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?

The rescue that wasn't

Jonathan came in around 11 a.m. to tell us that the sheep were trapped on a newly formed island. This might sound strange to you if you're new to my blog, but a creek runs through our property, and parts of our pastures flood at least a couple times a year. What we refer to as "the middle pasture" has a particularly bad habit of flooding, and that's where the sheep were grazing when the creek snuck up and surrounded them. The snow has been melting the past couple days, and with 37 degrees and precipitation today, we knew the waters would only get higher as the day progressed. This wasn't the first time we've had to rescue the sheep, so we had a pretty good idea of what needed to be done. Mike and Katherine were going to head out there and herd the sheep through the water before it got any higher. The first picture shows them surveying the situation, trying to figure out the best (most shallow) place to get the sheep to cross the water.

Much to everyone's surprise, as Katherine and Mike walked towards the end of the pasture with the shallowest water, the sheep seemed to know what they were thinking, and they also headed towards that end of the pasture. Then, before any human even attempted to go through the floodwaters, the sheep started running towards us! Maybe since we go through this every few months, the older sheep are getting accustomed to the idea. The younger sheep, of course, just follow the flock blindly. Katherine thinks they came running across the water because they saw her -- "hay girl!"

Now the sheep are back on the top of the hill, where we hope they'll stay!

Lizzie's baby girls

Sorry this is so late. These are Lizzie's babies. They were born a couple days after Christmas. This picture was taken last month when they were about a month old. Most people say that goats will be wild if they are dam raised (raised by mama instead of being bottle-fed by humans), but this line shows the importance of good genetics to personality. We have never had an unfriendly goat come out of Dancy's line, and Dancy is the great grandmother of these little girls! These two are more in-your-face annoying than the bottle babies out there. They are always jumping on us, wanting to be held and petted. We can't decide which one to keep, but we really should sell at least one of them.

Their names are Joy and Hope, named in honor of the Christmas season. Joy was such a happy little kid that the name seemed obvious, and Hope was the tiniest baby we've ever had born here. I really had my doubts that she'd survive, although she seemed healthy, so we were hoping she'd make it. After she was a few days old, Hope seemed like the perfect name for her.

More potting

Just finished putting more seeds in little pots. I planted 10 pots of early Jersey wakefield cabbage. Unlike the round cabbage you find in the supermarket, this type has an elongated shape to it. The picture looks like a very large candle flame. I think that will make it easier to shred for coleslaw. It's kind of funny how most of the vegetables in the supermarket are round, even though there are lots of vegetable varieties that are not round -- like the sausage tomatoes, which I love! There are also several icicle-shaped radishes, which are especially nice for shredding onto salad. Try doing that with a little round radish.

I also started nine pots of pimento seeds, three pots of Serrano peppers, and three pots of ancho san luis peppers, which are a hot variety that is supposedly used for stuffing. I've never grown the latter before, but it sounds delicious! I use the Serrano peppers for a hot sauce similar to one that I grew up eating in southern Texas.

First sprout!

Ten days already? This morning I was complaining in my head that there was something wrong with my planting methods or my soil or my watering methods or ... something! None of my 32 pots of tomato seeds was doing anything. I'd been watering from below (pouring water into the pan where the pots sit, so as not to disturb the seeds by watering on top of the soil), but out of desperation, I poured water ever-so-gently on top of the soil around noon today. Now, only three hours later, I happened to walk past the pots and noticed a tiny sprout emerging from the soil. Woo hoo! Of course, now the mother in me worries that I disturbed the other little seedlings by watering on top of the soil today. Yeah, I'm a little giddy about my little sprout. Interestingly enough, the tomato is First Pick, which I have grown before, and I don't recall being impressed by its punctuality.

Snow day!

It started snowing late last night, and it's still snowing, almost 24 hours later. They were predicting 8 to 12 inches. Due to the unbelievable drifting, however, I have no idea how much we have! There are spots where we can see grass, and there are places where the drifts are four feet high. It will not be fun shoveling the driveway tomorrow. That's where some of the four-foot drifts are located.

Today, I got the urge to make soap and get my tomatoes started in peat pots. I made three batches of soap: a lavender essential oil and wheat germ, a Valencia orange essential oil, and an unscented recipe that I just invented. It includes cocoa butter, shea butter, avocado butter, palm kernel oil, jojoba and several other oils. I'm calling it a "butter bar," and it's definitely for dry skin. A couple years ago, I made a really rich soap with lanolin and shea butter, and it caused my face to break out. I will only use this one for my hands. I think it will be great for my daughters though, because their hands have been getting really dry.

I also started 32 little peat pots with tomato seeds, including green sausage, green zebra, pink grapefruit, white currant, red fig, and several others, for a total of 12 different types. In the past, green zebra and amana orange have been my favorites. The green zebra tomatoes make an outstanding quiche, and the amana orange tomatoes are about a pound each, so they're excellent for freezing, because they are easy to peel, and it's simple to put away a one-pound bag in the freezer quickly. This will be our first year for Cherokee purple, green sausage, cream sausage, pink grapefruit, white currant, and red fig. I know I'll like the sausage tomatoes because their long cylindrical shape makes them great for slicing. I also planted three pots of ground cherries, which are supposed to be great for making pies and jams, just like real cherries, but they are a member of the tomato family and grow in a husk like a tomatillo.

Only three months until we can put everything in the garden. In one month, we can start putting out the cold-weather vegetables like peas. I am so looking forward to spring!

New year, new plans

I placed my first garden supply order a couple of days ago. I am really excited about the upcoming gardening season. As usual, I'm ordering lots of heirloom seeds. We don't need to buy any soldier beans though because we've been saving those for two years now. The soldier beans we'll plant this year are the grandchildren of beans I bought two years ago. That means they're totally organic seeds, which is exciting.

I placed the order with Landreth's, which is the oldest seed company in the United States, and they still have real human beings answering their phones and taking your order. They were the seed suppliers for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I get those two mens' gardens mixed up because I visited them one day apart in 1999, but I do recall that one of them said that a farmer who has to buy seeds more than once isn't really a farmer. They were, of course, big proponents of seed saving. It's funny to think that the concept of seed saving is actually illegal with today's patented seeds. If I receive a catalog that includes even one type of patented seed, I throw it away. I refuse to support a company that supports the idea of owning nature. You know there are patented seeds in the catalog if it includes an affidavit that you have to sign, promising to not save any seeds for future planting. It's hard for me to believe that today's modern commercial farmers fall for that garbage. But they're lured by the promise of big yields and bigger profits. I wonder if any of them have ever sat down to see how much money they'd save by purchasing old-fashioned seeds and saving some to plant next year, rather than having to buy new seeds every year.

Mike doesn't know it yet, but I ordered 100 asparagus roots. He's the head planter around here, and that should keep him busy for an afternoon. Five years ago, we planted a dozen asparagus roots, thinking that within a couple of years, we'd have more than we could eat. Unfortunately, we still get so few that we just pick them and eat them in the yard. We never get enough at one time to cook any. They are the Mary Washington strain, which is an older one. I am ordering the Jersey Knight this time, because it is supposed to be more prolific.

I plan to order more seeds from Jung's, which is a family owned company that's been around for 100 years. They have a centennial heirloom seed collection that I'm buying this year. I'm also excited about their collection of gladiolus. I've been planting glads in my garden for several years now. I love the beautiful cut flowers I get in the middle of summer.

We are going to be experimenting more with isolated garden beds and a permaculture system of growing things. To save seeds from squash plants, they have to be isolated from each other because they will cross pollinate, so if you have a butternut and an acorn squash next to each other, and you save the seeds, who knows what you'll get from those seeds next year! We have four garden areas around the house, and we're going to be planting things under trees and in flower beds, so it's going to look like the Garden of Eden around here if we're successful this year.

Farmgirls in waiting

We have two goats due to kid on Sunday, but the tail ligaments are gone on both of them, which means they are likely to kid within 24 hours. When Katherine went out to the barn 45 minutes ago to check on them, it looked like Sherri had a contraction. She pushed her legs out in front of her, and she curled her lip. Katherine came running back to the house, and we both went running out there with towels. Sherri has a history of surprising people with her babies.

She was born on a farm in Michigan, and she had her first babies there. They were born in the pasture because by the time her owner noticed she was in labor and went to clean a pen for her, it was too late. Sherri's first kids here were born in the pasture. Her daughter, Shirley, nearly died from exposure. Sherri always has triplets, and typically when goats have three, the last one or two come out really fast, which means the mama may not have time to clean off all of them. Such was the case with Shirley. We found her in the pasture, looking dead and soaking wet. Both her siblings were nursing. My son reached her first and picked her up. He screamed, "It's alive." I grabbed the kid from him, not knowing if it was a boy or a girl, and not completely believing his proclamation that it was indeed alive. As I ran for the house, I screamed back, "Are you sure?" I felt no movement, saw no movement. When I reached the house, I filled the sink with water that felt like it was around 100 degrees. I plunged the little baby in the water, keeping its head up, and I began briskly rubbing its body. When I was still, I felt the chest expand with a breath. I looked under the tail and saw that it was a girl. "Don't get your hopes up on this one," I said to my daughter when she came into the kitchen. I put my finger in the kid's mouth. It felt like ice water. "Her body temperature is really low. We may have found her too late." Ten minutes later, she started to move a little. I dried her off and moved her to a heating pad on the couch. An hour later, she was taking milk from a bottle, and a year later, she was eating the bark off my apple trees!

Last year, Sherri almost surprised us again. I woke up at 1 a.m. to go to the bathroom. While I was sitting on the toilet, I thought I heard a noise over the baby monitor, but I wasn't sure. I picked it up and held it to my ear. I played with the volume, higher, lower, higher -- finally, I was sure that I did hear something. Not wanting to wake anyone because I wasn't certain that it was "the real thing," I put on my clothes and went out to the barn. Just as I walked up to the stall and looked inside, a head started to come out of Sherri. "Oh my!" I was glad that I had grabbed some towels. I sat down next to her and welcomed her three beautiful babies.

With the loss of Venus's babies still painfully fresh in everyone's mind, we can't miss any births. Margaret is in town buying a baby monitor as I type. Katherine is headed back to the barn with a walkie-talkie, so she can call me if anything happens. I'm not convinced that it's going to happen tonight. I spent about half an hour in the barn, and I didn't see Sherri do anything that looked like birth was close, but we don't want to take any chances.

Holiday meals and living with nature

I need to get back into the habit of posting regularly. So much has been happening here lately. Today, we had roast pheasant for our New Year Day dinner. It was, of course, homegrown. Sadly, it's the last of the pheasant. I really enjoyed the meat, but raising the birds is difficult as they fight too much.

Speaking of fighting ... once again, I am reminded of the laws of nature. This past summer, a mama hen hatched a clutch of eggs, and these two roosters appeared to be best friends. You never saw one without the other. I've written before about the importance of not having too many roosters. We learned the hard way that if there are too many roosters, they'll fight to the death, so we always butcher the roosters to keep the number down. These two boys seemed different though. Just the other day, I said, "We can't butcher one of them. The other one would miss him too much." We'd see them out in the east pasture every morning, and we'd see them following each other everywhere on the farm. Then yesterday afternoon, I saw them fighting. I knew from experience that it does no good to break it up. They'll just start fighting again the minute I'm gone. I shook my head and hoped they'd work it out as I walked away from the window. This morning, I looked out to the east pasture and saw only one rooster. Later, I looked out the dining room window and saw the same lone rooster. Last night, my younger daughter said that one of the roosters had a pretty bloody head. I sent my eldest daughter to the chicken house to see if she could find him. A few minutes later, she was headed back to the house carrying what looked like a dead rooster. He wasn't dead, but he was close. He couldn't even hold up his head. I told my husband he needed to put him out of his misery. I guess there is no such thing as friendship for roosters.

On December 27, Lizzie gave birth to twin doelings. They are beautiful and sweet. They'll come up to you and sniff you, and they love to be held. They'll curl up on your lap and fall asleep.

The next day, Venus gave birth to triplets, but they all died. She was a first-time mom, and she didn't clean the babies off. They either suffocated in the amniotic sac or froze to death from being wet too long. Only a couple days earlier, someone asked me why we have to be there for the births. I said we really don't have to do much other than dry off the babies. That doesn't sound like it's very important, but it is. We've almost lost babies to hypothermia before, but luckily, we always found them while they were still alive. We were able to get them warmed up, but we weren't so lucky this time. I was really depressed for two days. I felt so guilty. We normally have a baby monitor in the barn, so we'll know if someone is giving birth. But we haven't been able to find the monitor. I thought about buying another one, but then I figured I'd find the old one as soon as I bought the new one. I felt dreadful when we found the dead babies. They were perfect. I have no doubt they'd all be alive today if only we had that baby monitor. We have two more goats due on January 7. If we don't find the baby monitor in the next couple days, we'll definitely be buying a new one.

When this kind of thing happens, people always ask what animals in the wild do. If you've been reading my blog for long, you might remember what I said about the mama turkeys ... they only have to raise one to adulthood to replace themselves. Nature is inherently wasteful but wise. In the wild, if Venus never learned to clean off her babies when they're born, none of her babies would survive, and her lack of mothering instincts would not be passed on to another generation.

Christmas on Antiquity Oaks

The day began with the usual fun of opening Christmas presents and eating Mike's homemade cinnamon rolls. Then a couple hours later, Margaret walked in with a look of sad resignation on her face. She held her wet hands out in front of her and shook her head. I knew what that meant.

I jumped up and said, "No! Who kidded? Are they dead?"

Margaret continued shaking her head from side to side and said, "Beauty. It was ice cold and still in the sack. There were two other ones, tiny skulls and legs."

I pulled on my coat, grabbed a plastic grocery bag, and headed for the barn. The fully developed one was a solid black buck. The other two were tiny. The heads were less than half the size of a normal kids, and the legs looked like toothpicks. They had clearly stopped developing a few weeks ago, perhaps a couple months. There was nothing we could do at that point. As we headed back to the house, I said, "At least the ground isn't frozen. We can bury them."

I thought about my comments the day before. "I want Christmas babies!" We had two goats due on December 25, and one due December 20. Surely someone was bound to kid on Christmas Day. I talked about naming them Holly and Ivy and St. Nick. I felt foolish for saying that I wanted Christmas babies. I said to the family, "I understand why people always just say they want healthy babies. I got what I thought I wanted -- Christmas babies -- but really I just want healthy babies."