Alexandria's quadruplets

by Sarah
Antiquity Oaks apprentice

After Alex gave birth to 4 healthy kids, and with no complications, Deborah asked me to write a blog post about it, so people could get an outside perspective. I was honored and thought it would be a lot of fun. Little did I know what the next few days had in store for me. But I am getting ahead of myself, so let me start at the beginning.

Thursday, February 28, Alex had been a little fussy all day. She had been bleating a lot, not eating very much, and walking around a lot. So we stayed close. I dressed up in my insulated overalls, several layers, and my nice warm work boots, and camped out in the barn office most of the afternoon reading a book. Evening chores came and went, and at 6:00 when I went out to feed Anne (one of the two bottle babies at that time), I thought, “Oh, I will just be outside for a minute, no need to bundle too much.” Never have I been so wrong.

Out I went with two layers on top and two on the bottom, none of it waterproof, no gloves, though luckily I remembered a hat. I make a point to go check on Alex just in case, and what do I see? A big string of mucus hanging out of her, so I quickly call over the monitor to Deborah that Alex is in labor and she needs to come join me.

By 6:30 we were both sitting in the straw waiting for Alex to get serious and talking about what we should have for dinner. Deborah suggests a quiche since we have gotten a decent amount of eggs recently. Between 7 and 7:30 we finally got our wish and her water broke and she began to push. She changed positions several times, eventually laying against Deborah, leaving me to look and see what was coming out. I saw a bubble, but for a minute couldn’t figure out what was inside it. I finally realize it is a tail, hence why Alex was taking so long. But then I see something else, something dark and fluid floating down. I ask Deborah if it is possible that the baby could poop while they were being born, she said yes, but she had never seen it. Suddenly the baby comes shooting out. We break the sack open, start drying the kid's face, and put it in front of Alex to start licking it. We check, and it is a girl! I then recount for Deborah what I saw, “it was like, bubble, tail, tail, tail, poop, baby!” It amazed me how fast the kid came out, and the fact that Deborah said many people freak out when they see breach kids seemed really strange to me. If you give the Mom a chance, they will do just fine, it just takes a little longer.

Before we know it, out pops the second kid, one hoof and mouth first. We begin to clean it off and it is a boy! The third one then comes shooting out, another boy with very “flashy” markings who was also breach. The fourth is another girl who came out hoof and mouth first. We continue to work on getting everyone dry and warm so that they will hopefully begin to nurse. At this point Deborah says that maybe omelets wound be better since they take less time to cook than a quiche.

We try without much luck for a while to get any of the kids to nurse. Finally the first girl born, also the littlest, nurses very successfully. The next to nurse is the larger girl, catching on quickly. Now just the boys are left. Boys being boys they were very stubborn and did not like us trying to help them very much, the first one just screamed and screamed when we tried to help. The flashy boy didn’t like it very much, but Deborah helped him through it. As we are sitting there talking about everything that happened, suddenly the first boy gets down on his knees and just latches on and nurses perfectly. Clearly he just wanted to do it on his own.

Since everyone had nursed we finally headed back inside for dinner and to warm up. Checking the clock on the way out of the barn we see it is 8:30. Deborah asks if scrambled eggs would be fine, I said it sounded fantastic.

Once we got inside I made myself a cup of tea, since I could barely move my hands anymore they were so stiff from the cold. Over dinner we talked about everything, the fact that it was not as gross as I thought it would be (this was my first time seeing a birth in real life), what people freak out about when they shouldn’t, everything. I gave the bottle babies their last bottle at 10:00, checked in on the new Mom, and she seemed to be doing fine, so I went to bed happy knowing I had seen my first successful birth. It was simple, and simple seemed good. The only thing we really had to try hard to do was get the kids to nurse, and in the end that wasn’t very hard either. It was an amazing experience, and I am glad her birth was the first one I ever witnessed.

Making our own wine

 

For years, I've wanted to start making our own wine, but I was adamant that we start with growing our own grapes. Well, that hasn't exactly happened yet. We've planted grapes a couple of times. Lack of water got them one year. Goats got them another year. And the last time I ordered vines, we just never got around to planting them!

So, a year ago I decided that making our own wine from concentrated grape juice would at least be a step in the right direction. I am not talking about grape juice concentrate from the grocery store. You can actually buy concentrated juice from wine vineyards all over the world. We've made Riesling from Washington State, Cabernet Sauvignon from California, Pinot Grigio from Italy, and more. We've made seven batches of 30 bottles already, and we've started drinking five of the different wines. We bought all of the equipment and ingredients from Midwest Supplies.

One thing I really like about making our wine is that we can reuse bottles. It used to drive me crazy to see perfectly good wine bottles going into the recycling bin. For years, I had even saved some of the prettier bottles with the idea that we could make drinking glasses out of them. Now we can reuse bottles after washing them out. After washing them out, we put them in the dishwasher rack to dry.

Making wine isn't really hard. And it isn't terribly time-consuming until you get to bottling. But you can procrastinate on bottling as long as you need. Our Gewurztraminer and Pinot Noir stayed in the carboy for three or four months because Mike didn't have time to bottle it. So, it got a head start on the aging!

In addition to saving our own wine bottles, we ask friends to save their bottles for us, but you can buy new bottles to get started, if you prefer. Although you can reuse bottles, you need to use new corks. We got this fancy corker to make it very easy to put corks into the bottles.

We couldn't be happier with the results! I was initially skeptical about the quality, because I hate "cheap" wine. I started off buying only wines with lots of 5-star reviews, but I got brave after a few and ordered a wine that had no reviews at all. We wound up loving it! Other than one very reserved response, friends and family have all given our wine two thumbs up, so I think it has about a 95% approval rating. And it winds up costing us only about $2-4 a bottle!

Although I felt like I was wimping out in terms of sustainability by not growing our own grapes, this is a better option than buying individual bottles of wine. One 2.5 gallon container requires a lot less energy to produce than 30 wine bottles.

And when I visited Monticello last year, I learned that Thomas Jefferson and I have something else in common beyond our love of farming. He was never able to grow grapes on Monticello during his lifetime, although he believed that America could someday make wine as good as Europe. In the meantime, however, he bought large casks of wine and bottled it on his farm, rather than buying individual bottles of wine!

If you've ever thought about making your own wine, I really recommend starting with a kit.

Lessons in neonatal goat care

Last night was the final night for our first winter intern, so we decided to take her out to dinner. Of course, as soon as I told her we were going out to dinner, I went into the kidding barn to discover that Sadie was in early labor! We decided to run out right away so that we'd be sure to get home in time for her kidding, especially because she was a first freshener.

By the time we arrived home from the restaurant, Sadie was still in early labor, so I checked email and did some paperwork and decided to get to bed by 10:00, which is early for me. We now have a video monitor to keep an eye on does in the kidding pens, so I was watching on the TV in my bedroom. I was in bed reading an article about dealing with drought when I heard a soft sound that was unmistakably the sound of a doe pushing. I jumped out of bed, ran across the hall to tell the apprentice that Sadie was pushing, and I went back into my bedroom to put my clothes back on. As I was in the middle of getting dressed, Sadie changed her tone and was in full-blown screaming panic! My son could hear her in the basement, which is two floors below the TV, and he said it sounded like she was being ripped apart by coyotes. The apprentice and I went into slight panic mode and went running outside with only one layer on our lower halves, which we didn't even realized until we were in the barn, and our legs started to feel really cold.

Within five minutes of our arrival, a black kid was presenting. Just as the apprentice said, "Oh, this one's breech," the kid shot out. I wiped off the nose, and realized Sadie was ignoring the kid. I held it in front of her face, telling her, "Look at your baby, Sadie. You need to lick your baby." She was ignoring it. I didn't want to wipe too much because I wanted to encourage Sadie to bond with her. However, my guess of the kid's size was about two pounds, which is quite small and very vulnerable to hypothermia. After a few minutes, Sadie started to lick it, and then she started to push again. After only a couple of pushes, another small kid came shooting out, this one nose and hoof first.

By now Sadie was licking the first kid, and I was starting to dry off the second one, and Sadie let out a little noise. I saw a third kid presenting, and handed the second one to the apprentice to dry off as I caught the third one, which also came out very quickly, also breech. A few seconds later, Sadie let out another yell, and a big bubble came out. It was dark, and both of us thought we saw kid parts in the bubble, but it was just fluid, which was good because we were running low on towels! Sadie had not been very large, and we were not expecting more than two kids.

Although the doelings were all quite small, they were very healthy and trying to walk around the pen within minutes. The second one, which was brown, was especially active, and I was calling her "our little world traveler." I realized that Lizzie was paying very close attention to the kid through the pig panel that separates the kidding pens, and it occurred to me that Lizzie is an outstanding producer, while Sadie is a yearling and will probably not be able to produce enough milk to feed three kids. Lizzie also happens to be Sadie's mom, so it seemed totally appropriate that she would nurse one of her granddaughters.

"I've never done this before," I said, "but I think this could work. Lizzie is so interested in this kid, and she just gave birth earlier today. I bet she'll accept this one as hers." So, I took the little brown kid into her pen and let her sniff it, saying, "Lizzie, you wanted a daughter, didn't you?" Then I placed the kid under Lizzie and tried to get her to nurse, which was fine with Lizzie, but the kid was oblivious. She had zero sucking reflex, and in spite of my efforts and Lizzie's patience, I realized this was not going to work, simply because the kid wasn't interested in nursing.

But kids also need ten percent of their body weight in colostrum within 24 hours, and they need half of that within the first few hours after birth. I had called over the TV monitor for Mike to bring my camera, and when he arrived, I asked him to bring me a milk bucket, bottle, strainer, and funnel so that I could milk Lizzie and give colostrum to the kids with a bottle. At this point, the kids were an hour old, and none of them had any sucking reflex at all.

I was on my knees milking Lizzie as she stood in the middle of her kidding pen until she lost patience with me, but I had three ounces, which would be a good start if I could get that into the kids. After trying each kid multiple times, I finally got an ounce into the black one, and a little later, I got another half ounce into her. Sadie let me milk her, and I added another ounce of colostrum to the bottle. After getting an ounce into the brown one, but nothing into the cream one, I said to the apprentice that I was taking the cream one into the house because I needed to get some colostrum out of the freezer, and besides that, I was freezing.

When we got into the house, we realized it was 1:30. We had been outside for three hours, and Sadie had given birth within the first ten minute after we got out there! I was thinking out loud about why we had three apparently healthy kids that were not sucking, and everything finally started to add up. I put my finger in the kid's mouth and realized it was not warm. It wasn't ice cold like a kid with severe hypothermia, but her body temp was definitely below normal. When kids get chilled, sucking is one of the first things to go.

By the time we had warmed up the colostrum for her, she was already warmed up quite a bit from simply being in the house, and she sucked down the ounce of colostrum like a pro. My theory now verified, I went searching for kid coats. I found only one, so I chose a sweatshirt to sacrifice and made two more, then took them outside to put on the other two kids. I wasn't terribly worried about them because they had already consumed a decent amount of colostrum, but I wanted to make sure they stayed warm enough. I came back inside, put the cream kid into a laundry basket and went to bed.

I knew the other kids would need more colostrum before morning, however, so I left the TV monitor on. At 4:30 I was awakened by one of the kids and Sadie talking to each other. I woke up Mike and updated him on everything that had happened, telling him that he needed to get more colostrum into the kids. He went outside and had no luck getting those two kids to nurse, and just as he came back inside, the kid in the laundry room was waking up. I wanted to help but still hadn't really warmed up myself. Mike defrosted another ounce of colostrum for the baby in the laundry room and she sucked it down. He handed her to me, and she started bopping my chin and trying to suck on it. I got excited and suggested he take her outside and see if she'd nurse on her mom.

Mike went back outside with the kid, returning about an hour later at 6 a.m. to tell me that the cream kid never nursed on Mama Sadie, but the other two did finally! Because the cream kid had just consumed another ounce of colostrum from the bottle I wasn't too worried about her. All morning, we've continued to check on them, trying to make sure they're nursing or taking some more colostrum from the bottle. Mike got another three ounces from Lizzie. Once two kids are successfully nursing on Mom, we'll bottlefeed the third one. The black one appears to be very good at nursing, and the cream one is very good at taking the bottle. Not sure about the brown one yet.

We said good-bye to our apprentice this morning, so now it's up to us to get these little does started on the right track. I'm afraid we still have a bit of a challenge ahead of us.

What a day!

I can't remember the last time I came inside and blogged about my day, but this was a day that won't be forgotten soon. We have an apprentice staying with us who is learning about goat birthing, and just as we were about to go outside this morning to milk the new moms -- because their babies are not nursing evenly on both sides -- I heard Sherri yell over the monitor. She was at day 148, and I was expecting her to give birth today because her udder was getting quite big when I saw it last night. So, instead of going to see the new moms, we went into the kidding barn to see Sherri.

She was pushing every now and then, and after about thirty minutes, I heard the phone ring in the barn office. It was a neighbor telling me that a llama was in her yard. Our apprentice had already seen two textbook births, and I'd explained a little to her about dealing with complications, but I said, "This is Sherri. She's had nine years of completely uneventful births. Usually when I hear a sound over the baby monitor, I come running out here to find a kid already born, so she knows what to do. You just have to wipe off the nose and put the kid in front of her face."

I called a friend and asked if someone could come over to help with catching the llama, so she and her teenage son headed over. It started to rain again, and I said, "What else could go wrong?" I realized my cell phone was dead, so we gave my friend's cell phone number to the apprentice ... just in case.

We headed out to find lady llama. We went over the river and through the woods and everywhere else, and we couldn't find the llama. After about half an hour, my friend's phone rang. The apprentice said, "A head is out, but there are no feet." I told her not to worry, we'd head back because we hadn't found the llama anyway. We were almost home when my friend got a text that said, "Kid out!" So, I turned the car around again, and we headed back to search for the llama some more. Then we got another text that said, "Buck doe twins." Finally, I headed home because I had a radio interview scheduled for 11 a.m. to talk about Ecothrifty, my latest book.

When we got home, I went into the barn to check on the kids, which were huge! Later I weighed them and found that the buck was 4.9 pounds, and the doe was 4.5 pounds, which is really big for Nigerian dwarf kids. I'm happy with 2.5 to 3 pound kids, and I'm pretty sure the does would agree with me on that one!

My friends left, and I came inside, waiting for the phone to ring at 11:00. It didn't ring, so I called the back-up number, and got a recording saying it was disconnected. Just as I started to panic, I got an email from my publicist asking if I was ready for my noon interview! Ah! The confirmation email was wrong; is said 12 eastern time.  I'm in the central time zone. An hour later, I did the interview and then decided we should head out to look for lady llama again. Turns out she was easy to find. She was in our pasture! Maybe I should have looked there earlier? I don't know. Maybe there is a place in the fence that was damaged by the storm, and she can now come and go as she pleases. Or maybe it was someone else's llama that was seen? People tend to assume any animals around here are always ours because there are not that many livestock owners in our area.

The deadline for my next book is tomorrow, so I'm hoping to have more time for blogging after that. I still need to tell you about the other births we've had so far and show you the cute pictures of the kids. We are up to 11 kids so far this year, and more are due in February.

Chicken changes

 

Our three-year-old New Hampshire Red hens and two-year-old Ameraucanas went to the poultry processor in mid-December to become stew hens. Although the Ameraucanas were only two years old, they were never great layers. At age two, they were not laying as well as the New Hampshires that were a year older, which was disappointing. They also stopped laying really early in the fall. At the end of November, none of us could remember when was the last time we saw a blue egg.

Buff Orpginton 4-month-old pullet

Jonathan and Mike cleaned out the chicken house and moved in the young chickens. I ordered 25 Buff Orpingtons from a hatchery in September. Why September? If I'm getting pullets from a hatchery, I prefer to get them in the fall because they wind up laying more eggs. It takes about six months for most pullets to start laying, so if you get them in September, they will reach six months of age right around the same time that most hens start laying after their winter hiatus. So, they start laying and they lay incredibly well because of the long days of summer. If you buy spring pullets, they start laying a few eggs around the time that the days are getting shorter and then slow down or even stop from December to February, so when you look at the number of eggs laid in their first year, it isn't great.

I quit buying roosters a long time ago because I realized you always get a couple anyway, possibly because of sexing errors or possibly because they add a rooster for "warmth" because they are always undersold. (Most people want hens for eggs.) I almost didn't get a rooster this time as only one turned out to be a cockerel! Maybe I should start adding one rooster to my orders in the future to be safe. Although you don't need a rooster to make eggs, we want fertile eggs so we can hatch our own replacements.

The New Hampshires were amazing layers. The only thing I didn't like about them is that they didn't go broody at all. Raising animals naturally means that I want them to reproduce on their own. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't want broody hens, so poultry breeders have been breeding towards less broody hens for decades. Orpingtons were one of the first two breeds of chickens we ever owned, and some of them did go broody, so I'm hoping a few of these girls will follow suit.

Silver Sebrights

I also added to my Silver Sebright flock. After a year with my first batch of Sebrights, which included half Goldens, I only had two hens and a rooster that had not been eaten by predators. (Okay, we had also eaten some of the roosters.) I ordered another 15 Silver Sebrights, and my one Silver hen finally hatched a brood by late summer. She hatched ten and lost six of them, but the four remaining were all pullets! Hopefully her mothering skills will improve in 2013. The positive/negative thing about the bantams is that they run all over the farm, which means they eat almost zero purchased feed, but they wind up as dinner for predators more often than the other chickens.

I bought the new Sebrights in late spring because they are only sold straight run, and most of the cockerels were destined to become dinner. At 3-4 months of age, almost all of them dress out at exactly a pound each, and when split down the middle, it makes a beautiful little grilled chicken for two people. One half is the perfect serving for one person with your own little leg, thigh, wing, and breast. I'll have to remember to take a picture of one next summer when we grill them!

And in case you're thinking that you see a few chickens in these pictures that don't look like Orpingtons or Sebrights, you are correct. We hatched a few eggs in the incubator this past spring, so we have four New Hampshire pullets, a Barred Rock pullet, and a cross-breed pullet.

This spring I will also be getting about a dozen straight run Delawares.

The longest week (or two) of my life

Four year ago when I adopted Joy at age 11

When I turned off the computer two weeks ago on Saturday night, December 29, I went upstairs and discovered that my little bichon was dead. She was 15 years old, and her health had been deteriorating for the past few months. She was going blind, and her arthritis was getting so bad that I was thinking about calling the vet to see if there was another medication that might help her more than the one she was currently taking. There was an obvious correlation between her ability to get around and her appetite. If she wasn't feeling good enough to walk around, she also wouldn't eat, even if I put food right in front of her. Still, I didn't expect her to be gone so suddenly.

On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, I was furiously working towards my goal of completing 50,000 words on my goat book so that I could celebrate a quiet evening at home with Mike. At 5:00, however, everything changed. My sister-in-law called to say that my mother-in-law had "taken a turn for the worse." She had been diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer, but when we had seen her on Christmas Day, she seemed fine. She was eating well, joking, and playing cards with the family. I found Mike outside and told him we needed to head over to his mother's house as soon as he finished the evening chores. It was the last time I would look at my manuscript for eight days.

We finished up everything at home, got in the car and headed over to her house. My sister-in-law was there, making phone calls to relatives when we arrived at eight o'clock. We hadn't eaten dinner, so we brought some cold meatloaf with us and put it in the kitchen. As soon as I saw my mother-in-law, something in my head said that she would never see 2013. I don't know if she ever knew we were there, but Mike held his mother's hand for the last two hours of her life.

The next six days were spent driving back and forth from home to the Peoria area to help with funeral plans and be with family members as they flew in from across the country and around the world. It was the most beautiful celebration of her life as we all scoured dozens of scrapbooks that chronicled all of her travels and volunteer work. She and her husband, who is now in the final stages of Alzheimer's, had traveled to 44 countries, some for fun and some to do volunteer work, like their trip to Haiti as support staff for doctors who were caring for the people there. Over and over, the words, "a life well lived" kept going through my head.

And every night, as we drove home and I walked into my bedroom, I kept expecting my little Joy to greet me, hobbling across the floor with tail wagging. And then I'd remember that she was gone.

Luckily, my two youngest children were on break from college, so they were able to run the farm when Mike and I were absent. Still, it made me think about what would happen in a similar situation when all of our children have careers of their own in a few years. But I know we can't live our lives based on "what if."

In the midst of all this, my son's car broke down and had to be towed, which was followed by a $600 repair bill. And he and I just got home from a three-day conference. We've also had to get ready for goat kidding to begin. Trips to Memphis and Dallas to do TV shows promoting Ecothrifty had to be canceled. Memphis is rescheduled for March, but I haven't rescheduled Dallas yet. And the elephant in the room, which no one really wanted to discuss, was the fact that Mike's father will probably not be with us much longer either. So I feel like I'm in the middle of a huge life lesson on acceptance and patience.

Mold-ripened cheese success

If you've been around for awhile, you might remember some of my failures in mold-ripened cheese ... like this one ... and this one. They didn't all turn out so badly. One was actually good enough to take to a party, although it didn't look like any mold-ripened cheese that anyone had ever seen. It was at least tasty, and it didn't look like a total wreck.

In October, I attended Jim Wallace's cheesemaking class in Massachusetts, and one of the cheeses on the agenda was Camembert. When I got home, I could hardly wait to try out the ideas I'd learned. And here is the lovely, delicious result!

What was the difference? Well, I had always failed in the affinage -- or aging. I had read somewhere that you could not age a mold-ripened cheese in the same cave with non-mold-ripened cheeses, and unfortunately I believed it. So, I had tried all sorts of crazy ideas ... like aging in my refrigerator (which was obviously too cold, and I knew that, but there was a book that said it would work, so I tried) and aging in a picnic cooler with ice, which meant I had to remember to replenish ice twice daily. I also tried aging in another frig without the proper thermostat control, thinking I could remember to keep turning the refrigerator on and off to keep the proper temperature. Geez! I really can't believe I tried all those things!

Jim ages his mold-ripened cheeses in his regular cheese cave, but he puts them in plastic food storage containers with a cheese mat in the container for drainage and air circulation under the cheese. It is so ridiculously simple that I'm kicking myself for not figuring that out sooner! But as they say, better late than never. And I'm thrilled to be able to make delicious homemade mold-ripened cheese now!

Taking lambs 'down south'

On Friday, we loaded up three of our spring lambs to take to the locker for turning into lamb chops. Anyone who thinks sheep are dumb has never met our sheep. They are ridiculously smart. I think they can actually read minds, or they have incredibly good hearing, and they can hear our conversations a quarter mile away ... in the house!

Jonathan went out to the pasture with their hay just like any other day, but no one wanted anything to do with it. They sensed a trap!

But we did eventually manage to herd them into the shelter area in spite of their reservations.

I was in charge of closing the gate behind everyone when they ran into the shelter area. Jonathan was in charge of standing behind a temporary fence so that the sheep wouldn't knock it down and run out into another pasture entirely. And Mike was in charge of actually catching the sheep and putting them into dog crates on the back of the pick-up. We usually use a trailer, and when Mike suggested dog crates, I thought there was something about the idea that wasn't quite right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

So, Mike caught the first one ...

and this handsome fellow was watching as his friend was loaded up.

And then Mike caught him. Without another person available to handle the gate between the pasture and pick-up, Mike had to hop over the fence.

And then Mike caught the third one.

And then the third one decided he didn't want to go to the locker.

 
You see that dog crate? It had a door only moments earlier. The door is now bent up to the point where it is probably ruined. The ram hit it once and shook the whole crate as I saw one of the door's four pins pop out of the hole that is responsible for keeping the door attached to the crate as a door. I yelled at Mike because he was closest, and he stretched across the tailgate of the truck to try to hold the door in place. As the ram hit it again, Mike realized the ram would soon have the door detached from the crate, and he jumped onto the pick-up bed. And it wasn't a moment too soon!

As Mike held the lamb, we brainstormed about how to get him to the locker. We agreed that the ram was able to knock off the door because the crate was big enough for him to back up and get some force behind his head to hit the door. We wound up putting him in a smaller crate, and we put the crate in the cab. Mike turned the other two crates so that the doors faced each other, which we hoped would dissuade the other rams from trying to knock off the doors of their crates. And even if they did try, we were assuming that they would not be able to get out of the crate because when they were end to end in the bed of the pick-up, they were snug enough that the rams would not be able to get out, even if the door was missing.

I was worried from the moment I left the pasture. The last thing I wanted was to hear that our lambs were splatted across I-55. I wasn't even that optimistic about the one in the cab with Mike. What if he busted out of the crate while Mike was driving and then he busted through the window? I have no doubt he could have shattered the window with one hit from his head. Luckily my worst fears were not realized, and all three made it to the locker, and the crates and the truck were still in one piece. Mike said that the two rams in the bed of the pick-up did get a little rowdy when he started to unload them, however. So, he won't be using dog crates again to transport rams. We are just really lucky that the one tried to get out when we were still right there and could stop him.

We have more lambs and goats to take in this Friday, and I'm not sure how we'll do it. Mike is worried about the truck being able to pull the trailer up the slight incline to get out of the pasture. (It's a rear-wheel drive.) Usually we park it on the road, but that's a long way to carry a sheep from the shelter to the road, which is why he liked the idea of using dog crates. Maybe we'll come up with Plan C by this Friday!

Moving day

We recently moved our guinea hogs to fresh pasture. This may not look like much to you, but to a guinea hog, it's a lovely buffet. We always know when they're fed up with their current pasture because they start rooting. As long as they're happy with the offerings, they eat the grass and weeds above ground. This is Julia in the lead. She follows me around like a dog because she was our first guinea hog, and she's rather attached to me.

I can't believe she's going to be three years old in March! Doesn't she have a lovely profile? And she is an excellent mama, too!

York is the handsome boar on the right. He's visiting for a few weeks to ensure that we have piglets in the spring. We saw him breed Julia already, and her estimated due date is April 1.

On the left is Julia's daughter, and she needs a name! Any suggestions? Mike suggested Julia's Child, and when I vetoed that one, he came up with Destiny Child. Not sure I'm too crazy about that one either, but I am very impressed with his creativity. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them! It's not every day you get to help someone name their pig.

I left my heart in Shelburne Falls

Since my first book came out, I've done quite a bit of traveling, and although it's fun, I'm always happy to come home to my little homestead on the prairie. Such was not the case, however, when Mike and I recently attended Jim Wallace's cheesemaking class in Shelburne Falls, MA. I had to remind myself that I had a farm full of animals counting on me to come home and take care of them. Otherwise my visit would have ended with a stop at a real estate office! What's so awesome about Shelburne Falls?

I imagine this is what most of America looked like and felt like 50 or 75 years ago. There isn't a national chain in site in their lovely downtown. The locally owned grocery store has a sign out front that says they support local agriculture. Each of the quaint locally owned restaurants have about a dozen tables, and local foods are on the menu. Towards the end of dinner one night, I asked a question about the lavender-maple glaze on the heritage pork tenderloin at the Blue Rock Restaurant, and the chef came out to tell me how he made it. He sat down, and we chatted about his use of locally grown ingredients. As we were talking, a customer stopped by our table on her way out to compliment the chef on her dinner and give him a kiss on the cheek.

When Mike suggested we check the menu of a pub our second night in town, I assumed they would have the usual pub fare -- factory farm burgers and previously frozen stuff that is tossed in a fryer. The West End Pub had a pleasantly surprising menu with locally raised grassfed beef burgers and chili! They even have locally made liquor and beer. Even though Illinois has plenty of wineries, I don't think I've ever seen Illinois wine in a restaurant here. A few restaurants have sprouted up that make their own beer, but otherwise, the alcohol in our restaurants comes from far away.

While at Jim's house, I had my first ever hard cider and wondered why -- coming from a state that grows apples -- we don't have hard cider available commercially in any of the stores or restaurants that I've been to.

We stayed at the Dancing Bear B&B, whose owners have their own farm and served delicious farm fresh breakfasts! When we arrived, Phil asked if we had any dietary restrictions for breakfast, and I sheepishly said, "Well, if you have meat, you don't have to fix any for us because we only eat locally grown, pasture-raised," and as my voice trailed off, he replied, "Oh, that's the only kind we serve." If we had not needed to be at our class by 9 o'clock, I could have really stuffed myself with the delicious breakfast Phil prepared, which included a to-die-for quiche and fresh baked bread and muffins. And because we were totally captivated by the B&Bs food, we did not have the chance to try Mocha Maya's breakfast, whose sign is pictured at right!

Unfortunately, we hardly got to experience the community at all. Jim said that they have lots of world-famous artists and crafts people living there, including a leather worker and a man who ties flies for fly fishing. The downtown certainly had a great mix of little shops. I personally was very interested in the Vavstuga Weaving School, but when I checked their website, all of their beginner classes for 2013 are already full!

Ever since Superstorm Sandy chased us home in a rental car when our flight was canceled, I've been saying, "I left my heart in Shelburne Falls!" So if you live in the northeast and want a great place to spend the weekend, head over there! And if Mike didn't have tenure at the college, I'd be begging on a daily basis, trying to convince him that we needed to move.

Instead, I've been daydreaming about turning our little village into another Shelburne Falls. It's been dwindling for more than 40 years, so I've been told, but why couldn't it become a weekend destination with quaint B&Bs for people from Chicago and St. Louis? Why couldn't the farmers around here grow organic food to serve in small, locally owned restaurants with chefs who can see their future steaks grazing in the fields? Why couldn't we have world famous artisans whose classes fill up a year in advance? It could happen ... couldn't it?