It is halfway through January and already I can hear the songs of springtime at the farm.  Croaking tree frogs, hungry lambs, finches and robins calling to each other… Our winter was a little disappointing this year and I hope it doesn’t mean we’ll have swarms of bugs this summer.  I just hate bugs. 

My goats are NOT singing yet since they are too fat and lazy to even get up to eat at night.  They are very pregnant.  This month they can lounge and order “stall service”, next month will be a different story.  If I were a betting person I would wager 7 baby goats are on the way.  WAY more than I’d like, but less that are possible.  Poor Blanca is the biggest.  I’m not really sure what is inside that belly of hers.  Last year she had twins, but both died – one still born and Little Joe who was premature, but stuck it out for about a week.  She wasn’t ready to be a mama last year anyway.  But she was an excellent milker all season!  I’m hopeful she will have better luck with her kiddos this year, but they are only a means to an end.  I WANT THAT YUMMY SAANAN MILK!!!

It is the first year kidding for Coco and Crema.  Crema is probably *technically* too young, but I’ve been giving her loads of food to make sure she gains enough weight.  Coco is looking large.  She has always been my most healty doe – and the most beautiful.  Such a beauty.  I can’t wait to see what her kids look like.  The sire is a bit of a scrappy little grunt.  Hopefully her line is stonger.

And Carmen.  What can I say about my sweet Carmen that I haven’t said a hundred times before.  She is such a good girl.  Last season she had some problems with her delivery and raising her kids.  Blanca ended up nursing them for most of the season.  I didn’t intend to breed her this year, but nothing can stop horny goats from getting together… so here we are   I’ll talk to the vet this week about her symptoms and see if there isn’t something we can do to help her out.

Once we have all the funny babies delivered I’ll get some new chicks to play with as well.  I always think I have enough chickens, but I always want more in the spring.  This year I hope to find some interesting banty varieties.  They are little and make little eggs – like a quail egg (for the foodies out there) but a chicken.  The other chicken experiment this year will be to see if I can hatch any eggs myself.  Well not MYself, obviously… I’ve never had a rooster before so this year I should be able to let one of the girls go broody and see what that brings.  We’ll see what the girls think.

With new babies and spring planting come visits to the farm – my favorite   Let me know if you’d like to come meet any of the new additions.  Weekends only, please. 

Sadie

Hi everyone,

My blog has been broken for a little while now and just got around to fixing it this afternoon.  I kind of went backwards when I re-posted them so they are all a little out of order.  But I put some of my favorites at the beginning

Farmer Sadie

I never thought I would have so much fun raising chickens. When I picked up my little chicklets on April 1st the entire dozen fit in a small cardboard box. Today, four months later, they are practically full grown hens and I couldn’t fit them in a box if my life depended on it.

The three golden pullets are nearly identical, *I* can’t tell them apart anyway. They are all named “HennyPenny”, aka. “The HPs”. There is one Barred Rock I’ve been calling “Dot” cause she’s so all-American, and the four Auracanas are names “Six through Nine”. That is the order in which they enter and exit the hen house. Interesting enough, that is also the order of their coloring, light to dark. Together they are my little Tean Girl Squad.

There is a lot of chitter chatter with my Girls. Every morning starts with a, “Ooo.. now are you going to give us some of that yummy chickie scratch? How about some grapes? Is that a bug, I just love eating bugs. I left you a pretty little egg in the box so you had better give me a nice treat. Did you see what Six did a second ago? She is so bossy…”

This morning Dot left me her second egg ever. It is small and freckled – just like her. It is also much lighter in color than the others. She is still working out the kinks of new motherhood… it had two yolks and the shell looks like old person skin; all wrinkled up around the top and bottom. She’ll figure it out in time, I have no doubt.

Originally posted 8/26/05

So.. about coyotes. When I moved out here I assumed there would be many wild and dangerous creatures around. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t seen anything but a rather large White Owl and a few Red-Tailed Hawks. My neighbors Ahti and Lena told me there were a pack of coyotes (pronounced KY-otes) in their back yard all the time. That isn’t especially surprising since they live on 300 acres of un-fenced flat land just at the base of some of some large, treed hills. Since I hadn’t truthfully heard an alive coyote in my life I asked if the dog noises I somtimes hear might be coyotes. They laughed and said, “Dont worry, you’ll know them when you hear them.”

The very next evening the fire alarm in town went of around 3am (its the kind of town where a siren goes off at the station, the volunteer firefighters drive into town, then go to the fire). Apparently, the coyotes took the sound of the siren as an invitation to sing-along. There were at least 10 of them and it sounded like they were right outside my open bedroom window. They howled, yipped, barked and growled at each other for about 2 minutes. In that short timeframe here’s what I did:

• awoke and bolted up in bed so fast I got a little dizzy
• thought, “where are my cats? did I lock the chicken’s door? do coyotes eat goats?”
• realized the side gate was WIDE open from mowing the lawn that day
• criticised myself for not having bought a shotgun yet
• pondered how well that one yelping sound can freak the crap out of a sleeping person
• committed to improving my animal security (and buying that shotgun)

I sat there half-asleep in bed for 5 minutes or so before I heard the new kittens under my window make a kind of growling noise. It was their first night out after having been locked in the basement for a week (post-spaying) and I still sleepy and had decided they were being eaten by the noisy predators. So I jumped out of bed like it was covered in thorns and ventured outside with the conviction of a woman who just spent $150 on vet bills.

If there were any coyotes out there, I’m sure they were struck dumb by the sight of this crazy woman in her tank top (no undies) wandering around in the middle of the night with a flickering flashlight in one hand and baseball bat in the other muttering, “I hope I don’t get eaten by wild dogs, I hope I don’t get eaten by wild dogs…” The gate closed with much difficulty, and the kittens scurried back to the basement with some encouragement. Needless to say, I didn’t get much more sleep that evening.

I haven’t heard them since, but I find it a little un-nerving knowing they are out there. At the same time, it is humbling knowing there is a creature so closely among us who, when given the chance, could take me down without even breaking a sweat. So the cats begrudgingly sleep inside now and the goats and chickens are penned up nightly. Art Farmer – 1; Pack of Wild Dogs – 0

Originally posted 09/15/05