boys in the side pasture and the girls in the pasture next to them.

For those of you who don't know anything about goats and breeding (besides the basics) it is something to see. The boys start out by urinating on their own face and the back of their front legs. This makes them very fragrant indeed. Not all that pleasant for people but the girls just love it! So, the girls that are ready to breed stand by the fence and wag their tails at the boys. This drives the boys crazy and they walk up and down the fence stomping the ground and whupping. They talk to the girls by making a noise that sound like "whup, whup" and then they wag their tongues at them. I think this is pretty much the funniest thing I've ever seen and I don't even mind that they stink. I think you have to be a farmer at heart to appreciate this. On the 28^th of September we put Romeo in with the girls. He's pretty small and not a year old yet. The girls mobbed him. He had 4 or 5 girls surrounding him all the time wagging their tails at him. We left him in for 2 days and then we had to take him out and give him a rest. He ate, lay down and went to sleep, poor guy. I even caught him standing up and leaning against the fence sleeping. Two days later he seemed recovered and we put him back in. The girls seem to know that he'll be there now so they are not so frantic to be around him. The plan is to leave him in for a month, leave a week with no boy in with the girls and then put Casanova in with them. That way we can tell who the father is by the birth date. Goats are pretty exact with gestation being 5 months. We are expecting our first babies at the end of February.

Yesterday we took 20 boys off to the auction. This was not easy for me and I'm glad we are going into breeding stock so I know when we sell them they are going to live happily on some other farm. We didn't stay for the auction, which would have been too much. So, now we only have our two Kiko boys until the next kidding.

The brick and stone work on the house is finished, including the fireplace.
It looks great and we couldn't be happier. We have finished priming on the inside and have some of the ceilings done. Tomorrow we start on the real paint doing the rooms that will get the built in cabinets first so we can get the floors down. Once that's done the trim carpenters start. Still a lot to do but we are making progress. I'm still hoping to be in this winter but I don't think it will be by Christmas, we'll just have to see how it goes.

The cats are cute as ever and Bear and Sophie are playmates. Sally is moving slow these days and is getting pretty fat. I told you about the puppies didn't I? If not, puppies in about 3 weeks.

Now back to the skinny thing. When my sister in law, Barbara, was here in July we naturally started talking about gaining weight as women always do. She was lamenting that she had put on a few pounds and I said, "Barbara"
I work like a dog and I've put on 20 pounds since we moved here. And yes, I know muscle weighs more than fat and yes, I am stronger and have better stamina, but no, this 20 pounds is not muscle.

She then said the magic works, "yes, but you don't have to dress!" I had to think about that for awhile and then realized that that was so true. There is not a place that I go that I can't wear jeans, sometimes nice jeans but jeans all the same. I don't wear makeup anymore and I'm fine with that. It is such a liberating concept. I now eat some of the skin on the Kentucky fried chicken and I have ice cream without guilt, or not much guilt anyway. I haven't gained anymore weight although I haven't lost any either. We did not go to Hilton Head this summer and we won't be going on the cruise this year either so I'll only have to start worrying about it by late spring. Till then I'll just try and hold my own. The cows, goats, dogs and Rory don't seem to mind so I'm not going to either, till the spring. Till next time…………..

The Dog Days Return

So, the rain finally stopped, completely. It hasn't rained in a month and we are now back to 100 plus degrees every day. Of course since it rained so much this spring we didn't get the things done that we needed to do and that would include (let's hear it now, all together) FENCING! YEAH! We are in a mad rush to get a couple of the next pastures fenced before breeding season. The little girls really need to be back there since they are out of leaves in the front, of course we have to worm them again before they go so they don't infect the new pasture, we will also wean off all remaining babies to get the girls ready for breeding season. I would have thought that the mommies would have done this themselves but no. Some of these babies will be a year old in November and are almost as big as their mothers, but they are still nursing. We will bring the first batch of boys to the livestock auction around this time. This will be pretty hard for me, but we hope to bring the bigger ones to the local auction in Maud where they have a better chance of being bought by people who want to keep them.

We lost Billy Bob this summer. He was never healthy and we couldn't put any weight on him no matter how much we fed him. I'm pretty sure stomach worms got him even though we had just wormed him three weeks before. It was very sad since he thought he was a dog and followed us around. He was our first goat and we were very attached to him. This leaves us without a herd sire this season. We are thinking of changing the whole concept of the goat thing and move away from slaughter animals more into the breeding end. We will switch breeds and focus more on the Kiko goat. These guys are more parasite resistant, better mothers and generally a hardier goat. We found a guy who will lease us one of his boys for a couple of months this season. We are also looking to buy a boy of our own. We will then split up the girls into two herds so we can start two different blood lines to help avoid inbreeding, lots of record keeping.

Meantime we are doing some pasture management. We are going to try Management Intensive grazing, MIG for short, for the Big girls (cows). This will involve several years of improvement starting now. We are cleaning up, cutting down cedars, removing tree "stobs", brush hogging, drag harrowing, fertilizing, picking up sticks,and planting seed for fall and early spring forage. Do you know how much your shoulders and arms hurt after swinging an ax a good part of the day? I do! It was hard to fold laundry the next day.

I've been reading a book called "Salad Bar Beef" about this, it's fascinating, and I don't want to put it down. Who would have ever thought? The idea is to eventually keep your pastures productive longer to eliminate feed and fertilizer just adding some hay in the winter and some minerals. The cost savings is tremendous. Great in theory, we'll see. This years contribution will be to plant the front pastures with rye, wheat, alfalfa, and purple top turnips in different combinations to see what works and what doesn't.

August 19^th we had 7 inches of rain! Flash floods all around, the local rivers and creeks were out of their banks and we had lakes where there were no lakes before. Those of you who have been here know about the low water crossing we have to get to our house in Shawnee. It's usually a trickle; it was about 10 feet deep on this day. The house here is high enough that there wasn't a problem and the house at the farm is on the highest point around.

Projects

When it gets unbearably hot we retreat to the red barn and work on projects. Heaven forbid that we waste a day. This month's project was building hay feeders for the winter. Last year we just put out bales of hay and let them go for it. We lost a tremendous amount because the goats like to get on top of the bale and into the sides tearing it down and spreading it out. While this is going on no one takes a potty break so they just poop and pee all over the hay and then they won't eat it. This year we bought square bales, built feeders and we will calculate how much in pounds everyone needs and that's what we will put out. We've done a test run to see if they could get on top of the feeders and they can't. We'll see how it goes when winter comes.

August 28^th, 2007

Eclipse

We had another surprise baby. He was born the morning of the lunar eclipse, hence the name. He is our first black baby, just the cutest thing. In this part of the country black cattle is worth more than any other color, I have no idea why. I'm trying to touch this one much sooner than we tried with Rocket Man hoping he will be friendlier. With his mother watching I was able to pet him on day one. All was going well until he decided he had enough and let out a little moo. Well, mama's head perked up and she started to charge. Needless to say I retreated rather quickly. Now, when she sees me coming she moves him away. I am not one of her favorite people at this time, maybe in a week or so.

Rocket Man was close by for the whole process it seemed like he was on guard. I'm sure he will be so happy when this one is old enough to play. Of course Bear is willing to play with him but Rocket doesn't get it and runs away.

And then there was Sheetrock

The house is being taped and mudded as we speak. The boys, Leroy and Dave, have been doing a great job and we are very impressed with their work. They hope to be shooting the texture this week and then they will be done. We have been totally fascinated with this process. These two guys do all the mud and tape and are unbelievably meticulous. The job is perfect we couldn't have asked for more. And to think we found them in the yellow pages. Imagine that!

After they finish we have to paint and get the floors down where the cabinets will be in about 4 weeks to get ready for the trim carpenters. In the meantime we have to worm the little girls, brush hog the pastures, fertilize and seed.

The Maud auction

This was a first for us, we actually sold two goats. Uno and Dos now belong to someone else. I was sad to see them go but at least I know they went to another home where I'm sure they will have a bunch of girls to hang out with. I know they will be happy. The auction itself was something to see. Goats, llamas, chickens, pea fowl, kids, all at this small town livestock auction held every Thursday night. I love a small town.

Max loves Sally

The only dog I had in my adult life was OB, the best dog ever! Now I have guardian dogs for the goats which I have turned into pets. I have not experienced dogs in love before. It works pretty much the same as for anyone else except that Sally loves Bear. Max won't have any of that so we had to put Bear in dogie jail over with the goat boys behind a fence to save his life. Max wouldn't let him anywhere near and wouldn't even let him eat. Bear was too proud to back down. It wasn't pretty. I'm told that dog love only lasts about a week and by all observations I would say we can expect puppies by the beginning of November. I'm hoping we can let Bear out soon, he's very depressed.

And then there is the Bear

Poor Bear. I really feel sorry for him. Its day three for him in jail. At least he has stopped crying and chewing on the fence to get out, and he has started eating again. Of course I've been giving him some canned dog food as an incentive. I sit with him and play with him for some time every day. I can't wait to let him out. I'm going to put Max out with the little girls in the new pasture when he falls out of love and let Bear back in. Max is the adult out he goes.

Bear still loves the kitties, I see him licking killer's head all the time. Killer doesn't really like it much but he tolerates it for awhile. We are down to two cats. The other two just disappeared. We chose to believe that they went to live at some other families house.

Sophie comes in to play with him every day too. Look how beautiful Bear is. Like everything else he does things his own way. He decided to shed in the middle of August. I thought Max lost a lot of hair, it was nothing compared to Bear. He's white again and he flounces when he runs. I just think he's the most gorgeous dog!

And this is Rocket Man now, he's just too months old. It continues to amaze me how fast these animals grow. He still won't let us touch him although he's thinking about it.




We are getting ready to paint, another adventure, I can hardly wait.........

Moving along, sort of

My last post was in May, it's now July!! The rain has been unbelievable, it rained for 30 days straight. We had big plans for this summer including getting the next three pastures fenced in and runningg water and electric to the animal barn not to mention building a house. So far the fence and lines are not done. We are unable to get into the pastures with the tractor because it will just tear it up. We are not complaining (much) mind you, at least the grass and the trees are growing. It's still better than the drought. The good news is the house is moving along and we should be able to start sheet rocking by the end of the month. I still hope to be in by winter.

A lot of stuff has been going on. We had company in June. Debbie and Kathy were here for a week along with my nephew William. William is on tour with the play Wicked, and the four of us along with Rory's mom and dad, went to the city, Oklahoma City that is, to see it. It was great! Will came out to the farm every day before he went to work. He loved it. Kathy is a farmer at heart and a major animal lover. We had no trouble getting her out to work on the farm, in fact the trouble was trying to get her to come home at the end of the day. Debbie is a different story. Good thing we had cats as a bribe

Of course we had to put them to work, except William who had to go to a real job everyday. We cut him some slack and he got pet everybody instead.

It was vacination time so we had Debbie opening syringes and record keeping plus herding goats. Kathy filled syringes, did some herding, talked to the goats, gave them treats and love to help them through the trauma. It took us 3 days but it was a job well done.


And then there was real love. Kathy thought it would be a good time to brush the mats out of Max. Remember this was a dog that we couldn't get near when we first got him. Well, Kathy spent a week brushing him. He was in heaven. I know for sure that Max would be a house dog in a second if we would let him. If you would just pet him all day it would be okay with him

While everyone one was here we thought we might add to the menagerie, so we took a short raod trip to pick up Sally and Sophie.

We had thought we would put them over in the boy's pen and give Max and Bear a little time to get used to them. That lasted 1 day. We now know that dogs can climb. Sally is able to climb up the gate and jump through the opening at the top. Sophie is small enough to just walk through some of the gates that are not wired filled. So, they spend their time with the dog boys and pretty much do what they want. Did I mention that when we are working on the house and the doors are open ?they're in, Sally likes sleeping in one of the closets, Max in the safe room and Sophie wherever when she gets tired of playing. Bear still prefers outside which is amazing to me since he is the only one of the 4 that was raised in the house. Such is life.

The weekend after Debbie, Kathy and Will left we went to Rory's family reunion down in Madill Ok. A great time was had by all and it was a nice break for us. Well, you remember about all the rain? Goats don't like rain. Up until this time whenever it rained they would all stampede to the barn. Sometime when we were gone they discovered that the house was open. Judging by the amount of presents on the floor it must have been right when we left. When we got back to the farm there were 97 goats in the house, some in every room. They looked quite comfortable too! It was also quite eveident that the cows thought the garage was a nice place to be. The nursery was in the storage room above the garage, we know this because as we were chasing everyone out the babies came bounding down the stairs. We had quite the cleanup and immediately started baracading the doorway and the stairs.


On July 4th we had a surprise. We were not expecting him but here he is the Rocket Man ( It was to be Roman but Barbara came up with Rocket and we liked it better)

He is just the cutest thing. We can't get too near him because his mother is very protective and she is very large. But, as the days go by he gets more curious and gets closer to the fence. Seems that when Sam's bull was visisting there was some hanky panky going on. We thought he was too young but we were wrong. Now we're hoping that he got around and the other two will give us a surprise too.

We are now done with the rough in for the electric. Sam has taken a job as a truck diver to we had Gary as a replacement. We liked Gary and as soon as Max and Bear discovered that he came with potato chips they liked him too. Actually they liked him anyway but the potato chips didn't hurt.


My sister in law, Barbara, came to visit in July. It was her first visit to the farm. She had recently had shoulder surgery and I thought we should try and take it easy, go shopping, hang around that kind of thing. Fat chance! We ended up spending 12 hours a day on the farm one night not leaving till after 8pm. We let her sit around the first day but after that, well.......... It was time to worm the goats. So now Barbara is a goat herder too.

After we showed her how to drive the RTV there was no stopping her. She became part of the cleanup crew and really did a fine job of cleaning up the junk around the house and depositing it in the burn pile, in one of the gullies, not to mention sweeping up the house and bagging a lot of that stuff too. One of the main reasons for her visit was to come with me for the annual walk to remember sponsered by the compassionate friends, a support group for people who have lost a child. This year it happened to be in Oklahoma City. We walked to remember Michael. There were about 1500 people attending the conference. On that walk we passed, and decieded to walk through, the memorial at the federal building. It is a beautiful place but heartbreaking just the same. I'm so grateful that she came, would have been tough to do it alone.

Now the house. We are making progress and really seeing difference. Terry the Brick man has been spending a good amount of time with us and the outside is looking good. +


We are finishing up the inside stuff including insulating the garage. Doesn't look like much but believe me it was a kller. I really didn't know I could sweat so much.

We have been cleaning up the inside and the outside. We are pretty tired. Then in the middle of this we got the call from the hay girl to come and get it. We spent 14 hours that day picking up three loads of hay and stacking it on pallets, covering all with this huge tarp we had made.

It was a tiring day but it's done now and we don't have to worry about hay for the winter. In my spare time (ha) I've been reading books on Management Intensive Grazing, MIG for short. Very interesting stuff. Seems if you do it right you can produce enough forage that you wouldn't have to buy hay. Probably will take a few years to perfect but you know I've got to try it.

And then there's the Bear. What can I say, he's a teenager now and I swear he's ADHD. He's berserko man, like the 5 year old you dress up to take out and 2 minutes he's a mess. Remember when he was white? He still is underneath all the dirt, but you gotta love him. He's still the sweetest boy.

This is breakfast time on the farm. You'll notice that Bear is eating by himself on the other side of the RTV. He has to eat over there because he doesn't get along well with others at mealtime.

He is such a brat!! But, we love him. He's the one that comes with me on my walks around the farm and if I ask him if he want to go for a ride he'll climb up in the ATV and ride around with me. He's a sweet boy most of the time.

So that will do it for this episode. The sheet rock will be delivered tomorrow. I still hope to be in by Christmas.I'm trying something new on the blog this time . I always wish that I could get more pictures posted and this may be a way. With any luck at all there should be a slide show at the end of this, let's hope so. If not we'll try again on the next one.

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