Sunday flowers: more irises

We have a lot of flowers around here in the summer, and I'd love to be sharing them with you every day, but alas, this is not a flower blog. Showing the first iris of 2009 was a lark last Sunday, but it seemed like a great post for a "lazy" Sunday. So, here are a few more iris pictures.

And yes, I do love purple.

I just realized that this is probably one of the last pictures that will be taken of the front yard without the new picket fence that Mike is building. The fence is being built between these flower beds and the hedge. Will probably have a post about that in a few more days!

Goats at work & greener lawns

Our buck goats are still hard at work eating the grass in our side yard. When I first blogged about this, I mentioned that Google and several other corporations had started using goats as a "green" replacement for lawn mowers and other heavy equipment.

Now the government is getting into the act. The state of Maryland is using goats to eat the grass in a wetland that will soon have a highway next to it, because lawn mowers would kill the endangered bog turtles that live in the area. Goats, of course, are vegetarians who will ignore the turtles.

The goats are reducing the state's carbon footprint and protecting the area's bog turtles, listed as threatened. In addition, he said, the animals are much cheaper than a mowing program: State costs are about $10,000 for two years, most of that for delivery and veterinary services.

For more on the program, you can check out the complete CNN story and the Baltimore Sun's story and video. CNN reports officials in New York and Colorado have started similar programs. The Sun said that Maryland got the idea from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which have used goats as lawn mowers and weed wackers to save endangered turtles in their states. I was happy to see that the Sun reporter did ask the goats for comment, although they declined to say anything.

Greener lawns

When looking for info on goats mowing, I also came across this great post about keeping a "greener" lawn in the city. Apparently, "one gas mower running for an hour emits as many pollutants as eight new cars driving at 55 mph for the same amount of time." So, that answered my question about whether it was really environmentally friendlier for Google to truck in a bunch of goats, rather than mow. Sadly, manufacturers of small engines, such as mowers and chain saws, have managed to avoid the strict pollution controls that have been mandated for automobiles. So, what's an earth-loving, non-goat-owning suburbanite to do?

There are lots of options! Like Justin and Danielle in St. Louis, you can create an edible landscape. You can also rip up your lawn and replace it with drought-resistant plants. Or if you must keep your lawn, you can start using a manual reel mower or an electric mower. We have used a reel mower in the past and can attest to the necessity of using it regularly, because if the grass gets too tall, the reel mower is useless. The electric mower is not something I'd ever considered, because I assumed you had to have a really long extension cord. Doh! Someone please tell me that they haven't been available with batteries for a terribly long time. Since there are some spaces in our yard where a scythe would be overkill and little grass shears would be hours of torture, an electric mower might be just what we need to complete our greener landscaping equipment collection.

Old-fashioned haying

The neighbors probably think we've lost our minds. Of course, they probably think that a lot more than I realize. A lawn mower has not touched our lawn this spring. The grass on our front yard is knee-high now, so Mike has started using his scythe to cut it. The girls and I then pick it up and use it for the goat's night-time feed while they're in the barn. When we have extra, we roll it up and tie it in a bundle (using old baling twine) to save for winter feed. This works quite well with long blades of grass. Probably wouldn't work so well if you were trying to do alfalfa.

I was using a child's plastic sled to take the hay to the barn initially, but I quickly realized that its small size meant a lot of trips between the yard and the barn. Last week, I bought a "garden cart." When I saw it, with its wire bottom and side, I immediately saw the potential for a little hay wagon. I brought it home, and after Mike assembled it, he bent some welded wire into a rectangle and put it inside the cart so that we could put about 3-4 times as much hay into it before having to make a trip to the barn.

Behind the cart in this picture, you can see the grass on the left has been cut and is ready to be picked up.

In case you didn't notice my Twitter update a couple days ago, I also must issue this warning -- a scythe is VERY sharp, and it is quite possible to cut yourself. Mike sliced off the tip of his middle finger a few days ago when sharpening the blade on his scythe. "And you thought non-motorized toys would be safer," he said with a smile.

For more on why we're trying to get hay from every corner of our property, check out this post from last year.

Chocolate truffles

Katherine has been using our chevre (goat cheese) to make a lot of chocolate truffles lately. You won't believe how easy they are to make!

Simply mix together the following ingredients:

8 oz. goat cheese
8 oz. melted semi-sweet baker's chocolate
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Put it in the frig for a couple hours to firm.

Use a little scooper to make little truffle balls. If you want to dip them in chocolate, you need to stick them back in the frig to firm up some more, then dip them in melted chocolate. Katherine also drizzled melted white chocolate over the truffle in the photo.

Warning: Side effects may include moaning, gasping, eyes rolling back in the head, and/or declaration of undying love for the maker of the truffles. These side effects are only temporary.

Give-Away Day!

A couple weeks ago, I discovered this great idea on the Sew, Mama, Sew! blog. Today, all over the Blogosphere, people are giving away something to their readers. I love giving things to people, so I immediately decided to participate. I've thought a lot about what to offer . . . wool roving, but not everyone spins; yarn, but not everyone knits or crochets; food provides shipping challenges. But everyone uses soap, right? So, I'm giving away three bars of my goat milk soap, your choice of fragrance (or not). Retail value, including shipping is about $20, and yes, I am willing to ship internationally. You can learn more about my soap here.

So, if you'd like to be considered, post a comment here between today and midnight central time May 31, and on June 1, I'll pick the winner. How will I pick the winner? Just tell me why you'd like to try my goat milk soap, and I'll pick the most interesting comment. In the case of a tie, the winner will be randomly chosen by one of my goats.

To sell or to eat?

I don't normally sell sheep. We keep the ewes as replacements, and we castrate the rams and butcher them at a year. However, this little guy is just too cute. I can't really use him myself since he is third generation Antiquity Oaks, which means he is related to two of my rams, which means he is a half brother, cousin, nephew, or uncle to most of my ewes. (I started with only three ewes. The rest were all born here.) But I have no idea how to go about selling sheep. I know it took several years for my goat sales to take off, so what are the odds that I could sell this little guy? especially in this economy?

First iris

It's Sunday, and while it is certainly not a day of rest for us, I'm short on time to write, so I'll just offer you this lovely picture of the first iris that bloomed on Antiquity Oaks this spring. It surprised me with its gorgeous purple glory on Thursday morning as I was walking out to the garden.

(Note: the grass behind it was scythed by Mike two days earlier, so we can use it for hay.)

Greenhouse finally up

We bought this greenhouse on sale last fall, and we finally were able to get it into the garden without sinking up to our ankles in mud, so we are now greenhouse owners. Unfortunately, it's probably too late for many of our seedlings, which should have been out there a month ago. My 64 tomato seedlings are still a couple inches tall and looking kind of purple, rather than green. Most of the other seedlings are short and wimpy. I think the greenhouse looks pretty wimpy too, so I hope it holds up against our strong northern winds.

I went to a local nursery a few days ago and bought some large tomato and pepper plants, so we will have at least enough home-grown tomatoes and peppers for our own family's needs. We were hoping to sell at a farmer's market this year. I am still holding out hope that the eggplant will grow big enough to put into the garden at some point. One year -- the only year we were successful with eggplant -- was when they went into the garden at the end of June. Every other year, the bugs eat them up.

That bushy green flat of plants you see in front of the greenhouse came from the local nursery. Those black trays in the greenhouse are my seedlings. Sad, isn't it?

Turkey surprise

No, it's not a recipe. It's nine turkey poults hatched by a very smart slate mama turkey who decided to hide her nest in the barn. It's been years since one of our turkeys did this, which is why we decided to try hatching eggs in the incubator this year. Usually they make nests all over the woods and pasture, and they wind up being eaten by coyotes. But this smart mama made her nest in the barn. We never saw it until yesterday when Mike discovered the mama and her babies. They look like all purebred slates and lavenders, which is even more exciting because they're a rare breed. The slate mama and the lavender tom live in the chicken house, but they're perfectly free to fly over the fence and mate with the turkeys that live in the middle pasture.

What's a slate and lavender? A lavender has two blue genes, and a slate has a blue gene and a black gene. The mama is a slate because she has black spots. Our tom has no black spots. If you breed two slates, you will get 25% solid black (2 black genes), 25% lavender (2 blue genes), and 50% slate (1 black and 1 blue gene). You can imagine my surprise when we hatched our first slate turkeys and saw black poults popping out of the eggs! So, if you don't want any black turkeys, you need to have a lavender tom, since he has no black genes to pass on to the babies. Half of these will be slate and half will be lavender, since the hen can pass on a black or blue gene, but the gobbler can only pass on a blue gene. (Note: some people call the lavenders "self-blue," so you may also see this term when referring to a turkey with two blue genes.)

When we ordered slate turkeys from hatcheries, the lavender ones didn't seem to be the healthiest, so it will be interesting to see if these are healthier since they have not had the added stress of being shipped at a day old. Typically, we have 100% survival of home-hatched poults.

Our five incubator poults are doing great. They're chirping in their box behind me. We need to get a stall cleaned out in the barn, so we can move them out there, where they'll live under a heat lamp until they're feathered out and can go outside.

Introducing Katydid the new llama

With so much happening around here, it's taken me a while to formally introduce Katydid to everyone. She is the big brown llama in the picture. She's four years old and will be Dolce's girlfriend. (He's the brown and white one.) The Amish say that horses are better than tractors because they can replace themselves. Well, we are completely sold on llamas as guard animals. We just wish we had more of them since we have multiple pastures that need guarding. So, we decided to get a female llama to help us out with that.

Katydid has had three cria in the past, and we're hoping she'll have five or six here. We could easily use eight llamas, since I like them to work in pairs. And Merlin and Sterling are 12 and 14, so they won't be around forever since llamas tend to live about 15 to 20 years. A llama pregnancy lasts 11 months, and they usually just have a single baby.

So, our grand plan for Katydid was that we would breed her to Dolce in June, so she'd have her baby next May when it was warm outside. We put Katydid in a pasture next to Dolce and Tuscany, so she'd have company. Well, she wasn't happy about being left here by her breeders. She stood at the gate for days looking out at the driveway. She wouldn't even go into the shelter when it was raining. Then after five days, I looked out the window one morning, and she was in the pasture with the boys. She must have jumped the fence since it was completely unharmed. So, I guess we'll be having our first cria next April.