The Drought is over

So, last year we had no rain, this year we have nothing but rain. But we're not complaining, at
least not too much. The rivers were out of the banks and the low land (known as bottoms for you non farm types) were lakes. It was amazing to see.

This is a bunch of Purple Martins scooping up mosquitoes and they flew around

This is usually a creek that you can step over, and it was moving fast. Needless to say we believe we will have hay this year.

My good friend, Pat, from Florida came up for a week to check out the farm. It rained the whole week but that didn't stop us from putting her to work. You gotta feed those goats rain or shine.


Because it's been so wet we have been unable to work on the fence for the new pastures. You can't drive a tractor across the pasture if it's mud because you'll tear it up. Not a good thing for the grass. Meantime the grass on the front 30 couldn't get ahead of the cows and the goats so we decided to put electric fence up in the next section so we could move the cows back there at least. So here's Rory digging the trench for the barn to the fence so we could get that going. The cows were moved and they just loved it back there. The front pasture has recovered and now there's food for everyone.

We've add a few things to the farm family. Here are Buster, BJ, Killer and Prancer. They are the cutest things. There mother hung around long enough to wean them and then took off. They are all boys so we won't have to worry about being overrun with kitten.



The house is coming along. I want it to be done now. The windows are in and the stone and brick guys are working on the outside.

Bear is still not very impressed with the whole process.
It's starting to take on a castle like appearance. So far I'm very happy with the way it's coming along .

The goats like to hang out on the back porch or the front porch. They now have discovered that they like the inside of the house too. We'll have to do something about that.

We spent a day helping one of our neighbors work their cattle. We vaccinated, sprayed for flies and tagged. We now know why you have to have a squeeze chute when you have cattle. It was a learning experience for us and we have now added another item to our must have list.

Our last babies of the season were born on Mothers day. We were there for this one and a good thing too because these were two of the dumbest babies we've had. They couldn't figure out how to eat. They had all the right motions but were in the wrong place. We watched for a long while and when it became clear that one of the twins was getting weak we gathered them up and brought them to one of the pens in the barn. We then proceeded to try and teach them where the groceries came from.

Rory held the Momma and I tried to latch them on. Spic (half of Spic and Span) caught on but Span just didn't get it. Eventually I had to milk the goat and bottle feed him. We went through this routine for two days, always trying to get him to latch on and eventually giving up and bottle feeding him.

At the end of the second day I had an epiphany. I squirted him in the face. It was like a light bulb went off. His little head perked up and he latched on. He's been fine ever since.

As you can see they are looking good. It's never dull on the farm.

Till next time..................