Spring on the homestead

The snow has melted, the grass is growing, and everything is blooming! Here are a few pictures from around the homestead ...

More goats are due to kid soon, and we put turkey eggs in the incubator on Saturday, which means we'll have poults in about four weeks!

Tree update -- finally

Sorry it's taken me so long to let you know what happened to the burning tree. It burned all night long, and Jonathan stayed with it to make sure it didn't spread to surrounding grass. At 1:10 a.m., he came into the house to tell us that the top part had fallen off. The tree was already mostly dead when the fire started. A couple years ago, about 3/4 of the top of it fell off during a storm. The inside is hollow, and I've been saying for two years that it should be cut down, because nothing good was going to come of a half-dead tree that was next to our garden. I was mostly afraid that another storm would blow down the rest of it, and it would destroy our nice new fence. The next morning there was still smoke coming off the tree, and you could see a few embers, but we were no longer worried about it spreading. This is what's left now. And we really need to get it cut down before it causes more trouble.

Unfortunately, a dead tree just hanging around does not tend to make it to the top of the to-do list. We still have fencing to complete, garden work to do, more barn cleaning, goat and sheep health maintenance, and the list goes on and on.

The view from my toilet

Yes, this really is the view from my toilet. You can see several things from here.

First, we still need to put tile around our bathtub. Whenever I list the things that still need to be done on the house, I always forget that one. We have a separate shower though, so it's not a huge deal, since I don't splash that much when I bathe. On the list of "things I wish I'd known" before building this house, I would add, "Don't have a separate shower and tub." Why? Because if you don't use a tub for about a week, you still have to clean it. Yeah, it gets ridiculously dusty, and all sorts of stuff collects in there, like dead Asian beetles in the fall. Ugh!

Second, there is a tree out there that still hasn't lost its leaves. Six or seven years ago, I wouldn't have noticed that, and I wouldn't have cared. Today, I wonder why it hasn't lost its leaves. Healthy trees shed their leaves in the fall, just like healthy animals shed their winter coats in the spring. After the goats stripped the bark off our apple trees, they didn't lose their leaves in the fall, and when spring arrived, we realized they were dead. So, if that huge tree is dead, that's a lot of firewood!

Often, I see ducks and geese swimming on the pond, but this time of year they're confined to the small area that is kept unfrozen by the aerator. They look like little dots in the picture, but they're bigger in real life. I've seen deer wandering through the pasture, and sometimes our horses gallop around the back of the pond. Every now and then, I also see naughty goats back there after they've gone through the electric fence. Overall, I'd have to say that the view from my toilet makes it the best seat in the house.

Fall?

Life on the farm is slowing down. It usually slows down this time of year because the weather forces us inside, but this year, the weather has been unseasonably warm. We've tried to keep pushing ourselves to do all the things we want to do, like building a potting shed. It is just not happening. We're tired. I am beginning to understand the wisdom of the seasons. We work, then we hibernate. Even though the climate is changing, we're not. We still need our rest, our hibernation. It's hard to explain how it feels to keep trying to push ourselves. Somehow our bodies or our subconscious minds just know that the working season is past.

The leaves are finally starting to change. Normally they change much earlier. The first week of October is usually a beautiful golden, red, and yellow display of color in the woods. Here we are, almost three weeks past that time, and we are starting to get a few brownish-yellow leaves on the hickory trees. The leaves on the oak trees are still green. A couple weeks ago, temperatures were hitting 90 degrees, and this weekend is supposed to be in the upper 70s again. We still haven't had a freeze. The part of me that loves fresh food from the garden is happy about that, but I know there is a much bigger picture here. Climate change is happening, and I'm seeing it on my own little piece of the earth. Every year our pond is frozen for fewer days, but seeing the change in fall foliage is more startling.

The drought has also caused problems. Our hay field pretty much died. At least everything useful died. It is now filling up with weeds. If it had a good fence around it, it would be a perfect place to put goats. They love weeds! But there is an old rusty barbed wire fence around it, so it's worthless as a pasture. The price of hay has gone up, but I should consider myself lucky that I was able to find grass for $3 a bale and alfalfa for $4 a bale. More than one person told me that they've heard of $6-7 a bale. Just a few years ago, it was $2 a bale for alfalfa.

A couple days ago we got our second rain in six weeks. Remember, six weeks ago we had two floods in one week -- or was it eight weeks ago?

Goats and fruit trees

As much as I love my dear goats, I am spittin' mad right now! I was walking past the library window today when my peripheral vision saw something very wrong, and an involuntary scream came from my mouth. I spun around on my toes, nearly hitting my forehead on the window as a string of expletives spewed from my lips. Two goats were in the midst of the apple trees happily gnawing at the bark!

We planted six apple trees and two pear trees when we moved here five years ago, creating a lovely little orchard. This past year, the pear trees and one of the apple trees died due to these two little goats and their friends stripping the bark from them. They have now stripped the bark from the remaining four apple trees. I'm so frustrated! Last summer was the first harvest from the trees, so in addition to having to buy new apple and pear trees, we'll have to wait another four years for a crop of fruit.

These two goats do NOT respect the electric fence, which is how they get into the yard. They just walk right through it as if it's nothing -- perhaps it's a tickley massage to them? I don't find it pleasant at all when I accidentally touch the fence. I don't understand how they can just walk right through it, but perhaps the taste of apple bark is just too delicious to be deterred by something as blah as an electric shock?