Update on book, goats, and weather

 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.

Maple syrup season winding down

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.

Maple syrup and Vera Wang's triplets

 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.

Baby book, baby goats, and maple sap

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.

Let the maple syruping begin!

Thursday morning, our first adventure with maple syrup began. Before leaving for work, Mike went out to one of the maple groves and put ten taps into nine maple trees. Jonathan checked on the taps during the day. At first, it was slow. Some buckets remained empty for a few hours, but a couple trees had three inches of sap within a few hours. By mid-afternoon, three buckets were half full, so Jonathan emptied them. We assumed the buckets would be fine until Friday morning.

Friday started with eight trips across the creek to empty buckets. The buckets on the south end of the grove were completely full, and these are two gallon buckets.
The 10-gallon evaporator was full in no time.
We were filling additional pots on the stove, and we were looking for additional containers to store sap until the boiling sap had evaporated enough moisture for us to add more fresh sap to the pots. By the end of the day, we had collected almost 30 gallons of sap.

We boiled all day, and we still had sap sitting in pitchers and milk buckets, waiting to be added to the pots. And of course, we kept going across the creek, emptying more buckets so they wouldn't overflow. We had to stop boiling in the house when the sun went down, because we had to close windows, and the humidity started building up on windows quickly! By midnight, we decided we would be able to go to bed without worrying about the sap suddenly becoming syrup and being ruined before we got up in the morning. Just to be safe, Mike did check on it around 3:30, and the big evaporator was down about halfway.

By this morning, the sap was close enough to syrup that I had some on my homemade yogurt. It was so delicious! However, it wasn't quite "real" syrup yet, and if we were to bottle it at this stage, it would grow mold, because it still needed to be evaporated more, so we started adding more fresh sap to the pot. We're hoping by the end of today, we'll have boiled down the sap enough that we will be able to bottle our first three or four quarts of syrup.

Getting ready for maple sugaring

Mike and I went into the woods on Saturday to identify trees. We wanted to see what kind of maple and oak trees we had, because acorns from the oaks can be used to feed pigs, and the maple trees can be used for making maple syrup for the humans. Acorn harvest has already begun, but I'll talk about that tomorrow.

As for the maple trees, we found more than a dozen large, old trees, and almost all of them are sugar maples. Although you can tap any kind of maple tree, the sugar maples have the highest yield of sap. You can tap a tree once it has grown to 10 inches in diameter, and you can add another tap for each additional six to eight inches in diameter. If the books are correct, this means we could easily have a couple dozen taps, because the trees are big enough to support two or three taps each. I had to post a picture of Mike next to a tree, because the trees look really small if there isn't a person in the picture. Even this tree looks small if you cover up Mike, but we can't get our arms around it.

This also means that my cabin in the woods may be moved closer to the top of the to-do list. I've been wanting a cabin in the woods, but it always seemed like one of those "nice to have" things, rather than anything practical. However, it takes 35 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, and how far do you want to carry all that sap before starting to boil it down? However, this also means that we probably won't be taking advantage of all our maple trees next spring, because there are two separate groves on opposite ends of our property.

Our next step is to somehow mark the trees so that at the end of February or in early March when there are no leaves on the trees, we'll know which ones are maples. I am really excited about making our own syrup, because having a homegrown sweetener will get us one step closer to true sustainability.