In the interest of trying to keep this blog focused mostly on me and my horse life, I started a new blog for the new additions to the farm and to keep track of the other livestock additions that may come in the future. Future goat news will probably be posted there as well.
I finally managed to talk Alayne into doing a blog for Horses For Clean Water. Green Horsekeeping Chronicles will be yet another extension for Alayne and the rest of the HCW staff to interact with horse people around the world. Please visit the blog and also the latest issue of The Green Horse. This looks to be a great new venue to spread the “green” horsekeeping message.
I have been lacking in my posting lately. And I do have lots to write and photos to share, just not enough time to get it done it seems. Here is a brief update.
I put tomato seeds in plastic egg cartons on the radiant heated bathroom floor. Had seedlings within a week and just repotted them the other day. They are doing smashingly well. Roma, heirloom and legend.
Put cucumbers, tomatillos and soybeans in another flat three days ago and they are now up!
Paddock Boy was able to rig a shop light stand for me to continue to coddle the plants along until it’s time to move them outside. It may be a while...we had hail and snow this afternoon! And more is in the forecast. Winter isn’t gone yet. But I long for fresh tomatoes for salsa and lots of cukes for more pickles!
And there is a bald eagle currently roosting in the oak tree in the front yard.
This is a great article by Enumclaw’s own garden guru and author Marianne Binetti.
Now is a great time to get the scoop on poop
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My husband came in this morning around sunrise to inform me that the run-in shed flipped over in the wind and that the horses were fine but were out running around. I dressed to go outside and help him put the horses in the round pen and then collect items before they blew away. Once that was done, then we grabbed a quick bite of breakfast and headed back out to the barn to reorganize the straw and hay bales to get the goats, barn cats, dog and horses all settled in. Took a couple of hours, but everyone is now cozy in the barn out of the wind.
Here is what it looked like before:
We made our trek into Forest Service Land today to get our tree. There’s not any snow to speak of in the mountains yet, so we were able to get quite high up today and made a great find. I have wanted a tall and skinny tree ever since we moved into this house. That happened this year, finally! Ten dollars and a little bit of fuel and hiking can get you a decent tree.
Mt. Rainier has been putting on quite the cloud show the past couple of days. It was a sign of the rain to come, which finally did this evening.
Thanks to Crunchy Chicken I dried a decent batch of cinnamon apple slices last week. They are already half gone and I need to make more!
And then thanks to Suzanne McMinn at Chickens In The Road I made a tasty batch of Crock Pot Apple Butter, only I left out the rum and raisins this time around.
Paddock Boy sampled the tiny leftovers from the canning and decided it was worth opening a jar for immediate consumption! And I sent a jar home with the in-laws the other day since my M-I-L helped by occupying the Little Cowboy much of last week. They even made an apple pie! I unfortunately knocked a jar off the counter and it crashed on the floor. :( Another jar went home with friends this evening... At this rate I guess no apple butter is going to make it to Christmas for presents this year unless I make some more.
And our little goatie girls will soon be consuming the various unwanted species around our place. Most notably the Himalayan blackberries and thistles.
FindArticles - Goats Advocated as Environmentally Sound Brush Control
Cattleman, The, Oct 2006
Plants Known To Be Poisonous To Goats
GoatWorld.Com
Edible and Poisonous Plants for Goats
Fias Co Farm
Yes, we do!
It was a minor scramble today to get everything done, but we did get their pen ready while they waited patiently in the back of the old Ford.
We stuck to our budget and probably could have gone a bit under, but in the end, we probably saved these two girls from a potential demise. There were TONS of goats at the auction today. Easily ten times as many as there were last weekend. We didn’t get there early enough to go back to the pens to look at the goats ahead of time, but I think we still did an okay job. These girls aren’t lame and don’t appear to be sick.
The little horned one is quite scared of people, but with a little work I think we’ll be able to get her to come around.
The black and white one is a bit more socialized to humans and will let me approach without completely cornering her.
I rather like hearing their bleating on occasion. I think this is going to be a good experience for the whole family, and hopefully these girls will stick around for many years. Now we just need to come up with some names and also have the vet check them out and maybe give us some idea on approximate ages.
Buena and Toad weren’t quite sure what to make of the new additions.
And it sure will be interesting getting Buster and the goats acquainted since they weren’t too sure of each other when we were loading the goats up to bring them home. Buster was a bit excited, as most yellow labs can be!
There are small houses and then there’s an 84-square-foot house on wheels in Olympia that Dee Williams calls home. Click on the image to be linked to the video segment from King5’s Evening Magazine.
If you’d like more information about Dee’s little house, send her an email at Dee . boxcar @ yahoo . com (remove spaces).
For more resources, check out these links that Dee sent to me to share with folks:
