Antiquity Oaks

Lizzie's triplets

2012-02-02T13:57:00.000-06:00

If only Lizzie's birth had been a stand-alone event -- meaning there was nothing else happening at the time -- it would have been perfectly glorious. But life on a homestead isn't like that. Of course, sometimes things happen at the perfect time when we have nothing else happening and when our heads are clear and we can think logically. But not the day Lizzie decided to kid.

If you read the post about Viola's death a couple of weeks ago, you know that right in the midst of that confusing mess, Lizzie went into labor. It's probably a good thing that I didn't write up the experience too soon, or I would have sounded like a -- hmm, I don't know -- let's just say I would not have inspired confidence in anyone that any goat could actually give birth without complications. I sit here typing today and know that is absolutely not true. But when you are in the midst of trying to save a dieing goat, and you saw a horribly deformed kid born only two days earlier, your brain can become horribly pessimistic. (You're probably thinking paranoid.)

If I would have written this sooner, I could have given you a minute-to-minute script of all the horrible things that were going through my head, but trust me when I say that you're not missing anything important. There are really only two things I remember at this point. The first kid was coming out head only, which can be a little challenging because the shoulders are kind of wide when the legs are against the chest. But it is not a big deal, especially for a doe that gave birth to a five-pound buckling last year! I know she has enough room to give birth to the caprine version of a draft horse. And the kid was born just fine.

The other thing that sticks out in my head is that while I was drying off the second one, Lizzie was standing there licking it, and suddenly -- plop! -- there was a kid in the straw behind her. I have no idea whether it was born nose first, tail first, or something in between. I'm not even sure that Lizzie knew she had pushed out another one, which is why a human needs to be there for these goats that have multiple kids. After the first two, they usually come shooting out with what appears to be virtually no effort on the part of the doe. Lizzie was busy licking one of the first two kids, so who knows when she would have noticed number three. Indeed, in our early days with goats, before we were halfway competent about figuring out when a doe was going to kid, we wound up with too many hypothermic kids that were part of triplets or quads. It was not fun.

So, Lizzie gave birth to three beautiful and healthy doelings. I had planned to keep a doeling, and now I have to choose one! Yesterday, I spent an hour with them, and I'm having a terrible time deciding. The tan one is definitely an aspiring herd queen. The creamier one is a social butterfly, and the whiter one is mama's girl. If only I hadn't broken my crystal ball, I could figure out which one will be the best milker when she grows up. I usually have such a terrible time deciding in these situations that I just let the buyers choose, and I keep the one that's left.

Update on book, goats, and weather

2012-01-31T19:00:00.000-06:00

Timpani, one of the Viola triplets

I'm sorry to dropped off the face of the blog world the last couple weeks, but I turned in my Ecofrugal book manuscript to the publisher yesterday, so I have more time now to devote to everything else in my life -- like my goats and blogging! And it's a good thing because yesterday we moved seven goats into the kidding barn. Life is going to get crazy around here in a couple weeks!

The gross necropsy results on Viola showed that she also had pneumonia, which the vet said is actually not uncommon in a goat that has milk fever, especially because I didn't realize her shivering in labor was a symptom of milk fever and didn't begin treatment until 24 hours after she started showing symptoms. So, if you ever see a goat in labor shivering, and it's only 45 degrees -- suspect milk fever. I've only seen goats shiver twice in the last ten years, and in both cases, the temperature was below zero, but it never occurred to me that something as simple as shivering could be a symptom of a life-threatening illness!

I am happy to report that Viola's triplets are doing great. Who would have ever thought Jo's tragedy could turn out to be such a blessing, but she's a very heavy milker and has only one kid to feed, so she has plenty of milk for the mini mancha kids. We're milking her twice a day without even separating her from her baby, and we're getting about 3 pounds of milk from her, which is about a quart and a half. Then Caboose freshened with a single kid, and she normally has multiples, so we have her milk, as well. Even though we had a dreadful start to kidding this year, things seem to be working out quite well.

Over the next couple days I'll be telling you about Lizzie's and Caboose's births, as well as my only remaining la mancha Clare.

The temperature outside today is in the mid-50s, which is crazy for this time of year, but we have had almost no days at all where the temperatures were freezing. Some nights it doesn't even freeze, which is even weirder. Since early January, I've been saying, "It's perfect maple syrup weather, except that it's not mid-February!" I have no idea what this will mean for the maple syrup season this year, but I don't think it's good. Luckily we had a month-long season last year and were able to put up five gallons, so we should have enough to last us until next year.

I spent an hour out in the barn playing with baby goats this afternoon. In spite of the fact that I know it's bad news for trees and parasites on the pasture, I am enjoying this unseasonably warm weather.

A second night of frustration and sadness

2012-01-19T20:15:00.000-06:00

Margaret arrived yesterday morning with the antibiotics, calcium supplement, and thermometer. By that time, I had already figured out that Viola was definitely suffering from hypocalcemia, which is often called "milk fever." About eleven o'clock, I started injecting 50 cc of calcium into Viola. One of the things I had read said that she should receive more injections an hour later, but by then, the goat would be feeling so much better, she would be a challenge to inject. Another thing I read simply said to do three separate series of injections the first day, so I decided to sort of split the difference and do the second series of injections after a few hours.

A few hours later, Viola was not fighting me. In fact, I really did not see any improvement in her at all. Everything I'd read made it sound like treating milk fever was quite simple. Although some sources mentioned that death was possible, it was usually mentioned in the same sentence as, "if left untreated," which was not the case. I also didn't read anything that said to call the vet immediately if the doe doesn't respond within an hour to the calcium injections. It was close to three o'clock, and I started to think that I should call the U of I vet clinic, but it was very clear that Lizzie was going to kid soon, and I couldn't leave her. The vet clinic would probably tell me to bring her in, but I couldn't leave Lizzie alone.

It also occurred to me that I had no idea how I could take her in. I didn't know how I would get her into a crate to put her on the back of the pick-up, which wouldn't be appropriate anyway because it would be freezing back there -- the temperature was in the 20s. The trailer had issues, which left me with the option of using my car, and I'd have to somehow lift her into the car because she certainly couldn't jump. As my brain tried to work this out, I was reminded that Lizzie was going to kid soon, making the whole conversation in my head pointless. I decided to do another series of calcium injections. When doing calcium injections sub-q, you are supposed to split them up into 10 cc injections in various parts of the body. I had just done the second injection when laboring Lizzie screamed and pushed so hard, she almost flipped herself onto her back. I decided that the rest of the injections could wait, so I moved to Lizzie's pen.

An hour later, Lizzie finally kidded -- which I'll tell you about tomorrow -- and of course, it took time to get the kids cleaned up. The colder it is, the longer it takes to get kids dry, even with a blow dryer. It amazes me how you can think a kid is dry, but when you pet them ten minutes later, they feel wet again.

It was almost six o'clock by the time I could think about Viola again. I injected the rest of the calcium and went into the house for dinner. I also pulled out my goat books and read everything I could find in them and online about hypocalcemia. The advice was almost identical from one source to another -- calcium injections. A friend posted my dilemma on a natural care goat group, and suggestions from a variety of people started to come in. I decided to give Viola an oral calcium drench in addition to the injectable, and I made an infusion of a variety of herbs that someone recommended. Although we'd had a heat lamp on her, I decided to cut the arms off of an old sweatshirt and put it on her to help keep her warm. Her body temperature was dropping, which usually means an animal's body is shutting down and they are about to die. However, I continued to hold out hope because everything written on hypocalcemia says that lowered body temperature is a typical symptom.

In the midst of all my reading, I realized that Viola had a symptom of hypocalcemia when she was in labor -- she was shivering, and it was only 45 degrees that day. I knew she shouldn't be shivering on such a warm day, but I didn't realize it was the first symptom of milk fever. The only goats I had ever seen shiver in the past were goats that were giving birth when the temperature was below zero. I began to worry that we had started treatment too late.

After heading back out to the barn, I gave Viola the oral calcium drench and the warm infusion of herbs that I had made. She seemed to enjoy the herbs. Maybe it was just the warmth of the infusion that she liked, but she didn't try to move her head away as I used a drench syringe to squirt it into her mouth. I sat with her and hugged her as her babies jumped all over both of us. I wish she could have told me if she wanted the kids around or not. I thought about moving them to another pen, but I was afraid that would upset her. It wasn't very long before she started to moan. It sounded so terribly human, like a person in pain. I thought about calling the vet clinic's emergency number. Mike would be home any minute and could help me put her into my car, but another part of my brain said it was too late.

A half hour later, she was dead. Her babies were curled up next to her. I didn't have the heart to disturb them. A dozen questions went through my head -- questions about Viola and milk fever and my own thought process -- and I felt horribly guilty. We took Viola's body to the university vet clinic today for a necropsy. It felt so backwards. She should have been there yesterday when she was still alive, when they could have still helped her. It felt so ridiculous giving her history to a vet when she was already dead. But I have to know what went wrong. If we learn nothing from this, then Viola's death would be completely in vain. And that would be even more tragic.

A night of frustration and sadness

2012-01-18T09:44:00.000-06:00

This post is not for the faint of heart. Last night Jo finally gave birth, shortly after I told Katherine that I was going to check her to make sure the first kid was presenting properly -- which I never did because Katherine talked me out of it. All day long, Jo had been bleating, although it was more of an annoyed bleat rather than one that signaled something was terribly wrong. I didn't realize until talking to Mike last night that I should have become worried long before I actually was. He said that I told him around 2:00 that Jo was quietly pushing between bleats. That's the way Jo and her sisters and their mother gives birth -- quietly -- so all of the bleating was really odd. Seeing her quietly pushing, however, made me think that everything was fine.

Last night around nine o'clock, I saw something white starting to emerge from Jo. It was not a nose, a hoof, or a butt, and it seemed too round to be a rib cage. Those are the only body parts I've ever seen presenting, but my brain said that the white thing looked like the top of a kid's head. As I was trying to figure out what I was seeing so I could respond intelligently, Jo gave a big push, and a whole head emerged -- a whole, huge head with a tiny little muzzle. The rest of the tiny kid came shooting out, and I immediately noticed a lot of red tissue. Temperatures were in the teens, so I had a towel waiting to dry the kid, and I immediately wrapped it up and placed it next to Jo's head, so she and I could clean it off. When I uncovered the kid, I saw what looked like a pile of intestines. As Jo tried to grab the pile of tissue, I stopped her and covered the kid back up so that she could only see the head, which was about twice as big as it should have been.

Jo gave another push, and when I looked towards her back end, I saw another kid about to be born. I grabbed a clean towel to catch it, and I placed it next to her face, moving the first kid away. I looked at the first kid under the towel and saw lots of things that were not quite right. I ran into the barn office and grabbed the cordless phone, dialing as I was running back to the kidding pen. Jo has always had three or four kids, so I was expecting another one to come shooting out at any moment. I called Katherine on her cell phone and just blurted, "Kat, get out here now! This is really freaky! I need you! Now!" As soon as I heard her say, "Okay," I hit the call end button and tossed the phone on the shelf above me. I took another look at the first kid and saw that the legs were all crooked and malformed, connected incorrectly, and the body was twisted in an unnatural position. There was definitely a pile of intestines, but the kid was very much alive. I continued drying the second kid as Katherine walked in.

I handed her the bundle in the green towel and said, "It's deformed. Take it into the office." After Katherine left, I realized I had no idea what sex either kid was, so I looked at the one I was drying and saw that it was a doeling. About fifteen minutes later, Jo stood up like she was done, and I saw long cords hanging out of her back end, which usually means the only thing left is the placenta. She still looked quite large though. I stood over her, straddling her body, bent over, and laced my fingers together under her belly, just in front of her udder. I lifted her off the ground and felt nothing but mushiness in her belly. No sign of another kid. I went into the barn office to see how Katherine was doing, as I continued watching Jo from the window that overlooks the kidding pens.

Katherine, who wants to be a doctor, said that those were definitely intestines, and you could see the peristalsis -- movement -- in them. I watched closely, and it looked like a little bundle of glistening red worms moving almost imperceptibly. In spite of what we saw, the intestines were ice cold, even though we were in the heated office. She complained that the little doe kept trying to stand and was crying in frustration because her completely deformed legs wouldn't support her.

It was past ten o'clock by now, and I called Mike and told him what had happened and that he'd need to put her down when he got home. It was especially sad because she clearly had such a will to live. I went back out to see Jo and her other doeling. Jo passed what I initially assumed was her placenta, although most does don't do that for a couple of hours after the last kid is born, sometimes later. It wasn't as much red tissue as I'm accustomed to seeing in a placenta. It looked more like an amniotic sac filled with water and blue and white tissue. I tried to grab the tissue that was inside, but it was like trying to snag a goldfish in a plastic bag of water. I tried to rip open the bag, but I had no luck, and Jo was eating it in record time. Part of my brain was yelling at me to take it away from her until I'd figured out exactly what I was seeing, but it was late, and the other half of my brain wasn't listening.

An hour later, as I looked at Jo's big belly, I started to wonder if that was an amniotic sac for another kid. If it was, the kid would be dead now because the placenta was passed already. I stood over her again and lifted her belly off the ground. I moved my hands into several different positions and still felt nothing but a mushy abdomen. I thought about checking her internally for another kid, but I knew I didn't have any antibiotics, which would be necessary at this point if I went fishing trying to see if another kid was inside.

I knew I didn't have any antibiotics because in the midst of all the chaos with Jo, I noticed that Viola was not herself. She had spent the whole evening standing and staring or laying down with her head down. She refused grain. I felt her udder, which was soft and normal, so no mastitis. I bounced her belly to see if I could find another kid, and it was just soft and mushy. I couldn't see how she could have an infection because she didn't have an assisted birth, but I figured I should take her temperature to be sure. I couldn't find either of my thermometers. I thought about giving her a shot of antibiotics but realized the only bottle in the medicine cabinet expired a year ago. So, I gave her an ounce of Power Punch (which is mostly molasses and vitamins) and every vitamin and mineral supplement I had on hand, just in case it was something nutritional, although I didn't have any calcium, which may be exactly what she needs.

With everything else going on, I never actually saw Jo's doeling nurse, although her belly felt round and full. I tried multiple times to get her to nurse when I was in the pen with them, but she was quite resistant. If babies don't get colostrum within the first six hours, their ability to completely absorb it decreases with each passing hour, so it's not the kind of thing you want to wait on. I finally decided to trust the feeling of the round belly and assume that she had nursed.

It was past one this morning when I finally got to bed, continuing to worry about Jo and Viola. Just after five, there was a loud metallic crash in the laundry room that woke me up. I still can't believe what I saw. The dog's food and water bowl are normally in a metal stand, but the metal stand was on its side in the middle of the room, and both the food and water bowl were sitting perfectly on the floor where the stand had been sitting. So, there is no way I could go back to sleep.

Knowing that the local farm store doesn't have the antibiotic I want, I called Margaret (my oldest who graduated from college in December and is looking for a job) and asked her to pick it up, as well as a thermometer, at one of the farm stores that's located in a city between where she lives and our place. I've also asked her to pick up a calcium supplement because Viola is also shivering, which is a sign of milk fever, along with lack of appetite and lethargy. We've never had milk fever here before, but apparently it does not include a fever, so I really need that thermometer!

To add to the excitement, Lizzie might kid today. I had originally thought about driving an hour to the little city to get what I needed, but when I thought about that, I realized that it would be really nice to have another brain here today. I'm not sure mine will be functioning very well. In fact, if Lizzie doesn't have a textbook perfect birth, I am really not going to be happy.

Viola's big surprise

2012-01-16T22:43:00.002-06:00

When Katherine was doing chores this morning, she said into the baby monitor, "Uh, I think Viola is going to give birth today. She's not herself exactly." She laughed. "I'll tell you more when I get inside." It's a one-way baby monitor, so I couldn't respond, but she certainly had my attention. When she came inside, she said that Viola completely ignored the hay instead of running up to the hay feeder as soon as it was filled. That's not funny unless you know Viola. She is incredibly pushy and is often the only goat at a hay feeder because she butts everyone else away. When Katherine put grain in there, she sniffed it and walked over to the corner of the pen and laid down. She also had all the signs that we look for in a goat that's going to give birth within a few hours -- her tail ligaments were soft, her udder was huge, and her belly was looking hollow towards the top. I told Katherine to put her into a kidding pen.

Every couple hours throughout the day I kept checking on her, even though we had the baby monitor on. She was definitely in her own little world. She was barely interested in food, only taking a bite here and there. She was laying down almost all the time, and she was having quite a bit of drainage -- not just mucous but dripping water, which you almost never see in a goat. Water sacs don't usually break until the goat is actively pushing. So, all day long I had this feeling that she might actually be ready to kick it into high gear and push out a kid at any minute.

Around 3:30, I decided to go outside and stay with her because the baby monitor was picking up some extremely annoying static. In addition to driving me crazy, I wasn't entirely sure I'd hear Viola if she started making a lot of noise. I took a magazine and the handouts from last week's conference. About an hour later, Viola got serious, and I saw a white hoof and a black nose with a little red tongue sticking out. In no time at all, we had a whole black baby goat!

He was an only child for about half an hour. Mike came through the barn and asked if I thought she had more. I gestured towards her big belly and said, "Oh, yeah, she's got another one in there. Look how big she still is!" It really didn't look like she'd given birth at all.

Viola and her buckling

Everyone came through the barn around the time that the second kid was born -- a black doeling! I was a little worried about her because her amniotic sac was full of poop. Although I've never seen a problem caused by this in goats, I spent too many years as a childbirth educator and doula with women to not be freaked out by it and worried about it getting into the baby's lungs. The head came out with the amniotic sac still intact, and I could see the brown water in there. I popped the sac and cleaned the kid's face and nose as good as possible -- and wished that I had my bulb syringe to suck out the nose just to be extra sure. But I didn't have it, and really it should have been fine because I had the face good and clean by the time the kid took its first breath.

The first doeling

As we were cooing and admiring the doeling, I happened to see Viola's back end when I looked at Mike, and I saw another pair of hooves! I gasped. "It's a hoof! I need more towels! She's having three! Get me more towels!" Because la manchas usually only have twins, I had only brought out three towels, and all three were now soaking wet. There were plenty more towels in the barn office, and Jonathan brought two more. When I looked more closely at the hooves, I realized they were upside down and started to panic, especially since there was no nose. In my mind, I was picturing a terrible malpresentation with a posterior kid that had its head twisted around over its back. Katherine happened to be walking through the barn at that moment, and she took one look at the situation and said very calmly, "Those are hind legs. It's breech." The legs were already sticking out a couple inches, so I ran my fingers up the legs and realized she was right when I felt the hocks. Breech goat kids are really not a big deal. We've had plenty of breech babies born with no problems, and breech is definitely better than what I had been picturing! Still, I was thinking about the poop-filled amniotic sac of the second kid, which means she was stressed, and I worried that this one might also be having a problem, so rather than letting go of the hind legs, I gently pulled, and in what seemed like a split second, she was born.

The second doeling

I heard Mike chuckle behind me. "I don't think Viola even noticed that one was born." Yeah, that's usually the case with a third or fourth kid. While I was drying her off, I made sure her head was lower than the rest of her body so the fluids would all run out of her nose and mouth. Unlike the last kid, which turned my towel brown as I was toweling her off, this one was completely clean -- or at least as clean as normal birth goo can be.

They are all a few hours old now and doing quite well. They've had their first meal of colostrum and have the whole nursing thing figured out. I am actually pretty excited that Viola had triplets for a couple of reasons. Last year she was making so much milk that we had to milk her even though she was nursing her kids 24 hours a day. We'd milk her every night and get a quart of milk, so these babies will be very well fed. Although Viola is a la mancha (which is why the ears are so tiny), daddy was a Nigerian dwarf, so these are mini manchas! I'll have to wait and see what Clare gives us before deciding which of these babies I'll be keeping for my mini mancha herd.

I'm pretty sure that Lizzie the Nigerian dwarf will be giving birth within the next day or two. She's only at day 146, but her udder is looking uncomfortably large, and her ligaments are so soft, they could be gone at any minute.

Rainbow Inca corn

2012-01-05T06:00:00.000-06:00

We recently ground up the rainbow inca corn that we grew in the garden. We used some of it for cornbread, which was really delicious, and we used some of it for hominy grits, which was not so great. I think we probably should have soaked it before cooking because it didn't taste quite done, and we cooked it for half an hour. We also ate some as corn on the cob during the summer, and it was delicious fresh.

Beef, our house, and the new year

2011-12-30T21:48:00.001-06:00

Bridget's and Molly's calves are now beef -- or something between veal and beef. They're not technically veal because veal is supposedly one hundred percent milk-fed, and these boys spent their whole lives on pasture nursing and eating grass the way nature intended. The butcher at the locker said that they'll have more flavor than veal but not as strong as beef.

I'm thinking this is probably what our ancestors thought of as veal. After all, historically animals would have been raised on grass with their mother. Today's veal comes from anemic calves that are fed an unnatural diet of only milk, and they're confined to small pens. It would be really interesting to find a book written more than a century ago on the raising of cattle. I'm sure one is out there. I just have to find it. After all, this really makes perfect sense. Calves are born in spring and grow up eating fresh pasture and their mother's milk. They are never castrated and are butchered before winter sets in so you don't have to start feeding hay.

Happy birthday, house!
It's hard to believe that we moved in to our house seven years ago tomorrow -- not because time flies, but because it is still not finished. I can't believe that we have lived here for seven years and have not finished the stairs or all of the trim around the windows and doors. Then again, on a farm there is always so much other stuff to do. And the needs of your animals and garden don't wait. Stairs and trim don't seem very important in the grand scheme of life.

Happy New Year!
Our first goats will be arriving around Jan. 12, and Bridget and Molly will be calving again in April. And my next baby -- er, book, called Ecofrugal -- will be hitting bookstores in the fall! I hope everyone has an outstanding 2012 where all of your homesteading dreams come true!

Worry, doubts, and hay in winter

2011-12-14T17:22:00.000-06:00

You don't have to know me very well to know that I worry a lot -- probably far more than is good for me. I once read that worrying too much is just as bad for you as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. That just gave me one more thing to worry about! I'm doing everything that is supposed to be good for me -- except this worrying thing! But I digress.

What I really want to write about today is the hay situation. Every year I worry about hay -- having enough hay to last until the pastures are growing again, as well as having good quality hay that will keep the animals well nourished and healthy. I wish I understood how hay that looked great in the middle of summer doesn't look so great in winter. I bought hay from two different farms this year, from three different cuttings. They all looked great when I bought them, but now I'm having my doubts about two of them. One is so stemmy that the goats won't eat it unless I feed them in a big group -- then, of course, they all want to get it so no one else does. I love it when goat peer pressure works for me. If there are only three or four goats in a group though, they look at me like, "You expect us to eat THIS?"

We only got 300 bales of the really good stuff, and the goats have already gone through half of that. I'm thinking we'll save the other half for when the does kid. In the meantime, we'll start feeding the stemmy stack. The other stuff smells kind of like pickles. The cattle are eating it though, so I suppose I'll continue to feed it to them. No, I have not sold any of them yet, in spite of what I said.

Every time I go out there to feed them, I tell myself I need to make an appointment at the locker to take in the two young bulls for processing. That would reduce the hay usage quite a bit. But that little red bull is just such a beautiful vibrant red, and he's polled. Honestly, I didn't try very hard to sell him as a bull. I only advertised in a couple of places. But if I sell a bull for breeding, it really should be his father. I'm not sure what kind of meat we'd get from an intact 2-year-old bull, even though I was mentally turning him into steaks the last time we had to bring him home from a neighbor's place a few months ago.

I go through this every winter, even though every summer I feel like I'm buying more hay than ever before. The increase in the cattle population is a big part of the problem. I really did buy more hay than ever before. The front of the big barn was full -- that's a 30-foot by 30-foot area -- as well as another area in the smaller barn. I think I wound up buying about 900 bales total. It's only December, and there is already an open area in the barn that is way bigger than it should be by now.

But the only smart thing to do is to butcher those two bull calves. It is not smart to buy hay in winter. It's always way more expensive than summertime because the hay men know that if you're buying in winter, you're desperate. And the other problem with the hay disappearing so fast is that we do have a lot more goats than normal. Since we were blessed with 29 bucklings this year, only about two-thirds of them were sold as bucks for breeding or wethers (castrated males) as pets. There are about a dozen wethers out there that are also eating a lot of hay.

A few years ago, I didn't think I could ever eat a goat, but that was a few years ago -- long before I found myself standing in the barn wondering how I was ever going to feed all these animals until next spring. Mike butchered one of the wethers a couple of months ago, and the meat was quite good. He really needs to butcher more of them. But we've been procrastinating.

When we first moved out here, I used to feel like the queen of some small country. Coming from a typical suburban lot, our 32 acres out here felt like a small kingdom, and I was suddenly responsible for the lives of a lot of animals. I didn't initially feel comfortable being the one who decided when an animal's life would end. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely comfortable with that idea, even knowing that I am making a responsible decision when it comes to allocating our resources, such as pasture space and hay. But goats and cows have to give birth if you want milk. And as good stewards of our land and caretakers of our animals, we have to have a plan for those babies. If they are not sold, the logical place for them is on the dinner table.

Just right!

2011-12-03T20:21:00.001-06:00

Tonight's dinner was one of those that reminded me why we do what we do. We had shepherd's pie made with meat from the spring lambs. It had a deliciously mild lamb flavor, and I could have eaten until I painfully regretted it, but luckily my son came out with the left-over containers and started putting it away.

After trying a couple of times, we finally got this one right. The first time we butchered lambs, they were a year old and had been castrated. They were 25 to 30 pounds, hanging weight, which is not big. I remember the woman at the locker saying, "Those chops are going to be dinky!" But they were yummy! We did that for a couple of years, but I knew that without testosterone, they just don't grow that fast.. Last year, we butchered some intact yearling rams, which were 45 to 50 pounds, but had a strong lamb flavor. I was not crazy about that. In fact, the more I ate it, the more I disliked it, and the past few months I've been saying that we should sell the sheep. Then we butchered the spring lambs, which were only about six months old and had not been castrated. Jackpot! They weighed 24 to 29 pounds hanging weight, which is about the same as the yearling wethers, but we didn't have to feed them over the winter. And the flavor of the meat was, I think, even more mild than the yearling wethers.

This is a win-win for the the humans and the rams. They don't have to get castrated. We don't have to feed them over the winter. And we get just as much delicious lamb as if we had put them through that unhappy ordeal and spent the money on feeding them hay over the winter.

I announced at dinner tonight that we'd be continuing to raise sheep on Antiquity Oaks. I'm glad I didn't have time to advertise the flock and sell them all. I'd have been terribly disappointed if I had tasted this delicious meat and realized I couldn't have more next year.

This-n-that and free books

2011-11-30T15:27:00.001-06:00

As I am typing away at my computer working on The Ecofrugal Handbook, which will be published next fall, my goats are starting to show off their pregnant bellies, and I'm getting excited about the babies that will be arriving starting in January. Due to all my traveling this fall with the Homegrown and Handmade book tour, I wasn't here enough to catch everyone in heat in a timely manner, so kids will be making their debuts between January and April.

A couple days ago, we put James the American Guinea Hog back in the walnut grove with Julia and their babies, which means we can expect our next litter of piglets at the end of March. As I suspected, Julia weaned her babies somewhere around three or four months. Most people separate the piglets from mama around two months because they say the sow starts to lose too much weight, but the babies were two months old right when the acorns and hickories started to fall, so Julia actually started gaining weight about that time!

I'm sad that I'm down to one pair each of the silver and gold Sebrights, the bantam chickens that I added to the homestead this past spring. I don't know whether it was coyotes or coons, but whatever it was, the bantams are almost gone. I am thinking about trying to catch them so I can lock them in the barn in hopes of being able to raise some chicks in the spring. They may be small in stature, but they are big in taste. We butchered the extra roosters in the summer when they were around four months old. Each one dressed out right around one pound, so we split them in half and grilled them. Sebright now ties stew hens as my favorite meat from the farm. I didn't realize a grilled chicken could taste that amazing!

If you want to chat about making Christmas gifts or turkey left-overs or anything homegrown or handmade, you can head over to my publisher's book club, and if you join the conversation, you'll be automatically entered to win a copy of my book. The drawing will be on Dec. 13.

If you have been thinking that you would like to give a copy of H&H to a friend or loved one, you can click over to the Homegrown and Handmade blog, leave a comment before Friday midnight, and be entered to win.

'Tis the season for . . .

2011-11-19T12:13:00.001-06:00

We harvested lots of winter squash this year!
photo by Lynn Stone

From the first year that we moved to Antiquity Oaks in 2002, we began to live in rhythm with nature, benefiting from our own labors, and feeling the consequences of labor lost. Of course, we weren't able to grow a lot of our own food the first few years, but as each year passed, we have learned to grow more and more. Today the main things we buy at the store are staples like flour, vinegar, sugar, salt, coffee, and cocoa. Sometimes I'll pick up something special like avocados or bananas that we don't grow, but the fact is that we grow so much of our own food now that we really don't have to buy much. It seems frivolous to buy anything when we have plenty of food at home to feed ourselves delicious and healthy meals.

We eat seasonally, which means tons of fresh fruits and vegetables through the growing season, including greens in our winter garden. I actually enjoy it because we eat so much when something is in season that we are pretty happy when the season is over. Then we start to crave it over the months when it is not available, and we are once again ecstatic when it is in season again.

Unfortunately there are some years when we wind up without a favorite food because of a crop failure or because of our own failure to actually plant the crop. That was the case with peas and okra this year. We never managed to find the time to get either one planted. You can be assured they'll be on the top of the planting list next year because I really miss my fried okra and my raw peas.

When we first moved out here, we were vegetarians, but even after we started eating meat, it was a pretty rare event because we only butchered extra roosters or rams or old stew hens. As we've added more meat animals to the farm though, and as our flocks and herds have increased, we are finding ourselves with more meat, and like the vegetables and fruits, the variety changes from year to year. Last year we had lots of pork and chicken. This year we have lots of turkey, lamb, and goat.

I can see where some people in our modern world would not like this because Big Biz has done such a good job of convincing us that not only can we have what we want, when we want it, but we should have everything we want, when we want it. Over the years I've begun to see the flaw in that logic, and not simply because so many people wind up in debt based upon that attitude.

When something is always available, we lose the concept of gratitude. When was the last time you got really excited at the grocery store? On the contrary, most of us find it a boring chore. You always know what's going to be there. You expect it. You depend upon it. You take it for granted. On the other hand, I get excited and am immensely grateful every February when our chickens start to lay eggs again because we've usually been without them for a couple of months. In fact, I get excited and grateful about every food when it comes into season. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

You also learn to live with the rewards and consequences of your actions or inaction. As another wise person once said, you harvest what you sow. The funny thing about these adages is that today we've lost touch with their origins. If you fail to plant something (or weed and water), you won't be harvesting it.

Variety is the spice of life, as someone else once said, yet most of us can easily fall into a routine, doing and eating the same things day after day. Being presented with a variety of foodstuff makes me use my noggin and get creative. This year, I am learning to cook with goat meat. I used to think that I'd never do that, but that was before our does blessed us with 29 bucklings! We usually castrate most of the boys and sell them as pets, but there simply are not that many people who want pet goats.

When it comes to eating meat, I'm pretty sure that nature is giving us what we need in the right proportions. I get a little worried about people who think they should be eating bacon on a daily basis or liver ever week. If you are eating whole animals, you can't do either of those things because there isn't that much bacon or liver in an animal. When we butcher a whole pig, the bacon is only a small part of it, so if we spread out our bacon consumption, we're eating a pound of bacon for about every ten pounds of other pork. I suspect that if we decided to only consume our own lard and butter, rather than buying sunflower oil, we'd probably all lose another five pounds because our consumption of fried food would go down.

It's amazing how much we've learned since moving out here. I didn't know any of this a decade ago. I only knew that I wanted to eat more organic food, and I assumed that exercise would be a natural benefit of growing our own food. I had never even heard of the concept of eating seasonally. Today, however, I can see a lot of wisdom in this natural lifestyle.

Hello, Milwaukee!

2011-10-31T21:25:00.001-05:00

Today was very different than one of my usual days. Katherine milked the goats and did all of the other farm chores, while I packed my bags. I drove to Milwaukee, checked into my hotel, dropped off lambskins at the tannery, drove downtown to meet a reporter, and then drove to Alice's Garden, an urban community garden in the middle of the city. The reporter thought it would be fun to do a recorded radio interview in the garden along with garden director Venice Williams. And it was a blast! Venice met me at the gate with a big hug, and we chatted about gardening and cooking and life like we'd been friends forever.

Unfortunately most of the conversation centered around me and Homegrown and Handmade, but I wish there would have been time to learn more about the garden. On this two acres, about a hundred families and a dozen community organizations cultivate a lot more than just carrots and lettuce. They're growing a community and nourishing healthy habits. They have picnic tables and a labyrinth and classes in yoga, cooking and making tea from your homegrown herbs, and they provide mentors for gardening novices. They even have classes for moms with babies and young children. It's everything I've always wanted to do, but it's 200 miles from home, so not terribly practical. The people of Milwaukee, however, are lucky to have such a special place in their city!

Tomorrow morning, I'll be on The Morning Blend. In the evening, I'm doing a book signing at Boswell Books, and Wednesday night, I'll be doing a book signing at Tribeca Gallery Cafe in Watertown, WI. And on my way home Thursday, I'll drop off 18 bags of washed fleeces at the fiber mill so they can be carded and turned into roving. Six of the bags will also be spun into yarn. Once I'm home, I need to help everyone else finish getting the farm ready for winter, which means cleaning out the barn, trimming goat hooves, giving the bucks their copper and selenium supplements, picking dried beans and shelling them, creating new low tunnels in the garden, selling a goat and three sheep to a couple different people who've already made appointments to come by, and keeping a close eye on the last two does that need to be bred this fall so I don't miss their next heat.

But right now I'm just hoping that my skin can survive three days with this hotel soap because I forgot to pack my homemade goat milk soap.

Today

2011-10-28T21:46:00.000-05:00

I spent most of today working on my next book. Mike took four of the spring lambs to the locker to be turned into lamb chops. And Katherine walked around the farm taking pictures.

Clare the la mancha grazing

A duck on the pond

Sheep in the pasture

Happy fall!

Corporate America can kiss my pastured pig!

2011-10-15T21:18:00.003-05:00

Wall Street is broken beyond repair. Every time the government comes up with a new regulation, a team of corporate lawyers simply figures out how to get around it. And the Supreme Court is not helping us at all. I really can't imagine how the corporate system can be fixed, so we simply need to opt out.

If you're wondering where all of this is coming from, I had a book signing today in Champaign, and it happened to overlap with an Occupy Champaign march. Some people came to the book signing following the march, and when others at the bookstore heard about it, they said they wished they'd known so they could have attended. Now I feel like I should have connected the dots sooner, but at least it all finally came together for me today.

I have been supremely annoyed at the fact that we bought a furniture set for our deck a year ago, and this summer it completely disintegrated. I'm guessing that maybe those folks in China forgot to spray the UV protectant on it or something like that, so it just started falling apart after less than a year -- half of which was spent in the shed (winter) where it was not even exposed to sunlight! And the paint is peeling off of the metal parts. Basically, it's garbage -- and it was not cheap! But like most people, I've been kind of whiny about the whole thing. Well, today I've decided that's the straw that broke this camel's back because I'm not supporting Corporate America any longer.

Over the past year, ever since I started on the adventure of writing Homegrown and Handmade, I've been meeting a lot of very cool people. One man today was talking about how his family wanted to grow their own food, in part to simply opt out of the corporate scene. One of the families I visited in Chicago last winter was talking about how our society needed to abandon corporations and go back to the idea of small businesses serving local communities. If you are a local business owner, and you make things that don't last, your business does not last.

Of course, a lot of people will say that we can't do this in today's world, and of course, Corporate America wants you to believe that. They've spent the better part of the past century convincing Americans that "you deserve a break today," and that your time is too valuable to do things like cook, clean, or build or grow things. As you know, I opted out of the industrial food system a few years ago. I didn't do it overnight though. Lack of instant gratification paralyzes a lot of people. They think it's all or nothing. Well, if that were true, then nothing would have ever been accomplished in this world, because everything requires practice, patience, and persistence. My first vegetable garden did not yield any edible food, but I kept trying, and today we grow most of our own produce.

So, no more whining -- and I'm including myself in that admonition! I've been whining about that furniture set that's falling apart on my deck, but no more. Whenever I decide to replace it -- and it may be a really long time because we don't NEED it -- it will be built by someone I know. If Mike doesn't have time to build one, then I'll get a local craftsperson to do it. Surely there is someone around here that knows how to use a saw and a hammer, and I bet they'd be willing to do it for about the same amount of money I paid for this "Made in China" set that fell apart after less than a year.

I'm drawing the line in the sand right here and right now. I'm not buying anything else from Corporate America if there is any way to get it locally. I don't have all the details worked out yet, but the important thing is to get started. Whenever I find myself thinking that I NEED something that is made by a corporation, I will ask myself (1) do I really NEED it, and (2) can I find someone to make it locally? If my only choice is a corporation, was it made in this country?

A year ago I had my friend Mary make some clothes for me, and she did a beautiful job, so I have a source for most of my clothes. And seriously, how many more clothes do I need? We can also shop at garage sales. You know who gets 100% of the money you spend at a garage sale. Thrift stores may support a good cause, and again, one person's trash is another person's treasure, so you may find what you need there.

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I'm hoping to start a conversation on how we can all decrease our dependence on corporations that don't care about anything other than their bottom line. So, rather than occupying Wall Street, I think we need to desert it and start to occupy our own backyards. Taking control of your food is one way you can declare your independence. (I spent 270 pages talking about how to do that in Homegrown and Handmade, so I won't get into the details here.) Start a garden, get a few hens for eggs, or plant a couple of fruit trees. Barter if you have an apple tree and your friend has extra eggs from his or her backyard hens. Dust off your knitting needles or sewing machine. Rediscover or teach yourself woodworking. And stop watching 2.4 hours (or more) of television every day where advertisers will just convince you that you need to buy more stuff from them! I know this is only the beginning and would love to hear your ideas on how we can all become more self-reliant and declare our independence from Wall Street!

What else can we do? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What's the first thing (or the next thing) you can do?

What's up?

2011-10-14T23:29:00.000-05:00

Although the massive garden harvest of summer is long gone, we are starting to eat mustard greens and Swiss chard from the winter garden, and my arugula and mache have sprouted. I need to transplant broccoli plants that I started in the basement a month ago, and I'm still waiting for lettuce to germinate, but I know it will. My one-year-old broccoli plants in the garden have been reinvigorated by this cool weather and are growing like weeds! Broccoli is an annual, but I wonder how long it will continue to produce if we keep cutting the tops off. We'll get low tunnels and row covers on everything before it gets too cold, so we'll be able to continue to harvest through the winter like last year.

And this is a picture of Milton (Shakespeare's brother). These are the only pictures I've taken in the past week. Someone wants to buy one of the boys, so I finally got a few photos to send her. She still couldn't decide which one she wants, so she's going to come see them in person in a couple of weeks. I'm keeping one for myself because Sherri is their mother, and if you've been around the blog long, you know I love Sherri. But I haven't been able to decide which one I want to keep, so I told the buyer that she can have her pick of the two.

I really hate the fact that I don't have time to post on here as much as I would like. Saturday (tomorrow) I have a book signing in Champaign, IL, and then I'm heading to Michigan for a week of speaking, book signings, and interviews, as well as the American Dairy Goat Association Conference. I'll post on the Homegrown and Handmade site about all of the exciting things I learn. Then I'll be heading to Wisconsin and Kansas and finally getting home again a week before Thanksgiving. Mike and the two-legged kids will be taking care of the farm and animals while I'm gone.

If you want to check out my complete schedule, click here. If you live in Michigan, Wisconsin, or Kansas, I hope you'll be able to make it to one of the events. I'd love to meet you! And if you're an XM or Sirius listener, I'm currently scheduled to be on Martha Stewart Radio Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 3 p.m. eastern time.

Twin doelings again!

2011-10-11T14:25:00.002-05:00

Two nights ago, I checked Alexandria's tail ligaments, and they were soft enough that I went looking for my baby monitor. We got it hooked up before going to bed, and the dear doe was kind enough to let us have a good night's sleep. But shortly before eight, we heard something that got Mike out there rather quickly. But then he came back in and said that she appeared to be fine. Half an hour later, however, I asked him to go check on her again because I kept hearing bleating. He didn't come back this time.

"There is a long string of mucous hanging out, and she's pushing," he said over the baby monitor.

I got dressed and headed out. Alexandria did not look terribly happy when I arrived, although she didn't seem quite as freaked out as most first fresheners. She kept pushing, but we didn't see anything other than mucous. Mike asked if I'd like some coffee, and I said that would be great.

A few minutes after he left, Alexandria started to sound and look more serious. She stopped bleating, but when she pushed, you could hear this low sound down deep in her throat. I looked at her back end, and it was starting to bulge, but I didn't see a hoof. A few more pushes, and I saw a black nose. Although a hoof would be perfect, a nose is okay. And there was a tongue sticking out of the side of the mouth. After the head was completely out, there was a hoof next to the neck. The rest of the kid's body slid out easily. I moved it to a towel next to Alexandria's head, and I started to wipe it off. I lifted the hind leg and didn't see any testicles, so assumed it was a girl.

Mike walked in with my coffee, and I said, "We have a girl!" We were both quite happy about that because two doelings were already reserved out of this kidding. As soon as Mike handed me the coffee, I realized Alexandria was pushing again -- while still licking the first kid! Talk about multi-tasking! I took a quick sip of coffee and grabbed a dry towel. This kid was a textbook presentation with two hooves sticking out, then a nose. It was born quickly, and I put it next to the other kid. Mike said he saw testicles, but when I lifted the hind leg, I didn't see any. I lifted the tail, and it was definitely a doe. After the dreadful buck-doe ratio we had in the spring (29-19), I could hardly believe our luck had changed so much, so I double-checked the first kid, and yep, it was really a doe.

In a few minutes, both doelings were trying to stand on wobbly legs. They were bumping their noses all over Alexandria and screaming, "feed me!" (That's a loose translation.) But Alexandria was not standing up. Her belly didn't look terribly small yet, so I wasn't sure if there was another kid inside, but after ten or fifteen minutes, she finally stood up, and the kids were looking for breakfast. Alexandria did have me a bit worried initially because every time a kid latched on, she would start to walk, effectively pulling the teat out of the kid's mouth. She was fine with me milking her, so we put some grain in front of her, hoping that would distract her enough that the doelings could get a decent meal. She was not terribly patient, so the kids were getting small snacks. I kept an eye on her for most of the day to make sure the babies were indeed getting enough to eat, and within a few hours, she had calmed down and figured out that she needed to stand still while they nursed.

They're doing great today, so it is time to commence spoiling! I've spent so much time with the babies that were born last month that they are ridiculously friendly. Whenever I go near them, they start jumping on me until I pick them up for cuddling. It sure is fun to have only a couple of kids a month so I can spend lots of individual time with each one.

Time for more kids!

2011-10-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

Alexandria is due any day now. She'll be at day 145 on Friday, so she could give birth anytime between now and next Wednesday or Thursday. I've only had two does go to day 151. In honor of her impending motherhood, I've decided to give away an autographed copy of Homegrown and Handmade, which will be in stores in the next week or so. It's already available on Amazon and BN.com.

Here's the deal --

In the comment section of the blog (HERE, not on Facebook), post the date you think she will give birth.
If more than one person guesses the correct date, the first tie-breaker is number of kids.
If more than one person guesses the correct date and number of kids, the second tie-breaker will be genders of kids.

So, tell me the date you think Alexandria will kid, as well as the number of kids, and the gender of the kids! You can post your guess until midnight central time Saturday, but only one guess per person. I'll let everyone know as soon as the blessed event occurs!

Good luck!

Update on Pegasus eye injury

2011-10-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Back when I was rushing around a couple weeks ago, Pegasus had the nerve to injure his eye, which necessitated my taking him down to the University of Illinois vet clinic, which is a day-long trip for me, which I really did not have time to do! But goats do not understand about human plans and schedules and such things, so I had to make time to take care of Pegasus.

I had initially feared the worst, expecting them to tell me that he'd need eye surgery for thousands of dollars to restore his sight, but it turned out to be far simpler than that. He had only damaged his eyelid. His vision was fine. I could hardly believe it when the vet showed me this tiny little divot in the skin of his upper eyelid. That tiny little thing was causing so much swelling? His eyelid was so swollen, it had pretty much turned inside out because it had nowhere else to go.

No doubt lover boy had injured the eyelid as he slammed against the livestock panel fencing that separates him from Draco, another buck. Every time either buck had a date with a doe, both of them would slam their heads against the fence to butt heads with each other and show off their machismo.

The vet instructed the student to make three tiny incisions in the swollen part of the eyelid, and they they went back and forth three or four times rinsing the eye and putting sugar on it. Yes, table sugar! Apparently it is good for reducing swelling, and I saw the eyelid going down in size while we were there. It was really amazing. They gave us some antibiotic ointment for the eye and sent us home. I had to leave for Pennsylvania the next morning, but Katherine took good care of Pegasus while I was gone, and when I got home, his eye was back to normal. This was the third time I'd taken Pegasus to U of I this year, and I really hope it's the last.

Highlights from the fair

2011-10-01T15:14:00.000-05:00

What fair? The Mother Earth News Fair, of course! Last weekend, I was in Seven Springs, PA, talking about "Why Homegrown and Handmade," as well as "The Natural Home Dairy," and I was signing copies of Homegrown and Handmade, hot off the press.

I was not able to attend nearly as many of the sessions as I had hoped, but here are a few highlights --

L to R: Me, Joel Salatin, and Pat Foreman, author of City Chicks

I finally got to see Joel Salatin in person. I walked into the speaker's lounge and recognized his voice the moment I heard it. I looked around and saw him standing at check in, talking on his cell phone. Like a teenage rock-star groupie, I grabbed my cell phone and hurried over to him to ask if I could get a quick photo with him. It was the only time all weekend that I thought about taking a picture of anyone, including myself. I was able to make it to one of his talks. Seeing him in person was fun. I've read so much about him and watched so many interviews with him that I "know" Joel pretty well. But I'm still looking forward to reading his newest book, Folks, This Ain't Normal, which will hit bookstores in the next week or two.

Another highlight for me was meeting Gianaclis Caldwell, who runs an off-grid, Nigerian dwarf goat dairy in Oregon. She is the author of The Farmstead Creamery Advisor and is working on a second book on cheese making. I wish we could have talked more, but hopefully our paths will cross again soon.

The Mother Earth News people put me in a condo for the weekend, which I shared with Aquaponic Gardening author Sylvia Bernstein. Aquaponics is a hydroponic system for growing your own fish and greens. I am really looking forward to reading her book because I've wanted to grow our own fish for several years, but there was not a book on the topic for me to learn more, and I didn't have the time to search through all the info scattered across the Internet. I can't believe I didn't think about getting a picture of Sylvia, but I did get a shot of the beautiful view we had from the condo kitchen.

I was able to see most of the bread presentation by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg, authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It was fun seeing Jeff make a pizza crust without a rolling pin, -- he flipped it in the air -- and I really appreciated what he had to say about using diet to deal with medical issues. He talked about eating flax seeds to cure a shoulder injury. (Sorry I forgot the amount!) After only three weeks, the pain in his shoulder, which had been there for three years, went away. He said that there is no risk in trying something like flax seeds to see if it can help you, whereas he used to prescribe medications that sometimes have life-threatening side effects. (He is an MD.)

And I caught the tail end of Jenna Woginrich's keynote. She's the author of Made From Scratch, which is part-memoir, part-how-to on her move to the country. I love her can-do attitude, and she ended her speech saying, "When the sheep knock you down, get back up!" Jenna and I squeezed in a very quick, very late lunch at nearly 3:00 as we were rushing between speaking engagements, book signings, and sessions we wanted to watch.

If you haven't made it to a Mother Earth News Fair yet, I highly recommend it. There are about a dozen speakers from which to choose every hour, and there are more vendors than I could estimate. They will be returning again next year to Puyallup, WA (near Seattle) and Seven Springs, PA (near Pittsburgh). They are also considering a third event, perhaps in the Midwest, but they're having a hard time finding a venue that can meet all of their needs.

Cows and goats and PowerPoint

2011-09-21T23:13:00.000-05:00

I should be working on my PowerPoint for the Mother Earth News Fair this weekend, but life has turned into quite the unexpected mess. And yes, I should be working on it now, but I haven't blogged in a week, and I'm not going to be able to write anything on here for the next few days, so I figured I'd let you all know what's been happening.

Yesterday I discovered that Pegasus, one of my ND bucks had a big problem with one of his eyes. At first I thought his eyeball was missing because I could only see pink tissue. But after closer inspection, I realized the eyeball was still in there, but you couldn't see it because the eyelid was so swollen. So, I called the university vet school. The man on the phone said someone would call me back in 15 minutes. So, I started working on one of my PowerPoints for the MEN Fair, and before I knew it, several hours had passed, and it was well past 5 p.m. when the vet school was closed. They have an emergency number, though, so I called back. An ophthalmologist talked to me and told me that it would be $300 for Pegasus to be seen! I was speechless. Normally the vet school is very reasonable.

So this morning, I started to call other vets to see if one of them could see him. The first one had a message saying she was out of town. The next one was busy. Then the phone rang. Our neighbor said our cows were in their yard, so Katherine and I ran out to get them. We brought them home but noticed that our bull was not with them. Katherine looked through our pastures and couldn't find him. Driving up and down the roads looking for him would have been a waste of time because it is very wooded around here, and he was probably deep in the woods where we would never see him from the road.

Then I got a phone call from the vet clinic. It was the technician that I normally speak with, and she said that the ophthalmologist was mistaken. It would be a normal office visit for the vet school, and the ophthalmologist consult would only be $35. Thank goodness she had heard about my phone call. Unfortunately, it was too late to bring in Pegasus today because it is a two-hour drive, so he has an appointment for tomorrow.

Then the intercom for the front gate ding-donged. It was a farmer from around the corner and a mile away. He said that our bull was in his barn. I was relieved to know where he was, but then the farmer started to complain that our cows were getting out "all the time," and he has 70 head of cattle, and "they never get out." Our bull has wound up in his barn twice, but he was also upset that another neighbor assumed our cattle belonged to him and had called him when our cattle got out a couple weeks ago. So, apparently once in March and two times in the last couple weeks is "all the time." But I had to really remember everything my mother ever said about being nice before I responded to his statement that his cattle "never get out." Before we put up a fence across our front yard, I found his cattle in my garden more than once. And I don't even know how many times I've called his brother to tell him that his cattle were in the road. I didn't even think about getting mad at him when someone called me and thought that his loose cattle were mine. I just said, nope, my cattle are in the pasture -- and I even called them to let them know that their cattle were loose.

I had always assumed that they didn't want their cattle running all over the county, and figured they'd realize I prefer mine stay home also. I don't understand why some people get so nasty about animals getting out. I certainly don't want my animals running all over the place. I appreciate it when people tell me they're out because I want them home where they'll be safe. Being mean to me isn't going to do anything to improve my fencing or my psychic ability to figure out how they're going to get out next. The problem is actually not the fencing. It's the creek. We had cattle before, and they never got out by walking down the creek bed or anywhere near there. Both times the cattle have gotten out before, we added additional fencing to the space where they got out, but then they go somewhere else next time. I didn't even attempt to figure out where they got out today because we're not putting them on the back twenty again.

One reason I wanted cattle is because they could utilize the pasture across the creek. Coyotes are thick back in there, so it's not safe for sheep and goats, even with the llamas. But this is not working with the cattle. I'm not happy about the idea of feeding them hay through another winter because they eat a lot. We ran out of hay the first winter we had them, which was not fun. Hay in February costs a lot more than hay during the summer because the sellers know you're desperate.

So, the cattle are now for sale. I already talked to one very clueless man who was interested in one of the cows. He mentioned breeding them to Scottish highlands or lowline Angus, and I immediately saw my sweet cows dieing trying to give birth to huge calves. So, scratch him off the list unless he educates himself a lot about Dexters, which are the smallest breed of cattle in the country. If the bull and the two calves don't sell within the next month or two, we'll turn them into beef and veal. If I have to feed hay to the two cows over the winter, I will.

As for how our day ended -- We had a fun time bringing Jaxon home. He was a mile from home, and the sun was going down. It was only Katherine and me at home, and the farmer made it clear he wasn't helping, which is fine. When Jaxon showed up at their place in March, his brother gave him a ride home in his trailer. Katherine and I took a lead rope and a pan of alfalfa cubes and hopped in the truck to drive over to the man's farm. We walked right up to Jaxon in the barn and started hand-feeding him the alfalfa cubes, and Katherine snapped the lead rope onto his collar. He walked out of the barn like a well-trained dog. I followed in the truck with my foot on the brake the whole time. I felt like I was driving in a parade, but watching Jaxon's back end for all that time, I started mentally drawing lines on him, figuring out how many roasts, steaks, and so on we'd get from him. The walk home went very well for the first half mile. Then Jaxon decided to start running, and Katherine dropped the lead rope. She runs for fun though, so she was able to keep up with him as he headed into the woods for a short while. The two re-emerged on the road a minute later with Katherine running closely behind him. Of course, the main thing on my mind was that if I had been home alone (like I will be in a year or two), I would not have been able to get him home by myself. I suppose that's why I started thinking about beef.

Now I have a PowerPoint to put together, and I have to take Pegasus to the vet clinic tomorrow, which will be a long day. Somewhere I need to get some sleep. I went to bed after midnight last night and woke up at 5:30 this morning and couldn't fall back asleep, worrying about Pegasus. Friday morning, I'm leaving for Pennsylvania and the Mother Earth News Fair. If you're there, be sure to say hi!

The annual panic post

2011-09-13T18:21:00.000-05:00

If you've been around for awhile, you know that I generally panic this time of year. Husband-professor Mike is back at school, and the three now-adult children are all in college. Margaret will be graduating from University of Illinois this December. Katherine, my baby, is editor of her community college newspaper this year, and favorite son Jonathan is in theater and has already been cast in a play this semester. That leaves me home seven days a week to milk goats, make cheese, harvest vegetables, can, freeze, and deal with whatever emergency happens to be happening around here, which seems to be coyote related lately. Most days, I have one additional person here to help, and I hate to sound ungrateful, but that's not usually enough.

In past years, I've also freaked out about the fact that we still didn't get drain tiles in the ground around the house and barn, which means that we'll have to deal with continued flooding at random times. And no, we didn't get the drain tiles in this summer either. And the potting shed still is not done, although Mike did buy the lumber, so we are one step ahead of previous years. Maybe my dining room won't be taken over by seedlings next spring. And we got nothing done on the house -- you know, the one in which we live, the one we started building seven years ago. So we're still living with no tile around the master bathtub, few baseboards, and an open staircase. Someday this will be a beautiful house.

But this year, I have new things to add to my panic list -- I have a book coming out in a couple weeks, which means I'll be doing lots of speaking and book signings. So, I have speeches to write and Power Points to create. If you're in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Kansas, be sure to check out the events that are already scheduled there, as well as Illinois, where I live.

I also have to write my second book, which is due January 15. And I started two new blogs, which is one reason I don't post here quite as often. I've already introduced you to the Homegrown and Handmade blog, which is a supplement to the book and contains recipes and information on growing your own food and fiber. But I also decided to start a writer's blog -- a blog where I write about writing.

Does it surprise you to know that I've been thinking about selling the Irish dexter cattle and most of the Shetland sheep? I just haven't worked up the nerve to actually post any ads. Part of me keeps saying, what if it's a mistake? I'm not sure how it could be a mistake to reduce my workload around here, but fear of making a mistake paralyzes a lot of people.

Now the sun is low enough in the sky to be shining into the window next to my computer. It's my cue that it's time for evening chores.

Twin doelings for Agnes

2011-09-07T16:02:00.000-05:00

Agnes was at day 143 today, and goats normally give birth between 145 and 150 days. I had even checked her tail ligaments last night, and they were still obviously firm. Her udder was filling up, but it hadn't changed much in the last couple weeks, so I really didn't expect to see kids before the weekend. So, it should not surprise you to hear that I had no idea what Katherine was talking about when she ran into the house this morning and gleefully yelled, "Babies!"

"What?"

"Babies!" she said happily with a bit of "duh" in her tone.

Then it sort of clicked, and I asked, "Agnes?"

Yes, Agnes had given birth to two lovely little doelings in the pasture. So, Katherine went running back out there to retrieve mom and babies and put them into their own private pen so they could have the time and space to get to know each other.

I could sit out there and watch them all day, but I have tomatoes to freeze, a book to write, and feta to make.

How does your garden grow?

2011-09-03T19:37:00.002-05:00

Ours is growing quite well!

We have tequila sunrise peppers . . .

which are sweet, but every now and then you think it might be a little hot. Definitely different. I love to slice them in ringlets and put them on pizza. Beautiful!

and cayenne peppers . . .

which are hot! Duh! Most of these will be dried, but we do use them fresh while we have them. This is where the bottles of "red pepper" in the spice aisle come from.

and Amana orange tomatoes . . .

which is an heirloom variety that you can't find in any store. They're delicious, especially in tomato soup!

And the tomato plants that look like they're on steroids! (But it's just composted goat manure!)

We even have melons this year!

which is very unusual for Illinois because we have such a short growing season! That's Orangeglo Watermelon on the left, Charantais in the middle, and Banana Melon on the right.

How is your garden doing?

Movie review: Farmageddon

2011-08-30T04:00:00.000-05:00

It sounds so absurd that everyone who hears about it assumes there must be more to the story. A family in Ohio is held at gunpoint for hours because they run a natural food buying club. After three raids, a California goat farmer sells all of her goats for fear of losing them. After a year of quarantine, a Vermont dairy loses all of its sheep -- not to a disease or a bear or a common thief, but to the same bully that held the Ohio family at gunpoint and harassed the California farmer -- the U. S. government. No, there were no illegal drugs. There were no illegal guns. There was nothing illicit, yet these law-abiding citizens were treated exactly as if they were producing and selling deadly street drugs to children. What were these people doing that caused SWAT teams to descend upon their farms and point loaded weapons at their children? They were selling raw milk. Yes, raw milk.

Saturday, Mike, Margaret, and I went to Chicago to see the documentary Farmageddon, which is about the government's harassment of farmers who sell raw milk. I had heard most of the stories before, but I always had a few lingering questions in the back of my head, and this movie answered them and gave me lots more information. Throughout the movie we meet farmers who are intelligent, articulate, and educated -- two of them have PhDs -- and we learn over and over again that the FDA and USDA harassed them without cause. No one died. No one even got sick. There were no lab test results indicating that someone might get sick. There was simply a bureaucrat who decided that another small farm needed to be shut down. Since 1970, 88 percent of America's dairy farms have disappeared, and they have been replaced by corporate-owned factory farms.

Since this harassment started, farmers have been getting smarter and started connecting over the Internet to share their experiences and advice. Unlike the sheep farmers who naively complied with the USDA's demands a decade ago, thinking that they could work through the system -- only to have the USDA take their sheep and kill them ten days before their hearing in a court of law -- today's farmers are fighting back, taking videos and pictures of the raids and calling friends and customers to serve as witnesses to the raids. Filmmaker Kristin Canty used a lot of this footage in the movie so that we could see exactly what is happening. It is scary and shocking and infuriating.

It is scary to me as a person with milk goats who sells a small amount of milk legally in my state. It is shocking to me as a person who believes that justice will prevail. And it is infuriating to me as a tax-paying citizen that literally millions of dollars has been spent on surveillance of innocent farmers who are merely trying to make a living doing what they love and what they believe in.

No one is saying that all milk should be raw or that pasteurization should be abandoned. They are merely saying that as free people, we should be allowed to choose. As one woman says in the movie, she could have legally smoked cigarettes every day when she pregnant and no one would have tried to stop her, but she can't buy raw milk in her state. Why do some states make raw milk illegal when it is perfectly legal for corporations to sell us edible food-like substances with ingredient lists that read like chemical formulas rather than recipes? They say it is because raw milk can make people sick, but that's like saying the sky is blue. ANY food can make you sick if it is improperly handled, including pasteurized milk. In the last few years, people have died from eating tainted spinach, green onions, peanuts, and most recently, strawberries! And no one was arrested in those cases. The reality is that milk produced in a factory farm needs to be pasteurized, but that's a discussion for another day.

Yours truly (left) with filmmaker Kristin Canty (right)

We attended a special showing of the film at the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago that started with a meet-n-greet prior to the film screening. We were lucky enough to meet Canty and talk to her about why she decided to make the movie. I knew this was her debut film, but the amazing thing is that she had no experience or education in film making. She was "just a mom" of four children, one who had very bad allergies, and when she started buying raw milk, her son's allergies disappeared. When she learned about the harassment of raw milk farmers, she told friends about it, but no one believed her. Everyone said there must be drugs or guns involved or something besides milk. Then she started writing letters to film makers, telling them they should make a movie, but this was when Food, Inc had just come out, and everyone was telling her that the world wasn't ready for another food movie. So, Canty decided to make the film herself because it was a story that had to be told.

In the Q&A after the movie, Canty said that although the movie is in limited release, some key people are seeing it, and it looks like it will be showing on Capitol Hill soon. She also heard through the grapevine that Big Ag is planning to start spending millions to fight the negative images presented about factory farming in movies like Food, Inc and Farmageddon. So this is what it's all about -- money. Rather than improving their practices and their own farms, which would result in a healthier planet, healthier animals, healthier food, and healthier people, they are planning to throw a few million at marketing in an attempt to convince consumers to continue buying their products.

Jaxon and Bridget's BIG adventure!

2011-08-23T19:20:00.000-05:00

From the moment the neighbor called to say that our cattle were on his property around the corner, I knew I did not have a good plan for getting them home. They were apparently in his orchard, which is probably only a quarter mile as the crow flies (over the creek and through the woods), but traveling on the roads, it is a mile away. After we arrived at his place, he showed us where they were. Jaxon wears a collar, and I had brought a lead rope to attach. For Bridget, I had brought a two-gallon stainless steel pot with alfalfa cubes in it to lure her back. The pot was demoted to barnware after it sprang a leak during maple syrup season.

It became obvious fairly quickly that this was going to be a long ordeal. Jaxon didn't want to walk on the lead rope, and Bridget was only somewhat interested in the alfalfa cubes. And did I mention that her calf was also with them? I assumed he would follow the grown-ups. The neighbor said that his tenant had told him there was also a brown cow, but we couldn't see her anywhere.

Bridget is the cow with the big horns, and the whole time I was walking backwards down the neighbor's quarter mile driveway with an alfalfa cube in my hand, I kept hearing blogpal Miss Effie saying, "Girlfriend, did you see those horns?" I hear ya, Miss Eff, I see those horns, and I am so happy that the stainless steel pot was demoted to the barn because I think it is about as wide as Bridget's horns are long. Mind you, Bridget is as sweet as a cow can be, but if she were to get overly excited and come running and not be able to stop quickly enough . . . well, then I start hearing the voice of that hen in the animated movie, Chicken Run. "I saw me life flash before me eyes!" So, I made sure the pot was always between me and Bridget, just to be safe.

When we finally got to the road, I ran back up the driveway to get my car and drive it out to the road. It had become obvious that it would take both Jonathan and me to get everyone home. I drove the car a little past Jonathan and the cattle and pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, and got out to help him move everyone a little farther down the road. When Bridget saw her reflection in my car, she didn't want to walk past it, but I finally coaxed her around it. And Jaxon kept stopping, so I would get behind him and push his back end while Jonathan pulled on the lead rope.

Things went fairly well until we got to the neighbor's house on the corner. I don't know what was so enticing about their yard, but Bridget kept trying to go into their backyard. Although I managed to stop her from doing that, we did wind up cutting through their front yard. As we began heading down our road towards home, I suggested Jonathan go get my car. I took Jaxon's lead rope, and Jonathan took off running. I turned my back towards Jaxon, and leaned foward, putting all my weight into dragging him down the road. It went well. It's going too well, I thought. No, no, I argued with myself. Jaxon is just getting better at walking on lead. But with me focusing on Jaxon, Bridget started to wander off into the ditch and then behind weeds that were taller than she was. I called her name several times, but she was nowhere to be seen. Jaxon was trucking along at the best speed of our entire jaunt, so I did not want to stop. But I didn't feel like I had much choice. I had to find Bridget and get her back on track. I tied Jaxon's lead rope to a fence post on the side of the road and went running into the weeds to find Bridget just as Jonathan showed up. Then I realized that Bridget was going to a pond. Who knew when she last had a drink of water, so she was obviously thirsty. I told Jonathan to take Jaxon and head down the road with him.

Everything gets a little fuzzy at this point. There was lots of running, and I kept hearing that hen from Chicken Run! "I saw me life flash before me eyes!" I saw Jaxon come bolting out of the woods a few hundreds yards from where he was supposed to be. Then I see Jonathan still hanging on to the other end of the lead rope, running behind Jaxon. I started making that horrible noise -- you know the one that makes bystanders ask, "Are you laughing or crying?" Amazingly Jonathan got Jaxon under control again, but a few minutes later, the whole scene was repeated in reverse. Jaxon ran into the woods with Jonathan behind him. I realized that I didn't have my cell phone to call for help, and I would never be able to get Jonathan out of the woods if he got injured. Then I saw Jaxon come running out of the woods again with Jonathan still in tow. By the time Jonathan got Jaxon under control, we were so far from the road, it would have been a huge waste of time to go back the way we came. Jonathan, who had just been dragged through the woods three times, said that there was a four-wheeler trail that led straight to the road, so we agreed that he'd take the cows through there, and I'd go back to the car and drive it forward a bit more.

After driving the car past the other end of the trail, I walked back to the opening in the trees and waited for Jonathan and the cattle. After a few minutes, I called his name, and he yelled back, "I'm coming." I knew we had to come up with a new plan. Bridget was stuffed with alfalfa cubes, so they weren't working any longer, and she was only mildly interested in following Jaxon. I told Jonathan that next time we walked past the car, I would get in and drive very slowly behind him and hopefully that would push the cows to continue walking. We were within spitting distance of our western property line, but we were still about a tenth of a mile from the nearest gate, and across the road was a field full of soybeans and then corn. How would we ever get Bridget out of there? Then I realized that she has never had grain, and it is an acquired taste. So, if we're lucky, she'll just keep walking, I thought. Although Bridget kept walking, Jaxon stopped twice, so I had to get out of the car and push him to get him going again.

Finally, we could see our driveway ahead. I pushed the button to open the gate, and Jonathan led Jaxon through, and then after briefly hesitating, Bridget went through, and her calf followed. I pulled my car into the driveway and stopped as I waited for the gate to close -- just in case anyone had any second thoughts and turned around to head back out onto the road.

We still had to get everyone into a secure pasture, and I suddenly got the brilliant idea to use fly spray to make them move. It's just soapy water, but I think the cows hate the "psht" sound it makes when I spray. So I went and got my spray bottle and stood behind Jaxon. When Jonathan pulled on the lead rope, I started spraying, and Jaxon started walking. It worked brilliantly. We had to get them through the barn to get to the pasture, and as we were taking Jaxon through, Bridget came into the front of the barn. I went back and slipped behind her and started spraying and she started trotting through the barn. Worked like a charm.

The whole time we were heading towards home, we kept thinking about Molly. Where was she, and how would we find her, and how would we get her home? As soon as we had Jaxon, Bridget, and the calf in the pasture, we heard a moo coming from across the creek. It sounded close so Jonathan went to check it out, and it was Molly with her calf.

So, I can now say that the whole thing ended with no injuries to human or cattle, and we got an hour and a half of good exercise. I have no idea how they escaped because Mike just walked the fenceline yesterday and pronounced it perfectly sound. One thing that kept going through my head again and again was, what would I have done if I had been home alone?

Breaking up is hard to do

2011-08-19T05:54:00.026-05:00

I knew it was going to happen. It had to happen. We had to split up James and Julia after she had her piglets because we don't want her to get pregnant again too soon. James was being the most awesome father. When you looked out there, you were as likely to see the piglets with him as with Julia. But then a couple days ago, I looked out there and saw James with his nose to Julia's back end following her wherever she went. Not good. My original thought was that we would move James to the sheep pasture, but then I realized that no one was in the pasture next to Julia and the piglets, so I thought it might be nicer for him to be next door, so to speak. And if the piglets really want to visit, they can.

Piglets, already getting muddy like mama!

Katherine took a bucket of whey out to the pasture, and as soon as James saw the bucket, he came running because he loves whey. He followed her through the gate into the neighboring pasture. She put down the bucket, and he was happily slurping up the whey as she left the pasture and closed the gate behind her. That was two days ago.

You can see the path James has worn next to the fence.

Yesterday, I seriously thought James was going to kill all of the grass along the fence in his pasture as he paced back and forth all day long -- and I was right. He wouldn't even go to the water trough, and by early afternoon, he was pacing with his mouth hanging open. So, Katherine went out there and convinced him to go to the water trough and have a drink. But he is still spending most of his day next to the fence looking longingly at Julia and the piglets. At chore time last night, the babies all jumped up as if on cue and ran over to the fence where James was laying, and I swear I could hear little voices saying, "Come on, Daddy, let's play!"

Julia, covered in mud, as usual

So, as sad as it is to break up this happy little family, I really don't want piglets born in December or January or February, so James will simply have to accept this new living arrangement. I just hope my fencing is up to the challenge!

Changes

2011-08-12T07:23:00.001-05:00

This morning, I am taking our summer intern to the airport. Michael has been here for the past nine weeks, and it's hard to believe how fast the summer has flown! It seems like yesterday when he arrived. He has been helping out with a variety of things around the farm, but his favorite activity has been milking the la mancha dairy goats. He arrived already knowing how to milk because he spent last summer on a farm milking sheep. His daily chores included taking care of the goats -- filling hay feeders and water buckets, mucking out stalls, and whatever else the goats needed. He also washed the sheep and llama fleeces and helped out in the garden from time to time.

When Margaret decided she wanted backyard chickens, he helped her build a movable chicken coop that I blogged about in Homegrown & Handmade, and he helped Mike build our newest turkey tractor, which I still need to blog about.

Talking to Michael gives me hope for the future as he is an agricultural student who is interested in organics! While he was here, I introduced him to the documentaries Fresh and Food Inc, as well as Michael Pollan books, The Stockman Grass Farmer, and Joel Salatin's farming philosophy. It has been a great nine weeks, and we are all sad to say good bye!

This is an especially challenging post to write because I'm trying to avoid turning it into my annual "freak out" post -- you know the one where I panic about how it's crunch time because we have so much left to do, and there is so little time left to do it before winter. You'll probably be reading that post in a week or two though. On Monday, the other Michael (my husband) goes back to work, and the following Monday, classes start for Jonathan and Katherine at the junior college.

All-you-can-eat goat buffet

2011-08-06T13:52:00.001-05:00

We moved the does into a new browsing area today. Technically, goats are not grazers. If given the choice, they prefer to browse, which means to eat leaves, bushes, and young trees. So this hillside is their idea of a five-star gourmet restaurant!

Amelia Earhart, a polled, blue-eyed doeling born this spring

It is easy to see why goats are rented to clear hillsides that are overgrown. They love this stuff!

Girlfriend, a mini mancha doeling

The more experience we get with rotational grazing, the more brave we get. We used to only put the goats on flat land. But now we put them in a lot of places overgrown with brush.

Miss Kitty, named after the Gunsmoke character,
is developing the sassy personality of her namesake.

One reason goats are not as resilient against internal parasites as sheep and cattle is because they didn't evolve eating grass off the ground where the parasite larvae can be ingested. They've gone through history eating from trees. As one person said, goats should never eat below their knees.

Sherri, eight years old and our most valued brood doe

Skippy, the other earless wonder (mini mancha)

Piglets!

2011-08-03T10:35:00.002-05:00

As I was laying in bed last night around 8:30, trying to convince myself that no one's head ever really exploded from a migraine, my son Jonathan burst into the bedroom panting and blurted out, "Piglets! In the chicken house! Four or five are already nursing, and I think I saw another one pop out!" He said something about getting a towel to wipe off a couple that seemed especially dirty, and he was gone again.

Of all the hours she could have given birth, she waited until I was incapable of being there. Talk about rotten luck! A bit later I got reports from daughter Katherine, who couldn't stop squealing about how cute they were, and husband Mike, who told me he tried to take a video but it was too dark in the chicken house at sundown. Both asked if it was okay that some of the piglets had a white foot or two -- and it is. Being one of the oldest and rarest hog breeds in the U.S., guinea hogs don't have a lot of strict rules about appearance, although the majority of guinea hogs are solid black today.

This morning, in spite of a lingering headache, I got myself out there to check out the new additions. Julia had followed Mike to her own little house when he went into the chicken house this morning. None of the babies followed, so Mike put them all in a box and took them to the pig's area. Piglets remind me more of human babies than any other livestock the way that they nurse until they fall asleep, and then if they accidentally fall off the teat, they wake up immediately and start looking for it again!

The final count was nine babies -- four girls and five boys. Unfortunately, two of the girls (gilts) were dead this morning, just laying there peacefully near their mama without a sign of anything wrong. One of the other little girls is not the most clued-in about nursing, so I'm wondering if her sisters had a little trouble also getting the hang of it. While six of the piglets were nursing this morning, she was hanging out in the little house, so we took her out several times and kept putting her back on the teat. Although the nine piglets were in a variety of sizes, there wasn't a real runt in the litter, so that's a good thing.

Because the guinea hogs are an endangered breed, we'll be keeping the girls for breeding as long as they don't show any undesirable traits. Some of the boys will wind up as pork, but a couple of the nicer ones will probably be sold for breeding.

About the piglet prognostication give-away -- not a single person chose August 2! But two people guessed August 3, and that was Penny and Miss Effie. Penny said ten piglets, and Miss Effie said six, so Penny is the winner of the goat milk soap. Drop me an email Penny (deborah at antiquity oaks), and I'll get your soap in the mail right away! Thanks to everyone for your guesses!

Where did the recipes go?

2011-07-31T06:53:00.000-05:00

In case you're wondering when I'll post more recipes, I am now posting all of them on the Homegrown & Handmade blog. I just posted a recipe for bread pudding, and last month I posted a recipe for strawberry jam. In May I shared my recipes for chocolate truffles and multigrain bread that's light and fluffy. If you don't want to miss any of the upcoming recipes, be sure to "follow" the Homegrown & Handmade blog or subscribe by email. In the next few months, I'll be posting recipes for cucumber goat cheese spread, spiced pear butter, and pumpkin spice cookies, just to name a few!

Piglet prognostication (give-away time!)

2011-07-27T18:11:00.001-05:00

As I was agonizing today over when Julia Child was going to finally have her piglets, I realized that there was no need for me to suffer alone when I have all of you! We saw her get bred in the middle of March, so we've been thinking "any day now" ever since the first week of July. Obviously, she did not get pregnant when we saw her get bred. But since James has been with her the whole time, he must have done the deed again when we did not see it. So, it is a bit of a guess now. Due dates are never engraved in stone, but I do like to have it narrowed down to something a little better than a whole month. Anyway, enough of my complaining! To get my mind off of this, I've decided to give away three bars of my goat milk soap, so all of you can be in on the fun of waiting for Julia's piglets. If you want to try your hand at piglet prognostication, just answer the following questions:

What date will Julia have her piglets?
How many piglets will she have?
What will be the male-female breakdown?

The first question is the most important, so everyone who gets that one right will move on to the semi-finals. If you get the number of piglets correct, then we'll have to use the male-female numbers to determine the winner. Basically, the best prognosticator wins! Put your answers in the comment section HERE on the blog (not on Facebook), and only one guess per person, please. You can post your guesses up until she actually farrows, whenever that may be! And I will be sure to put up a post on the blog with pictures as soon as the blessed event occurs.

To help you figure out when she will farrow (that's birthing in pig lingo), I've included a few photos of the expectant mother. She's a little muddy because she had just crawled out of the pond to have a snack when I decided to take these photos. Yes, she has a mouthful of weeds in two pictures. She loves weeds!

Heat wave

2011-07-23T19:06:00.001-05:00

It seems that our temperatures and humidity are finally coming down from record-breaking highs for the past week -- and when I say coming down, I mean into the mid 90s. A temperature of 90-anything seemed hot before living through this past week, but we actually appreciate 90s after going above 100 degrees with a dewpoint in the 80s, which basically makes it dangerously hot because your sweat can't evaporate, so it doesn't do much to cool your body.

We've been getting up at 6 a.m. to do as many chores as possible while the temperature is in the 80s. Contrary to popular belief, living on a farm does not automatically make you a morning person, and we don't normally head out to do chores before eight. I am not good about getting to bed before 11, and the lack of sleep is starting to make me drag. I need my eight hours!

The animals have been drinking far more than normal, so we have to keep refilling water buckets and troughs almost twice as often as normal. We have seen a drop in milk and egg production. I can just hear the hens saying, "You think I want to sit in one of those hot nest boxes? No way!"

Every morning when I get out of bed, I expect to see piglets, but Julia just keeps getting bigger and bigger. If she had gotten pregnant when we saw her get bred, she would have had the piglets by now, so she must have gotten pregnant at a later breeding that we did not see. Still, considering how huge she is, I can't imagine she will go much longer. She spends almost all of her time laying in the pond. I hope she has some instinct that tells her she needs to be on dry land to give birth. Although piglets can walk as soon as they're born, I can't imagine they're very good swimmers.

For the past week, when I look at the ten-day forecast, it shows temperatures in the 90s for the next five days. Now it shows temperatures in the 90s for the next week, with one day in the 80s. Maybe the weather forecasters are feeling sorry for us and throwing that 85 in there to give us some hope, even though it is not going to happen. At this point, I don't trust anything they say beyond tomorrow.

We finally broke down on the second 100+ day and put an air conditioner in the living room window. We did a good job of keeping the house in the 80s by closing all the windows and blinds, but mold started growing in the oddest places because of the humidity -- bags of flour, my oatmeal soap, an upholstered dining room chair, the leather part of my spinning wheel, the bamboo knitting needles that hold an afghan I'm making, and more. If the heat, humidity, and mold continue, we may need to put in an air conditioner in the basement and upstairs. We have a dehumidifier for the basement, but we don't use it in the summer because it exhausts heat, which is the last thing we want right now!

I'll remember 2011 weather for many years to come. We had our coldest goat kidding ever when Jo gave birth at -8 F. We had a blizzard in early February with drifts six feet deep, and then it all melted two weeks later as we went into a four-week maple syrup season, which requires warm days with freezing nights. And now, we're having a record-breaking heat wave. I wonder which way the weather will swing in fall. Personally, I think we've broken enough weather records for one year, and I'd like to request a textbook "average" fall.

Sheep shearing

2011-07-18T09:01:00.001-05:00

No, we don't have any particular reason for shearing in July. This is another one of those things that slipped through the cracks when I was writing my book. It was getting hot in May when I realized that I had not scheduled an appointment with the sheep shearer, so I called and scheduled, and this was the earliest he could shear our sheep. Thankfully no one melted in the nearly 100-degree heat we've had sporadically over the past two months.

As it turned out, I was not home for the shearing, which was tough for me. I was attending a meeting at the Illinois Farm Bureau, and everyone who was anyone in local foods was in attendance, from the lieutenant governor to local farmers' market managers. I reconsidered attending the meeting over and over in my head, but finally I convinced myself that everyone could handle shearing without me. I was right.

Last year, I suggested that we use Electronet to create lanes and simply "push" the sheep from their pasture to the barn. Basically, a couple of humans get behind them, and they do what comes naturally -- they run away from the humans. It was a brilliant idea. I wish I'd come up with it sooner. There were some years when it took us several hours to get the sheep into the barn. Getting a herding dog shortened the time quite a bit, but without formal training, his assistance has been limited. It only took 12 minutes this year to move the sheep from pasture to barn, which is a record. And they were just as easily moved back to the pasture again.

Now it's time to skirt and wash the fleeces and get them ready for taking to the mill where they'll be carded into roving for hand spinners or spun into yarn for knitters and crocheters.

Blooms on the homestead

2011-07-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

In spite of the terrible heat and humidity, flowers are one reason I love summer. When I downloaded pictures of sheep shearing and city chicken condo construction, I realized that Katherine took a few flower photos with my camera earlier this week, so here you go! I blogged about the chicken coop construction on the Homegrown and Handmade blog, so you can also check that out, if you're interested, and I'll get the sheep shearing post up in the next day or two.

Return of the bull

2011-07-10T08:00:00.003-05:00

Lesson # 953: NEVER assume that a bull will stay in a trailer simply because you are standing in the open doorway.

Lesson # 954: Always wear blue jeans around cattle.

Because a bull really needs more than two girlfriends to stay happy, we share a bull with another person who also owns two cows. Jaxon spends three months here, then three months there, and so on. It works well because he gets our girls pregnant, then goes to get their girls pregnant, then stays here for another three months until our girls calve, then he goes back over to his other home to stay there until those girls calve. By then our girls are three months postpartum and ready to breed again. And so the cycle goes on.

Jaxon is the big guy in the middle, reunited with two of his girlfriends.
Bridget (left) is horned, and Molly (right) is polled like Jaxon.

Thursday I picked up Jaxon to bring him home so he could get our cows pregnant again. Jaxon is almost two years old, and he really is a good bull. (You have to know that before you read the rest of the story.) I decided to open the trailer door and snap the lead rope onto his collar. Simple enough, right? Never! As soon as I started to crack open the door, he calmly pushed his way out of trailer. I tried to block him with my body, and he lifted one leg and began to step out. My leg was in the way. Wow, those hooves are sharp! As the pain registered in my brain, I started to feel panicked and was expecting him to barrel out of the trailer and start running. But he didn't. He was as calm as could be, while I stumbled backwards and screamed, expecting to see a bone sticking out of my leg. But it quickly became apparent that my leg wasn't broken -- just a little bruised and bloody. Although I had not succeeded in getting the lead rope attached to Jaxon's collar, he just stood there right outside the trailer as Jonathan attached the rope and began leading him through the barn to the pasture. It was weird to feel so panicked while everyone around me seemed so calm, including the bull.

I used to think that I needed a friendly bull. Now I realize I need a well-trained bull -- as in a bull who understands "stay!" like my dog. Considering the odds of that happening, maybe I should give up on cattle and just be happy with my little goats.

Another book contract!

2011-07-08T06:00:00.004-05:00

I admit I'm not very good at building suspense, which explains why I'm not a fiction writer. Yes, the title pretty much spills the beans. I signed another book contract. The Ecofrugal Handbook will be published in the fall of 2012. It takes the core beliefs behind Homegrown and Handmade and brings the concepts to an even larger audience. Even if you don't want to grow your own food, you can make inexpensive, ecofriendly decisions daily.

Being a stay-at-home mom when my children were young, I was always looking for ways to save money and was a big fan of the Cheapskate Gazette books back in the early 1990s. Even though I've only been making soap for eight years, I was using baking soda as a facial exfoliant shortly after reading Don't Go To the Cosmetic Counter Without Me when it was only in its fourth edition. (It's now in its eight edition.) I also have all sorts of books on making your own cleaning products. In fact, one of the things that sold this idea to my publisher is that a lot of authors have made this way too complicated! You don't need 300 pages to give someone a couple hundred recipes for cleaning their house! Between baking soda and vinegar, you've pretty much got the bases covered when it comes to cleaning. Throw in a little hydrogen peroxide for blood stains, and you're good to go. And even though I loved Don't Go To the Cosmetic Counter Without Me, you really don't need 1,000 pages of advice on skin and hair care. The whole point of The Ecofrugal Handbook is that it does not have to be time-consuming or complicated or expensive to do things that are healthy, inexpensive, and ecofriendly.

I'm really looking forward to writing this book because it's always been a passion of mine to help people save money while making healthier choices. The book will cover ecofrugal choices for all sorts of things from educating yourself to planning your child's birthday party. And I'll definitely be asking all of you for ideas along the way.

One of the things I learned in writing my last book is that although I could write a book in three months, it's not something I really want to do again. So, the deadline for The Ecofrugal Handbook is January 15, which gives me time to do some gardening and cheesemaking this summer, as well as book signings and speaking engagements in the fall when Homegrown and Handmade comes out.

Daylilies in bloom!

2011-07-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

This is normally my crazy busy time of year, and this year is even crazier and busier than normal. I hope to have time to tell you more about that in the next day or two. In the meantime, I thought some of you might enjoy a few photos of the daylilies blooming around here. In the midst of all my hurrying from barn to garden to house, I do take time to stop and admire the flowers.

Farewell, Anne

2011-06-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

Anne and her triplets last year:
The little white-faced doe hiding between her mama
and sibling is Agnes Grey, who still lives here.

Yesterday we were milking 13 goats; today it is 12. It is amazing how quickly life can change. When Katherine brought in the milk yesterday morning, she said it was less than usual. She didn't think she had missed Anne, but her udder was empty. For whatever reason, we both assumed Katherine had lost track. Although I check off goats on a white board as I milk them, she doesn't. So, neither of us thought that something might be wrong with Anne. Yesterday evening, shortly before six, as I was proofreading the galleys for Homegrown and Handmade on my computer, I heard the sound of a goat in distress. I called to Katherine to go check on the does.

Half an hour later, Anne left us as she thrashed around in Katherine's lap, screaming in pain. I had little hope from the time that we brought her into the barn, but I had some hope. I'd never before seen a goat so bloated and with a bloody discharge leaking from her rectum. Her body temperature had already fallen to well below normal. The inside of her mouth felt like a glass of cool water.

I called the vet hospital at U of I, but I couldn't understand anything the vet was saying because he had such a thick accent. Finally I asked, "Clostridium?" And he said yes, she had all the symptoms. He went on, I suppose telling me what I should do, but I couldn't understand any of it. I knew the prognosis was somewhere between terrible and hopeless. I didn't think she would survive the two hour trip to the university vet hospital. I knew she needed antitoxin. I did a quick online search and checked both of the vet textbooks that I have. They also suggested antibiotics, a baking soda drench, and B vitamins. I was gathering up those supplies to head outside and at least get started, but when I opened the front door, I saw Katherine walking towards the house with her head down. I watched her walk a few more steps and finally asked, "Is she still alive?" Katherine said, "No," and started crying.

All last night I kept trying to figure out what had made her sick. The literature says that enterotoxemia is usually caused by some sort of digestive disturbance, such as a change in feed or over-consumption of grain -- basically, something throws off the digestive system. But what? We hadn't changed the diet. No one had busted into the chicken grain or the hog feed. Then this morning I got a hint. I was heading out to the barn to milk, and Mike was about to put cut grass into the hay feeders. I stood next to the little hay wagon and felt heat. I reached over and lifted the grass, and it was quite warm in the pile. Then it clicked. I remembered our apprentice asking Mike a couple days ago if it was okay to give the grass to the goats because it had heated up. Mike sniffed it and said it was fine. I had not thought about what process might be taking place if the hay were piled up while still green. Something was happening to it because it was quite warm at the center of the pile.

"Don't give this to the goats," I blurted. Mike looked at me, annoyed. "I think this is what made Anne sick. It's hot. That means something is happening to it. Even if smells okay, there could be some kind of toxins growing in here."

We've been giving the goats freshly cut grass all summer, but the past few days, we've been getting ahead of ourselves with cutting, filling the little hay wagon, and filling the hay feeders. Who would have ever thought that we could be overly efficient? The cut grass should have been staying on the ground to dry until minutes before being taken to the barn and being eaten.

As Mike started pulling the grass out of the hay feeders, I went into the milking parlor to milk the goats. I tried not to beat myself up, but it's hard. I can go round and round in my head, especially when it's just me and a goat. Anyone who milks goats will tell you that a lot of thinking goes on when you're milking. Anne was one of the special ones. She's the only daughter we ever had out of Mercury, the son of my first milk goat, Star. Her dam is Sherri, my favorite brood doe, and my top milker for several years. I've kept four of Sherri's daughters, all of which earned their milk stars. Anne was my highest producer last year, milking 627 pounds, which won't break any records in the rest of the world, but it made her really special here.

Anne as a yearling

But what I loved the most about Anne was that she proved it was possible for a goat to be bonded to her mama like glue, yet incredibly friendly with people. She was one of those goats that would wrap her neck around yours and give you a goaty hug.

Every time I milked one of the goats this morning and checked her name off my list, I knew there was one goat whose name would not be checked off. I told myself I should erase Anne's name from the list, so I wouldn't confuse myself about how many goats were left to milk. No, that's silly. I know I only have 12 to milk this morning. After milking the last goat, I erased Anne's name. And, then I sat down and cried.

Classes and Open Farm Day tomorrow

2011-06-24T10:57:00.000-05:00

Saturday will be the second Open Farm Day of 2011. From 2 to 6 p.m. visitors can meet the animals, check out the garden, and pick our brains about what we do and why we do it. Mike will be scything, and we'll probably be skirting sheep fleeces, so you can see what a raw fleece looks like. We have goat milk soap available for purchase, as well as raw fleeces, roving, and yarn from our sheep and llamas. Although the Open Farm Day is free and you can plan the day however you want, there are also three classes available for those who want in-depth instruction and information about the home dairy, soapmaking, and homesteading.

10 a.m. to noon The Home Dairy
We'll start in the barn with instructions in goat milking, and we'll talk about how it's different than milking a cow or a sheep (and how their milk is different). Then we'll head into the kitchen to talk about the history of dairy in this country and demonstrate how to make a variety of dairy products, such as chevre, mozzarella, yogurt, and buttermilk.
Fee: $24 per person, and reservations are required. Class is limited to six people, so there will be ample opportunity for discussion.

1 to 3 p.m. Soapmaking
You'll learn the history of soapmaking, how modern soapmaking is different, and how to create your own soap recipes. Watch every step of cold-process soapmaking from start to finish. Each participant will receive handouts, including a list of references for future use, and you'll go home with a small loaf of soap (retail value $28) that you can slice a day or two later after saponification is complete.
Fee: $32 per person, and reservations are required. Class is limited to six people, so everyone will receive personalized instruction.

6 to 8 p.m. Homesteading 101
So, you think you’d like to live in the country, grow your own vegetables, milk goats, and raise chickens? We’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a homesteading lifestyle, and we’ll talk about the practicalities of choosing land, building a house, choosing livestock to fit your lifestyle, and learning new skills, such as gardening and animal husbandry. Then, join us for evening chores as we discuss the basic care of different animals that live on Antiquity Oaks and how each one fits into a sustainable homestead. Arrive a little early and bring a picnic supper to enjoy on the deck or under an oak tree.
Fee: $15 per person or $25 per couple, and reservations are required. Class is limited to eight people, so there will be ample opportunity for discussion.

We'll also have potluck meals at noon and 5 p.m., if you'd like to join us!

Llama shearing

2011-06-19T13:56:00.001-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a week! The good news is that the garden is really shaping up, and we're making cheese daily. Our summer apprentice arrived on Monday, and it has been a lot of work helping him around the farm. We always spend a lot of time explaining things in the beginning, which is why we won't let people come out for a day to "help" anymore. We realized we got very little done on those days.

Yesterday was llama shearing day, which happens once a year. We did it later than usual this year because the cold weather kept coming back until about a month ago. Everyone was very well behaved, except for Merlin, who always spits. He actually spit less this year than he did a couple years ago.

These are the lady llamas relaxing before their spa day . . .

The llamas are put in a chute so they can't freak out and trample anyone. This is Sitara ready for shearing . . .

This is Tuscany before shearing . . .

And this is Tuscany and Dolce after shearing. I don't think I will ever get accustomed to how much smaller they are after shearing.

Now the work begins for us as we have to wash the fiber and get it ready for carding and spinning.

Bridget's calf -- take two!

2011-06-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

Yes, Bridget the Irish Dexter gave birth back in March, but Margaret just edited the video footage that I took. If you've ever wondered what a normal birth is like for a cow, here you go.

Turkey rescue

2011-06-07T06:00:00.009-05:00

One of the pigs on this side of the fence.
La mancha goats grazing on the other side.

Last week we decided to put the milk goats behind the house so they could graze around the pond. That meant putting up the portable electric fencing. About an hour after the job was completed, we saw a turkey hen frantically pacing back and forth on the pond side of the fencing. Mike realized it was the turkey hen that had been setting on a nest by the garden. A setting hen will leave the nest once a day to eat and drink, and apparently Mike had put up the fencing while the hen was in the chicken house having breakfast.

Mike and Margaret (still home from U of I until her summer class starts next week) went out there to help the turkey hen get back to her nest so she could continue setting and hatch her brood. They hoped to either catch her or at last scare her enough so that she would fly over the fence. Neither of those things happened. When they tried to catch her, she did get scared and fly -- but in the opposite direction of the fencing, which landed her right in the pond!

Perhaps like me, you've always assumed that turkeys can't swim. Well, although they don't exactly swim, they don't sink either. She was just floating in the pond. Mike mumbled a couple of words that I won't repeat and said he needed to get his chest waders. A couple of minutes later, he was walking into the pond. We hadn't noticed yet, but Julia the pig had been watching the whole show, and when Mike started walking into the pond, she followed him. She was walking, walking, walking, and then she went swoosh and was under water. I was laughing too hard to get a picture as she took a turn to the right and started walking back up the bank of the pond. As she came up from the water, a sheet of algae settled on top of her head and back, and Margaret and I laughed hysterically as she looked like a sea monster emerging from the pond. Mike had been concentrating on the turkey and had no idea Julia was following him, so he was rather confused about why Margaret and I were laughing hard enough to injure ourselves.

It all had a happy ending as Julia managed to rid herself of the algae, and Mike placed the turkey hen on the opposite side of the fence so she could get back to setting on her nest.

A new predator

2011-06-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

When I was doing chores Tuesday night, I discovered that the setting goose was gone and so were all of her eggs. I couldn't even find an egg shell. What kind of predator could have taken her without leaving any feathers? And what could eat eggs without leaving any shells? I mentioned it on the Antiquity Oaks Facebook page, and a few people offered guesses. A snake seemed the most likely egg thief because they do swallow eggs whole, but I couldn't figure out who could have taken the goose. The area is fenced, but I supposed some might have forgotten and left a gate open at some point.

Wednesday was one of those days that felt like a week. I woke up knowing that the final draft of my book would be waiting in my inbox. I'd be spending the whole day giving it one final read before giving the thumb's up for it to be put into book form. Talk about nerve wracking!

I was sitting at the computer, which is in front of a window overlooking the barnyard, and I heard our livestock guardian dog barking viciously. He was standing at the fence of the goat pasture looking towards the chicken house. I turned towards the chicken house and saw something large and gray on the other side of the fence. After a few seconds, I screamed, "Coyote! Coyote!" Mike ran to get a gun from upstairs but the coyote disappeared down the hill. Mike went running after it as I started to process what I'd seen. It was huge -- much taller than the chickens. Coyotes are only 40 pounds. It was very gray. Coyotes are more brown-gray-reddish. Could it have been a wolf?

When Mike got back, he started talking about how big the coyote was -- at least twice as big as any coyote he'd seen before. I asked if he thought it could have been a wolf, and to my surprise -- because he is always Mr. Cool -- he said yes. I googled "wolves in Illinois" and read an article in the Chicago Tribune that said a wolf siting was confirmed about 60 miles from here in March. Not good. We have two dogs, six llamas, and guns, but llamas are not effective guardians against wolves, only coyotes. The dogs can't be in every pasture every minute of every day and neither can we.

But I didn't have time to think about the predator because I had to finish reading my manuscript. So, while everyone else decided to spend a lot of time near the chicken house, I got back to work on my computer. We haven't seen the predator again, and as far as we know, we haven't lost any more animals. But if we've learned anything out here, it's that coyotes don't go far if they think there is a free meal to be had. I read that wolves will range over hundreds of miles, so maybe it would be lucky if this is a wolf. Maybe he'll move on?

It's all about food

2011-05-30T15:58:00.000-05:00

My husband just informed me it's been a week since I blogged, so what have I been doing? Mostly I've been busy with final edits on the book, tweaking sentences, writing captions for photos, and double-checking the bibliography.

We've been getting a ridiculous amount of rain lately, so the yard, pastures, and garden are all soggy. Only about 20 percent of the garden is planted -- sweet potatoes, onions, beans, strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus. I have 50 heirloom tomato and 60 pepper plants sitting around waiting to be transplanted. It is really not a big deal that they're a bit late getting into the garden because they won't start producing anyway until it gets hot enough, which means early August most years. One year I planted tomatoes at the end of June, and they produced fine. We are still harvesting more than enough lettuce, which was planted last fall in low tunnels. We removed the tunnels in April.

Because I've been so busy, we actually ran out of chevré! I can't remember the last time we had no chevré in the house in May -- maybe 2002? Anyway, I'm making chevré today!

Lately we've been talking about how excited we used to be when we had a single meal that was homegrown, but now almost all of our meals are homegrown, even through the winter. It's a pretty surprising accomplishment for someone who was a vegetarian with a brown thumb nine years ago. Tonight's dinner will be salad, grilled lamb chops, corn on the cob, and ice cream. Last night's dinner was queso blanco with pasta and marinara sauce. Saturday's lunch was quiche. We've actually been having a lot of quiches lately. Today's lunch was an odd one -- corn fritters and smoothies -- because no one thought about cooking until we were all starving, and it was after noon.

We're about to open our last jar of canned pears, and we're running low on frozen raspberries. There are only two packages of frozen green beans left, although we still have a lot of corn in the freezer. The chickens are laying a few dozen eggs a day, and if we milk all the goats, we can get seven gallons of milk a day for making buttermilk, yogurt, and cheese, as well as ice cream and cream soups and other good stuff.

And with the garden, the cycle starts again. As we are running out of fruits and vegetables, it's time to plant and nurture and harvest to put up food to last for the next winter. Why do we keep doing this? As my daughter said this morning, "Once you get used to homegrown, you just can't find anything in the store that tastes as good."

Goat classifications 2011

2011-05-22T23:47:00.000-05:00

We had about a dozen of our goats classified today. That means that a judge came to the farm and basically scored our goats against the ideal. The goats are scored on things like length of bone, front end assembly, head and breed character, feet and legs, neck, skin, ribs, chest and heart girth, fore udder, rear udder, teats, and more! Total possible score is 100, but I don't think I've ever seen a score much beyond 92. After all, no goat is perfect. If a goat scores 90 or higher, they are "Excellent," 85 to 89.9 is "Very Good," 80-84.9 is "Good+," and so on. Of the eleven goats classified today, we received ten VG and one E!

Maly PG Annie Oakley scored 90.4! Last year, she came so close to "E" with an 89.8 as a three year old. Does should improve with age, although sometimes things start to break down, such as feet, legs, and mammary support, especially as does go beyond six or seven years of age. Although Annie does not carry the Antiquity Oaks herd name, she was born here. Maly is the herd name that my oldest daughter Margaret had for her herd. When she went to college, she sold all of her goats to me. I didn't have to buy them all, but I have to admit that she did a great job breeding, and I wanted to buy her goats!

Our first homegrown master champion, ARMCH Antiquity Oaks Carmen *D scored 89.9 today at age 7, which is exciting. She is a good example of a goat that keeps improving with age. This is her highest score yet. It's hard for me to believe she's already 7!

And although Antiquity Oaks Giselle didn't score as well as several other goats, she wins the award for "most photogenic" today. Her score was 87.7, which is still a "VG" and quite good, but you get to see her picture instead of the other four goats that scored 89-point-something because their pictures didn't turn out as well. And unfortunately, I totally forgot to get a picture of Pinkerton, the buck who scored 89.2.

So, why do people have their goats classified? It's very educational, and you get a second opinion on your goats. It also makes it nice for potential buyers of kids to have that second opinion. It's not just me saying that a goat is good in a particular area. Buyers can actually look at the goat's scorecard to see how they were scored on each individual area.

What's up?

2011-05-20T15:59:00.000-05:00

It might sound impossible, but I've been busier than normal lately. In addition to cleaning the milking parlor, planting the garden, and milking goats twice a day four days a week while my daughter is taking summer classes, I'm also working on final edits for the book manuscript. Part of that process is deciding what can be cut because I ran out of space. So, earlier today on the Homegrown and Handmade site, I posted a bread recipe that was cut.

We recently received another batch of turkey poults, which I want to blog about. Today and tomorrow morning, we are in the midst of doing our monthly milk test with the goats, and on Sunday, we are having about a dozen of our goats classified with AGS. An AGS judge will be coming to the farm and basically giving our goats a report card to score them on the various parts of their conformation. We only have about a fourth of the garden planted, so we need to continue with that while also working on other projects that I'm looking forward to sharing with you -- like the area we're creating in the basement for making soap, storing wool roving, and shipping orders.

I go through this every summer -- when I have dozens of things to write about, I have no time to blog!

White Feather lambed

2011-05-12T06:00:00.003-05:00

Jonathan came inside Monday evening before the sun went down to tell me that White Feather had two fluffy lambs. White Feather is one of the two ewes I bought eight years ago, which means she's nine now, so I'm not planning to breed her again after this year. Wasn't it sweet of her to give me two lovely ewes to fill her footsteps? And it was tough to get pictures of them because they were so friendly. They kept coming up to me, and I had a nice cuddle. Baby goats may be cute, but lambs win the award for best cuddlers. And I really need a new camera. I've been using my cell phone, and out of a dozen photos, this one is least blurry. Both ewes have black bodies with white face and leg(s) with the big black spots on their eyes -- one of my favorite patterns.

Slipping through the cracks

2011-05-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

We use an old water trough as a brooder for the first two weeks.

For those of you who have said, "You're so busy. I don't know how you do it all," the answer is that I don't do it all perfectly! While working on the book this past winter, a lot of things slipped through the cracks. Normally, I spend January and February perusing gardening and hatchery catalogs and placing orders. It is just not something I think about during March. In April, I suddenly realized that I had no seeds started in the basement, and there were no turkey poults ordered, so I frantically tried to correct the situation.

Of all the seed potatoes sold by Seed Saver, there were only three varieties not sold out by the time I placed my order. So, I decided to try Nicola, a new one for us that looks a lot like a Burbank russet, but hopefully it won't be plagued by some of the issues that cause russets to not do very well in organic situations. And we'll plant some of our own potatoes that we saved from last year's crop.

The turkey situation was not much better. I called several hatcheries, and the earliest I could get a turkey delivery was the first week of May. Some were already sold out for the year. Good news for heritage turkey enthusiasts, but not so good for us. I decided to try Narragansetts this year. They are the only breed of turkey recognized by the American Poultry Association that we have never had for dinner. We tried to raise them five or six years ago, and they all disappeared one day. It was a very discouraging experience, although I don't blame the breed. I'm sure it was not a predator, because there were no feathers anywhere. And it would have taken a pretty big pack of coyotes to eat twenty young turkeys. So apparently they just all took a hike and probably got lost in the woods, never to be seen by human eyes again.

We like to get turkey poults in early April because we get the largest live turkeys by Thanksgiving. Get them any earlier, and the males start to reach sexual maturity and begin killing each other. Although two or three additional weeks of growth on the turkeys before Thanksgiving would have been nice, I can't beat myself up about it, because it's not going to do any good. The poults arrived last week in the best condition I've ever seen, and so far (knock on wood), they're all still alive, which is unusual for poults, because they don't usually handle the trip that well.

And if you're wondering why we don't hatch our own turkeys, it's because they don't hatch early enough in Illinois to be a good size by Thanksgiving. Our turkeys hens do hatch poults, but not usually until June or July. And if we collect eggs and incubate them, we don't usually get them hatched much earlier than that. We don't mind small turkeys, but customers do. However, I usually save that topic for a November post.

For today, I'm just trying to accept the fact that although I can do a lot of stuff, it may not all be perfect, and that's okay.

Tough choices

2011-05-09T23:49:00.001-05:00

My mother always told me, "Never say never." And I try really, really hard to follow that advice, because when I say "never," it's almost as if I've just bought myself a ticket to do whatever I just said I would never do. And at some point, I'm pretty sure that I said (probably more than once) that I could never butcher a doe. But I find myself with a doe that seems to have little practical purpose in this world.

Viola the la mancha finally freshened for the first time a few months before her fourth birthday. She seemed to be a great mother initially, and she was producing more milk than her babies needed, so we were milking her almost daily without ever separating her from her kids. But then the problems started. After our first milk test, she got mastitis. It's understandable that she wouldn't want her kids to nurse because I'm sure it was painful, but even after she was over the mastitis, she would often refuse to let them nurse. She also has a bad habit of jumping fences, so she'd decide she wanted to be in another pasture and jump a fence -- not a problem that her kids couldn't come along, or so she thought.

After our second milk test, she had her second bout with mastitis, which had me thinking that I wouldn't breed her again if this was going to turn into a chronic thing. And now it seems that she has pretty much weaned her kids at just over two months of age. We're milking her twice a day, and she's usually filling up the bucket. We've never had an older doe freshen for the first time, so maybe she just doesn't like kids cramping her style? But we let moms raise their kids on this farm, and if she doesn't want to do that, she doesn't really fit here. However, if her history with mastitis, which pops up when she does NOT have kids on her 24 hours a day makes me think that she doesn't really fit on a farm where the kids are bottle fed and does are milked twice a day from the day they freshen.

And she didn't get pregnant until she was almost four years old. She is small for a la mancha because her dam was copper deficient when Viola was in utero and when she was nursing. In fact, Viola's mother died when she was only two months old, and I was afraid I might lose Viola, which is why I didn't even try to breed her to freshen as a yearling. She was just too small, even to be bred to a Nigerian buck. Now, however, I wouldn't want to sell her to a farm where she would be bred to anything other than a ND buck, because although she had no trouble giving birth to her babies, they were half Nigerian, so purebred la manchas could easily be two or three pounds heavier.

And it's kind of tough to sell a goat as a pet when she has a habit of jumping fences. I suppose if their fences were tall enough, she wouldn't be able to jump them. She is a crazy-friendly goat. But seriously who would want a goat like this?

Goat for sale -- didn't freshen until almost four years of age due to copper deficiency as a kid. Weaned her kids at two months. Had two cases of mastitis in the first two months after freshening. Loves to jump fences. Occassionally has a kicking fit on the milkstand.

Did I forget to mention her random fits on the milkstand? She usually loves to be milked and plows into the milking parlor ahead of every other goat, but every now and then, she throws a fit. And when a big goat throws a fit, it's not pretty. Other than the fact that she actually produces milk, she doesn't have much going for her. How can you sell a goat like this?

What do you do with a problem like Viola?

New website is up!

2011-05-04T15:38:00.000-05:00

It still needs work, but the new website for Homegrown and Handmade is up! It has a Blogspot address for the time being, because all of the short and easy "Homegrown and Handmade" URLs are taken, so I either have to do something that is not a dot-com, like homegrownandhandmade.org or something really long like homegrownandhandmadethebook.com. In fact, the phrase "homegrown and handmade" is so popular, there were not even any of the shorter URLs available with Blogger, which is why I have the crazy, long URL that I do.

If you're wondering whether or not you want to "follow" the new blog and website, I don't plan to be duplicating information from here and there. The new site will contain a lot of unique info, such as the schedule for the book tour this fall and videos related to the book.

Planting seeds

2011-05-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Although it's spring, and we're planting lots of seeds in the garden, I'm talking about planting metaphorical seeds. Anyone who knew me in high school or college has to be incredibly shocked when they see the person I've become -- growing my own food, weighing less than I did in high school and college, almost never wearing make-up, more concerned about who made my clothes instead of who designed them, never watching television other than a once-a-week movie from Netflix. I've changed in practically every way imaginable.

When my first child was born, I would drink a two-liter bottle of soda every day -- caffeine-free though because I was nursing my baby. I remember buying $50 designer jeans in high school in the late 1970s! (That was a lot of money back then.) I thought, "What's the big deal?" when garment manufacturing jobs started going overseas in the 1980s. I ate out more often than I ate at home, and a home-prepared meal was likely to be something from a can or a box. I never got any exercise more strenuous than walking to my car. I was heavily addicted to television. What happened to me?

Me at age 20, standing in the middle. The woman sitting,
third from right, was the knitter. Boyfriend is on the far right.

I was lucky enough to have a number of people come into my life -- some for a very short time -- to plant seeds. The four months I spent in Nebraska on National Student Exchange at Kearney State College definitely represented a fork in the road for me. I had a boyfriend who was diabetic, and it was the first time I had ever heard anyone talk about good nutrition. I grew up believing that all food was created equal. Just eat whatever you want, and you'll be fine. It was just fuel, right? Although I didn't change my diet at all -- and felt sorry for my boyfriend who had to watch what he ate -- the seed was planted that connected health and diet.

Another person I met during that time was a woman knitting a pair of mittens from wool that she had spun. Like most people, it had never crossed my mind that human beings could spin yarn from wool. At that time, learning to spin wool became a goal. It was a goal not realized for almost twenty years, but the seed was planted when I was in Nebraska.

Although I had read Walden previously, I read it for a literature class when I was in Nebraska, and somehow at that time, my brain processed it differently. Maybe it was reading it more than once. Maybe it was reading it after a geology trip to Colorado (pictured above). Maybe it was meeting the woman making the mittens. But whatever the connection, I finally "got it." I understood what Henry David Thoreau was saying. The designer clothes were not really important. Old habits die hard though, and I do recall buying a Gucci handbag a few years later. But the seed of simplicity was planted.

I earned my bachelor's degree from Eastern Connecticut State University, and my first New England boyfriend had a mother who was a Cordon Bleu chef. She was the first mere mortal I ever met who could really cook. I loved my mother dearly, but she either boiled or deep-fried everything, seriously everything. I loved my boyfriend's mother's cooking. She had her own restaurant, and I was lucky enough to help out a bit. Knowing her, I learned that cooking is something that anyone can learn. You can prepare delicious food in your own kitchen. It doesn't have to come from a box or a restaurant. She planted the seeds that gave me the courage to try things in the kitchen that most people never even consider -- like making cheese.

My parents planted a vegetable garden every year that I can remember, although I never helped. I don't remember ever pulling a single weed or picking any vegetables. My idea of gardening was overly simplistic. I assumed that you just plant seeds, and they magically turn into kitchen-ready vegetables. Although I had to learn a lot on my own, my parents planted the seeds that growing your own vegetables is possible.

I remember visiting my grandparent's farm when I was a little girl. All of the animals were running around together in fresh air and sunshine. I grew up believing that that's what all farms were like. Because of my grandparent's farm, the seeds were planted that made me believe that animals could be raised naturally.

Although I grew up in town, my parents would buy a calf from a rancher they knew. Sometimes my father would take it to the locker to get it butchered, and sometimes he'd shoot it and bring it home and butcher it in our garage. I was absolutely horrified as a teenager. "Why can't we just buy meat at the store like everybody else?" I asked my mother. And she responded, "Because you don't know how it was raised." She didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask any questions. I didn't know why it mattered, and I didn't care. But that comment stuck in my head, and one day in January 1989, when I was a new mother, I read an article about factory farming. I understood why my mother didn't like to buy meat at the grocery store, and with no alternatives for locally grown meat, my husband and I became vegetarians and decided to raise our children as vegetarians. My mother planted the seed that sometimes it's okay not to do the same thing as everyone else. It's okay if people think you're weird.

I was talking to a conventional-turned-organic farmer in January, and I asked him why he switched. "It didn't work," he said bluntly. "Conventional doesn't work." He told me about walking around with a pistol-grip syringe in each hand, injecting sick pigs with antibiotics daily. Then he told me about a conversation he overheard between his grandfather and his father. His grandfather said, "I don't understand why people think they can spray poison on food, and it's not going to hurt them." That thought lingered in his mind for decades as he grew up and followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a conventional farmer. One day he sprayed his field and forgot that he wasn't supposed to go back in there for a few days. That night he woke up gasping for air, barely able to breathe, thinking he was going to die, and he heard his grandfather's voice. He knew why he was sick. He knew he had to stop spraying poison on his fields and injecting his pigs with drugs. His grandfather had planted the seeds that decades later caused him to reject conventional agriculture.

Some people think there has to be a big a-ha! moment when you suddenly see the light and change your life, and it can happen like that if someone gets a life-threatening disease, but more often, it's the culmination of a lot of little things. So many people have come into my life and presented me with a new idea or a question that seemed insignificant at the time. But today I can see how all of those little seeds that were planted have grown into this beautiful garden that is now my life.

Who can you trust?

2011-05-02T12:23:00.000-05:00

A fear and frustration of anyone who does any public speaking or writing is that your words will be taken out of context. It has been on my mind for the past week as I contemplated whether or not to write this post. But I finally decided to do it because this topic is too important to not write about it. What is so important and controversial?

Anyone remember back in 2007 when Tyson started advertising antibiotic-free chicken? Did you notice how those ads disappeared? That's because Tyson was lying, and they got called on the carpet by Perdue and then consumers. Like many advertisers, Tyson was splitting hairs with their advertising claim because their chickens were being fed medication on a daily basis -- just like Perdue and other commercial chickens -- but technically the drug is an ionophore, not an antibiotic. Although Tyson admitted no wrongdoing, they quietly settled the lawsuit with Perdue in 2008. The consumer lawsuits were ultimately lumped into a class-action suit, which was settled last year. I'm sorry to say that if you bought Tyson chicken from 2007 to 2009 thinking it was drug-free, the time has passed for you to get your coupons and cash. So, why am I telling you this?

Because it's just another painful example of how corporate America will say anything to get us to fork over our hard-earned cash for their products. And they'll do anything to increase their profits, because that is the only thing they care about. But, as they are quick to point out, it's not their fault because legally corporations only answer to their stock holders, and they are responsible for turning as big a profit as possible.

Food giant Dean Foods, which has gobbled up dozens of smaller dairy companies, has been caught conveniently avoiding the truth and stretching the truth. When Dean bought Silk Soy products, they quietly stopped using organic soybeans without changing the labels, other than to omit the word "organic," and it was months before consumers noticed that they had been duped. In their organic dairies, they've been caught buying conventionally raised, drug-fed heifers as future milkers, even though it's prohibited by organic standards. And now they're fortifying their "organic" milk with DHA Omega-3, which is synthetic and illegal under the organic standards. And what really fries my bacon with this story is that if they kept their cows on a grass-fed diet, their milk would be naturally high in omega-3s.

And it goes beyond organics. Does anyone remember the McDonald's class action lawsuit in the 1990s when McD said they were now frying their french fries in vegetable oil rather than lard. Vegetarians started eating the fries before learning that the new "secret ingredient" in the fries was tallow, which is beef fat. We were vegetarians at the time and starting eating the fries. The only thing I've purchased from McDonald's in at least ten years was a cup of coffee a few years ago when I was desperate to find a WiFi connection, and a sign outside a McD's boasted WiFi, so I figured I could buy a cup of coffee and check my email. Wrong! After I bought the coffee, I asked how to get connected, and I was told I'd have to pay for it. Want to guess when I'll set foot in a McD's again?

And it goes beyond food. When we moved into our house six years ago, all of the appliances were brand new except for the dryer, which we bought in 1993. As of today, all of the appliances have been replaced -- some twice -- except for the stove and the 1993 dryer. And in the last two years, the cost of a refrigerator has gone up $400 -- yes, the exact same refrigerator that only lasted 20 months!

I am so fed up with Big Biz, I could rant all day with one story after another. And although I don't have an answer about what to do with appliances, I do have answers for food. We can't rely on labels, government inspectors, or lawyers and lawsuits to protect us from anything, whether it is ingredients we would prefer to avoid or deadly pathogens. We have to take responsibility and do what we can. Madison Avenue has done a splendid job convincing us that our time is too valuable to be spent gardening or cooking. We should relax in front of the television (so they can convince us to buy more stuff that we don't need). Of course, we can't all grow everything, but farmer's markets are becoming more popular, making it easier than ever to know your farmer.

Yes, a person could lie to you about how they grow their crops, but in my experience most of them adamantly believe that they're doing what needs to be done, and rather than lie to you, they'll try to convince you that you don't really need organic spinach or pork. And if you're a savvy shopper, it is easy to spot the fakers. A couple of years ago, I asked at a farmer's market stand if they sprayed their vegetables, and rather than answering my question, the man said, "Pesticides kill bees," and gave me an explanation that would mean no one could use pesticides. I just walked away, feeling insulted and thinking that I should have started questioning him. But if you frequent a farmer's market, you can get to know the people and learn who you can trust.

I've been thinking about writing this post for a long time, but the last thing I want is for people to take away the idea that it's hopeless, and you should just keep buying the cheapest food possible, because you don't really know if organic is organic or not. I want this post (and the blog and my book) to motivate and empower you -- to help you believe that you really can take control of your food choices. You don't have to be a master gardener. I'm not. You don't even need a yard. When we lived in the Chicago burbs, we rented a community garden plot. According to the National Gardening Association, 5% of those who garden -- two million people -- have a garden at a friend's house. And it doesn't take a ton of time. The average amount of time spent gardening every week is less than five hours, which is not even an hour a day -- far less than most people spend watching television.

But if you have a legitimate reason for not gardening or shopping at farmer's market, you can at least start cooking something from scratch. I started baking bread 23 years ago, back when I was drinking two liters of soda a day. Little things add up, and if you keep adding little things, at some point you might find yourself on 32 acres in the middle of nowhere growing the majority of your own food organically.

And if anyone has ideas on how we can get back to appliances that last twenty years, please share!

Growing your own is in!

2011-04-27T10:23:00.000-05:00

Molly and calf

There are some things in life that you would prefer to forget, and up until a couple weeks ago, the Illinois Sustainable Living and Wellness Expo was one of those things. Six years ago, I was scheduled to speak in two separate sessions, one on homesteading and one on heritage livestock. The homesteading talk was attended by four people. No one showed up for the heritage livestock talk, and when a volunteer told organizers that no one showed up for my talk, they asked him to sit there and listen. I told him he didn't have to do that, but he insisted. It turned out that he was a college ag student who grew up on a modern farm. With only him in the room, my talk quickly turned into a debate as he was firmly convinced that organic agriculture just didn't work in the real world, and heritage livestock really had nothing to offer real farmers and ranchers.

For days -- no, weeks -- I kept thinking, "I should have said ___ or ___!" It was the first time anyone had ever argued with me about organics and sustainability, and I was not prepared at all. When we told everyone we were moving to the country in 2002 to grow our own food, they all looked at us like we had lost our minds. They really didn't know what to say, so most didn't say much. My father, who had lived on a farm his entire life until I was three years old, looked at me quizzically, paused for a long time, then finally said, "What do you want to do that for?" The goal in his life was to have a real job so he could make enough money to buy all of his food. And so I grew up eating canned ravioli, frozen pizza, and lots of hamburgers and burritos from local fast food places.

Thinking about the past month is like traveling to a new universe -- one where people are concerned about their food and want to grow their own, one where my lifestyle is cool instead of weird. In the past month, I've had five speaking engagements, two newspaper interviews, and a radio interview. Here is one of the newspaper articles, and here's the other one. Another reporter is coming over today to interview me. I spoke at the Illinois Sustainable Living and Wellness Expo on homesteading and backyard chickens two weeks ago, and both sessions were packed with about seventy people. From young couples to retirees, people want to take control of their food. Thirty-one people spent a whole day at a Homesteading Conference a few weeks ago, learning to raise livestock, compost, and preserve the fruits of their labor by canning.

But the good news doesn't stop there. Tractor Supply in Blomington, IL, can't keep up with demand for its livestock feed. For the past month, they keep running out of various feeds, and a friend from Kentucky told me her Tractor Supply down there is having the same problem. I also noticed that every time I went into the store for the past month, their chick brooders have been empty. Yesterday, they were full, and there was an employee giving them food and water. I started talking to her and learned that they can't keep the chicks in stock. Every time they get a shipment, they sell out within a few hours. They have only had chicks in the store overnight once this spring!

I'm really excited about this new consciousness, and not just because Homegrown and Handmade is coming out this fall, which by the way, is now available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I'm excited because there are so many positive aspects to growing your own food -- you get exercise, you eat healthier, and you get outside more. And this leads into tomorrow's post about why we should do our best to avoid Big Ag and Big Biz products as much as possible. Although we're growing most of our own food now, there are still plenty of things on my to-do list, including bee hives and mushrooms. But I love hearing about what other people have started to do or are planning to do, so don't be shy -- share your successes and your plans for the future in the comment section.

Spring

2011-04-25T11:32:00.000-05:00

Flower garden at front gate

It's raining . . . again. It's been raining for several days now, and the forecast calls for rain six days of the next seven. I hope they're wrong. After Friday's flood, we did get a little break on Saturday, so we went out to the garden and cleaned it up for planting. We pulled out all of the old corn stalks, tomato plants, and dead weeds. The dead sorghum stalks are still there, but once they're out, we'll be ready to spread the compost and till.

Mike also put together four new raised beds, and he has the lumber to build four more, which will give us a total of twelve raised beds. They're eight-feet by four-feet, and we've discovered that there are many advantages to them. For one thing, you can work in them when it's just rained buckets, because you are standing on grass next to the raised beds. I am thinking of putting gravel between them though, because we are not great about mowing between them in the summer. The four existing raised beds were turned into low tunnels for winter gardening, which is why we have lots of lettuce right now. Five of the new raised beds will be used for perennials -- strawberries, rhubarb, and purple asparagus, which are sitting in the house losing vitality, waiting to be put into soil.

As for the animals, the goats are only going outside about every other day. We're doing this balancing act, trying to figure out whether the goats are better off outside with mud and parasites on wet pasture or in the barn eating alfalfa all day and increasing risk of coccidiosis for kids. It feels like a no-win situation, so I just keep piling on more clean straw in the barn for the inside days. Katherine was at least able to get all the goat stalls clean on Saturday. Still, I worry.

Even the pigs are not happy with all the mud in their pen. I keep piling on more straw in their shelter and right outside the shelter so they don't drag too much mud inside. As soon as I put fresh straw in there, they immediately lay down on it.

This is starting to remind me of the spring of 2009. It rained and rained, and just when you thought it was finally going to dry out, it rained again. Farmers couldn't get their heavy equipment into the fields until about a month later than normal, which then meant they were still harvesting at Thanksgiving, which even the oldest among them had never experienced before. The really frustrating thing about the spring of '09 is that when it stopped raining, it stopped for weeks. But the good thing about backyard agriculture is that we don't use heavy equipment. Yeah, mud is nasty, but if we put on a pair of waterproof boots, we can still get a lot done. And if we have a drought, we can water the garden.

So, I just have to learn to relax.

Hatching chicks, sustainability, and ingenuity

2011-04-19T06:00:00.002-05:00

There is nothing more agonizing than watching a chick hatch. You just want to reach over there and rip open the shell so the little bird can be free. But lots of sources tell you not to do this. Some say that the struggle is vital in building the chick's muscles, and if you "help," the chicks won't survive. But if you watch closely, it's obvious that at some point, the chick exhausts itself to death. I've learned over the years not to watch the process too closely. Most chicks take hours and hours to hatch -- anywhere from four to twelve hours or more.

Part of our drive towards sustainability includes hatching our own meat birds and replacement layers. The chicks hatching now should be mostly New Hampshire reds with a barred rock cross here and there. After all we have about forty NH hens and three roosters. We only have six barred rock hens and one barred rock cross rooster. However, when I look at the nine black chicks and eight red chicks, it makes me think that barred rock rooster has been pretty busy.

If you think the inside of our incubator looks a lot like the inside of a refrigerator, that would be because it is an old refrigerator. We had an under-the-counter refrigerator that kept croaking, so after having it fixed three times, I suggested that Mike turn it into an incubator. After all, it is a big insulated box, right? He's an electrical engineering professor, so he understands thermostats. He put a light and a fan inside the frig to create heat and circulate it, and he made a thermostat that turns the light on and off to keep it between 99.5 and 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

It looks like we have a lot of eggs that are not hatching, but I think that has to do with egg husbandry, rather than electronics. We collected the eggs and then couldn't find our old Styrofoam incubator, so the eggs sat and sat for about a week while Mike repurposed the frig to make a new incubator. I didn't think they would hatch, because if you are holding eggs to put into an incubator, they should be turned regularly, but they were pretty much left to sit in one position the whole time.

Next up -- turkey poults! We've only collected about eight turkey eggs so far, but we'll hopefully find another dozen or so and get them started in the incubator by this weekend. They take 28 days to hatch (compared to 21 for chickens), so I'll give you an update in a month.

Pig romance (or lack thereof)

2011-04-18T11:49:00.000-05:00

James (left) and Julia (right) saying "hi" to Porter (far left).

After seven years of raising feeder pigs -- and one disastrous attempt at farrowing with Tamworths -- we bought a pair of American Guinea hogs last fall. Both were eight months old, which is when a lot of people breed their pigs for the first time, and although Julia Child was coming into heat, James Beard was oblivious. They've been living together all this time, and we finally saw them mate a couple weeks ago, which would give Julia a July due date. I really hope that isn't right because I was hoping for spring piglets that could be finished on acorns and hickory nuts in the fall. And if they're born in July, they'll only be three months old when the nuts start to fall from the trees. But I keep rubbing Julia's belly, and her teats are definitely not filling with milk yet, so this is one of those situations where I will just have to patiently wait.

Nine years ago

2011-04-11T10:13:00.000-05:00

On April 10, 2002, my professor husband and our three children, then 9, 12, and 14, pulled into the driveway of the place we have now called home for nine years. When speaking at conferences, one thing that keeps coming up is that people today don't know how to do all the things we do out here. Well, here's a little secret -- nine years ago, we didn't know any of this stuff either!

Our entire goat herd in 2002. Star (left), my first milk goat,
is still with us at age 12.

Nine years ago, I bought goats because I liked goat cheese. I had no idea that you could make a multitude of cheeses with goat milk beyond the simple chevre that many generically call "goat cheese." I didn't know how simple or difficult it was to make any kind of cheese, but I knew that people had been doing it for thousands of years, so I figured I could learn to do it, too.

Nine years ago, our gardening success amounted to a few tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and lettuce in our suburban Chicago backyard. But I saw no reason why we couldn't grow most of our vegetables.

Nine years ago, the only homegrown fruit I'd ever eaten were cherries from our Nanking cherry bushes, although we had certainly planted a variety of fruit trees and brambles in our suburban backyard. They all died, but I wanted to try again.

Nine years ago, our livestock consisted of two cats and a poodle. But I figured that goats, cattle, and chickens couldn't be that much harder. Right?

One of our first buff Orpington hens at 3 months.

Nine years ago, I wanted my poultry to be completely free to go wherever they wanted, which meant no fences. I didn't know that chickens love fresh tomatoes and geese love baby lettuce. I ultimately decided that maybe a fence around the garden was not a bad thing.

Nine years ago, we thought the old fence around the east pasture was "good enough" to keep Katherine's horse at home. Then we learned -- again and again -- that if the words "good enough" ever pass our lips, it's not really good enough to do the job. Fences and gates have to be excellent -- period -- or you'll find yourself retrieving animals from all over the countryside.

Nine years ago, I'd never seen a goat give birth or a chicken hatch from an egg. I'd never made cheese or soap. I'd never sheared a sheep or spun yarn from wool. I'd never plucked a chicken.

Katherine, age 10, assisting at our first goat birth in 2003.

Nine years ago, my children didn't know real responsibility. None of us had a real reason to get out of bed in the morning. No one really depended upon us for their lives and well-being. We didn't even depend upon ourselves for much of anything. (Corporate America took care of our needs.)

But nine years ago, we also didn't realize that pain and joy are two inseparable sides of the same coin. Life is not perfect. It never has been, even though advertisers would have us believe that we can have everything we want, just the way we want it. After all, "you deserve a break today!" (and tomorrow and the next day and . . . )

In the last nine years, we've learned that the most joyful goat births are those that were the most difficult, but somehow we managed to get through them with live babies. We've learned that we sleep best after a long, hard day of work outside. We've learned to appreciate eating seasonally. We've learned that joy isn't one big destination like Disney World. Joy is all around us, every day. It's in the bouncing of a baby goat, the taste of a stalk of asparagus eaten in the garden, the chirping of a chick trying to hatch itself, the heavenly feel of wool from a sheep that you know personally, the smell of a stew hen cooking on the stove all day.

Nine years ago, I knew I had a lot to learn. I expected to eat healthier, get more exercise, and have fun. But I had no idea how much richer our lives would be after we moved to Antiquity Oaks.

Rotten, lousy day

2011-04-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

To be completely honest, today did start out great. I had a two-hour visit with a reporter from a newspaper who is doing a story on homesteading. It is always fun to walk around the farm, introduce the animals to people, and talk about what I do here. It was a great visit, and I'm looking forward to seeing the story. But then the day went downhill.

I got another email from a potential goat buyer who was being a pain. She called yesterday interested in a buck. I had already responded to her email, sending her a picture and linking to the buck's parents on the website. She asked, "What's your best price on him?" I said I'd have to look on the website, because they're all listed on there. It's $400. She asked if I'd come down, and I said I've never come down on a price. She said she didn't want to pay more then $300-350, which really shocked me because she had also expressed interest in a $600 buck. (Did she think this was half-price day?) I pointed out that the $400 buck's dam has both a one-day and a 305-day milk star and classified "very good," with a score of 88.3, which is less than two points away from excellent. Well, she just raises goats for pets. They don't milk or show.

Then she sends me an email asking if I'd meet her in Springfield, which is a two-hour drive for me. I said yes, then she sends another email asking if I'd take $375 for him. As I was responding to that email -- reiterating that his price is $400 -- she sends another one wanting to know how much white he has on the other side of his body. (That's the picture I emailed on the right.) She had told me on the phone that color was very important to her, but seriously -- how much white does he have on the other side of his body? By then, I was so annoyed I just went to bed -- not to mention the fact that I honestly had no idea how much white he had on the other side of his body. I did briefly chuckle to myself as I imagined measuring the white on him -- but that sounds more like a job for my engineer-husband.

This afternoon, I received another email from her saying that they are interested in him, but they want to know how much white he has on the other side of his body. Were they seriously going to decide whether or not they wanted him based upon how much white he had? How much white were they looking for? So, I responded honestly -- said I didn't know because I didn't pay that much attention to color. It doesn't put milk in the bucket, and there are no points for color on the scorecard. And I honestly hoped I would never hear from her again.

Then it started to rain. And I was home alone. It's bad enough to have to do chores alone, but rain makes it depressing. So, I headed outside at 5:30, knowing that it would take at least a couple hours, and sundown is around 7-something now. When I went into one stall to give the goats grain, I saw a kid hanging by its neck from a hay feeder. I gasped, "oh, no!" as I ran over there and lifted it out. It was limp. I kept saying, "oh, no!" over and over again as I sat down holding it in my arms. It was still warm, and I briefly thought that maybe it was still alive, just unconscious. I tried to find a heart beat, but there was none. The other goats came up to me, sniffed it, and walked away. I sat there for a long time, thinking that I needed to finish chores outside before the sun went down, but I didn't want to let go of the kid. The other goats kept coming up to me and sniffing the dead kid, and then I remembered a conversation that I had with someone recently where she said she left a dead kid with its mother until it seemed the mother had accepted its death. Somehow it did seem easier to leave the kid in there with her mother and brothers while I finished chores. After I laid her down in the straw and walked away, her brothers laid down next to her just as they had always done.

As I continued working on chores, I knew I would have to milk Viola at some point. She's one of my la manchas -- a big goat, which means she has a lot of milk, and it takes at least twice as long to milk her as it takes to milk a Nigerian. And although her kids are only six weeks old, she's decided she is tired of being a mom, and she keeps jumping fences -- as many as necessary -- to get away from her kids. Yes, this means she has already taught her kids to jump fences also. She just keeps going until they can't follow.

At some point in the middle of all the chores, I felt that annoying pain in my neck that sneaks up on me every now and then. I knew that within a few minutes, I would not be able to turn my head because my neck would be frozen. I've had arthritis in my neck for four years, and I was also diagnosed with two herniated disks a couple years ago, but there are not any good options for dealing with either problem, so I just live with the pain. The day-to-day pain is bad enough, but the pain when my neck goes into a spasm is really horrible. After four years, however, my sub-conscious has at least learned to keep my head completely straight and not even attempt to turn in any direction, because if I do turn my head, it feels like I've just been stabbed in the neck, and the pain shoots into my head.

I don't normally do much of anything when this happens -- I prefer to lay down so that I'm perfectly still -- but no one was home, so I had to finish chores and milk Viola. I decided that the cows would just have to spend the night in the pasture, because they still haven't learned the routine of going into their stall at night, and it usually takes one person leading with alfalfa cubes and one person pushing their back ends to get them into the right stall in the barn. (They don't learn nearly as fast as goats!) So, I figured I'd be asking for trouble if I attempted to get them in the barn by myself when my body is not firing on all cylinders.

I prayed that Viola would be a good girl on the milk stand. Katherine told me she's been naughty lately, trying to kick over the bucket. I find it interesting how some goats respond differently to different people. Thankfully, Viola was as good as ever for me.

When I walked in the house, it was 8:33. I had a glass of carrot juice and some crackers with Mike's cheddar. Then I made myself a cup of willow bark tea for the pain in my neck. It also did a good job of warming me up. When I checked email, there was a long, scathing response from the woman who wanted a cheap, flashy buck, criticizing me for refusing to tell her something as simple as what color he was. Any bit of guilt that I had about not budging on the price disappeared when she said that she was buying a pygmy goat from New York for $550. And it's not like they have goats for their family's milk supply. It finally clicked that money must not be much of an issue if they have fifteen pet goats.

Tomorrow will dawn bright and early for me because Katherine is at a journalism conference, so I have to do most of the goat chores, including milking. We'll have to bury Anne's doeling, which was one of the kids I was planning to keep. Then, I'm going to see the chiropractor and massage therapist. Hopefully they can do something with my neck so that I can at least turn my head again.

Spring chicks!

2011-04-06T12:34:00.000-05:00

Over the winter I visited several chicken keepers in Chicago while doing research for Homegrown and Handmade. One woman had bantams, which got me thinking. We were erroneously shipped bantams by a hatchery nine years ago when we first moved out here, and they were adorable, spunky little things. In some ways, they were the most sustainable animals on the farm because they just kept reproducing without any human attention for years. Bantams have a reputation for being outstanding mothers. This also means they don't lay a lot, because they get broody so often and want to set. Being small also means they don't make a great chicken dinner -- we're talking about a pound each after plucking and cleaning.

But bantams are beautiful! When my daughters showed chickens in 4-H, someone always showed some Sebright bantams, which look like works of art. It didn't matter how many times I saw them, I was always impressed with their beautiful plumage. So, a few months ago, I decided to order some Sebrights for myself, and today they arrived! Although I had thought about it a few times in the last few months, I had done nothing to get ready. Then when the phone rang at 6:39 this morning, I yelled, "Chicks!" as I pushed my husband towards the ringing phone, which is on his side of the bed. (Yes, we were asleep at 6:39 a.m.)

We're not exactly novices though, so I jumped up and dressed and headed to the post office to pick up my package while Mike gathered everything for a homemade brooder. As luck would have it, we just bought a new microwave, and the box is the perfect size for a brooder.

I ordered ten of each color because I couldn't decide between the silver and gold. The hatchery shipped 23, although one little golden chick didn't survive the trip, so I have ten gold and twelve silver. For now, the chicks are living in the basement, so I can keep an eye on them to make sure they are getting a good start. We'll move them to the barn this weekend.

So, what am I going to do with them? Of course, we'll eat the eggs, but mostly they're going to be my pet chickens, except for the extra roosters, which will become dinner. I'll keep the prettiest and nicest roosters for making more chicks next spring. They'll also be yard ornaments for the front yard. We finally fenced the laying hens away from the front yard because they keep destroying everything I plant, but I've been worried about bugs. We don't have any trouble with mosquitoes and fleas, and I'm pretty sure it's because we have all these chickens who love to eat bugs.

First lamb of the year

2011-04-04T22:08:00.001-05:00

It is unfortunate that sheep and goats are often lumped into the category of small ruminants, which leads some people to think that they are almost the same animal, except that one has wool. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sheep are far more aloof than goats. And while even a shy goat enjoys human company while in labor, sheep want to be left alone. So, it is never really a "surprise" when we find new lambs in the pasture. Ewes are also very quiet when lambing -- often not making a sound through the whole process.

I was speaking at a homesteading conference on Saturday, and when I arrived home, Mike met me with the news that we had our first lamb of 2011. He wasn't sure if it was Cheyenne or Naira (both are spotted), and he didn't know if it was a ewe or a ram lamb. The sun was almost completely gone, so it was too late to venture into the pasture to see the newest addition to the farm. Mike had taken pictures with his cell phone, however, so I was able to at least get a preview. Katherine and I immediately recognized Cheyenne as the mother in the photos, but it was anyone's guess about the lamb's gender.

Sunday we went out to the pasture, and the little lamb, still quite shy, let us know that she was a ewe when she squatted to pee.

I'm not entirely sure when we'll see more lambs, because Jonathan kept removing the ram from the ewes' pasture last fall. He felt sorry for the young ram, because the ewes kept beating him up.

Cicada's anticlimactic kidding

2011-03-31T16:52:00.000-05:00

In past years, a goat has given birth twice when I was speaking at the InHome homeschooling conference in the Chicago suburbs. So, I totally expected Cicada to follow suit, because the conference was on day 150 of her pregnancy. But just when I start to think I have all the answers, things go a little differently.

At 6:30 Saturday morning, I was still snuggly in bed and ignoring the bleating of the goats over the baby monitor, because they always talk to Katherine when she goes out there to milk and do chores. Then I heard Katherine scream over the baby monitor, "She's pushing!" I started to get up, then stopped and said to Mike, "She can handle it." I really wanted to sleep another hour before heading out to the conference.

There was more bleating, Cicada screaming, and Katherine screaming. Mike asked, "Did she say it's stuck?" I wasn't sure. The words were fuzzy, but Katherine's tone was definitely frustrated. I was not going to be getting another hour of sleep.

By the time I got outside, Katherine was drying off the kid, and Cicada looked happy. Katherine was wondering what took us so long. Apparently the kid was stuck. The front legs were coming out farther and farther, but the nose was not budging. When Katherine started to pull on the kid's legs to help, she pulled Cicada across the straw, but the kid still didn't budge. Within a minute or so, she did get the kid out. It was pretty big, and in any year prior to this year, I would have said huge, but 4.5 pounds isn't much compared to the 5+pounders that we'd had in the last month.

And that was it. A single buckling -- our only single kid all year -- and it came from a second freshener who had triplets last year. Apparently Sherri and Cicada didn't get any of the water (or whatever) that was causing all of the multiple births with the rest of the goats.

Hopefully this is the end of the 2011 kidding season. There is the possibility that Eleanor is pregnant, because she invited herself into her half-brother's pen a couple months ago. I've marked the calendar for May 25, so we'll see if she starts to develop an udder. But for now, I'm going to assume that we're done. I'll write up a recap within a day or two in case you lost track of everything.

Sherri's twins

2011-03-27T22:15:00.000-05:00

With the 2011 kidding season progressing so oddly, one could say that I started to get a bit paranoid. Before Katherine left for school on Wednesday, she told me that Sherri's tail ligaments were gone, so I figured she would be going into labor soon. When I hadn't heard anything by 10:30, I decided to head out to the barn and check on her. Well, it was obvious she was in labor, although she was not making a sound.

Although Sherri is eight years old, I have never actually seen her in labor. If it were almost any other goat, I would not have been worried, but from my perspective, Sherri's labors have always been measured in negative numbers. How is that possible? Well, normally I'm in the house and hear a scream over the monitor. I go running to the barn to find Sherri licking her first kid and pushing out the second one. But nothing went normally this year, and maybe if I weren't so worried, I would have been happy to stay in the house until I heard Sherri scream. But, no, I had to go out there to check on her. And I saw her pushing -- quietly -- for an hour.

I tried to remain calm and convince myself that if something were wrong, she would not be quiet. I flipped through a seed catalog while sitting in the straw and watching her. Then I heard that familiar scream. When I looked at her back end, there was a hoof and a nose. "So, this is how you do it, eh, Sherri?" A few more pushes, and the kid was born. It was a huge buck kid -- and I really mean huge.

A few minutes later, and another kid was born. Then Sherri stood up, acting like she was done. But she couldn't be done, could she? She has always had three or four kids every year, ever since she was a yearling. In this crazy year of multiple births, could she really only have two kids?

Yes, apparently she could. After I weighed them, I realized that the two of them weighed as much as three or four normal kids. One was 4.7 pounds, and the other was 5.5 pounds!

This was the second time I've bred her to Draco, and it is the second time she had all bucks. Three people had reserved does out of her, so I had some emails to write.

Annie's big surprise

2011-03-23T23:01:00.000-05:00

Sunday night, I had a visitor who was looking at Scandal's kids, but when she saw Annie, she thought she might like a kid out of her. When Annie turned her back to us, there was a thin string of mucous hanging down. The emphasis here is on the word "thin" because when I see a thick gooey string of mucous, it usually means kids within a couple hours.

Annie's doeling was born first.

Nearly 24 hours later, Annie was in hard labor. She quickly gave birth to three kids -- a doe first, followed by two bucks. Katherine came into the barn about ten minutes later, and we were chatting when Annie plopped down and pushed a little. We figured it was the placenta. But then she stood up and seemed perfectly happy again. About twenty minutes later, she pawed at the ground, then laid down without paying attention to where her babies were standing or lying, and Katherine grabbed the little doeling just as Annie was about to lay on her. Then Annie let out a yell, and we briefly considered the possibility of a fourth kid, but then a bubble appeared, and we chuckled about how she was trying to fool us just like Scandal had done a few days earlier. A moment later, Annie screamed again, and as another bubble started to emerge, I saw something black inside it.

"Is that a kid?"

I grabbed a towel as it came sliding out. It was indeed another kid -- another buck!

I've come to the conclusion that nothing should surprise me this kidding season. Nine years of raising goats really means nothing, because in the great realm of possibilities, anything is possible.

In case you've lost count, this is our sixth set of quadruplets this year. On average, we have one set of quads a year. And we had our first set of quints this year. This is more than a little crazy!

Bridget's calf

2011-03-21T16:16:00.000-05:00

Thursday, I was headed out to the barn, and I happened to look down the hill into the pasture. Bridget the Irish dexter heifer had her back arched, her tail extended a bit, and it looked like there was something sticking out from under her tail. I went back into the house and told Mike that it looked like Bridget might be ready to have her calf.

Unlike goats, which give birth very quickly after you see any part of a kid, cows take forever. At least it feels like forever when you're accustomed to goats giving birth. When Mike and I got to the bottom of the hill, we could see a hoof sticking out, but we had no idea if she had just started or if she had already been at this for awhile.

Not wanting to miss anything, Mike and I followed her around for an hour and fifteen minutes. Still seeing nothing but a hoof, Mike decided to go across the pasture and work on the fence. It was getting close to evening chore time, so I went up to the barn to start chores. I came back fifteen minutes later, and I could see a nose. Progress! Now, with each push, I could see a little more of the nose, and finally, eyes, ears, and a whole head!

When Bridget had the calf pushed out to its chest, the calf spewed a couple cups of liquid from its nose and mouth. I know all animals have fluid in their airway when they're born, but it's shocking to see so much of it spew from a baby. The only reason you don't see the same thing with goats is because their lungs are smaller than a thimble, compared to a calf, whose lungs are the size of a small loaf of bread. A moment later, more liquid spewed from the calf's nose and mouth, and Bridget stood up with the calf dangling from her back end. It all looked so violent, I had to keep reminding myself that it was okay. Hanging him upside down like that meant that all that fluid could drain out of his airway.

And then plop! One more push, and he fell to the ground. Bridget immediately turned around and started to clean him up. After learning that we had yet another bull calf, Mike and I went off to do chores while Bridget finished cleaning him up. Then Mike told me it was supposed to rain in an hour or two. Bridget had given birth as far from the shelter as possible, and there was no way that the newborn calf could walk that far, even if Bridget went, which she wouldn't because she doesn't care about rain. I told Mike I would never get any sleep that night unless I knew the calf was safe and dry in the barn.

So, we went for the alfalfa cubes again. Mike picked up the calf, and Bridget followed us, munching on alfalfa cubes and keeping a watchful eye on Mike and her calf.

I think this calf is also polled. At least I don't feel any horn buds yet, so odds are good. He is also very sweet and friendly, always coming up to me in the barn and rubbing against me. Unfortunately, it is not a slam dunk that these little guys will be sold as bulls, even though polled bulls are in demand. A few years ago, a genetic condition called PHA in was discovered in Irish dexters. I made a point of buying a PHA-negative bull, and if these boys are PHA positive, they should become Stew and Chuck. I'm going to get the cows tested, so I'll know in the future if I have anything to worry about, and I'll also get the two boys tested as soon as possible, so the mystery will be over. PHA is a lethal gene, so if a calf gets the gene from both parents, it will abort at some point in pregnancy or be stillborn. Both of the calves are so friendly, they'd make lovely herdsires but the easiest way to overcome this condition is to eliminate the carriers in the breed, and because bulls can have so many calves compared to cows, the standards are pretty tough for them.

Winter gardening success

2011-03-20T04:48:00.003-05:00

In previous years, I would have only been starting seeds in my basement in March, but this year, I'm already weeding, watering, and harvesting!

Back in December, I first told you about our winter garden. We continued to enjoy fresh salad for a few more weeks after I wrote that post, but towards the end of December, I realized that I had not planted enough to last us all winter. However, because I wanted to know how this worked, I decided that I should leave everything in the garden rather than continuing to harvest. And I am excited to report that it worked great! The low tunnels even survived the Blizzard of 2011.

Earlier this week, I opened up the low tunnels to see how everything had survived. Salads greens were thriving.

But the most exciting thing was that the cole crops, which were only tiny transplants in September, were now quite large, and there was actually broccoli ready to harvest! My favorite thing about winter gardening is that there no pests! I've tried putting cole crops in the garden in spring and in fall, and the bugs just eats the poor things until the outer leaves look like lace. The broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbages are absolutely pristine.

We are already making plans for next winter's low tunnels. We will definitely have more, but rather than mixing up lettuces and cole crops in each tunnel, I will plant each tunnel based upon when the crop will be harvested. This year, I mixed up three of the low tunnels, although I did plant the northernmost tunnel with cole crops and lettuce seeds that I didn't plan to harvest until now, so I never opened that one all winter. The cole crops in that one are huge compared to the cole crops in the tunnels from which I harvested through December. Coincidence? Perhaps, but it also makes it easier to harvest from the beds during the winter if I don't have to work around the cole crops. I am also hoping that we can put up a high tunnel so that I won't be on my hands and knees in the snow harvesting in the middle of winter.

Maple syrup season winding down

2011-03-15T20:54:00.000-05:00

We put syrup in canning jars for ourselves,
but we put it in cute little jugs for gifts to relatives.

For the past four weeks, our house has been in a bit of disarray. On days when the temperatures get above freezing, the stove has been covered with pots of boiling maple sap. There is a sheet hanging in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room that reminds me daily that we should have put a pocket door in there when we built the house. Although the window is usually wide open, and the door is cracked in the kitchen, it is usually the hottest room in the house -- and the most humid -- hence the sheet in the doorway. I didn't even try making maple syrup until a year ago because I had heard that it would steam up your house and could even cause wallpaper to come unglued and fall down. We haven't lost any wallpaper, but if I ever decide I want to get rid of any, I know how to do it now. It is not an exaggeration to say that it creates a lot of humidity. It boils down from about 35 to 45 quarts of sap to a single quart of syrup. Although some books say it takes less sap, this is how much sap we have to boil down to get a quart of syrup. So, for every quart of syrup we make, we put nine or ten gallons of water into the air.

Last year, the sap didn't start to run until early March. This year, it started in mid-February, only about a week after the biggest blizzard in decades. The sap runs when the temperatures start to go above freezing during the day, while still dipping below freezing overnight. Sap season has lasted about twice as long as last year, and we have quite a bit more syrup -- ten and a half quarts last year, and more than four gallons this year. The sap is barely dripping today, and based on the forecast, I think our maple syrup days are gone until 2012.

It's a bittersweet good-bye though. Of course, I would love to get more maple syrup, but at the same time, it will be nice to have full use of the kitchen again. And I won't miss that sheet in the doorway. The seasonality of maple sugaring is what makes it tolerable. I wouldn't want to do this every day, but for a few weeks every spring, a bit of inconvenience seems a small price to pay for the most delicious sweetener on the homestead.

Scandal's quadruple surprise!

2011-03-14T21:42:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning dawned cloudy and cold. When I checked on Scandal, I knew she would kid before too long because I couldn't find her tail ligaments, and her udder looked full. I put her into a clean kidding pen and came back into the house. Each time I checked on her, she was quiet and calm. The thing you have to know about Scandal, however, is that she definitely falls into the category of "easy kidders."

The first year she gave birth here, it was quite the experience. It was our third kidding season, and we knew just enough to be dangerous. Katherine and I realized she was in labor, but it was quite early in the morning. I confidently said, "Well, Katherine, there's no reason for both of us to be out here. You go have breakfast. She's obviously not going to do anything very soon." So, Katherine went back into the house, and I sat down with Scandal -- without any towels or anything, because obviously she was not going to kid anytime soon, right?

She was making a few little "maa, maa" sounds, but they certainly did not sound serious. About ten minutes after Katherine had gone inside, Scandal stood in front of me, looked me squarely in the eyes, and said, "maa-aaa" a bit more seriously than previously. "That sounds like you might have actually made some progress," I said knowingly, thinking that perhaps I would see a bit of mucous when I crawled around to look at her back end. Did I see a bit of mucous? Yep -- and a whole head hanging out! Then she proceeded to quickly birth four kids, while I attempted to clean off their noses with my bare hands and no towels. That was a great lesson learned!

So, back to last Saturday -- I was on the computer when I heard several short bleats that sounded like Scandal was giving birth. I ran upstairs to get the towels out of the dryer, because Jonathan had used all seven of our goat towels to clean off Anne's kids the day before. By the time I reached the barn, Scandal had already cleaned off the first kid -- a doeling. Within a couple minutes, she gave birth to the second one -- a tiny breech doe. Then she started screaming in a different voice with her ears back. Katherine and I looked at each other. We agreed it was not good. Katherine looked under Scandal's tail and said, "I see an ear." Definitely not good! Kids are supposed to come out nose first when the head is presenting. If the top of the head is presenting, the kid is much wider and more difficult to push out. Thinking that we might have to push the kid back in and grab the nose, I jumped up to get gloves. Then Katherine said, "Oh! Got it!"

In spite of the larger circumference of the kid, Scandal had pushed it out all by herself -- and it was another doe! As we dried it off, Scandal didn't take much of a break at all as she proceeded to push out a fourth kid -- another doe! Four does! And then Scandal continued pushing. Katherine was sitting near Scandal's back end and said, "It's another bubble."

Is she having five?

"What? She can't be having quints! No one has two sets of quints in a single year!" And then Scandal pushed out three bubbles the size of oranges. No, it wasn't quints. It was just the beginning of the end of her labor -- membranes that were attached to the placenta. It really was not very nice of her to scare me like that. I was practically hyperventilating when I thought she was about to have five. But four does is quite an achievement, so I'm certainly not complaining.

I'll be keeping one of these because Scandal is 8 years old now. In addition to being a finished champion in two different registries, she also has a milk star, and she has the highest butterfat in our herd. Although we have a lot of goats that can produce more milk, Scandal can produce as many pounds of butterfat in two or three less months than goats who can produce fifty percent more fluid milk. And because we make cheese, we love the high butterfat.

None of the other goats are due until this weekend, but we are still waiting on Bridget the cow. Mike and the two-legged kids are on spring break this week, which means we will be getting a lot done, so you will get to hear about more than just goats this week. We have some amazing temperatures forecast in a few days, so hopefully we can get started in the garden.

Molly's calf

2011-03-13T17:04:00.000-05:00

At sundown Friday, Mike came into the barn to tell Katherine and I that Molly had given birth in the far pasture. Of course, we had to go running out there to see what was up. Mike was alerted to the whole situation by the fact that Molly was mooing non-stop. When we got out there, a little calf was wobbling around and Molly was running around and around him mooing. The neighbor's dogs, which are housed in a small pen next to our property line, were barking and howling continuously, which is probably what was freaking her out. She also kept pushing the calf -- probably to a place where she thought he would be safer.

I told Katherine to get a towel and a pan of alfalfa cubes, so we could dry the calf, which was shivering, and then encourage Molly to follow us to the barn. While we waited, I walked up to the calf and felt under its belly to discern whether it was a bull or a heifer. "It's a boy," I told Mike.

When Katherine got back, Molly was very happy to follow us with the alfalfa cubes, and Mike wrapped the towel around the calf and picked it up. When we arrived at the barn, Mike put the calf on the ground and went to open the barn door, and that's when everything got a little crazy. Our guard dog came trotting up to say hi, and Molly charged at him, smacking him with her head. He growled at her, and I yelled at him. He backed off with his tail between his legs, but Molly really went into maternal-protection mode and started pushing and tossing the calf, who went flying into the water trough head first! Katherine lunged towards the calf to pull him out of the trough, and Molly charged at Katherine. Thank goodness she is polled -- meaning she has no horns -- or Katherine would still be in the ICU, because Molly hit her right in the chest.

Mike scooped up the dripping-wet calf and hurried into the barn, while I offered Molly alfalfa cubes by hand to encourage her to follow me. After we put them in the barn together, Molly kept pushing the calf. It is only a ten-foot wide stall, so after a couple of pushes, she was pushing him against the wall. I had to keep reminding myself that this is a calf, which is a lot tougher than a tiny goat kid, and Molly is only trying to protect him from the dogs, which were still barking and howling. I gave her several flakes of alfalfa, hoping that would take her mind off the calf. It worked -- somewhat. As we continued doing chores, we kept hearing banging sounds coming from the stall, but every time we looked in there, the calf seemed to be fine.

Saturday morning he was running around, and Molly had calmed down considerably. Today, the little calf was coming up to us when we walked in the stall, and Molly let Katherine handle her udder. We'll start milking her in a few days. We don't have a name for the calf yet. There is a 75 percent chance he is polled, because both of his parents are polled, and a lot of people would probably love to have a red polled bull -- and after hearing about Molly and Katherine's altercation, you can understand why most people don't want a horned bull. If he's not polled, he might become beef, so a name like Chuck or Stew would be most appropriate.

Anne's triplets

2011-03-12T18:11:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, I went to the little city to see the chiropractor and massage therapist. When the chiropractor asked me how I was doing, I said it would just be simpler to tell him what doesn't hurt -- my left wrist and elbow were feeling great. Every other muscle and joint in my body was in pain. He chuckled.

Anne's cream buck

Before leaving home, I told Jonathan that Anne would probably kid before I returned. The baby monitor was on in the house, and he had strict instructions to check on her regularly if he was running maple sap. At 1:10, my cell phone rang.

"The goat finally had a kid, and she's pushing out the second one now."

"Awesome! Well, you better keep catching and drying!"

"Where are you?"

"Bloomington," was all I needed to say. He knew that was at least an hour away, so it was all up to him. He's 20 now, and he's been watching and helping with goat births since he was 12, but he is not an animal person, so if someone else is available, he'd be perfectly happy to let someone else take care of everything when an animal is giving birth.

Anne's white doeling and buckling (and my knees)

Half an hour later, he called back to let us know that she'd given birth to three -- two bucks and a doe -- and the placenta parts were hanging out, so he figured she was done.

Like all the goats in the Sherri line (Anne's dam), these kids are super friendly. When I was taking pictures today, they all kept crawling into my lap and sniffing me. It is so hard not to keep them all. I really love white goats, and the little doe is white. Isn't she cute!

Maple syrup and Vera Wang's triplets

2011-03-11T06:00:00.001-06:00

Vera's doeling

It took us a few days to get out of the woods with Coco's two bucklings, and then I tried to catch my breath and got eight hours of sleep for a couple of nights. In the midst of all the kidding, we were continuing to make maple syrup on the days when the sap ran. And that was somewhat disastrous at times. We boiled down the sap to nothing but black charcoal on three separate occasions. My big canning pot is ruined. The enamel cracked. Mike is still scrubbing the ten-gallon evaporator, but it looks like it will eventually be usable again. And thankfully he did manage to scrub off all the charred remains of sap from the five-quart Dutch oven that we were using. We've been a little distracted, I guess. In spite of our failures, we've managed to make more than two gallons of syrup so far, which is already more than we made last year.

Vera's buckling (l) and doeling (r)

Tuesday, March 8 -- Vera was at day 146 and looking huge. She's a yearling, and I was thinking that she would have at least two, maybe three kids. The thought of her having one absolutely terrified me, because it would have to be a monster-sized kid. When I went out to do chores Tuesday morning, I checked ligaments on Vera, Anne, and Scandal, the three goats that are due this week. Vera's were gone. I got a phone call while I was in the barn, and as I was talking, I was watching her. She was pushing, but not too seriously. Considering what I've seen the last couple weeks, I suppose I've been numbed to "normal" goat labor. After all, she wasn't even making any noise with her pushes.

I continued doing chores, and at one point when I was in the other barn, I sat down on the ground and started playing with baby goats. Jonathan walked past, and we chatted a bit about his role in an upcoming play at the college. He left, and I continued to cuddle Lizzie's little doeling. Then I heard five short, rapid bleats. There was no doubt in my mind that was the sound of a goat seriously pushing. I put down Lizzie's doeling and ran next door.

Vera was standing there, looking at me, and there was a head hanging out of her back end. There was also a kid laying on the ground, still completely covered with an amniotic sac. I ran into the pen and dropped to my knees, pulled the sac off the kid, and started squeegeeing the mucous from the kid's nose. I didn't feel any movement, but I kept trying to wipe off the nose, holding the kid with its head down to help the mucous and fluid drain. Then I remembered that there was a head hanging out of Vera -- still! She wasn't even pushing, so I laid down the first kid and moved around to her back end on my knees, took hold of the kid by its head and front feet and pulled. It easily slid out. I broke the amniotic sac and tried to clean the kid as much as I could, although I didn't even have a towel.

I was pretty sure the other kid was dead. I ran into the office, grabbed the only towel in there, as well as the bulb syringe and the cordless phone. I called Jonathan's cell and told him I needed towels. The second kid was very much alive and shaking its head. I started suctioning the nose of the kid on the ground, but it was still not moving. I felt a heartbeat, but the kid was clearly leaving us. I briefly wished that I had the drugs that they have at the U of I vet hospital -- the ones they used to save little Marshall Dillon -- but then I remembered that the vet said we were lucky that he turned out normal. He said sometimes when a kid is oxygen deprived, they save it, but the kid is brain dead and has to be put down anyway. I lifted its leg and saw that it was a doeling. Jonathan arrived with the towels, and I cleaned up the second kid, a buckling. I had stuck him in front of Vera as soon as he was born, and she immediately started to lick him. Unfortunately, as a first time mom, she didn't know that she was supposed to do that with the kid that magically showed up at her back end before I arrived.

A few minutes later, she bleated briefly and pushed out another beautiful little doeling. And then Vera proceeded to spend the next hour or two licking and licking and licking. I had never seen a doe so bent on cleaning up her kids. They couldn't even nurse, because she would follow them with her mouth, licking and licking whenever they moved. If one would start to move towards her udder while she was cleaning the other one, she would immediately stop licking the other one as soon as she felt movement against her udder, then turn around and start licking that one. When I tried to help by moving a kid towards her udder, she would walk backwards so she could continue licking it. I know it sounds crazy, but it occurred to me that maybe she was trying to make up for not cleaning the first one.

I thought for sure that a pan of grain would take her mind off licking the kids, but it didn't. She took a few bites, but as soon as I got the little buckling latched on, she walked backwards and started licking him again. But as with everything else, patience and persistence finally paid off. Close to two hours after they were born, they finally nursed. I continued to worry about them and checked on them frequently all day. I had not tube fed a kid in six years before having to tube feed two of Coco's boys last week, and I'd be perfectly happy if I could go another six years -- or ten or twelve -- before I have to do it again. So, I was not going to take any chances on these kids falling behind with nursing.

They're doing great now, bouncing around, nursing and playing. And I just have to wait for Anne and Scandal to give birth. Anne is at day 148, and Scandal is at day 146, so it will be any day now. And the two heifers are also due any day now -- Molly was actually due Sunday, according to an online cow gestation calculator -- so we should soon have calves joining the other babies on Antiquity Oaks.

Clare's twins

2011-03-10T06:00:00.002-06:00

Sunday morning, in the midst of trying to save two of Coco's boys that were trying to starve themselves to death (click here, if you missed that post), I heard a long, low "maaaaaaaa" from Clare's pen. I knew what that meant. "Get the towels," I said to Mike. "I'm so sorry, little dude," I said to the hypothermic, little black kid that I had just placed on a heating pad and covered.

Doeling on the left, buckling on the right

There was a head hanging out when we walked into Clare's pen, and she quickly gave birth to buck-doe twins. Clare is Viola's sister, so these babies are also mini manchas. We dried them off, and in no time, they were struggling to get to their feet and find their first meal. Yes, it really was that easy, and I think I can say that after the last six births, I deserved an easy one! But then I was in the middle of trying to save two of Coco's little bucks, so it's a good thing Clare only required about fifteen minutes of my time.

Are these not the two cutest kids ever?

I am so glad that I was planning to keep them for my mini mancha breeding project, because it would be tough to let them go -- especially that doeling. And she has the sweetest personality to go with her flashy looks!

Coco's big surprise

2011-03-09T06:00:00.138-06:00

After listening to Coco scream every twenty or thirty minutes for the past twelve hours, I called U of I for an opinion on what I should do with her. I talked to the same vet that had done Caboose's c-section, and he suggested that I just wait and watch. While a contraction that infrequently won't dilate the cervix, it also should not stress the kids much. I was relieved. I hung up the phone and fell asleep.

Six hours later, near midnight, I woke up when Mike walked into our bedroom. I immediately asked, "How's Coco?"

"It's complicated." He paused.

So, here is the story from Katherine's perspective:

One of the quints at eight days of age

When doing chores that evening, I was just finishing up and was about to check on Coco when I heard her scream. Although I was told that she had been acting like she was in labor since that morning, I thought she sounded very serious. I saw that there were already towels next to her pen so I spoke into the monitor saying that Coco sounded serious and that I was going to stay out in the barn with her.

For the next 45-60 minutes (although I didn't have a clock, this is a rough estimation) Coco would plop down on the ground, scream so loudly that it echoed off the walls, get up, walk around, and lay down all over again. Because of a huge misunderstanding, I was under the impression that the vet wanted us to wait before trying to pull the kids out. But after a good hour of her screaming, Coco was looking very tired and I still didn't see anything as slight as a bubble, so I knew something was not right.

After putting on a surgical glove, I applied the lube and iodine before doing some investigating. I was expecting something like her cervix wasn't dilated like what happened with Lizzie. However, her cervix was fully dilated, and when I went a little beyond, that's when I finally felt a kid. Both hooves were in front so I was failing to see what was taking so long. It was then that I realized that the hooves felt upside down and I was not finding the head.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I muttered when I realized that the kid was upside down with its head turned back.

I couldn't get my hand in any further and the kid was too slippery for repositioning, and because Coco had been pushing for the last hour, I knew I just needed to get the kid out. I grabbed the two front hooves and started pulling with Coco's contractions. When the kid came closer to the entrance is when I pulled the head forward and tried to reposition it better. With a couple more pulls, the kid was out and Coco was eagerly cleaning it.

One of the quints with Coco at eight days

It was not long after I got the kid out that I saw Coco was contracting again and I saw another bubble. So leaving the first kid by her, I grabbed another towel to catch the next one that just came sliding out -- along with a lot of blood. When I cleaned the mucus off of its face, the baby didn't react at all. I saw that its eyes were rather blank and it was not even coughing or shaking its head, so I knew that it was dead. I immediately took the stillborn out of the pen so that Coco wouldn't waste her energy trying to clean it. When I came back, the third one was already starting to come out. It was also the first one that finally came out in a perfect manner and was very much alive.

It was not long after the third one that the fourth came out. This time the sac was full of meconium. The baby was not near as responsive as the first and the third born, but it was at least very much alive.

That was four babies and Coco was getting to her feet so I then started focusing all of my attention on making sure that all of the babies were dry and fluffy and hopefully getting ready to nurse.

"Took her long enough," I heard Dad say as he came into the barn. "What are the sexes?"

"All four bucks," I sighed. "One was a stillborn."

"Oh well," he shrugged.

It was after this that I noticed Coco stopped licking the babies and plopped down on her belly again and started contracting.

"No, you are not having quints," I laughed. A bubble then appeared that very clearly had a baby in it. "Oh! You ARE having QUINTS! I NEED ANOTHER TOWEL!" I screamed while jumping forward to catch the kid that was sliding out breach.

One of the bottle babies

I had only had four towels and all were thoroughly soaked, so I was simply pulling off the mucus. This kid was definitely more responsive than the fourth kid had been. The real problem with this one didn't happen until he started walking around and was dragging one of his back feet.

Because they were all bucks, I figured that like must buck kids, they would be very eager to get up and start nursing. That certainly wasn't the case this time. None of the kids were interested in nursing. So because you can't force a kid to nurse, I decided to go inside for about 10-20 minutes and come back out to try again.

When I came back out, they were not any more interested in nursing than before. As much as I hate to be forceful, it had been close to an hour since they were born and I didn't feel like bottle-feeding kids. So I decided to push each kid against the udder and manually squirt milk into their mouth. This finally got them interested in the whole nursing thing. Within ten minutes, everyone had nursed except for the fifth kid, which was still dragging his foot around. After trying a few more times, I finally got him to nurse for a few seconds.

Seeing as though it was getting late and I had to get up early in the morning anyway, I figured it was time to call it a night.


Bottle boys in the house -- the red and white one has a splint on his rear leg.

By the next morning, two of the bucks were not doing well. In case you missed the post where I wrote about their challenges, it's the last three paragraphs of this post. It took a couple days to get them on a bottle, but now they're ravenous and bounce around like normal kids. I splinted the leg on the red and white one, and a few days later, he got his foot caught between the deck and the house when they were playing outside, and he pulled his leg out of the splint, and it was fine. So, it must have been a tendon issue, rather than a fracture, which is good news for everyone.

Cleo's triplets

2011-03-08T06:00:00.001-06:00

We were awakened before 6 a.m. by Coco screaming over the monitor so loudly that I was certain there would be a kid on the ground when we got out there. As soon as I sat up, it felt like I had been whacked in the side of the head by a two-by-four. I knew this was not going to be a good day. When Mike and I walked into the barn, Coco was just standing there staring at us as if she hadn't said a word. I was freezing, so I headed into the barn office and turned on the little gas heater. Mike came in and sat down on the futon. I laid down and put my feet in his lap. We waited. Coco would scream every twenty or thirty minutes, which reminded me of Caboose's and Lizzie's labors. This did not help my head.

Katherine came into the office an hour later, and I realized that Coco really was not going to have her kids anytime soon in spite of her occasional screaming. I came into the house, had breakfast, heard Coco scream over the baby monitor a couple more times and called a goat friend. She encouraged me to check her and just see if she was dilated, so shortly after ten, I went back outside and checked Coco. Nothing. Absolutely no dilatation at all. Not even getting started! This is really weird for my goats. Normally, from the time I realize they're in labor until the time I see kids is somewhere between five minutes and two hours. This was shaping up to be the weirdest kidding season ever. My head felt worse. I went into the office and laid down on the futon. For four hours, my head throbbed and I listened to Coco's scream every twenty or thirty minutes. Close to 3:00, I heard Cleo a couple times. I went into the barn and sat down with her. She is always a big baby when she's in labor, and she wanted to lay in my lap. She weighs about 75 pounds, so she is not even close to being a baby.

Neither Katherine or Jonathan were home, but Mike had been running maple sap from across the creek and boiling it down. I finally decided I couldn't take it any longer. Every time Coco or Cleo screamed, it felt like a smack across the side of my head, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I went into the house and told Mike, "Okay, I know the maple syrup is important, but you can fill up the pots really full so you don't have to worry about them boiling down to nothing. I can't sit out there anymore. I need to go to bed." I asked him to come with me and hold Coco, so I could check her cervix one more time to see if she had started dilating. He held her. I squirted iodine on my gloved fingers and checked. Still nothing, nada, zilch dilation. As I stood up, Cleo made a sound from the other end of the barn that sounded like she was seriously pushing. Mike and I walked over there and found her laying in the corner of the pen pushing quite convincingly.

Cleo's black doelings at one week

Because she was so close to kidding, I told Mike I'd stay with him and talk him through everything. He only delivered his first baby goats a couple weeks ago. Now that our children are growing up and leaving home, he needs to learn how to do it, because there will be times when he is home alone and has to know what to do. The whole birth was rather uneventful, except for one annoying little kid that was trying not to be born. The nose and two hooves were sticking out a couple inches, and suddenly a hoof jerked back inside Cleo. Then the other hoof disappeared. I told Mike that next time Cleo pushed them out, grab them and just hold them so the little stinker can't yank them back inside again. Who knows what problems he might cause if he twists his leg into some weird position. The second and third kid were born so closely together, I helped dry the second one, but Mike was able to handle everything else. Final tally was two black doelings and a red buckling with blue eyes.

After the third kid was born, I saw membranes hanging out, indicating that the placenta would be next, and I told Mike I was heading to bed. I thought about calling U of I to talk to one of the vets on call, but I was in no condition to drive Coco down there, and I hated the idea of sending Mike off with one of my goats. I guess Cleo knows that it's okay to act like a baby when she's in labor, because my goats are my babies. If Coco had to go to U of I, then I had to go with her, even if I had to take a barf bag along for the ride and ask Mike to drive for me. So, when I walked into the house, I picked up the phone and punched in the number for U of I.

Lizzie's twins and Caboose's homecoming

2011-03-07T13:13:00.000-06:00

In our last episode: Deborah delivered Viola's twins and jumped in the car to head down to Urbana to pick up Caboose following her c-section. She left Lizzie in labor, in Katherine's capable hands.

Lizzie's twins at one week

More than 90 minutes after leaving home, I took the exit off I-74, annoyed that no one had called me from home to tell me about Lizzie's kids. Surely she had delivered them by now. Knowing that the cell phone signal inside the vet hospital was terrible, I decided to call home for an update before I arrived at the university. Nothing. That is what had happened since I left home. The description of Lizzie's labor reminded me of Caboose's the day before. She was pushing, but the contractions were too far apart to be doing anything.

Why was this happening? I asked the vet when I arrived at the hospital, and he started to tell me that pygmies have lots of problems giving birth. I corrected him and said that I have Nigerian dwarf goats, and he shook his head, saying, "all of those little goats." I tried to tell him that I knew pygmies have lots of birthing problems -- I know several breeders, including a vet, who have quit raising pygmies because they got tired of pulling kids and doing c-sections -- but Nigerians are easy birthers. He insisted that it was the breed, even though this is my first c-section in nine years, which gives us a c-section rate of less than one percent. I was worried that perhaps there was a nutritional issue that was suddenly causing the problems, but it became obvious that I wasn't going to get any information about that possibility.

We loaded Caboose and her kids into the car, and I headed home as the sun was setting. It was a tense drive. Although the kids slept peacefully, every time I slowed down or turned a corner, Caboose would grind her teeth, a sign that she was in pain. I felt terrible and tried to drive as gently as possible, apologizing every time I heard her grinding. The sound is similar to nails on a chalkboard, only worse, because you know when you hear it, a goat is in pain.

About halfway home, I got a phone call from Katherine, saying that she had finally checked Lizzie, and she wasn't fully dilated. I wanted to scream! I explained to Katherine how to manually dilate the cervix, as I had attempted to do with Caboose the previous day. After hanging up the phone, I looked at the clock, realizing I was still 45 minutes from home and thinking that as soon as I arrived, we'd unload Caboose and her kids and load up Lizzie to head back to U of I. The vet had explained that once a goat is in hard labor, the placenta will start to separate after two or three hours, which is why one of Caboose's kids was born dead, and one died shortly after birth. Although it appears that a goat has only one placenta, it has a different point of attachment for each kid. This is why the little doe was in such great shape -- she was attached to the end that was still securely attached to mom. Katherine had called me from the barn, and I could hear Lizzie screaming. She was definitely in hard labor. If the manual dilation had not worked by the time I got home, we might be able to save the kids if we put her in the car and headed straight for U of I.

I was so deep in thought that I almost missed my turn. I slammed on the brakes, swerved into the left lane, and took the turn too fast. "I'm sorry Caboose," I said as I heard her grinding her teeth. The phone rang. I hit the button on my steering wheel to answer. It was Mike.

"I just wanted to tell you that Katherine got the first kid out! It's a huge buck! Katherine thinks he's probably five pounds."

I was able to relax for the rest of the drive home. As soon as I stopped the car in front of the barn, I jumped out and ran in to see Lizzie. She had buck-doe twins. I weighed the little buck, and he was 5.1 pounds! He was by far the biggest Nigerian kid ever born on our farm. It was shaping up to be a record-breaking years in a lot of ways -- and I wasn't really happy about any of the records we were breaking -- four sets of quadruplets, our first c-section, and our first five-pound kid. And at that moment, I had no idea what a record-breaking day was ahead of me.

Viola's story

2011-03-03T10:00:00.017-06:00

Viola's story actually starts years ago. She is a la mancha, a goat that is most famous for its apparent lack of ears. Yes, they can hear; they just don't have external ear cartilage, so it looks like they don't have ears. People either love it or hate it. Obviously, I'm one who thinks the no-ear thing is adorable -- so adorable that I'm trying to make mini manchas, which are little goats without ears.

Even if you've been reading my blog forever, you probably don't remember me mentioning Viola. That's because she has done little other than frustrate me for four years, and I don't like to complain. Viola's mama is the one that died from copper deficiency -- the one whose liver I insisted be biopsied to check the copper level, because four different vets insisted a copper deficiency was impossible if I were feeding a complete feed and had minerals available for the goats. She died when Clare and Viola were only two months old and after learning that her copper level was only 4.8 (normal is 25-150 ppm), I was amazed she had survived as long as she did. That also meant I was now the owner of two orphans who were severely copper deficient, because mama can't give her babies something that she doesn't have. And I was going it alone because the current vet was still obliviously trusting the feed companies and refused to give me prescription copper for any of my goats.

Being in grad school, I had access to the university database and could read veterinary journals for free, so I started researching copper on my own. I even started doing my own original research on copper in goats and surveyed around 40 goat owners to learn more about their use of copper and the incidence of copper deficiency and toxicity in their herds. The twins' growth was slow, and their resistance to parasites was low, but with repeated copper bolusing, Clare was big enough to breed by fall. I was worried, however, that Viola still might not make it, so I didn't breed her. Clare kidded the following spring with a single buckling. The next year I tried to breed Viola -- and the next year. When she was two, I was so desperate for her to get pregnant, I just let her run with the whole buck herd, not even caring if I knew who the sire was. Still, no babies. I had pretty much completely given up on her ever having kids. But last fall, I gave everyone their pre-breeding copper and selenium supplements, and a couple weeks later, Viola was in heat! I put her with Mardi, a Nigerian buck, and he bred her! I was ecstatic! I wasn't too worried about having a first-freshening four year old because the kids would be much smaller than your average la manchas.

Then I spent most of the next four and a half months thinking that she wasn't pregnant. Her belly wasn't really big, although I reminded myself that she would be carrying mini-manchas, because I bred her to a Nigerian buck, so they wouldn't be as big as if she were carrying full-size kids. Still, I thought she should at least look like there was something in her belly. A couple weeks before she kidded, I saw an udder, but she'd fooled me before with a precocious udder, so I didn't want to get my hopes up. Still, I did get hopeful, so I moved her and Clare to the kidding barn, because their due dates were only one day apart. As each day passed, I spent more and more time with them, staring at their bellies, feeling their udders, checking their tail ligaments. The more time I spent with them, the more I believed they really were pregnant.

About a week before they ultimately kidded, I noticed Viola's udder was really starting to get big. It was filling up in the rear, which never happened when she got a precocious udder. And each day as her udder got bigger, I got more excited that we really would have mini-mancha babies, at last!

Although Viola had no problems at all, I was momentarily freaked out when she was in labor. Mike had just walked in the barn to check on me, and I told him I saw a hoof. Then a minute later, I said, "Oh, this is not good. The hooves are upside down." After a couple more pushes, I realized my error. If you see an inch of a Nigerian hoof, it's the bottom of the hoof, which would mean the baby was coming out upside down or breech. But these babies are bigger, so I was relieved when I realized I was seeing the front of the hoof. How much bigger are they? The little buck was 7.4 at birth, and the doeling was 6.7, so they weigh about twice as much as Nigerian babies!

During Viola's labor, I kept noticing Lizzie laying on her side, looking like she was pushing a little, but she wasn't screaming, so I wasn't worried. I had to leave to go to U of I and pick up Caboose, but I knew Katherine would be home at any minute, and she would be able to handle whatever Lizzie threw her way. If this were fiction, I'd think, "Oh, foreshadowing!" but as they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

Carmen's twin bucks

2011-03-02T13:10:00.000-06:00

Thursday ended with me heading to bed around 1 a.m. because I was flying from all the coffee I'd consumed in Urbana before heading home for a two hour drive in the dark. My sweet, sweet goats all avoided going into labor during the night. I'm so glad they got that memo! Friday morning around 8:00, I went out to the barn and checked everyone's tail ligaments and udders. My best guess was that Carmen, Lizzie, and Viola would all kid before the day was done, but I also knew I had to get down to Urbana to pick up Caboose and her kids. On one hand I was worried about having two goats in labor at the same time, but on the other hand, I hoped they'd give birth soon, each about an hour apart, so I could leave for Urbana by about 1:00.

Around 10:00, Carmen gave birth to two bucklings. Although Carmen doesn't just plop down and start shooting out kids like Sherri and her daughters, she does make it look pretty easy. She bleated a little to let me know I needed to be on hand to help her clean up the kids, but otherwise, things seemed to be going easily enough for her. She has a habit of giving birth standing, sometimes even walking, so it can be a challenge to catch the kid. I usually spend lots of time walking on my knees behind her when she's in labor. And this year was no different. She had her rear legs spread widely as she sort of waddled from side to side, taking a step, making a little noise, pushing, taking a step, and so on. And swoosh! Welcome to the world, little dude!

For the second one, however, she decided to plop down with her rear in the corner of the kidding pen. The thing you have to know about the kidding pens is that we put a shelf across the back of all of them, so we would have a place to put kidding supplies that are out of the goat's reach. Carmen had her rear in the corner under the shelf. No big deal, I thought. I'll just crawl under there and reach over her body and pick up the kid when it's born. That part of the plan worked just fine. I picked up the second kid, also a buck, and dried him off. But then I forgot there was a shelf above my head when I went to get up. Ouch!

Mike came out to check on me and immediately ran the towels into the house for washing, because we knew at some point over the weekend we would run out if too many goats kidded closely together. And from the looks of Viola, she was getting close. Viola is normally a very in-your-face goat, and she was obviously off in her own little world, so I knew I didn't have much time to eat lunch before she kidded.

It's all about me!

2011-02-28T10:42:00.001-06:00

The last four days have been a complete blur. After spending Thursday in Urbana for Caboose's c-section, I tanked up on coffee before my drive home in the dark. I had only slept two or three hours the night before and really didn't have time for a car accident, knowing that I had six goats left to kid before the weekend was over. I knew I'd have trouble falling asleep once I arrived home, but it was preferable to death or being paralyzed or even simply rolling my car into one of the big ditches on Rt. 47 if I fell asleep driving. So, I finally fell asleep around 1 a.m. and got up about six hours later, which is not my idea of a good night's sleep.

Viola's doeling his tiny elf ears because she's a mini mancha.

Friday morning saw Carmen give birth to twin bucks, then shortly after noon, Viola gave birth to buck-doe twins. The whole time she was in labor, I kept seeing Lizzie out of the corner of my eye, and she looked like she was pushing. As soon as Viola gave birth, I needed to head back down to Urbana to pick up Caboose and her kids, because the vet said they were ready to come home. Katherine pulled into the driveway as I was leaving, and I told her she needed to keep a close eye on Lizzie. So, I drove down to Urbana, picked up Caboose and her kids, and headed home. Lizzie gave birth as I was driving back, but not without some challenges, which I heard about via cell phone.

I didn't get to bed until close to eleven Friday night, and then Coco woke us up screaming over the baby monitor at 5:49 Saturday morning. When I sat up, it felt like I'd been hit on the side of the head with a two-by-four. I really thought we would see a kid when we got out there, but instead, Coco was just standing there staring at us. Thus began what could possibly be the worst day of my life in terms of pain. By noon, my headache had blossomed into a full-blown migraine, and I had two does alternately screaming and talking to me until Cleo finally gave birth to twins around 4:00. Normally, when I have a migraine, I can't even stand to whisper, so being in a barn with two bleating goats was torture. Coco's weird progress was not helping my headache, because I was afraid I might be looking at another c-section. Around 6:00, I called U of I and talked to the vet, who said it sounded like Coco was just trying to rearrange her babies, and to my happy surprise, he suggested that I wait and watch. So, I went to bed and told Mike to watch Coco until Katherine got home.

I woke up at midnight when Mike walked into the bedroom, still feeling like I was half dead, and I asked if Coco had given birth. "It's complicated," he said. Bottom line is that she had quintuplet bucks, but one was born dead, and some of the others were having problems.

Sunday morning, I woke up with a headache, but nothing compared to the migraine from the day before. As Katherine headed out to church, she said I needed to check on Coco's kids. She thought one had a broken leg, and the others didn't seem to be nursing well. After breakfast and coffee, I was finally able to drag myself out there, and I felt like I'd just walked into an episode of "Goat ER." I saw a black kid spread eagle in the corner of the pen looking dead, so I picked him up and realized he was terribly cold but still alive. I plugged in the heating pad, and just as I laid him on it and covered him with a towel, I heard a long bleat from Claire's pen. She was giving birth. "I'm so sorry, little dude!" I said as I left him on the heating pad and ran to Claire, who had a head hanging out. After drying her twins with Mike's help, we went back to Coco's pen. I figured I'd splint the leg of the red and white buckling, then I'd get some colostrum into the black one that was trying to die. But as I was splinting the kid's leg, I realized he was also ice cold and would soon be in the same shape as the black one. Even with the splint on his leg, he was unable to stand. I milked Coco, who had plenty of colostrum, and I told Mike we had to bring the kids into the house.

Neither of them would suck on the bottle, and I'd read years ago that if a kid is completely depressed, it is best to use IV fluids first to get them perked up before even tube feeding them. Giving IV fluids to goats is really not that hard, because you just put it under their skin, and their body absorbs it. So, I gave each one 15 cc of fluids, which was 5% dextrose, and within minutes the black kid lifted his head, which seemed miraculous considering his condition for the past hour. I tried to give him a bottle, but he still wasn't sucking, so I gave him two ounces of colostrum via stomach tube. I did the same with the red and white buckling, because he was equally out of it. Then I put both of them on a heating pad and covered them with a towel and hoped for the best. Two hours later, I went to check on them, and both lifted their heads and then stood up. Each one took an ounce of colostrum from the bottle, so I was ready to celebrate. Then I realized that their body temps had fallen, so I put them back on the heating pad. By last night, they were doing quite well, and the little black one napped in my lap for an hour while I was online.

So, that's my side of the story for the past four days. For the rest of this week, I'll tell you the goat's individual stories of their kiddings. Katherine has agreed to write about Lizzie's and Coco's births, since she was the one who was there. It's been quite a ride bringing 20 kids into the world in only four days while also making lots of maple syrup. And in a couple weeks, we'll start again with seven more does kidding.

Our first c-section

2011-02-25T00:52:00.000-06:00

I knew it would happen someday. I only hoped to avoid that day for as long as possible.

Wednesday night around nine, I noticed a four-inch string of mucous hanging out of Caboose's back end. Usually that means you'll see kids in a couple hours, so I stayed with her until past midnight. She wasn't even acting uncomfortable, but I decided to sleep in the barn, because you just don't see mucous that long before you see babies.

Thursday

3:44 a.m. -- Caboose woke me up with a bleat that sounded serious, although it wasn't quite as long as most goat screams that mean the babies are coming. I pulled on my insulated overalls, boots, coat, and hat, grabbed an armful of towels, heating pad, camera, and phone, and I went to the kidding pen and sat down in the straw next to her.

4:37 a.m. -- I go back into the barn office and lay down on the futon, hoping to catch a little more sleep, because Caboose has done almost nothing for the past hour. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, she lets out a bleat that's about half as long as one that means she's really pushing. I spend the next hour feeling like a jack-in-the-box, as I pop up and look out the window from the office at Caboose when she lets out a short scream.

6:05 a.m. -- The sun is coming up, and I still haven't had any sleep, so I decide to check on Caboose again. She seems fine, so I start doing chores, feeding all the other animals in the two barns. About every fifteen minutes, Caboose lets out a real scream that sounds like she is serious now. I run in, thinking I'll see a nose or hoof or something, but there is nothing.

8:00 a.m. -- I decide to do a vaginal exam, thinking that the kid must be sideways or something. As soon as I feel a nose, I'm happy and assume that I'll be seeing a kid within about fifteen minutes.

8:33 a.m. -- Still nothing. I do another vaginal exam and realized that just beyond that nose is Caboose's very tight cervix. She has not been dilating. I immediately think of my friend with Nubians who had to have a c-section a few years ago because one of her does did not dilate. I call the University of Illinois vet clinic and am quickly connected to a professor. He is concerned that she is not dilated after hearing the history and explains how to manually dilate the cervix. If that doesn't work, he says we're probably looking at a c-section. I try to manually dilate the cervix and don't make any progress.

9:42 a.m. I come into the house to call Ellen, another breeder, to see if she has any tricks up her sleeve before heading to the vet clinic. She does, and adds that it could take thirty or forty minutes, so I try again.

10:30 a.m. I come inside and tell Jonathan to help me get a crate in my car to take Caboose to U of I for a c-section. Still no progress on dilating the cervix and when I pulled my hand out the last time, there was hair covering my fingers, so I knew the presenting kid was dead -- had been dead for quite some time and was probably responsible for the current situation.

11:05 a.m. I'm on the road to U of I. Caboose is absolutely quiet. I wonder if she's died. I second guess every decision I've made in the last eight hours. After half an hour on the road, I hear her kick, and my sleep-deprived brain says, "She's not even in labor!" because she is no longer bleating.

12:45 p.m. I arrive at the vet clinic. The crate is placed on a cart that is wheeled straight to the operating room. I feel my throat getting tight and tell myself not to cry. She is going to be fine. Margaret arrives ten minutes later. She is in her senior year as an engineering student at the university. I called her when I knew she was done with classes for the day, and I told her what was happening. Caboose was her goat before she went off to college.

Everything started moving really fast as more than a dozen people were buzzing around Caboose. A vet did a vaginal check and confirmed what I'd said -- she wasn't dilated. It was obvious a c-section was the only answer for a positive outcome. Caboose was weighed and her belly shaved as the surgeon kept reminding everyone that they needed to hurry in case there was still a live kid inside. They shaved her neck to insert an IV line. We discussed anesthesia options, and one vet explained that gas would be the quickest, least stressful option for Caboose, so I agreed. They put a mask over her face, and as soon as she was asleep, they put a tube down her throat. They shaved her ears and attached tubes and wires. Caboose is surrounded closely by six people: the surgeon and his assistant, the anesthesiologist and her assistant, and two students who are holding Caboose so she doesn't roll off the operating table. Half a dozen more masked veterinary students stand around the room to observe.

Caboose's buckling, Marshall Dillon

1:37 p.m. The c-section begins. Within seven minutes the first kid is delivered and handed to a waiting student with a towel. I don't see any movement and know that no one knows if it is alive or dead. I watch as several people start working on the kid and overhear one say that it is alive. I wonder if it is a buck or a doe, but I know that it really doesn't matter. The kid's airway is suctioned, and everything is happening so fast, I can't keep track. I hear excitement back at the operating table and see another kid in a towel. All of those students who were just standing around are now busily working on our kids -- drying them, administering oxygen, giving dextrose, injecting something else, suctioning the kids' airways.

Caboose's doeling, Miss Kitty

I see the third kid get pulled out, and it is obvious this is the dead one that had been stuck in the cervix. The amniotic sac looks like it is filled with mud. As I suspected, the kid has been dead for some time. A student wraps it in a towel and sets it aside. I look at it and see that it was a buck. I want to know exactly what happened and why, but as I start to look at him more closely, I realized a fourth kid has been delivered. At some point, I hear the anesthesiologist say, "Get me a crash cart" and know that's not good. I leave the dead buckling and walk over to the kids that everyone is trying desperately to save. The anesthesiologist looks up at me and asks if it's okay to intubate the kid that they're losing. I nod and say, "Yes, that's fine." A few minutes later, she asks if I want them to keep trying. I ask if there's a heartbeat, and when she says no, I respond, "That's okay. We have two kids."

Miss Kitty stands!

For the next two hours, the kids are the stars of the hospital. The little doe finds her voice, which brings everyone within earshot. People squeal like children when they see the kids -- the little doe learning to walk and the little buck wrapped in a "bear hugger" to bring up his temperature, which has dropped to 91.6 (ten degrees below normal). No less than five people say they want to take the kids home with them. Professors, students, receptionists, and custodians are all captivated by these tiny little angels.

5 p.m. Margaret and I finally decide to leave the vet hospital. Caboose is awake and now has a walking epidural, so she won't be in pain, although she attempted to stand once and was completely unsuccessful. The little doe is a champion nurser. The little buck never quite figured it out, so they fed him some of Caboose's colostrum through a stomach tube. It was hard to leave them at the hospital, but the surgeon assured us that they would be carefully monitored at least hourly.

If Caboose can do all the normal goat things like walk around, eat and drink, she and the babies can come home Friday.

Baby book, baby goats, and maple sap

2011-02-23T19:25:00.000-06:00

Just when I was getting really frustrated by the seven very pregnant goats not having their babies, I received the most exciting email from my publisher. The cover for my book was attached! I was as excited as an expectant mother looking at her baby on an ultrasound. Unfortunately, it will still be another six months before I actually get to hold my book, which is starting to feel a lot like my fourth baby. I've heard more than one author use that analogy, and I'm beginning to understand it.

Included on the cover is an endorsement from Mother Earth News, because the book has been selected to become a part of their Wiser Living Series, and I could not be prouder. It is really exciting to have such a great magazine put their stamp on my book.

Baby goats
Now I just have to keep waiting for these seven goats to have their babies. Three are at day 147 and four are at day 146. We've never had a goat go past day 151, so as each day passes, I worry about having more than one in labor at a time. At least I have heat lamps in each of the four kidding pens, and the temperatures are not supposed to go much below the twenties for the rest of the week. I counted my goat towels today, however, and there are only seven. It usually takes one or two towels to get each baby dry. I wouldn't be too worried except that we seem to be having an unusually high number of quads this year, and Coco has had quads the last two years, and four of the goats out there have had triplets in the past, so this could get interesting. I usually spend about two hours with the kids after they're born, then it will take a couple hours to wash the towels, so this could work -- if there are at least a few hours between births.

So, why did I put myself in this crazy situation, you ask? Well, when a goat is in heat, you have to ask yourself if you want to breed her to kid in five months, or do you want to wait for her to come into heat again in three weeks. Considering that I have seven more due in two to three weeks, I'm glad I decided to breed these seven when I did. It should be warmer in three weeks, but I can't imagine how I'd feel if I have ten or twelve goats due in a short period of time. Seven is chaotic enough.

Maple sap
We collected twelve and a half gallons of sap over the weekend, and we spent most of Sunday and Monday boiling it down. Around nine, Monday night, Mike put up our first three pints of syrup, but the weather was too cold today and yesterday for the sap to flow. As soon as it warms up a little during the day, that will add another interesting dimension to our lives.

Bonnie's quads

2011-02-22T13:27:00.000-06:00

Lil Valentine at 8 days and 2 pounds, 9 ounces!

If I was a bettin' woman, I would have lost big last week. Bonnie was the least wide of the four goats that were due to kid. She had birthed quads last year as a first freshener, but she was much bigger -- at least, that's what I remembered. So, I was pretty sure she was only going to have twins. As each day passed, and she didn't give birth, and she looked wider, I started to think maybe triplets.

Mike had made fajitas with homemade tortillas on Valentine's Day, and I had just taken the last bite of my first one when we heard a goat over the baby monitor. I gave Mike a look. I suppose I should be thankful that I had eaten one fajita and didn't have to run out there with nothing more than the aromas of delicious food lingering in my nostrils.

At least it was warm enough that I didn't have to deal with the heating pad and blow dryer. With temperatures around freezing, a heat lamp and plenty of towels would be enough. When I walked into the barn, I saw something already poking out under Bonnie's tail. I ran into the office and grabbed the whole stack of towels without bothering to count. When Mike walked in a few minutes later, I was drying off the first kid. A few minutes later, a second kid popped out. "You know, she doesn't really look any smaller," I said to Mike. "Maybe she's having triplets."

Sisters!

And then this tiny little thing shot out! Bonnie didn't seem to notice. "It's another kid!" I broke the amniotic sac and pulled it off the kid, as I said, "I think it's dead," because it wasn't moving at all. I laid it on a towel and started cleaning it up. It shook its head and sneezed. "Oh, it's alive! But it's so tiny!" My excitement over the kid was short-lived though because Bonnie let out a bleat, and I looked down to see another kid presenting. Mike was at Bonnie's head and couldn't see what I saw.

"Here, take this one! Another one is coming! Gimme a clean towel!" I handed him the tiny kid in the towel as I grabbed a dry towel from him just in time to catch kid number four. "Quads again! I can't believe it!"


Blue-eyed buckling

We sat there for awhile making sure everyone was dry and nursing. And everyone was up and bouncing around in no time except for the littlest doeling. Seeing her next to her siblings, I was curious about the weight difference, so I weighed her and the biggest buckling. She was 1.5 pounds, and her big brother was 4.1 pounds. I had a feeling that she wouldn't have a chance against her siblings when it came to getting fed. In the ultimate proof that life is not fair, goats only have two teats, yet they can have so many babies! Although she did manage to stand a few times, walking was clearly not her forte. In the meantime, the biggest buckling was getting more than his fair share of mama's colostrum. It seemed he was always on one teat, while the other doe and buck took turns on the other one.

Luckily, Giselle had just kidded with twins 24 hours earlier. Normally when a goat has a single or twins, we milk them at 24 hours and put it in the freezer for emergencies or other situations where we need more colostrum than what the mama goat is producing. Hindsight is 20/20, but if I could have turned back time, I would have milked her right away, before the big buckling had made such a piggy of himself. Although it wouldn't be a problem to have the three kids nursing practically non-stop, because they'd get a little each time, milking her for the tiny one would be useless, because we wouldn't get enough to put in a bottle. So, the decision was made to bottlefeed the baby with Giselle's milk.

Buckling weighed 4.1 pounds, and doeling was 1.5!

What a week it has been with the tiny doeling that Katherine is calling her Little Valentine. We brought her into the house so that we could give her the frequent, small feedings that she needed. She didn't usually take more than an ounce at a time for several days. On the second day she drank two ounces for a couple of feedings, and we were getting excited, but then she reverted to one ounce a day on the third day, and her little mustard poops had streaks of blood. I had never seen that before, so asked some other goat breeders. One of them who bottlefeeds all of her kids said that she had seen it a few times, and it probably was not a big deal. She called the vet, freaking out the first time, and the vet listed several reasons why it could happen, and that it was not a problem. Because most of my kids are raised by mama, I don't see every single poop, which would explain why I've never seen it before.

The whole week with her has been one step backward after every two steps forward. She took three ounces at one feeding, but then reverted back to two ounces. I finally told myself that "normal" is a subjective term. This is her normal. It really does not matter that most kids at a week are sucking down four ounces in a couple minutes. She is just a little delayed, and there is not anything that anyone can do about it. Patience has never been one of my stronger virtues, but I'm learning.

This week on Antiquity Oaks: Seven goats are due, including two la manchas that will be giving birth to mini manchas that were sired by my ND bucks. And we've started maple sugaring!

Giselle's twins

2011-02-17T23:03:00.001-06:00

Sunday, February 13 -- A couple days after Charlotte gave birth, it became obvious that Giselle was in labor. Unlike Charlotte and Jo, Giselle is not the quiet, stoic type of goat. Rather than running in at the last minute, we were with Giselle for a couple hours before she gave birth. I kept thinking that something was wrong and then I'd realize that I was just comparing her to Charlotte and Jo, who are truly extraordinary. And I reminded myself that it is not a good thing to have a goat scream once and pop out a kid in one push as I am running through the dark from the house to the barn.

Katherine and I were sitting in the pen with Giselle, who was so much more affectionate than normal. She kept laying down and putting her head on our laps, leaning up against us, and giving us kisses. I joked that her tongue was going to be too tired to clean off her babies by the time they were born. But she was determined to get us cleaned up!


Giselle's buckling was born first!

Once she plopped down and started pushing earnestly, the kids made their appearance fairly quickly. After the second one was born, Giselle seemed very happy -- as if she was done. But I was pretty sure that she must have one more in there. She was the widest of all the goats due last week, although I realized she is not very long-bodied. But that's why I thought three instead of four. Katherine and I debated the possibility of there being another kid inside, and finally I said that I'd believe there were only two if they were four pounds each. They were obviously pretty big, but I really didn't think they were four pounds each, so I weighed them in a canvas shopping bag hanging from my dairy scale, which was just checked for accuracy in preparation for milk testing. The little buck was 4.5 pounds, and the little doe was 4.1! That's a lot of kids to be carrying around!

Giselle's doeling

So, she was done. It was nice attending a birth when the sun was up and the temperature was above freezing. The kids are doing quite well, and Giselle has plenty of milk for them and has even been sharing with us. We haven't separated her from her kids at all, but we've milked her a few times, and we've gotten anywhere from a few squirts to a pound.

And I'm sorry I've given no credit to the father of all these kids lately. I guess I sort of forgot about his contribution since it was five months ago, but Silveraurora Apple Jack was apparently a very busy buck back then. Giselle, Charlotte, and Jo were all pen bred with AJ, so I didn't really know when to expect their babies to arrive. All the rest of the goats have a specific due date, so I can at least narrow down the possible birth dates to a six or seven day window. I don't think I'll be pen breeding for winter kiddings again. That was too stressful.

Charlotte's quads

2011-02-16T20:18:00.001-06:00

In previous episodes . . . Jo gave birth to quads at midnight when the temperature was eight degrees below zero. The next morning, the bucks were refusing to eat or drink, so Deborah spent the whole day running them down to the U of I vet clinic, only to learn that they were stressed out. Arriving home in time for supper, Deborah didn't get to bed until after 10 p.m., and then at 2:24 a.m., she sat straight up in bed and screamed, "Goat!" as the sound of a goat screaming over the baby monitor awakened her . . .

Charlotte's buckling

I knew it was Charlotte, because she had all the signs and symptoms of going into labor soon. I jumped out of bed and got dressed as quickly as I could. Because the temperature was in the teens (above zero), I told Mike that he and I should be able to handle it on our own, so he didn't need to wake Katherine. I grabbed an armful of towels and ran to the barn. One kid was already born when I arrived. I started blow drying it as Charlotte licked it. Unlike her half sister, Jo, who is also a Sherri daughter, Charlotte gave us plenty of time to dry each kid before pushing out another one. It was very considerate of her, and we thanked her profusely. By the time we got all the kids to nurse, it was after 5 a.m. as we headed into the house. I can't believe how few details of this birth that I remember, but I was running on empty at the time. Final tally was four kids -- two bucks and two does.

Charlotte's mini-me doeling looks like mama!

The next evening I noticed that one of the bucklings was sucking on Charlotte's beard. I tried to get him to latch on, but he wanted nothing to do with it. I was thinking about cutting off Charlotte's beard, but then I saw him sucking on a sibling's ear, so there didn't seem to be much point in cutting off the beard. His tummy didn't feel full, but I knew he had nursed well at birth. I did recall that he was the second one to nurse, and I'd seen him nurse more than once. He was big and strong, so I wasn't worried. I thought that maybe he was just being weird. But the next morning he was dead. I had heard stories of baby goats and sheep sucking on odd things and starving, but it has never happened here. I guess I always assumed it was something that might happen at birth if there is no one there to help the kids get started. It never occurred to me that a kid might be nursing and then totally forget how to do it. I still find it odd, but it is certainly something that I will be more careful about in the future. Of course, it could have been something completely unrelated to that, but it's the first thing that popped into my head when Mike told me the little guy had died. It's hard to believe he could go from bouncing around to dead in only nine hours.

Sundgau doeling make me glad I'm not a goat mama!

Tonight when we were doing chores, I noticed that Charlotte's udder was huge. It really looked like she needed to be milked, so I got a milk bucket for Katherine. The dear girl isn't used to milking much right now because the goats have only begun to give birth, and they're all nursing kids at the moment, so her hands were in pain fairly quickly. I noticed that the bucket was more than half full. It wound up being more than a quart! So, Charlotte certainly has a lot of milk -- more than enough to feed four. I'm glad because we do have a bottle baby now, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Coming up: I still need to tell you about Giselle's twins before you hear the wild news of Bonnie's birth. And there are exciting developments on Homegrown and Handmade!

Jo's quads

2011-02-14T22:10:00.001-06:00

I have to get this written before I forget everything! Tomorrow is the deadline to get my manuscript to the publisher for Homegrown and Handmade, but the goats don't know or care, and I don't blame them, of course. We've had four kiddings in the past few days -- three set of quads and one set of twins. Yes, that's a record for us. Last year, we had two sets of quads, and before that, we'd never had more than one set of quads in a year.

February 9 -- Jo's tail ligaments were rock sold, so we were all thinking she would be the third or fourth to kid. Charlotte's ligaments had been soft as a rubber band for days, so we were carefully watching her, thinking that she could drop kids at any moment. I even spent one night in the barn when it was really cold, because I didn't want the kids to get hypothermia. We finally found the baby monitor and got it hooked up so I could sleep in the house.


Jo's belted doeling

Wednesday evening, one of the goats was bellowing over the monitor for quite some time, although it didn't sound like she was in the midst of actually giving birth, so I sent Katherine to check on her. She came back with an inconclusive report. So, before I went to bed at 11:00, I decided to go check on her myself, even though she had been quiet for the last couple hours. When I saw her and checked her tail ligaments, I thought, yes, she could go at any time. So, I put her into a kidding pen with clean straw and bucket of warm water and came inside.

I was brushing my teeth, and Jo continued to make little "meh, meh, meh" sounds. As I was just about to get dressed for bed, Mike said, "I think I hear a kid." I listened, but I didn't hear anything. He insisted. "Don't you hear it?" Knowing that I would forever feel guilty if I didn't go check on Jo, I headed downstairs. As I was putting on my insulated overalls -- because it was 8 BELOW ZERO outside -- Mike yelled down the stairs, "That's a newborn sound!" He sounded really convinced, so I hurried outside. He said he would listen at the baby monitor, in case I needed help.


Jo's black doeling

I walked into the kidding barn and saw Jo laying right where she had plopped down fifteen minutes earlier when I left her. At her back end were three babies in a puddle of amniotic fluid. I started screaming a bunch of stuff that I didn't even remember five minutes later. It really didn't matter what I was screaming. I knew if Mike heard me, he'd come running, and I knew I needed all the help I could get. If we didn't get the kids dry and warm quickly, their ears could freeze, or worse, they would die of hypothermia. I ran to the office and grabbed the blow dryer and heating pad. When I got to the pen, I realized I needed towels, so I dropped everything and ran back to the office for the towels, running smack into the handle of a wheelbarrow in the darkness.

Jo's black and white buckling

Having no idea which kid had been born first, I spread out a towel, grabbed two kids and wrapped them up in it, while I toweled off the third one and began blow drying it. As soon as Mike arrived, I told him to start toweling off one of the other kids. We didn't even stop to check the sex of the kids until we'd been working on drying them for at least five minutes. Jo was making the most horrible noise. She sounded like she was dying, and she was shivering badly. We draped a towel over her back to help warm her. As soon as Katherine arrived, I told her to get the Nutri-Drench, which is a molasses and vitamin concoction that gives goats a little extra energy. I squirted some into Jo's mouth, and she continued making the pathetically weak bleating sound. About ten minutes later, she pushed out a fourth kid -- a doe. All of the kids were at least three pounds, so I wasn't worried about any of them.

It took two hours to get the kids dry, and by then, the placenta had passed. We helped the kids get started with nursing, and then shortly after 2 a.m., we went to bed.

Hope you'll forgive me for not getting any pictures of the blessed event. Jo's kidding was the beginning of a crazy few days, and these photos were taken when the kids were three days old. Unfortunately, I didn't get any non-blurry photos of the broken buckskin buckling, which is a shame, because he's really cute.

Coming up -- the stories of Charlotte's quads, Giselle's twins, and Bonnie's quads! Hope I can get those written before Carmen, Coco, Cleo, Caboose, and Lizzie start kidding! They're all due the 21st and 22nd, but Carmen has a history of going early.