Summer pictures; goats, kids and geese

Rose, due August 24th. Fingers crossed for a nice doeling, preferably white or light red.

 

Bluebell meet Rosie Goose. The goose always wins.

 

My kids bonded with the wrong doeling this year, sigh. Looks like she is staying for now. At least she is well handled.

Zinnia and daughter Clary; the doeling I wish the kids had bonded with.

Garden Strawberries.

Our first Goat Show

Where to start? I decided to take three milkers and one yearling. In retrospect I wish I'd taken my two year old milker Avalon. Rose; who I suspect may be my nicest confirmation doe, is due in a couple weeks so she couldn't go, so I took her daughter Zinnia, pictured above and bellow, and her granddaughter Bluebell.

I borrowed a couple different pair of clippers from a friend. Alas, as I've never clipped a goat before, it quickly became apparent that I was doing them no favor by putting swipes through their smooth natural coats, so I gave up on clipping, but have the intent to practice before next year's show comes around.

I've never seen lice on my goats and I have looked. I've never deliced them either. However, they make a really big deal about all your goats being turned away if the vet finds a louse during the vet check. I was certainly concerned that the vet might actually find lice so I purchased some diatomaceous (sp?) earth and brushed it into their coats a couple times over the week before showing. In retrospect it appears that I may have overdone it. I ran a warm soapy wet rag with essential oils over the goats before we went to the show. Yet at the show when I was petting or would pat the goats tufts of diatomaceaous earth would puff up. Oops.

I had concerns about showing Zinnia as she is my nervous ninny. She is really a sweet dear thing, but she get's scared easily. When she gets scared she lashes out with her teeth and nips or bites at whoever is closest. So getting bit in the show ring was definitely a possibility, and eventually a reality. What I did not expect is that she would be so nervous that she wouldn't fill out her udder. She produces about five pounds of milk overnight generally, and come the morning of the show her udder was only about a quarter of the way full. I thought about leaving her at home but I was interested in hearing what the judge had to say about the rest of her confirmation. 

We were showing at an American Dairy Goat Sanctioned Show. There were enough Lamanchas, Nigerian Dwarf and Nubians to each have their own sanctioned shows. Everyone else was in shown in All Other Pure Bred classes. Zuri and Zinnia were in a three year old Lamancha milker class. Zuri took first place and Zinnia took fourth and last place because of her udder.

Xanadu, my well behaved five year old, took first place in her class, Lamancha milkers five years and older. The judge's words are all muddled in my memory now. But I recall she thought her teats were too long in comparison to her udder. She had good things to say about the rest of her.

Xanadu and Zuri, as best of their class, went on to compete in the overall Lamancha milker class, I'm not sure the proper title. Zuri got reserve Grand Champion. She is the black and tan doe I'm trying to position. Her topline is not as level as it should be, and that seemed to be the deciding factor that kept her from doing better. I was very happy with how they both did and looked. These are my two favorite does and I enjoyed hearing the judge have positive things to say about each of them.

(I hope that none of the ladies pictured here with their goats take offense that I'm posting this without their permission. I will take down pictures if asked.)

Bluebell was the only doe shown in any of the Lamancha Junior doe classes. As a result she took Lamancha Junior doe Grand Champion. Despite the lack of competition, the judge had many good things to say about her. She went on to compete against the best junior does from each other catagory. She got second place in the best of Junior doe show. The judge had me bring Blue back and line her up with the recorded grade doe at the end of the line. So, there were a few moments of excitement. The Recorded Grade ended up taking Grand Champion Junior Doe.

Overall, I ended up having a fun time. I am looking forward to showing again next year. I was hoping that showing might help me make some decisions in which goats to keep and which to sell. If I came away with any conclusions it is to keep the my favorite goats and sell those which I haven't bonded with as much. We have five does, two yearlings and two doelings right now. I'm thinking of selling the two yearlings. I'm having a hard time talking my kids into letting me sell the doelings, but I have a strategy; I'm waiting for my next doe to kid, they are suckers for the new babies. I'm also planning on selling one or two milkers this fall. So, hopefully I'll be down to four to six does in the barn this winter.

Still Green

I feel ambiguous. If I had to guess, I'd say my vitamin D levels have yet to be restored to normal. As a result I continue to feel that all is right with my world when the sun is shining and I am in it. However, when the weather is gloomy, I am so low. I am beginning to wonder if something else is amiss with my health. Taking my vitamins regularly would probably be a good place to start. I did go see my hollistic doctor earlier this summer for the first time in a few years. We discovered that I do have an iodine defficiency, so I'm taking kelp now. That I'm still feeling so conflicted and temperamental about life during the sunniest and warmest time of the year, has me slightly concerned about entering another long winter. I remind myself that I still have all of August and September to bare my skin to the sun during the warmest hours of the day.

It is still green out, thankfully. The last couple months have been socially busy for us with play groups, soccer practice and games and farm visits. I mistakenly was thinking that we'd get some slower weeks before the hectic harvest time, but instead I think our summer days are more like a wet snowball rolling down a hill; we are only gaining in momentum. This weekend I am showing goats for the first time. I think it will be entertaining for those watching, as I haven't been handling and setting up my goats at all, oh, then there is my biter, who turns and tries to bite me when she is nervous or scared. I wasn't going to show her, but I'm trying to decide if I'm going to keep her and she is one of my nicest does....

We have a special trip that we've been planning for months now. We are going to a friend's wedding. It is going to be a reunion of sorts, with long time friends coming from all around. I pulled out my due date calculator and realized that I've got a doe due the week before and another one due the week after our planned condo rented weekend vacation. I have soooo much help scheduled to come up and help and keep an eye on the goats. I have a guilty conscious.  I may end up staying. Only time will tell.

The garden is providing. Tonight we had greens soup and fresh pea, onion, zucchini, carrot stir fry. All the vegetables were from the garden. The cream in the soup was courtesy of our outside ladies, and the croutons were from bread made with local wheat. The butter was from far away. We grilled a turkey last week and have been eating from it since. Lots of more than local meals. Meals that come exclusively from our land, with the exception of grain, spices, salt and oils.

One of the few things I've really been excited about lately is planning our homeschooling year. I absolutely love our Christopherus Waldorf curriculum. This year Noah and I are learning to play the pentatonic flute together. We will also be working with wool, spinning and knitting together. I recently ordered several children music cd's, for the first time ever. I have been loving the beautiful folk songs that we've been learning. I also ordered some new story books and fairy tale compilations, along with some quality beeswax crayons and colored pencils. I was reading through our curriculum the other day, and the author was writing about what is most importance of spending time outside, helping in the kitchen, growing and harvesting a garden, and spending time around animals and farms etc. And I thought, CHECK! Got that base covered!

I am resolving once more to begin waking up and accomplishing farm chores before my children wake. I know you've heard this before. I indulged in some late summer nights and have been relishing the warm mornings which make chores with the kids oh so much more easier. However, together it does take us till lunch to finish up. I REALLY want to spend our mornings together, where I'm focused on the kids and doing things together, instead of feeling like I'm dragging them from one chore to the next. It sounds to good to be true, but I'm envisioning a morning where we have breakfast and then either do yoga together or practice our flutes, then go on to do our main lesson of the day, all before I start to do house chores and fix lunch.

I promise some informative goat posts in the near future. Almost time to start planning for fall breeding. When I'm a couple months out from breeding I'm going to start putting one cup of apple cider vinegar per five gallons of water ( I think that is the right ration) Into my does water. Call it an experiment, can you guess why?

Late Summer for Fairbanks

While Summer is probably just getting going and only getting hotter in far away places I'm envious of, Fairbanks is entering late summer. I tend to have high hopes of July because the garden is finally producing and I feel like we are just getting going. Inevitably mid July starts to cool off and get rainy, (sigh). We've had cool rainy weather for the last week straight, which is a sign that yes it is truly mid July. Of course this weather is all to familiar to locals, and has everyone panicking and grumbling about how summer is over, and the obvious; summers are too short here! As I drove around today I couldn't keep track of how many pick up trucks and trailers I saw loaded down with firewood. Yes, all it takes is a little cool crisp weather for reality to set in.

As the month progresses our chances of seeing any more eighty degree days is quickly diminishing. I remind myself that come late August and September we are going to have some lovely sunny golden afternoons, but they won't be humid and balmy, but rather crisp and, well, fall like. We've had some stormy windy weather and as a result I've been lighting a fire in the wood stove in the mornings. Fairbanks; where digging for winter hats and gloves in mid July is perfectly normal. Of course, our fair week, which is the first week of August, is rapidly approaching, and that tends to mark the end of summer and summer weather. Fair week is traditionally rainy and cool. The nights are growing dark by then, and the first yellow leaves are spotted.  All is still lush and green for a couple more weeks, now if we can just get some sun and heat to help ripen the heat loving crops.

The garden is looking almost picture perfect. I spent about eight hours on my new battery powered weed whacker last week, and a few hours pushing the push mower. So the rows of vegetables are more pronounced than the weeds this week. It is that time of year where I tend to come down from the garden with more than I can easily carry. Yesterday we pulled baby carrots, picked shelling peas, harvested a row of beets (beets that were not getting any bigger probably because the soil wasn't as good as I thought it was. I amended the soil and resowed beets, may be too late, but maybe not). We harvested three 4-5" heads of cauliflower, I wasn't too happy with the size, but it was the earliest, by the name of Charming, I believe. The first broccoli heads formed this past week, I have to dig for the label to see which were the earliest. We finally have begun to pick more strawberries than we can eat fresh. So, the kids and I made our first batch of strawberry jam of the year yesterday.

You can tell from looking at my garden what I'm most excited about, because those crops are doing well. Then there are things that aren't doing so well, and you'd think I'd be babying or coaxing them along (tomatoes and cucumbers), but I'm not, at this point they are going to do what they are going to do. I am most excited about my winter squash and pumpkins, of which I have several small squash forming. I am also ecstatic about my fifty-sixty feet of shelling peas which are just getting going. This is going to be my best pea, squash and strawberry year yet! And my worst tomato, cucumber year ever - surprisingly I'm not devastated...what can you do? Take notes - on the blog...if I forget you guys can kindly remind me in the spring to spend more time prepping my beds before planting!

This time of year already has me remembering my gardening weaknesses and repetitive mistakes. I get lazy about hauling compost and old manure up to the garden, and I'm usually broke at planting time and don't want to rely on commercial amendments anyway. As a result, I get to this time of year and wish I'd spent a little more time and effort on turning in compost before rushing to plant. I was so proud to have grown enough pickling cucumbers to get us through a year of pickles last year, the success not to be repeated this year. Likewise, I had so many tomatoes the last two years I started grumbling about how I was having to make sauce daily in the fall- not this year. I remind myself, every summer has it's triumphs, and there are always going to be things that don't grow according to plan.

I went to a friend's garden today, someone I view as a master gardener, and she is having a rough pea/ winter squash year. The rest of her garden looked awesome. I am always envious of her heated greenhouse with ceiling high tomatoes and english cucumbers. I couldn't believe how big her Brassica plants were. She had a broccoli head that was like a foot across, it's side shoots were the size of some of my broccoli heads. I asked her secret, she said composted chicken bedding. I knew it! I've got to get better about composting my animal bedding. My chief complaint; it is soooo much work to move wheelbarrows of animal bedding and compost up steep inclines. Especially when I have an almost four year old daughter who still wants me to carry her everywhere, and breaks down when I need both hands to do something, like push a wheelbarrow.

So, I'm curious, what is doing well in your garden and what is not? What do you wish you could go back and do differently? - cause next year is still just too far away to think about!

Midnight sun kids,chickens, garden.

 On nice nights, such as these, my kids accompany me for our evening chore walk. It includes shooing and herding chickens into their indoor coops and closing them in safe for the night. Our main predators are fox, lynx and ravens. If you've raised poultry in the Interior without bird netting, I'm guessing you've encountered ravens. They can massacre a large amount of small birds in a short amount of time. We've lost full sized male ducks to Ravens! Most chore rounds include my children chasing after and holding chickens. You can imagine how pleased the chickens are with this arrangement.

How does that Strawberry taste Noah? The strawberry patch is in full swing. This is only our second summer with perennial Toklat strawberry plants that we've dug up from friend's gardens and transplanted into our own. Last year, most didn't make it out of the garden. I managed to make one batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. This year is looking more promising. The kids and I are each eating about twenty daily in the garden, and my second bed which is lower down is a couple weeks behind my top bed. So, I'm thinking the strawberries are going to get more plentiful over the next couple weeks, and if we can take a break from snacking for a couple days, we'll be jam making.

                                               Avery, collecting weeds for the Cornish Cross.

This week we started picking shelling peas. Some even made it into the car for snacking on while in town. We also harvested the first broccoli and cauliflower heads. We've been enjoying small zucchini, scallions, radishes, lettuce, spinach and napa cabbage, in addition to herbs. I re-sowed cilantro, chinese cabbage, spinach, lettuce and beets this week. I've stopped planning meals ahead this week. Instead we make sure and take a basket up to the garden and whatever looks good is what we are cooking up. Happy me!

Summer chickens, garden and goats

 Everything grows so fast this time of year; the garden, weeds, chickens. I took these pictures about a week ago and already they seem outdated. The Cornish Cross, above, seem twice the size and have moved into a different pen, to make room for twenty some laying pullets who have taken over the larger, more secure coop and pen. The last two years we raised about twenty five Cornish Cross. This year I picked up twelve, and still have twelve. Without looking at my calendar, I'm thinking they are seven weeks or so. I'm feeding them one part organic chicken starter/grower and one part ground local barley. If I remember correctly the bags of chicken starter are $27 per fifty pounds ? or forty? and the barley is $9 or $10 dollars per fifty pounds. By mixing the two, my goal is to slow down their growth some as well as cut down on the cost to raise them. I have discovered in the past that they don't do well with a whole grains, at least until they are big enough to butcher. I'm also doing better at not overcrowding them, which in the past seems to have been the main cause for fatalities - and leads to gross living conditions which does not make me feel good about my husbandry practices.

 
Adult black sex linked layers and our handsome blue Welsummer Ameraucana cross Rooster. We've provided three tasty chicken meals this week for a nearby cross fox. And so, our chickens free range time has been drastically shortened. The fox managed to sneak in grab chickens and leave with them, without making enough noise to disturb our dog or ourselves while we were inside the house. Now, I let the chickens out when I'm in the garden or outside, and they get herded back in when I go inside. We are down to seven eight layers and they are beginning to taper off in egg production. Looks like I'll be hoarding eggs and not sharing till fall which is lame, as I love sending our farm helpers off with eggs along with other farm products.

Our cat, who rarely get's picture time. He found some catnip volunteers that came up by the chicken bedding pile.

 Here are our laying pullets who were overcrowded in this chicken tractor and are much happier now that they have a larger fenced area to roam. We have five each, Blue with red laced Wyandottes, Barred Rocks, Partridge Barred Rocks, and seven Speckled Sussex and one freebie Polish. I lost one sussex and a raven made a meal out of two one night when they escaped their confinement. An interesting note about these pullets, is that I've been feeding them our mixed grain ration from the beginning. I ground it up in the coffee grinder for the first five weeks or so and now they eat it whole. I started buying the organic chick grower for the meat birds and thought these ladies might benefit from a little of that mixed in with their grains. I was surprised to see that they did not relish the spendy high protein crumbles as I thought they would. They empty their feeder much slower with the crumbles in it. So, I'm back to feeding mostly whole grains with some fish meal. Of course they do a lot more foraging and weed eating as well.

The garden is looking good. My cucumber and watermelon beds are pretty pathetic, but those crops don't usually do well here, especially outside the greenhouse. Last year I grew enough pickling cucumbers to make enough dill pickles to get us through an entire year. Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to repeat that. Half my cucumbers died when I transplanted this year, so I direct seeded. Hopefully I'll get a small crop before the frost. I've pollinated a number of female winter squash and pumpkin flowers. The kids are so eager for carrots and peas. We picked the very first shelling peas today. Perhaps even more exciting, we picked a couple dozen ripe strawberries today, and there are so many more that are almost ripe. I'm wondering if some might actually make it down to the house this year. Do I dare hope to have enough for a couple batches of jam? I picked three small zucchini, pulled scallions and cut some swiss chard for dinner tonight. We had the veggies along with a roast chicken from the freezer. With the exception of the parmesan, butter and lemon, it was a lovely home raised meal.

The goats are doing well. I'm getting them out almost daily for a walk to browse on fresh willow, fireweed, birch, rose and raspberry bushes. I'm getting mentally prepared to tattoo and register some doelings, along with a possible clipping session. I trimmed hooves today. We've sold one doeling and I've got two more to sell. I am going to make my first attempt at showing a few milkers at our ADGA show this August. I'm looking forward to hearing what a judge has to say about their confirmation. Unfortunately, probably my two nicest does will stay home as one is due to kid and the other doesn't handle stress well.

Wherever you are at with your livestock, garden and homesteading adventures, I wish you well!

Hay Weather

We were down to one hundred pound bale of Alfalfa hay this morning. Now we are just a couple bales shy of one hundred leafy, bright green, dry, fifty pound bales of brome. That will get us through a few months. However, of course, we've got to stock up while we can. So we have plans to get another hundred next Sunday and then again the following Sunday, each from a different farm. Here in Interior Alaska we generally get two hay cuttings. The first cutting usually takes place about the fourth of July, and the second is usually just barely before frost and is always a tight squeeze with the rain and morning dew we get in the fall. This year, unlike the past few years, we've gotten a decent amount of rain in May and June, and then this past week we had seventy-eighty degree days with no rain, which made for good early hay growth, followed by perfect haying weather. Thus farms far and wide have been and will be haying now. Thus cows, goats and horses all around will be munching and relishing fresh green hay. Yeah!

The hay we got today is just beautiful. My goats are stoked! There is much debate on when the best hay is harvested up here. I haven't ever had any of our bought hay tested so I really can't join the debate. All I know is that it feels good to stock up on hay early and not wait until the last minute. Also, I like that the first cutting hay is generally more leafy and green. Second cutting hay usually isn't as green, as after it is cut and on the ground, it get's moist every morning from the light freezes, and then the farmers have to turn it all day to get it to dry out enough to bale by evening. That seems pretty much the same as getting rained on every day, which would leach out nutrients? Obviously I need to do some more hay research.

I not only have pasture envy, but I have hay farmer envy. I totally want to be the sun weathered, knowledgeble, farmer, spending the sunny days of summer in the hay fields, picking up hay, and riding around in a green tractor. Well, maybe that's an exageration. The image does have it's appeal.

As far as everything else is going around here. The children are taking baths nightly. They are getting so dirty running around barefoot with hardly any clothing on, that they are almost too dirty to come inside for dinner, deffinitely too dirty to sit on the couch for story time. They continue to get more bruised and scratched up, something I'd not thought possible two weeks ago. I've had to change up my daily schedule. Instead of doing house chores in the morning to get out and enjoy the afternoon, I've had to get out sooner and enjoy the cooler less intense mornings, as it has been too hot and sunny to be in the garden or in the sun mid afternoon -(at least for the kids, I on the other hand...).

One of the varieties of peas I've planted, Coral, is flowering. I harvested a row of tatsoi and arugula. I've finished thinning the beets, and now have a bag of baby beet greens in the fridge to do something with. I've thinned the carrots once, but it is time to do it again. The whole garden is taking off, with the nice balance of sun and rain. I've been spending most of my garden time weeding and mowing. We're harvesting some crisp mild lettuces, and mixing them with various weeds and other greens. We've got enough cilantro, basil, chives, lovage and sorrel right now. I am checking squash blossoms daily to pollinate the female flowers. We've got a few baby zucchini growing, I can't wait!

Best wishes wherever you are in your summer gardening, haying season!

Mid Summer Nights

Every year at this time, I find myself attempting in vain to capture these magical summer nights with words. Scroll back through my June and July posts from the last few years and you'll see what I mean. The posts something like this, I'm sitting on my front porch, facing the sun in the west and watching the goats enjoying their dinner. My family is asleep. Although it is late into the evening, the sun is shining strong and and the air is warm and comfortable. All around is green. The thrush are still singing. The breeze is gentle. 

These are the perfect evenings. The mornings are beautiful too, but I'm moving too fast to really enjoy them. Scrambling to do dishes, laundry, sweep, make breakfast and start the bread before the kids and I head out to milk the does, who have been looking up at the house for the past hour while I opened and closed the door, filling water jugs, setting out milking pails, bringing in rags to wash and so on. I've been trying to finish chores and eat lunch or take lunch to the garden by noon, before it gets to hot for the kids, as we have barely a towel length of shade in the whole garden during the middle part of the day. We are all scratched and sore, bug bitten and a bit sunburned - myself especially. If the sun is shining I cannot help but be in it's rays. Making up for lost time.  I went in for a routine doctor's checkup this past week. She felt my pulse and said I was definitely yang deficient and could use more sun and heat in my life - and of course I was like, TELL BE ABOUT IT!

There is no place I'd rather be in the world than in Fairbanks in the summers, especially around Summer Solstice. This time of year is magical. Too think that all was frozen and white a couple months ago, and now is alive, growing at a rapid pace and oh so lush and green. We've had the best weather so far this summer, the perfect balance of sun and rain. Our homestead is at the top of a hill, so often we hear the thunder, but the storm goes around us one way or another. This year, we have been fortunate to actually receive the rain and not just glimpse it in the distance. Tonight was my second night watering the garden this season. Everything is taking off, and I just can't wait for our own peas, zucchini and broccoli. For now, I'm trying to be happy with tatsoi, arugula, chives, sorrel, lovage and some mixed greens. Well, it is time to put this computer away, grab my novel and head out to the front porch and enjoy the view. Best wishes for your summer solstice!

Yeah, pictures, finally!

As you can see I finally got around to upgrading my storage plan. It was a close one. I almost switched to word press. I figured I can cancel my current plan anytime and move over.

I took these pictures last week. We've been taking the goats on walks pretty much daily, multiple times a day. Beings that we are low on hay, don't have a charger for our portable electric fence, and then there is less waste and work when we take the goats to the weeds as opposed to the weeds to the goats..well, there you have it, it makes sense. It's that time of year where I can't keep wait on a couple of my milkers, and they are looking pretty scrawny. More grain, more alfalfa, more browse - and still!

This week the bluebells and wild roses are in full bloom all around the property. The kids, especially Noah are enthusiastic gatherers. They've been going out daily gathering flowers and greens, technically weeds, for salads and munching on. Noah has been asking lately if we can stop buying food at the store. He's been making comments like, "When I'm older I'm going to live off the land and not buy things at the store." And of course, I'm like THATS MY BOY!  He get's it. He is continually growing in pride about our lifestyle. He is eagerly awaiting foraging for mushrooms and berries. Last week we took a nature walk and gathered probably at least twenty-five different leaves and small plants and then layed them all out and talked about their edibleness and medicinal purposes. Then instead of pressing them as I suggested, he insisted we had picked them and therefor must consume them. So, we blended them up in a very pungent smoothie, after which he ever so slowly consumed it, remarking on how it must be the healthiest smoothie ever.

When Noah asks if we can stop going to the store, I remind him that if we stopped now we'd be eating a lot of frozen kale, frozen broccoli and zucchini, as we just picked our first salad from the garden and don't have any other veggies yet. We've been talking about what we'll be going without, namely snacks, chips, hot and cold cereal etc. So yesterday we began coming up with a plan to take the month of August off without stopping by the store. In some ways we'll still be buying groceries, as I'll probably stock up on a few things, rolled oats for granola and granola bars, flour, butter and cheese. But I'm thinking we'll just be eating berries and veggies from the garden that month, and meat from the freezer of course, or if we are lucky D will get down to Chitina for a salmon run.

Avalon, for sale.

Zuri's daughter, Cila, possibly for sale.

Busy summer days; goat walks, foraging, garden, sun, green plants, flowers, sweet air.

You have too many goats if:

This past year I have found myself thinking we have too many goats for a number of reasons and here are a few of my conclusions. You know you have too many goats:

1. When you are asked how many goats you have, and it takes several minutes to count and name them on your fingers before you are able to give an answer.
2. When you can't take your annual winter vacation this year because you're broke - because of how much money is getting spent on grain, hay and supplements. Or along the same lines but even worse, when you skip high dollar items, treats, at the grocery store so you still have enough money for alfalfa and sunflower seeds for the goats.
3. When you are constantly excusing bad goat behavior, saying, "she just needs to get handled more." 
4. When you start cutting corners with their feed regime, wanting to always have kelp, molasses and olive oil on hand, but instead have it around about half the time. Or the milkers are looking scrawny and you know they need more Alfalfa, but since you can't afford it you start soaking the peas or high protein legumes from your kitchen cupboards, if it's summer, taking them for longer browsing walks, etc.
5. When the manure and leftover hay pile up faster than you can move it out, or maybe that just happens no matter how many livestock you have??
6. When you run out of room. When goats start sleeping outside instead of fighting for prime indoor space.
7. When you start fantasizing about a day in the future when you have less goats.
8. When you sit down with the receipts from the year and realize what else you could have done with that huge chunk of money, several vacations, new house, (hah, just kidding- about the house).

I'll add more as I think of them. Anyone? I'll bet some of you can add to this list. For these reasons, I am in downsizing mode. I'm not making any drastic decisions yet. And I'm not selling any milkers yet. I am committed to providing our shareholders with milk through the season. But this is most likely going to be our last year, for a while at least, selling goat shares.  I found myself dreaming about being an old lady with two or three milkers. Then I starting thinking, why wait? As one of my girlfriends pointed out this week, sometimes you have to take things to the extreme before you find some balance. I started cleaning out a small area of deep pack bedding this week. After an hour of sweating and bug swatting and heavy pitchforking, I yelled out to Dustin that I'd forgotten how much work it is getting the old hay mixed with manure back out of the pen. And again I found myself thinking how much less poo we'd be moving with a few goats. By next summer I'm thinking we'll just have a handful of goats. For now, I'm constantly thinking of who can go and who must stay.

Summer arrives in Interior Alaska

Finally, it is the time of year I live for; summer. Most locals I talk to agree that a Fairbanks summer is defined as the period of time when the Birch leaves are green. We had "green up" about two weeks ago; that week where the hills and woods go from brown to spring green over the course of the week, or in some cases during a single afternoon. June and July give us our hottest, sunniest and longest days. By August, the temperatures are cooling off, the nights are growing dark, patches of gold leaves are spotted and in low lying areas, frost is pretty much inevitable. 

When my husband and I first met, oh so long ago, he commented on my extensive summer wardrobe. I replied in complete sincerity, that "summer was my favorite month." And it is. My favorite summer's are more like two and a half months. Then of course spring is usually a couple weeks here, and I need not go on. 

At first sight, you would think me presently sunburned - but really I'm just getting going on my summer glow. The kids are also pink. They've been playing "cave men" lately, which entails running around outside in nothing more than shorts - sometimes as early as nine a.m., when it is still pretty cool. They are sporting a large number of bruises, scratches, scrapes, bug bites and they've already had numerous run ins with splinters and rose bush prickles. 

Our nights are no longer getting dark, but rather are dusky from about midnight till three or so. Most of us sleep fine. Although the rooster has been making a lot of racket starting at 4 a.m. Today, I wised up and closed him inside the coop so at least he will be muffled by the walls. We've been sleeping with the upstairs windows open, which face the coop. So the entire morning is filled with bird calls, chicks peeping downstairs, overlayed with the lovely robin melodies which are rudely punctuated and overwhelmed by rooster crows. 

The woods are spring green. The air sweet and moist. I recall thinking last year at this time that listening to the mating calls of the thrush was my favorite part of early summer. I guess I don't think I can chose a favorite this year. Feasting my deprived eyes on all the green life springing up around me and inhaling the sweet sweet air are two things that I don't ever think I can get my fill of. 

I'm in love with everything right now; my home, our woods, the view, the does and their kids, the goose with her goslings, my garden, working in the soil, and above all, spending my days outside with my children. Rosie was due to hatch her eggs last week. The time came and went and she continued to diligently sit. In fear that we'd have a depressed goose sitting on rotten eggs, I had my husband bring home two, just hatched goslings from the feed store. I carried them tucked in my shirt and sneakily stuck them under Rosie. She took to them right away. I snuck her eggs out from under her and decided to have a look in a dark room with the flashlight. All of them were fertile and only one was definitely bad. I couldn't see movement but they looked like they just needed a few more days. Oops. Lesson: Before paying eighteen dollars a piece for goslings from the feed store, first candle eggs to be sure they aren't going to hatch. As she should have, she abandoned her eggs and is a very proud mama, caring for her two goslings. I thought about putting her eggs in the incubator for a week, but it is just more trouble than it's worth. Lesson learned.

The garden is coming along nicely. Most of the direct seeding is done. I started planting starts just the last couple days after lots of bed prepping. I've been checking the weather forecast twice daily, as it changes so fast. More than worrying about cold night temperatures, I was waiting for clouds and rain in the forecast for several days, so the starts won't just bake in merciless sun. It seems like every year, for the end of May and most of June we get warm sunny days and hardly a drop of rain. Even the heat loving plants get stressed with all the non stop sun. So, this year I'm really trying to take advantage of overcast rainy days for planting. So far onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and squash are transplanted, the later under shade cloth and clear plastic. Peas, scallions and beets are coming up. Carrots, radishes, greens, kohlrabi, and turnips are seeded. I need to buy and plant seed potatoes soon. Such and exciting busy time of year. I wish I had pictures to share. I'm going to take the camera on the rounds with me this next week, upload pictures and then hopefully that will motivate me to fix my blogger photo hangup. Well, best wishes to you all wherever you are at in your spring-slash-summer.

Zuri's second kidding story

It is a typical May morning here. The kids and I got an early start on farm chores and milking this morning. A friend of mine came up and we chased and caught ducks together, with Noah's help, of course. Rosie the goose is due to hatch her eggs this Friday. Now the hopefully soon to be mother has her surroundings to herself. After a short stint in the garden and the swing set we made it back to the house where I processed the milk that was chilling. Now, a fresh batch of yogurt is incubating. The bread dough started. Nine flats of seedlings are set out to harden off, bearing the brunt of the cooler outdoor temperature and the light wind and sun -we'll they're shaded somewhat. The kid's are upstairs playing and it isn't even lunch yet. I was thinking it was time to prepare for our main lesson of the day, but remembered I'd yet to tell you guys of Zuri's kidding. Sorry, no pictures yet. Just haven't gotten around to dealing with picture/blogger stuff.

Zuri kidded to one black and brown doeling and one black and tan buckling on Saturday. I noticed her ligaments were going on Friday morning, then were gone and she was noticeably in early labor Friday night. She was only at day 145 and her udder was not filled out yet. She wasn't having arching contractions yet, but she was very verbal, affectionate and pawing for the first time. I was hesitant to go to sleep and decided I could get away with three hours to start, then I was afraid to sleep more than an hour at a time for the rest of the night - which is probably why I succumbed to a cold Sunday.

Her labor progressed gradually as I ate breakfast, did morning chores, ate lunch. Then around one p.m. she started pushing. Her doeling came out in the correct diving position. She was good sized and healthy. Noah has been wanting to name a doeling for a while, and came up with Cila, (seelah). Zuri was sooo excited about her daughter that her labor pretty much came to a complete halt for about an hour. It would be pretty unlikely that she just had one kid for her second kidding. I don't know if you guys remember but last year Zuri had one healthy silver doeling. I don't know what happened to her, but my guess is that Zuri accidentally kicked her in the head or something, because when I did my first after kidding check, the doeling was completely limp and unresponsive. We brought her into the house and dripped her dam's milk down her throat with a drenching syringe for a day, before she was strong and standing again. We put her back in with her much relieved dam. The next morning I found her dead, outside her pen. She had escaped through a narrow slat in the gate, and had been stomped by another doe. Zuri was so devastated that for weeks she continued to call and look for her doeling. Finally, she adopted Xanadu's daughter. Xan had triplets, and was more into feeding her two strong bucklings than her much smaller weaker doeling. Zuri took over mothering Bali, nursing her and watching out for her. Needless to say, Zuri is very excited to be given another chance at motherhood.

I tried bouncing Zuri; a technique where you lift up in front of their udder and see if you feel more bones; kid parts. She was starting to resume her contractions and lay down and get back up but nothing was coming out, and it seemed like it was time for the next kid to get out. So, D came down to hold her. I gloved and lubed up and went in. The second kid was pretty far in and not close to coming out. The first thing I felt was pointed and angular, not a nose or a hoof. I followed it forward and realized it was the back hock  (I think that is the correct name although it sounds funny) of his leg. He was backwards with both his legs straight forward under his belly from the hock on. I had to push it forward and get a grip further down towards his hoof, then gently pull it back, then the other leg. Holding onto both hooves finally, I pulled and she pushed and he came out. He was still in good shape, although a little smaller and weaker than his sister. Today I got Zuri out of her stall for the first time. She ate her grain on the milk stand while I milked her full side, as the kids tend to go for the easier, emptier side all the time. 

This was our last spring kidding. Rose may be due in August. Now there is just the disbudding, wethering, registering, weaning and selling. Whew. This is why we are downsizing. We had three goats kid this spring and that is plenty. I think two does kidding each spring is the perfect number - enough to get our goat kid fill. 

Summer Day Aspirations

Today is going to be a beautiful day. I awoke to the beautiful songs of the thrush outside in our woods. One of the many things I forget how much I love this time of year. Our house of course is filled with the sound of week old chicks cheeping. Upstairs their cheeps are muted and I can hear the rooster up the hill and all the wild birds in the woods. I can't wait to sleep with the window open...

Today and the next two days are supposed to be sunnier and warmer than the rest of the week. I am taking the weather forecast seriously and will be terribly disappointed if it doesn't come true. After our morning house chores, bread baking, lessons and lunch, I am looking forward to spending the afternoon in the garden; turning beds and planting soaked peas and beet seed. The seedling rack is full with fourteen trays of starts lined up - room for two more. I'm starting to set some of the biggest starts outside for a couple hours each afternoon in the shade. 

My husband is starting his crazy summer work schedule, roughly six days of ten hour shifts. I've been steadily working up to resolving to wake early with him and get chores and milking done while the kids are still asleep. If, and a big IF it is, I can accomplish this, my mornings and days with the kids will be oh so much more serene and peaceful. If I can tip toe inside with the milk pails and filter milk. Then brew  a cup of tea, maybe read a book or do a few yoga stretches while waiting for the kids to wake up. 

I am aspiring for the majority of my summer days to look like this: Peaceful early morning milkings by myself, productive sunny kitchen mornings with the kids playing indoors; getting lessons done and food made for the day, followed by relaxed afternoons; playing and working in the garden or laying around on the back porch reading library books and coloring with the kids. And finally, finished off with simple meals from the garden, mostly grilled and enjoyed on the pack porch. 

What do you envision your ideal summer days looking like?

May growth

First, I want to thank you all for the thoughtful feedback. For now I'll be paying for more room so I can add more pictures. Switching over to Wordpress may be in my future. I would love to have a quality camera in the next year with which I can take better quality pictures as well. I envy so many of your beautiful photographs that accompany your stories and sharing.

May Day did not bring spring weather to interior Alaska. Instead the thermometer read eighteen degrees mid afternoon. On top of that it was windy and snowing. Unfortunately we had a big outdoor May Day celebration planned at a local farm with our Waldorf community. Preparing for the afternoon I first pulled out long underwear, water pants and rain coats. By the time we were ready to leave I'd pulled our winter bag back out of storage and had packed snowsuits, winter coats, hats, scarves and gloves. The weather was just as nasty as it could be, and I kept thinking, "Only in Fairbanks would no one even think of canceling for weather." Needless to say, no one was interested in outdoor pottery, face painting or marbling. We did manage to enjoy ourselves, the kid's more than myself.

The week has continued to be cold and glum. My poor little seedlings in the garden... I had beet seedlings and all sorts of hardy greens poking their heads up under plastic row covers. I peeked on them yesterday and they aren't completely frozen. I had also taken off the front door minimizers on the bee hives, and ended up tacking them back on. So the ground is once again hard and frozen at least on the surface. The livestock water bins, once more in various degrees of frozen states. Maybe it is just principle, but instead of plugging them back in I've just been hacking at the tops with ice picks or shovels. 

In other news, Rosie, our lone female goose is continuing to diligently sit on her eggs. Our chickens and six remaining adult ducks have been immensely enjoying free ranging around the property from morning till dusk - despite the fact that all the mud and puddles the ducks were relishing last week are solid this week. A friend of mine is going to pick up the ducks before Rosie is due to hatch out her goslings. So, she'll have some new mommy space to herself which she is going to appreciate.

We started delivering milk again this week for our Goat Shareholders. I barely have enough milk. I'm counting heavily on Zuri, who will be kidding in the next couple weeks to help out. We now have twenty-seven layer chicks in a brooder in our hallway. I ended up ordering chicks after all, after realizing that I could order the exact chicks I wanted, when I wanted them, for cheaper than the feed store could and without all the hassle. We have speckled sussex, partridge plymouth rocks, barred rocks (they were suppose to be buff barred rocks :( ) and blue laced red Wyandottes. This was my first time ordering chicks and having them arrive within one day of shipping. They all made it and are doing well. They are eating lots of eggs; fried, hard boiled and scrambled. They have garlic, a little honey and vinegar in their water. Their feed is local ground wheat, oats and barley, ground corn, quinoa, kelp and fish meal.

This has been the season for contemplation and decisions. We are making a slight veer off our current path and changing directions for the time being. We've decided that we want to put less money, time and energy into livestock husbandry. We have been putting a significant portion of our budget into feed animals. We also are still in the building stages, and have been sinking a lot of money into our house, but we are on the home stretch and our new addition is nearing completion. Between the house and the animals, we have not had extra fun money, travel money and really it feels like we are just scraping by most the time. This year is going to be our last year (for a while anyway) of doing goat shares. It feels like we just really got going, and I hate to disappoint people. Selling goat shares almost covers most of our feed costs. Yet, without so many goats, we wouldn't need to sell shares. This winter I found myself dreaming of a day when I just own a couple dear milkers. I thought, maybe when I'm an old woman I'll just need a couple does, and I'll drive them to see a buck every other year... The more I think about it the more appealing it looks. 


It is not just about cost. It is equally about having time for my children and family. Time, energy, patience, to be able to relax and enjoy their childhood and not feel rushed or stressed or that feeding, milking, breeding or kidding takes precedence over their wants and needs. As I've been reading some Waldorf approaches to parenting and discipline, I'm gaining a different perspective on what kind of parent I want to be. I do not want to be the mom who is too busy to set aside blank to stop and give full attention to her child's needs, and that is who I tend to be too often.


My plan to minimize mouths and simplify chores for the year goes something like this: By fall our ducks and geese will have found new homes. We will have one chicken coop with twenty some layers. Our three bucks will be two in number and will move out of their home way high up on the hill which is a pain to get water to in the winter, (and hay if we run out), and down to the current duck/goose stall and pen. I plan on milking four to five milkers until December or January. I am going to try and sell all- most of the doelings, possibly along with our two yearlings. By next year, I'd love to be down to four milkers. Ideally I'd like to just breed a couple does each year. At some point I'd like to take a break from keeping bucks. I do plan on keeping a couple bee hives each summer as well as raising a small batch of Cornish Cross for meat. And of course, I have big plans for the garden. I'm focusing less on heat loving plants and more on medicinal perennials. We are expanding our raspberry rows and strawberry patches this year.


Next winter we are hoping to leave our home and animals in our capable house sitter's hands and get out and travel to warmer climates for a couple months - yeah, preferably months, not just a couple measly weeks. We both feel the need to see what else is out there before we commit to investing everything we have into a farm or large land purchase here. I have always thought I'd grow old here in Interior Alaska. Maybe I just need a reminder of how good we have it. Right now, it is hard to imagine living this lifestyle here, when I'm elderly. On one hand a farming lifestyle keeps you in shape and healthy. But then we are already feeling and looking haggard during our winters. 


I love what we've been doing. I love our homestead, our animals, our lifestyle. We are both trying to figure out if we really want to do it here. At the same time, we are realizing that everything doesn't need to happen now. We have time. Time to make mistakes, time to learn, time to change course and break a new trail. And now, it is time I head down to the goat barn, toss hay and put away the goat kids for the night. Goodnight.

April Funk

So, I went to change my header the other day, to something more spring like, and I got a message saying I've maxed out my allotted free picture room. No more pictures until I figure out what to do. I am interested to hear from other bloggers, your experiences and what you've done when you get to this stage. For five dollars I can buy more room. I know it isn't much, but if the blog is going to cost money, it does raise the option that I could post adds and make money... I'm generally very anti add. I don't like clutter on pages or advertisements in general. What do you guys think?

Complete topic change: All I want to do is write and read. What do I fantasize about while washing dishes? Solitude. Days and days to myself. I would clean the house and then it would stay that way. I'd eat salads and nibble on raw foods, and take a complete break from the kitchen, from the stove and dirty dishes. And then I'd sit and let it all pour out at the computer, taking breaks to curl up in the sun with a good book. What does it say about myself and my life that I want to live in fictional worlds other than my own? I've been contemplating this question for a year now, with few answers. I feel like the Little Engine That Could, repeating in my head over and over to myself, "I love my life, I love my life, I love my life." And I do, don't I? Am I having a midlife crisis already or is it just spring time? 

I'm not sure if I've written this already here, or if it has just been on my mind so often - but either way it bears repeating. For most the winter I feel like I'm doing just fine. People are complaining, moaning and groaning all around me about how cold and dark it is and how they'd rather be elsewhere. And I, myself feel just fine. Then about this time of year; March, April, it is like I've woken up from a long dark dreary sleep that I do not want to ever return to. When I think of next winter, my only thought is of ESCAPE! 

We are finally in full spring mode here. Mud and water everywhere. The river down our driveway has finally dried up. There is still a glacier of snow in our backyard. I hunger for warmer days, but I know the end of cold nights will bring an abundance of mosquitoes after all that snow. The bees are collecting pollen. The pussy willows are budding. The goats are laying out in the sun all day. From the middle to late afternoon, if the sun is out, we can get by on the back porch without sweatshirts. But when the sun goes behind the clouds or when the wind blows across the glacier, we are reminded that it is still April. 

I did till two small beds by hand and plant cold hardy greens, scallions and some beets. I covered the beds with clear plastic. Half the garden is still under snow. I laid out plastic row covers from last summer to thaw the beds quicker. The strawberry plants, comfrey and poppies are still green from last year. The iris shoots are coming up. The raspberry canes are budding out. I should feel thrilled with life today, shouldn't I? I suppose it is time to forget about chores and go sit in the sun. I hope you all are feeling perkier than I on this April afternoon.








 

Spring kids and bees

I'm guessing we have a couple more weeks of spring before the days start to blur into summer. Our snow is fast melting. Our roof is still dripping. Puddles and mud abound, and small rivers run down the road. The goose and ducks are in heaven. We've been staying home most days so we let the ducks and chickens out of their outside pens each morning and close them in again before bedtime. Watching the ducks and goose waddle up and down the road and trails, splashing in all the puddles, well, it almost makes it worth watering them all winter long. Our nights are in the twenties and thirties, with our days reaching into the fifties and sixties. I've washed and put away our snowsuits and we've switched over to rain boots and mud pants. These pictures were taken about a week ago. We still have more snow on the ground than dirt showing, but not for long.

Today I set several goose eggs in the incubator. Rosie, our lone goose is starting to go broody. Today I felt guilty taking two eggs out from under her. She is getting more attached to her nest. I am going to let her start sitting on the remaining eggs. I want her to hatch out some eggs just for the fun of watching a mother goose with her goslings for the summer. We don't plan on keeping any geese next winter.

I'm well into seed starting. I'm feeling a little behind where I'm usually at. But I keep reminding myself that I usually plant seedlings out too early anyway. They don't usually die from the cold, but instead they just take a long time to take off - but I do plant a lot earlier than our official planting out date. So I'm going to try and hold out a little later this year for transplants. Today I started Brassicas, medicinal herbs and 4-6 wk flowers. I made decisions like cutting out the savoy cabbage and just growing a dozen storage cabbage. I started twenty four broccoli plants, five different varieties so we'll have broccoli early and until frost. I made sure to keep the kid's gardens in mind when sowing flower seeds. Both of them are really into the color red. So I started extra red zinnias and a bright calendula for them. Avery helped with the Brassica tray, so I'm pretty sure we might have no plants in some cells and three in others.

We are getting into the summer routine of busting out on house and kitchen chores in the morning hours and then spending the afternoons and early evenings outside. I finally have some sun on my face and arms, the first of hopefully much sun to soak into my skin this season.

Noah turned six last week. He asked and received a bee suit for his birthday from D and I. We picked up our four pound bee package with two queens a couple days later and then hived them on a lovely sunny afternoon. This is my second year doing bees and we are doing it differently last year in an attempt to improve upon our honey yield. I have had a hard time trying to decide the best spot for the hive. Our best early morning sunny sites are in the garden, and beings that the kids and I spend a lot of time up there I didn't really want to have the bees take over a corner. So, we thought we'd try putting them into our abandoned greenhouse. The pluses are that the greenhouse get's great sun, some of the earliest sun on the property all the way till sunset. With the bees being inside the greenhouse, their hives will also stay warmer. I'm hoping that their flight path will be mostly above our heads. The disadvantages to having the bees high up is that we have to climb a ladder up and down to check on them and at some point we'll have to carry all the heavy honey frames down the ladder :) Today we smoked the bees to check and see if the queens had been released from their cages, and Noah and I got smoked out. So, another disadvantage, with the smoke not dissipating as easily as outside. Beings that warmth and sun are some of the biggest challenges for bee keepers up here, I'll take the smoke and the ladder climbing, if the bees do well and don't interfere too much with our garden play space.

 Noah, squirting warm sugar water on the package before opening it.

Hives from the outside. We split the hive into half, putting roughly two pounds of bees into each hive and a queen into each. The plan is to combine the hives at the beginning of the honey flow to maximize population numbers and have the best sized work force. We'll see how it goes. Everything is an experiment each year isn't it? Bees, garden, poultry -egg setting, goats - kidding, and the list goes on. Wouldn't life be boring without experiments?

Zinnia and Avalon's birth stories

 Above is Avalon's two kids. First though my husband has kindly reminded me that I promised a story of Zinnia's kidding. For a week before Zinnia kidded, I thought she was so close I didn't feel comfortable leaving the house. By the time I was absolutely positive she was in labor (for the third time), I was already sleep deprived. The few nights before she went into labor I was getting up and going down to the barn and sitting with her every couple hours. I felt like I had a newborn that week. I don't do well with sleep deprivation. On Wednesday night about eleven p.m. I saw her back and tale arching in definite contractions. So I went to sleep and our schedule went something like this; D checks on her at one a.m., I check on her at three a.m., then four a.m. before deciding that she was close enough that I shouldn't go back to sleep. 

Thank goodness for our goat security camera which is wired into our television as I was able to lay on the couch and watch her in labor. And I watched and watched, she got up and stretched, pawed, contraction, laid back down, up, turn, paw, contraction, laid down again and so it went. By the time I realized I could probably sleep some more I had been drinking some caffeinated tea and eating chocolate chip cookies - oops, but at least I had a really good book to read by headlamp. Before I knew it, it was dawn and the kids were stirring and still no goat babies. And so the day went. Zinnia in labor, slowly progressing, but never getting to that pushing stage.

Now, if you read about goat labor there is always debate; but generally people agree that you wait until the goat is visibly pushing and then you want to see a hoof within a half hour or forty-five minutes. What no one discusses enough is what you do when the goat never gets to the pushing stage. Most people would say that if the doe is getting visibly worn out or looking weaker or going down hill that something is wrong and you go in. I'm beginning to think that if you notice that, you've probably waited too long already. In Zinnia's case, she looked fine, she was just doing her thing and did not seem to be overly agitated or distressed. One concern that I had was that this reminded me of her labor last year and I was hoping that this isn't a pattern. Last year we sat up with her all night and into the next day. When I finally "went in", her doelings were in the correct position, but they weren't close to coming out. I went ahead and pulled them out, but in looking back I thought I must have jumped the gun, or intervened unnecessarily as doe and kids were both strong and healthy. 

My girlfriend Becca was sitting with me and I asked her how long she could stay. She said she needed to leave by ten p.m., and I believe it was about eight thirty p.m. So I decided to see what was going on. I dipped my gloved hand into diluted everclear, then into warm water with J Lube, and carefully worked my way in, one finger at a time until I was up to my elbow. Becca works the front end with her arm around Zinnias neck, cooing and encouraging her. I had to go way in, so again the kids were not coming out anytime soon if ever. She was dialated though, which means that they should have been. Closing my eyes I found one leg and then another and I clasped them both in my right hand, but also felt around and I thought I felt a head between them, so I started to pull him out, (pulling with her contractions and once the legs come out pulling down towards her hocks). Once the legs were out I realized that he was either upside down or backwards. I decided to try and pull it out as it was and ended up being rash and just really pulling with all my might not caring if the kid made it or not at this point. When the kid came out, I realized why he hadn't been coming out, his head was turned back on himself instead of facing forward. Oops, poor mama. Most goat people would agree that this is the most difficult presentation when the head is turned, because the head is used to being turned and wants to go back into that position with every contraction. The usual recommended procedure is to use a kid puller or sterilize a piece of baling twine. You work that in behind their head and under their jaw and then hold tight to keep the head in position while pulling on the front legs. 

The first buckling was pretty much unresponsive and completely limp and floppy. I felt a faint heartbeat but really couldn't take the time to work on him. I set him off to the side. I put on another glove, re-sanitized, re-lubed and went back in to find another kid. Again I found two legs, this time I didn't feel a head so again I thought I had the back two legs. This kid came out easier, but again when he came out he was upside down with his neck turned. He was also unresponsive but had a faint heart beat. I rubbed him briefly before going back in. I was pretty sure there was going to be one more kid in there and there was. This time I grabbed small legs and easily pulled out a doeling. The doeling was in the correct position and in decent shape. We quickly put her in front of her dam who was very happy to see here and took off licking and talking to her immediately, despite how awful she must have felt. 

We started rubbing the second buckling. I wish I'd had cayenne tincture to put on his gums and chest. Instead I had dried cayenne which I rubbed into his gums. From now on I'll keep the tincture in my kidding kit. It is a heart starter and one of the most recommended emergency herbs for this sort of situation. We tried a little CPR on the guy, but he didn't make it either. Fortunately Zinnia has a daughter to love and care for. We quickly got the boys out of the barn,  hoping she wouldn't be too sad. 

After a couple hours of drying off the doeling and getting her to nurse we finally headed inside where we could watch dam and doeling on the t.v. I headed back down before going to bed to see if I could get the doeling to nurse one more time. While I was down there I noticed that Avalon was in labor. She is a first timer, so I was pretty sure I had time for some sleep. 

Avalon didn't really get going until the next afternoon. After a labor like Zinnia's I was extra alert, worried that Avalon was taking too long to progress, not wanting to jump the gun but not wanting to make the same mistake twice of not going in soon enough. Early afternoon I lubed up and went in a little to see if she was dilated and she wasn't, so I worked her cervix a bit and backed out. I sat with her for another couple hours before she finally began to push. She was close to pushing a kid out and I was getting worried that she might push out a big head first and then I'd have a hard time getting the legs, so I called Dustin down to help hold her. I lubed up and went in and sure enough there was a head right there about to come out. I reached down the right side, following his neck and felt the front of his left leg folded back underneath itself and I got a couple fingers underneath and pulled his leg forward. Then I went down the other side of his neck and that leg was completely flat against his body so again I reached back till I could get fingers under his leg and pull it out. Then I had both front hooves and I slowly pulled as she pushed. He was a good size buckling so it took her a while to push him out. But we just took it slow and steady till he made it. He was a healthy normal kid, so we cleared his nostrils and began to dry him off. We set him in front of his mom, but she was pretty distracted and we figured there was another one coming. I lubed up and went back in and there was a doeling in the correct position who came out easily. She too was healthy and in good shape. And here are some pictures.

 Doeling is black and brown on left, buckling is more tan and black with some white, right.

Avalon's kids were so healthy. These were the first kids that we've had that stayed up on their feet for several hours before laying down to rest. Avalon is a very attentive mom, and fortunately for us she is not too overly protective like Zinnia, who is a bit on the vicious side- I've almost been bit in the face a few times. Zinnia's doeling is named Wild Roots Clary Sage, nick named Clary, after both the herb and one of my favorite heroines from this winter's reading. Avalon's daughter is named Wild Roots Camelot, nick named Camy or Cameo. They are both very sweet and enjoy being held and loved on. Both will be for sale. The buckling will not be named unless he is registered as a buck - because you don't name animals you might eat. :) 


Our next doe due is Zuri. She is due the second week of May. Rose and Bluebell may be due in August. And now, I am past due to milk some goats.