Snow, snow, and more snow

If you've heard that we're getting a lot of snow in Illinois, I'm here to tell you that it's true, and we're supposed to get more snow today! There is a picket fence in the above picture. Can you find it?

And it's been really cold -- as in below zero Fahrenheit -- multiple times. Our pond is about one-third acre, and we have an aerator that normally keeps it from freezing over completely, but many times this winter, Mike has had to go out there with a pick ax to open up the little hole above the aerator. If the pond is completely iced over, it will kill the fish in there.

We've never had a winter like this since we moved here in 2002, but some of the old timers say this is what winter used to be like. I just hope that all of this snow melts gradually over the course of a couple of weeks. If the weather suddenly warms up for days, we will probably be in for some flooding.

Foul fowl weather

The last few days have certainly been interesting. It all started on Saturday when things got really windy. We lost electricity in the late afternoon. We've learned over the years that if it isn't back in a few seconds, it won't be back for awhile, so Mike tried to start the generator. Key word: tried. It wouldn't start, so he spent the next couple hours working on it. The sun went down, and he kept working with the help of a flashlight, then the barn lights came on.

Good news: Electricity is back.

Bad news: We knew that Sunday's weather was predicted to be worse, and we still did not have a working generator.

Sunday morning, we were lounging in bed, sipping coffee. Mike was texting our daughter who now lives in Ft. Worth, and I was gazing out the window. Suddenly one of the turkey's moveable pens lifted off the ground, flew high into the air, and came down on top of a 12-foot tall pine tree. Mike's head immediately popped up from his cell phone, and as soon as he saw that I was staring out the window with my mouth wide open and spewing expletives, such as "Holy cow!" he whipped his head around in time to see the pen landing on top of the pine tree. He flew out of bed, and as we exited the bedroom, we met Jane, who was also running out of her bedroom. Because I was still in my gown, I was glad to see that Jane was dressed.

She and Mike ran out to the front yard as I ran for my camera. It seemed like it would be entirely inappropriate for me to yell after them, asking them to wait to remove the pen from the top of the tree while I switched to my zoom lens, which is why I didn't manage to get a picture of it. Those pens are not at all heavy, which was good for the tree and good for Mike and Jane, as it was easy to get down, and it had not broken any branches on the tree.

Once they had the pen down, they had to herd the turkeys back in there. Interestingly enough, the other turkey pen did not get blown away at all. We think it's because it was positioned at a 90 degree angle to the one that did get blown. As long as the wind could blow straight through the pen and under the tarp like a tunnel, it didn't get any lift. Unfortunately, the forecast was calling for the wind to shift in the afternoon from the south to the west.

The forecast was also calling for even stronger winds in the afternoon. Ultimately we decided to slide the pens up against the wooden fence, sticking the skids until the fence and tying the pen to the fence. Jane and Mike piled cinder blocks on the two corners of the skids that were not under the fence.

Mike went back to work on the generator, while Jane and I started chores. When we were feeding the sheep, we saw a ram lamb mount a ewe, which should not really have happened because the ram lambs were supposed to be castrated. Jane grabbed the little guy when he wasn't looking, and I checked for the presence of the family jewels. I thought that I felt two testicles that were very uneven in size. Since I had used a Burdizzo to castrate the little guy, I assumed that I had somehow missed the cord on one, so I was heading to the barn to grab the Burdizzo and try again. At that moment Jonathan was hurrying into the pasture to tell us that we were under a tornado alert.

"Well, we have a testicle alert here!" Jane shot back, as she was holding the little ram. I know tornadoes are nothing to play with, but we already had the little guy, so it should only take a minute to redo the job. I grabbed the Burdizzo from the barn and brought it out to the pasture. As soon as we were done and let the lamb go, I heard the roaring that was unmistakeably the sound of a tornado. I told Jane, who is from Baltimore and knows nothing about tornadoes, and we both started rushing to the house. Once we were close to the house, however, she wanted to stay outside and see everything. Amazingly enough, we were getting zero rain -- not even a drop! -- even though the radar showed purple and magenta over us, so we should have been getting buckets of rain. Later we learned that the tornado was only a couple of miles away.

We wound up losing Internet because the tornado knocked out electricity where our service provider's tower is located, but considering all of the people killed and houses damaged, we were extremely lucky. We are only an hour from Washington, IL, which made national news as it had some of the worst damage, and we have a friend closer to Chicago whose neighbor's barn was completely blown to bits. We've also seen a video of a twister touching down near Pontiac, which is only 12 miles from us. So, all things considered, we really can't complain.

Water, water ... nowhere

Somehow the goats opened the gate today and came into the front yard.
And they quickly found everything green!

How long has it been since we've had any measurable amount of rain? I'm not entirely sure, but it's somewhere around seven or eight weeks. We are officially in an "extreme drought," according to the Drought Monitor. I've gone through all the usual stages of grief -- denial, anger, bargaining, and finally acceptance. There is still a part of me that is angry, but the logical part of my brain keeps telling me to just settle down. Acceptance is probably the most difficult thing for humans to learn.

This morning, we sent nine goats to be processed. They were wethers from last year that didn't sell. I had hoped to sell them this year, but most people don't want year-old pet goats, even at a discounted price. They want babies. The plan was to butcher them at the end of summer if they still didn't sell, but at this point, they were eating grass that is far too valuable for future pets that will sell for the cost of a few bales of hay, which they have already consumed. It wasn't that long ago that I said I could never butcher a goat, and it certainly was not easy bringing the boys into the barn last night, knowing where they would be going this morning. But I have to think of the welfare of all the animals out there. Unless there is a good reason to keep one, it has to go. And I really need to sell the sheep, or we will wind up with a freezer full of lamb and mutton by fall.

Carmen is pregnant and due to kid in 2-3 weeks. She really loves the weeds in the driveway.

It has been so easy over the past ten years to take for granted all of the beautiful, lush grass that grows throughout our summers, as well as the nearby hay fields. I had always thought that our animals would never go hungry. This summer, however, those pastures are rapidly turning brown. And the surrounding hay fields are dieing. I normally need about 800 bales of hay, which we start feeding towards the end of October or early November, depending upon the weather. But we need to be feeding hay now -- at the end of July! I was able to find 240 bales of alfalfa, and you don't have to do any math to conclude that it isn't nearly enough to last until next spring.

Finding no other alternatives, I decided to buy Chaffhaye, which is haylage. There wasn't a dealer within 100 miles of me, so I bought a truckload and can sell some to other people if they find themselves in a bind, unable to find hay for their animals. If no one buys any, I'll have plenty to feed my animals for more than a year. Yeah, that was pricey, but it's a good answer. I've heard more than one livestock producer say you should always have enough hay in storage to last for two years.

The garden isn't doing very well, but we've been able to keep everything alive. We aren't planting anything new. Although we're assuming we have a good water well, I don't want to take anything for granted because there are some people around here whose wells have run dry. The last thing I want to do is haul water from town. I've noticed a new water truck driving down our road the last couple weeks. Towards the end of next month, I'll plant some seeds for lettuce and other greens to overwinter in our low tunnels, but I'm not planting them until this horrific heat is passed.

Our pond is drying up, which is simply a constant reminder of our new reality. Every bit of dirt that you see in the photo above and below was covered with water two months ago.

I hope the crack willows don't die. They are accustomed to growing in the water, so I imagine they have pretty shallow roots.

On the bright side, we now know where all of our buckets disappear to!

But the sobering reality is that the situation is not expected to get better. The Drought Outlook shows the drought continuing through October at least.

Broiling and steamed

No, this post is not about food. "Broiling" is about temperatures in excess of 100 degrees every day for about a week now. Today is supposed to get to 111 degrees, and it was 101.3 at 10:13 this morning, which was not what I wanted to see.

Combine these temperatures with no rain for more than two weeks, and what do you get? The grass is turning brown, and on a farm, that is not a cosmetic complaint. We are going to start watering a couple areas of pasture. Of course the garden is not happy either, so we have been watering the vegetables plants for awhile already.

So far the animals are doing okay, although I did have one goat that quit eating. Earlier this week I realized she had a pretty heavy load of parasites, so I treated her for that, but she still didn't regain her appetite. I took her to the U of I vet clinic yesterday, and they couldn't find anything wrong with her, so I'm assuming that the weather is just making it harder for her to recover. We've put her in the barn office with an air conditioner until tomorrow when the heat wave is supposed to break.

"Steamed" in today's title is about how mad I am that something -- I'm assuming another raccoon (or two) -- has completely wiped out our flock of heritage turkeys. We found the remains of three, but we haven't seen a live turkey in days. We now have a trap set, but so far, nothing has been caught. The number of chickens and ducks is also decreasing. It seems that coons are bad everywhere this year. We haven't had a problem in about eight years ourselves. A friend was saying that she thinks it was due to our very mild winter and early spring, and I agree. Baby raccoons born at zero degrees are far less likely to survive than those born at 50 degrees.

It is going to be strange without turkeys roaming around. We've had breeding turkeys ever since we moved out here ten years ago. Unfortunately, the hatchery sent us almost all broad breasted turkeys in our order last month, so with only two Spanish black poults, the odds are 50/50 that it's a male and a female. But it's not a great idea to have only one female with a male anyway.

So, for now, there isn't much we can do other than wait for the heat wave to break and the raccoons to wander into the trap.

Hurricane in Illinois?

Clare enjoying the new buffet of leaves and branches!

"When it rains, it pours" is more than just a meaningless cliche here today. I knew today was going to be interesting because we had goats being shipped out of the Bloomington airport -- two at 6 a.m. and four more at 6:25, and they're supposed to be dropped off two hours earlier, which meant we were getting up quite early for the hour-long drive to the airport.

Hickory trees in front yard --
most of the branches on the right side
are ripped off and hanging down to the ground.

Shortly after 1 a.m., however, life got interesting. Normally I'm sleeping at that time, and this morning was no different. Then a massive storm hit us. Sleeping through it was simply not possible. They say that a tornado sounds like a freight train coming at you, and that's exactly what it sounded like outside. Mike pulled up the radar, and we could see that we were completely engulfed in a large magenta colored mass with pink next to it. Pink? I've never seen pink on the radar before. I looked at the key and saw that it was worse than magenta -- and that purple is even worse than pink. I wondered how on earth anything could be worse that what we were experiencing. I could hear windows rattling and other creaking noises, and our house is only seven years old. I had been about a hundred miles inland for hurricane Alicia in 1983 when it hit Houston, and this was worse than what I remembered back then. Later I learned that last night's winds were gusting up to 70 mph.

After half an hour, the noise finally died down, and the radar confirmed that the storm had passed. It was 2 a.m., and Mike and I foolishly thought we could get an hour of sleep before heading to the airport. I did sleep, but it might have been a mistake. It was really tough to drag myself out of bed. Walking across the yard in the darkness to the barn, I couldn't really see much. There were a couple of small branches in my path, so I tossed them aside. By the time we got the kids all loaded into their respective crates and onto the pickup, it was about ten minute to four. I wondered what we'd see when we came home after sun-up.

This branch is laying on an electric fence.

The experience at the airport was interesting. Because it is a small airport, we have to check in the goats in the same place as people check in, so you can imagine we got a lot of attention. It took a full hour to get the goats checked in and on their way. Each of the six goats had to be removed from its crate and inspected by the TSA people. That's when things really got ridiculous. All of the people standing in line were oohing and aahing over the goaty cuteness, including one woman who said to her child, "Look at the lambs!" I smiled and didn't correct her. And the cell phone cameras came out, and people were snapping pictures like crazy of us holding the kids. I imagine our pictures are all over Facebook now, on walls of people we've never met, with captions about the goats at the airport. And several people asked us if they were "special goats," so I took the opportunity to explain the awesomeness of the Nigerian dwarf dairy goats and why people love them so much. When the TSA people realized the goats had their names on their collars, they started calling them by their names. They especially loved Ursula's name.

The man doing our check in briefly scared me. "You got a reservation on this flight?" he asked. I said, yes. He didn't look happy. Apparently the computer was telling him that the goats could not go on the flight on which they were scheduled because the transfer time in Atlanta wasn't long enough. But he double-checked the times manually and said there was plenty of time for the goats to get from one terminal to another.

I wasn't exactly happy that they took all three crates to a back room after the TSA inspection. He came out and asked me which one was going to Arkansas, and thank goodness, I had labeled the crates with their destinations. I told him about the labels, but I really should have just asked to see the goats again to be double sure. I worried all morning that the wrong goats were jetting down to Arkansas.

That is not a bush in front of the shelter.
It's part of a tree and is about 8 feet high.
The goats will only be able to reach about a fourth of it.

On the drive back, we didn't really see any storm damage until we were about three miles from home. A couple pieces of wood from a hog building were in the road, and we saw a couple of large branches fallen from trees. But I really started to get worried when we were half a mile from home. Someone moved in a few months ago and planted a lot of five-foot tall evergreens. Some of them had been ripped up by their roots. The next home had five or six trees with massive damage. One tree with a trunk more than a foot in diameter had snapped like a toothpick. Several trees were missing about a third of their branches. Mike drove slowly as soon as we reached the edge of our property.

We saw the sheep walking around happily in their pasture, and then we noticed a huge tree that had been ripped up by the roots and was laying horizontally on the ground. We saw a large tree with huge branches ripped off and laying on the ground -- and then we saw another and another, including one that was laying across an electric fence, which meant the fence was shorted out and worthless. Beyond our driveway, a tree was in the road. As soon as we pulled in front of the house, I decided to walk around to get an idea of the damage.

So far we haven't found any property damage other than fences. Mike's gas-powered chainsaw is broken, so he'll have to haul a generator out to the pastures to do some of the fence work with an electric chainsaw. It took him about an hour to get the limb off the electric fence with a hand saw, but another one is too big for that. It's good that it isn't going across an electric fence though. He spent a couple more hours cleaning off other fences. At least the goats are happy with their windfall. They are stuffing themselves with all of the leaves that are now at buffet level. Although it's a pain to deal with all of this, I am extremely grateful that none of the animals were hurt, and we didn't have any expensive damage.

Mike has a busy weekend ahead as I take off for a book signing in Wisconsin tomorrow and a speaking engagement at the Green Festival in Chicago on Sunday.

What's wrong with these beautiful pictures?

 Daffodils blooming

 

 Rose bush leafing out

 Pear tree ready to bloom

Cherry blossoms

It's March 18! In case you're wondering why that's a problem, it's because we have NEVER had daffodils blooming in mid-March in Illinois! Last year, the daffodils were blooming at the end of April. In 2010, the fruit trees had blossoms, and the daffodils were blooming in mid-April. Looking through my blog over the years, it appears that my memory has not failed me. Daffodils do appear in mid-April -- normally -- not mid-March. Rose bushes do not have green leaves on them, nor do pear trees or cherry bushes bloom in March.

Everything is coming out of hibernation. The bees are buzzing around pollinating the blossoms. The dayliles are coming up, as well as the irises and the tulips. We have made a temporary pen in the front yard for the goats so that they can get out of the barn, which is too hot for them.

I don't see any positive end to this. If we go back to normal temperatures, all of the buds will freeze, so we won't have any fruit this year. If these record-breaking temperatures continue, I can hardly imagine what that will mean for us this summer. We've been having temperatures well above normal since October. And the temperatures have been in the 80s for several days now, and they're predicting they will continue for several more days before falling into the 70s. Normal high for March is 50s with freezing temperatures overnight. The low tonight is supposed to be 62.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire?

I totally understand the people living in the cities around me who are celebrating this beautiful weather that we're having. We don't normally see 80 degrees in Illinois until May. Our normal highs this time of year are somewhere in the 50s with freezing temperatures overnight. But then our weather has not been normal for a long time. It has been way above normal ever since October. All winter long we didn't go more than about three days without the temperature going above freezing during the day, which is not good. I was watching it, hoping and praying to have a good, long freeze of at least a couple of weeks to kill the bugs and parasites that plague the garden and the livestock. But it never happened.

It was lovely to wake up this morning with a cool breeze blowing across my face from the open window. It's my favorite way to wake up, so there is a part of me that's loving this weather too. But there's the other part of me that is torn between letting my baby goats out onto pasture and keeping them in the barn. It usually isn't a tough decision this time of year. If the pasture is still frozen, let the goats out; if it's wet, leave them in the barn which is a comfortable temperature.

But the past few days, I've been choosing between a barn so hot the goats are panting and a pasture that is probably covered with larvae from haemonchus contortus just waiting to be eaten by a goat host. The wetter the pasture, the more likely the larvae is still alive, and I keep walking through the pastures trying to find one that's dry enough to convince me that the larvae has died and the eggs have dried out with no hope of hatching. It feels like a lose-lose situation. And it's supposed to rain again tomorrow.

I am contemplating some non-conventional ideas, like putting the mamas and babies in the front yard, where goats have not grazed in the past year, so there are no parasite eggs or larvae on the ground. The down side is that we need some type of enclosure so that they don't eat my evergreens. And it would take a few people to get them to and from the barn daily, but I'll have a lot of help for the next week because it's the beginning of spring break. The other issue is that there is no shade where the ground is dry, which is why the ground is dry! Hopefully we can figure out something that will work. Just when you think you've got everything figured out, everything changes!

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.

Spring

 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.

The Blizzard of 2011

Sorry I didn't post sooner, but it's been crazy around here the last few days! Yes, we survived The Blizzard of 2011! It was a scary mess. Visibility grew shorter and shorter as the shelters in the pastures disappeared one by one until I could only see the red chicken house, which is the closest building to our house. As the sun went down Tuesday, I felt like we were moving into a tunnel and started to feel a little claustrophobic. The windows gradually grew whiter and whiter as the snow whipped right through the screens and stuck to the glass. The windows also rattled, which was a little unnerving.

The college didn't close until 4 p.m., so Mike (husband and professor) and Katherine (daughter and student) drove home after it had already started. As they attempted to pull into our driveway, they found themselves stuck in the snow with most of the car still in the road. Although we weren't really worried about anyone coming by at that moment, we knew that it was only going to get worse as we had heard two feet of snow predicted, and we're just south of a wide open cornfield. We concluded it would be better to dig out a foot now, rather than wait until the whole thing ended the next day. Jonathan had attempted to get the driveway shoveled, but it was fruitless, so Mike finally managed to get the car moved into the end of the driveway, where at least it wouldn't get run over by a snow plow.

Then we realized that the lady llamas' shelter was filling up with snow, so they needed to be moved. Although I can normally see everything in their pasture with no problem, it was completely white by then, so I couldn't see anything. Katherine and Mike volunteered to go out there, halter them, and bring them into the barn. Llamas are not the friendliest animals around, but they cooperated far better than ever before. Katherine easily haltered Katy, although Katy initially balked as Katherine had to first walk her straight into the storm. Once the llama realized they were headed for the barn, she practically bolted. It was nerve wracking sitting in the house, having no idea how the move was going, so I was relieved when Mike and Katherine finally came back inside and said the lady llamas were in the barn.

If you were interested in the storm, I'm sure you got your fill via the media. Interstates, schools, and businesses were closed, because the snow was simply coming down too hard and fast for anyone to be able to keep up. Even after the snow stopped falling, the wind continued to make a mess of things. Because we're on the south side of a wide open field, the snow had nothing to stop it until it hit our farm -- and boy, did it hit!

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go. This was our west driveway on Wednesday afternoon, and that's a four-foot fence on the horizon. My husband's car was stuck outside the gate.

Mike finally got it cleared out by Thursday around noon . . . 

This is the front yard. The four foot picket fence is buried under all the snow. And those little pine trees -- they're actually seven to eight feet tall.

The three-sided shelters in the pastures completely filled up with snow. I'm glad we didn't have any animals in them!

Having a big horseshoe driveway seems cool in the middle of summer, but not very cool when you've had a blizzard. As of this morning, Mike is almost done with the east driveway! Once he gets past the gate, there is a bank of snow that's about six feet high from the snow plow. Yep, he did all of this with a shovel.

Overall, I can't complain. All the animals and humans fared well. I feel like we need T-shirts that say, "We survived the Blizzard of 2011 on Antiquity Oaks!"

Letting go of citified ideas

It has been more than eight years, and we are heading into our ninth winter here, and I just bought my first pair of insulated overalls. Yes, you read that correctly. Now that I have a pair, I can't believe I didn't buy a pair before now. And I want more. My whole family wants them now!

It was two degrees Fahrenheit when I woke up this morning, and the temperature has risen to a balmy 16 now, and I just came inside from mid-day chores. I'm sweating. That is hard to believe, but I was not cold at all. Katherine borrowed them last night for chores, and now she wants a pair. Then after her raving about how great they are, Jonathan wanted to try them on when he went outside later. Yes, we're a pretty boring family when it comes to sizes, although the overalls were a little short on Jonathan, because he is three inches taller than me. Still, they covered enough of his legs that he wants a pair now. And this morning, Mike and Katherine almost got into an argument over who was going to get to wear them. So, I need to head back to Tractor Supply and buy more for everyone.

So, why has it taken me eight years to even try them? Well, this is kind of embarrassing, but every time I saw someone wearing them, I thought they were really ugly. Most people around here wear Carhartt's, and they are the ugliest yellow-brown imaginable, in my opinion. When I was in Tractor Supply last week, I noticed these really pretty pink insulated overalls and went over to look at them. I immediately started to think about buying them, but then a bit of common sense kicked in, and I realized that they would look horrendous after one day of chores. But right next to them were these chocolate brown overalls. Perfect! They are nice and dark, so hardly anything will show up on them.

The first time I put them on and walked outside, I was in shock about how warm my legs were. Blue jeans or sweat pants with long underwear do not even come close to keeping my legs warm, but I am totally toasty when I put the overalls on top of what I'm wearing in the house. (Yes, I know I'm a wimp. I need three layers on my legs and four layers on top to stay warm.) Katherine went outside to milk this morning by putting the overalls on top of her pajamas, so she didn't have to get dressed for chores then redressed for school. No doubt that is one reason she is so excited about them. Now I know why the farmers out here walk around looking totally unaffected by the cold weather. It's because they're so warm in those insulated overalls! It's not about looking good. It's about staying warm!

Blustery day

Blustery is probably understating the situation. Professionals are comparing the winds to a hurricane. My sleep was interrupted at least a couple dozen times last night by scary wind noises. Almost all of the deck furniture has blown off, and with another 24 hours of this craziness predicted, I don't see much point in putting it back on the deck. My poor rosemary plant, which is about two feet tall was standing at a 45-degree angle when I first saw it this morning.

Our greenhouse, which is only two years old, is completely trashed. It was still half covered when I got up this morning, so I was hopeful that we'd be able to fix it, but no such luck. That's really thick plastic, and it's reinforced with threads that run between the layers of plastic, but it is ripped in multiple places. I wanted to look at it more closely, but I nearly got blown away just taking the picture, so I decided to come back inside. It's pointless to look at it more closely anyway. Trashed is trashed. It's probably a good thing we didn't get the low tunnel covers on the raised beds yet.

Someone needs to walk the perimeter of our property later today and again tomorrow. A storm like this usually results in at least one tree falling down, and it usually falls on a fence, which is statistically improbable, but somehow it happens that way. The good news is that we'll have more firewood.

Recovering from restless sky syndrome

We've had wind, rain, hail, and tornadoes, although the latter did not actually touch down on our property. The forecast (if it can be believed) is now calling for clear skies for the next week, which makes me happier than a pig in mud. I know it's my fault that we've had so much rain. You see, we used to have only two water hoses, which had to be pulled from the house-to-garden path to the barn-to-livestock-troughs frequently. I went out and bought two more water hoses a couple weeks ago, so they could stay permanently attached to the house, and we could water the garden at any time without having to go to the barn, unhook the hoses, and drag them to the house, where we'd connect them and string them out to the garden. The garden has not required watering since I bought the new hoses. So, if you live in the Midwest, now you know who to blame for all this rain!

When I looked at the farmer's forecast a few days ago, it said that soil moisture levels were excellent for crop growth. What a nice way to look at it. I screamed at the computer, "Yeah, and perfect for weeds, too!" We had mulched two rows of our peppers a couple weeks ago, but the third row was completely lost, because the weeds were just as big as the pepper plants. And it was the row that was hardest hit by the rabbits, which made it harder for Mike to sort through everything growing there and pull only the weeds. He didn't know when to expect a pepper plant, so he couldn't just start grabbing and yanking everything.

So, for the first time in eight years, I actually hired someone to help with the vegetable garden, which was a great idea. We managed to get the whole thing weeded and mulched, and Mike and I got all the tomato plants on trellises. For the first time in months, I'm actually feeling optimistic about the garden!

Summer storms

We've been having a lot of rain lately, too much rain, really. The frequent showers were annoying enough, as they kept chasing us in from the garden. In fact, a couple of times, Mike refused to come in, not believing that the rain would get serious. I, however, ran for the house when I looked up to see an ancient hickory tree bending in the wind towards me. A week or two ago, a tornado ripped across the cornfields a few miles north of us, destroying buildings in two nearby towns. Friday, we went to bed with no idea that the current rain would turn into a downpour. Saturday, I woke up far too early, and as the sun began to rise, I looked out the window and did a double take -- where pastures are normally located, there were lakes. We didn't know it at the time, but the hay field had even flooded, and a good portion of the hay that had been cut the day before had been washed away.

The plan for yesterday morning was to get ourselves into the garden first thing, so that we could begin to reclaim the space as ours, rather than allowing it to grow into a wild, weedy jungle. I wish I were exaggerating, but we have weeds as big as the tomato plants, which are currently about two feet tall. I woke up around six yesterday morning, and I immediately realized that it should be brighter. After all, the sun rises just before 5 a.m. this time of year. Yes, a storm was brewing. And before we could even think about coffee, it was pouring.

Monday night, when I was milking goats, I kept hearing a banging noise and wondered what kind of trouble the goats had found. Finally I realized it was thunder. Then the electricity was gone. Carmen kept munching her grain, as if nothing odd was happening. Luckily, I had put a night light in the milking parlor only three days earlier, during the Friday night storm, and this particular night light has a battery back-up, so if you lose power, it continues to shine. It felt like I was milking by candle light, but before I had a chance to get too nostalgic, the lights came back on. A couple minutes later, the lights went out again. And then they were back on. They flickered one final time before Mike came into the milking parlor.

He had been in the pasture when the storm began. He saw lightening strike the hay field across the road and was only able to count to three before he heard the thunder, meaning that the lightening was striking very close to us. To make the whole situation scarier, lightening was striking the ground all around him. And he was carrying his scythe, a long metal thing, which would act as a perfect lightening rod. I never understood why he didn't just leave it behind, but at least he arrived at the barn safely.

More storms are in the forecast for today and tomorrow.

Summer?

Yesterday's temperature was 17 degrees above normal, and I was wiped out before noon. I kept trying to get back outside all day, but I just did not have the energy. Spring came early to Illinois, and the temperatures never returned to normal. All of our perennials are two weeks ahead of schedule.

It looks like summer is arriving even earlier because yesterday's temperature hit 93 F. Turkeys are walking around with their wings held away from their body. All the animals are panting like dogs -- like the poor goat kid in the picture. The humans are sweating. And temperatures will be in the upper 80s and 90s for the rest of the week.

We do our best to adjust. We don't have central air conditioning, because we couldn't find a system that was not an energy hog when we started building the house six years ago. We have an attic fan, so as long as the temperature falls into the 60s at night, we can use that fan to pull in the cold air from outside overnight. We close all the windows in the morning to trap the cold air inside with the help of insulated window shades, which also keeps the sun out. If it gets too hot in here, we can always retreat to the basement, which stays naturally cool.

We try to do chores as early as we can drag ourselves out of bed, which is not as early as you might think. We're not crack-o-dawn farmers, however, if the temperatures get much higher, we will be. We get all the animals out of the barns, which will be up to 10 degrees hotter than the outside temperatures. I really don't like metal barns, because they're hotter in summer and colder in winter.  Too bad we couldn't find a farm with big, old wooden barns. In the middle of the day, we make sure everyone has plenty of water. Then we hibernate inside until a couple hours before sundown when the temperatures start to fall again. Or at least, that's what I do. Mike makes me feel like the ultimate wimp in all of this. He is out there working hard and sweating profusely all day. At the moment, he is scything and digging into the dirt around the perimeter of the garden, so that he can bury a rabbit-proof fence. (That's a post for tomorrow or the next day.)

We're having cold breakfasts, like yogurt and granola, and lunch is cold left-overs, salads, or a cold sandwich spread like hummus.  Dinner is cooked around 8 p.m., so that the temperatures are starting to drop, and we'll be able to open windows again and turn on the attic fan, which will pull the cold night air back into the house. Then we'll start over again in the morning.

Christmas flood, snow storm, and recalcitrant cows

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but . . . there is no but. If you recall, I tried to sell our creek last spring, but I had no takers. So, I guess today's story starts a few days ago when the temperatures went above freezing, and it started raining. The Christmas Flood of '09 now joins the New Years Flood of '08, the 9/11 Flood of '06, the Mothers Day Flood of '02 and a dozen other floods that weren't lucky enough to happen on a holiday and get a name. I've pretty much given up on taking pictures of floods, because they pretty much all look the same. So, if you want to know what it looked like here on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, just click on the "flood" label, and you can check out pictures from previous floods.

Mike spent the end of Christmas Eve and the early part of Christmas Day shop-vaccing out the small barn. The pigs did some serious landscaping, creating a little pond, which caused water and mud to flow into the north side of the smaller barn. We never installed the drain tiles in the pasture or the yard this summer, so part of the bigger barn also flooded. Jonathan sat up with me until almost 1 a.m. Christmas Day, as I waited for Mike who was sucking the water out of the smaller barn. I felt guilty about sitting inside warm and dry, but it really was a one-person job since we only have one ShopVac. At 12:45 a.m., we talked Margaret into going out there to check on him. While she was outside, Jonathan told me that I could be waiting until 3 a.m. Then Margaret came in and said that when she asked her father if he'd be in tonight, he said he didn't know. So, I decided to go to bed close to 2 a.m.

On Christmas Day, the temperature dropped below freezing again, and the precipitation continued. In fact, it continues as I type, so we have a soft powdery snow on top of ice. I've only had lunch -- a late lunch -- and today has been far more exciting than I really enjoy. When I woke up this morning, I saw that the greenhouse had blown over, so Mike and I went out there to pick up all the pots and planting equipment that had blown around the garden, and he put it in one of the barns. I came inside to get warmed up, and I'd only taken off my boots for about five minutes when he came in and said the cows were out. Of course, they were out! The flood had shorted out the electric fence, and they just know when they can escape. They were across the road, so I took a pan of grain out there and lured them back home. We let them into the barn, and then decided it would be a bad idea to let them out the back door, because it swings on hinges, and we're in the middle of a snow storm, remember? I hate it when a 12-foot door gets yanked out of my hand by the wind. So, we decided to put halters on them and take them out the front door (which slides) and put them in the near pasture (which is woven wire). Sounds simple enough, right?

Getting a halter on Molly was not a big deal. However, Bridget has always been easy, and I made the mistake of assuming she would be easy today. Ha! After a couple tries, I realized I'd need help, so Mike put a lead rope around her neck to hold her while I put the halter on her. I was standing behind her head to the right and was planning to pull the halter up over her nose, and buckle it behind her neck. I leaned forward to put the halter over her nose, and just at that moment she jerked her head up. Smack! Mike heard it and said, "What was that?"

"My tooth. Her horn hit my tooth." Then I tasted something salty. Ah, yes, blood. And I realized my lower lip felt numb. I spit like one of those cowboys who'd just been punched in the face in an old western movie. Yep, blood. But I didn't smile the way cowboys do when they realize they're spitting blood. There really is no good place to stand when you're trying to put a halter on a horned cow, and right at that moment, I was thinking about how much I hated horns on cows. I'm definitely getting a polled bull -- genetically hornless -- so hopefully we'll have polled calves. If not, I'll probably dehorn them as calves before their horn buds even start to grow. But I digress. I moved as quickly as I could to get the halter on Bridget, and then we started leading the heifers out of the barn.

When I got to the gate, of course it had to be a challenge to get unlatched. And of course, there just had to be a turkey sitting on the fence next to it. And of course, the turkey just had to decide that she didn't like me invading her space. So, she flaps her two-foot long wings to fly off and smacks me in the face. At that moment, I decided that this was turning into a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. As we walked the cows into the pasture, Mike asks if I think they can get into the goat's stall through that cute little door that he made last month. I look at the heifers and look at the little door. I can barely fit through that door, but I take a good, long look at the heifers and the door again. Nope, no way -- and why would they? We put a flake of hay in the 3-sided shelter for them. What more could they want?

You know what happens next, don't you? I go into the house once again to try to warm up, and I barely have my boots off when I hear Mike scream. Molly has gone through the little goat door. By the time I look out the window, Bridget has followed her. I yell for Katherine to come downstairs and go help her dad get the cows out of the goat stall. I'm ready to warm up in front of the wood stove with a cup of hot cider.
. . . but the fire is so delightful. Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Trouble happens in threes

I was the last one up this morning, which is pretty typical on a Sunday. And with Daylight Savings, I lost an hour of sleep that I would have liked to get back. Unfortunately, 'twas not to be. Jonathan didn't get a chance walk Mom's dog, Joy, before he left for church so I had to get up and do it before she had an accident. Once I was up there seemed little point in going back to bed, so I headed outside to do chores.

Imagine my surprise when I walked out to fill the goats' hay feeders and saw the llamas standing in water at the bottom of the middle pasture. I had thought llamas were slightly sensible creatures who should have realized they needed to retreat to much higher ground when it started flooding -- but no, they were at the bottom of the pasture standing in water that was probably 4-6 inches deep, with water up to 2 feet around them.

I immediately ran down and took my shoes off to go in. I'd been in this situation before and didn't know how long the llamas had been standing in the frigid water. The air temperature wasn't too bad -- probably around 50 degrees at the time -- but because of the time of year, the water felt around 33 degrees. I didn't walk more than 4 feet in (and 2 feet deep) before I felt like my feet and calves were going to freeze off. I quickly got back out of the water, put my socks and boots back on, and headed back to the barn, hoping I would think of something while I finished chores.

Well, right when I finished chores I heard Sovalye, our livestock guardian who is currently locked up in the barn, whining very loudly. I looked over at the stall he was in and realized that he had ripped down all the chicken wire that had been covering the bars. I wasn't sure why he would have done that but he seemed very upset. After finding a collar and leash, I took him outside for a walk. I pretty much just let him lead me where he wanted to go, as I didn't have a preference, and we eneded up by the sheep pasture. You've probably heard my mom say before that sheep hardly, if ever, make noise. I heard a very upset baaing coming from the bottom of their pasture, which surprised me, as their pasture doesn't flood and I couldn't fathom what could be the matter.

Squinting my eyes (I didn't have my glasses on), I saw that Snuggles, our Southdown Baby Doll wether, appeared to have gotten caught in some baling twine. We just got a large circular bale of hay for the sheep, so that we don't have to take half a bale out to their pasture every day, and Dad tied a tarp over it yesterday with baling twine. Unfortunately, some of the twine and come down and caught Snuggles to the point that he was almost choking himself, it was so tight. Thank goodness Sovalye decided we need to visit the sheep!

As Sovalye and I walked back to the barn, I tried calling Dad and Mom, who are off at a seminar about apple trees (I think). The only thing I could think of, since I absolutely did not want to go in that water again, was to take the inflatable raft to get to the llamas, and try to get them to move through the water to dry land. (Although how exactly that would have worked, I'm not sure.) I deposited Sovalye in the shed with the momma goats and their babies so he would have some company, and headed back to look at the llamas. One of them had moved about 10 feet from their original spot, where the other llama still was. However, he seemed very unwilling to move more.

Dad called me 10 minutes later as I was contemplating exactly how to get the raft blown up. He didn't have any other ideas, and neither did Mom. After dragging the raft about 300 feet into the barn, I really didn't want to try to blow it up, so I went out to look at the llamas again. Surprise! The pasture had drained some, and they were standing on semi-dry land, though still surrounded by 2-foot-deep water. However, knowing that I would be able to stand on that semi-dry land once I reached them, I was more willing to wade across. Once again, I stripped off my boots and socks and started across. It wasn't as deep as it had been earlier, and I found slightly higher ground, though the water was still above my knees for much of the 100-foot walk. By the time I reached them my feet had started to go numb, which was a blessing for the most part, but made me worry about all sorts of things -- like if it was possible my toes would turn black and fall off before I made it out of there.

When I reached the llamas, they were not at all happy to see me. They aren't the friendliest, and I had to grab the smaller one around the neck to try and put a halter on him. I finally got it on, but as soon as I tried to start dragging him across the water, he planted his legs firmly on the ground. Unfortunately, the halter wasn't tight enough and he was able to pull out of it. I was so terrified that my toes were going to fall off that I started chasing them to try and put the halter back on one of them. Eventually, after about 2 minutes, I was able to chase them into the far pasture (they both jumped the fence) and onto dry land. They seemed improperly ungrateful for my sacrifice. Walking back to the house, I didn't even bother to put my shoes or pants back on (which had fallen off after getting soaked), as my feet were so numb they didn't really notice the cold.

Once inside, I hopped right into the shower. All of this activity makes me a little sad -- I'll be going to college this fall, and as much as I'm glad to get away from this craziness (this is not the first time I have crossed frigid water to save animals), I think part of me is going to miss it. I was just accepted to the College of Engineering (Electrical Engineering major) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a transfer student, and that is probably where I will be this fall.

Update on Coco's babies: They seem to be doing well, momma is making lots of milk, and the babies are getting enough food. We'll be keeping a close eye on them, as we seem to have trouble with quads, but for now they're doing well. There is a possibility that two of the bucks and possibly the doe are polled -- if so, that means there's only one possibility for daddy: Draco. Naughty boy! We'll be able to tell for sure in a few days.

One of those days

The forecast for today's weather was a high temperature of 59 degrees F. The good news is that it actually got well up into the 60s. The bad news is that we hardly took advantage of it the way we had planned. We had planned to clean out the barn. We wound up cleaning out the basement, because it flooded.

Mike has been putting up walls in the basement, and he unplugged the sump pump a week ago because he was going to put up the wall where the electrical box was located. He didn't get the wall up, and he didn't plug the sump back in. Those high temperatures meant lots of melting snow, which then flooded the basement.

Then there was this poor guy coming to pick up a goat. I gave him directions and said, "Go six or seven miles." He thought I said 57, so he went an hour past us! I felt terrible, but he seemed to handle it better than me. Maybe because his basement was not flooded, and he didn't have blood on his jeans and a goat with three kids that weren't looking great.

Yeah, Charlotte's kids are not gaining weight like they should be. They look downright skinny, and their bellies don't feel full. Her udder looks huge, but hardly any milk comes out. I checked her temperature to see if she had mastitis, but it was 102.4, which is normal. We've given the kids some extra milk, and we keep trying to milk Charlotte, but I'm not sure if we're making a lot of progress. The blood on my jeans was from crawling around in the straw trying to look under Charlotte and see if the kids are nursing correctly. One is definitely not doing a very good job. The other two seem more clued in. The blood wasn't mine; it was from Charlotte's birth. I didn't see it in the straw, but I certainly felt it when I sat in it. Cold!

When doing chores this afternoon and when walking Joy half an hour ago, I heard the sheep making lots of noise. They were certainly not "quiet as a lamb." Mike went out there this afternoon to find a ram lamb with his head stuck in the fence. I had discovered one stuck in the fence yesterday. Then tonight when I heard a lamb screaming, I came back into the house and said, "Who wants to go save a lamb?" Katherine volunteered. We've never had this problem before. I think it might be because I wethered them between one and two months of age, so their horns are small enough that they can stick their head through the fence, but then they hook the fence when trying to pull their heads back out again. My only question is, why are they doing this all of a sudden!

I am very happy to see this day end and hoping tomorrow will be better!

Still waiting

The blizzard finally arrived, but the kids haven't. I'm spending almost all of my time outside, even though Sherri's tail ligaments are not completely gone, and she's not hollow looking, and her udder isn't completely full. She moans sometimes when she's eating. I suppose the poor girl is just miserable. I worry that her kids are getting too big or that she has too many. The more they have, the smaller they tend to be. Although it might seem exciting to have five or six, usually there's a runt or two that doesn't survive when there are that many.

I'm hoping she'll have her usual three or four. I'm hoping I've learned enough in the last four years that I won't miss her birth again. It was Sherri's first kidding on Antiquity Oaks that brought us our second kid with hypothermia, because we missed the birth. Luckily, we were able to save the doeling, but I know we were very close to losing her. I felt so incompetent. The doeling looked dead, but Katherine insisted she felt a heartbeat, so I brought her to the house and put her in a sink filled with warm water. Finally, I felt the heartbeat with my fingers on her chest. Finally, she started to move. I get this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think about it now, and I want to run through the knee-deep drifts back to the barn, although I was just there 30 minutes ago. Sherri was laying in the straw, chewing her cud and looking exactly the same as she has looked for the past few days. But it is 11 degrees F this afternoon, and tomorrow's high is predicted to be -1 degree.

Sherri is the first of eight goats that will kid within the next month. Carmen is due next Tuesday. I remind myself that it is good that our goats kid without difficulty or assistance. That is how it should be. Now if I could just teach them to use a blow dryer or a towel or to give birth directly under the heat lamp, I'd be able to relax. In the meantime, I've given the two-legged kids directions for making dinner and taking care of the house, and I'm heading back to the barn to my little office.

No use crying over flooded pastures

Although we didn't get everything done, yesterday was a productive day. We started with a very messy barn . . .

and we wound up with three pens that will hopefully make 2009 kidding easier than ever. The small pen on the left is the kidding pen. The pen in the middle is about 16 X 16 feet, and that's where the moms and babies will be staying once the babies are a couple days old. The pen on the right is where the pregnant does will stay during the last month before kidding. They need their own separate area because we start feeding grain in the last month of pregnancy. The advantage of the new pens is that they are in a barn that has a heated office with windows that look out into the area with the pens. In the top picture, you can see the office window on the left behind the wire crate.

When I first started writing this post, I said yesterday was a "good" day but quickly changed that to "productive" because it was really a pretty lousy day, although we got some good work done. The temperature jumped into the 60s, which means all the snow melted and had nowhere to go, since the ground has been frozen for several weeks already. That means the creek flooded. As if that were not bad enough, we had rain almost all day, so it was really disgusting around here. Since the creek had already frozen, the rushing flood waters lifted some rather large pieces of ice and moved them onto land. What can I say other than, it looks interesting?

Storm refugee
Katherine discovered this little guy huddling in a tree above a flooded pasture.

Suggestions, anyone?
While I have your attention, perhaps you could suggest a solution to this problem. This is the view from our front door after we have rain. We built our house behind a mobile home, which was sitting on a concrete pad. Now that the mobile is gone, the concrete pad fills up with water every time it rains. The concrete blocks are our bridge to civilization, and after a really hard rain, the water is at the top of those blocks! Ripping up the concrete would be expensive and/or difficult. Putting dirt on top of it wouldn't help much unless we put in drain tiles; otherwise, the dirt wouldn't be able to drain, and we'd have a muddy front yard. Any thoughts on what we can do with our moat?