Wordless Wednesday #12

"At the 'goat-eo'"

Playtime at the Park

Over the weekend, we took a little drive to a goat show. Although the camera was tucked in my pocket the whole time, I completely forgot to take it out and get any goat pictures. So I didn't get any shots of the goats with amazing udders! I think I was so busy ogling the size of their udders that I just got distracted, actually. I knew Bella wasn't milking anything to brag about at around 3 cups a day, but I didn't fully appreciate how lacking she was until I saw these girls with udders so full I'm not sure how they walked without dislocating their hips! So now I know what a real dairy goat looks like. Can't wait for Betty Bob and Bambi to kid this month so I can see how they measure up. This being their first freshening, they won't be at full production potential yet, but I am definitely expecting better things out of them than I'm getting from Bella currently.

I did remember to pull the camera out a little later when we stopped at Cedar Creek State park for lunch and play.

Finn didn't want to leave the goat show and cried when we put him back into the car. But after we picked up lunch and told him we were going to a park, he perked back up. He chattered excitedly almost nonstop until we got to the park, which we took as a sign that he was looking forward to it.

Getting Holly to look at the camera proved to be almost impossible, and when she finally looked at me, Ivy was looking somewhere else.

Holly and Finn both had fun sliding with Paul, but neither really got the concept of taking turns.

The swings were another favorite. Finn had to make several visits to them.

We had a tiny visitor join us for lunch. After trying to get a decent shot of him, he hopped onto my arm and seemed content to climb around on my sleeve.

Where'd the week go?

This week seems to have slipped past in a blur. Wednesday was a busy day. Paul had to have minor surgery, but all is well. I advertised Heckle for sale this week and on Wednesday, when the Trader's Guide come out, someone called about him. It turned out to be one of our neighbors and now Heckle lives next door to us. Bella wasn't happy about losing her baby and spent a good amount of time crying for him that day. Since he was only next door, they could hear each other still. She's looked for him every morning since then when I let her out, but I haven't heard them "talking" back and forth anymore. Wednesday we also took Ivy up to stay with her grandparents in Ohio for a few days. So on Wednesday, I was up at 5 am and didn't get in until after 10 pm. I was exhausted--especially since Paul couldn't drive that day because of the anesthesia.

On Friday, Paul wanted to go check out a glass factory in Paden City, Wissmach Glass, that sells hobby glass by the pound. It was a dollar/pound, so he gloated the rest of the day over his good fortune. He's setting his shop up to have different work areas and has been working on getting his stained glass work area set up. So he was pleased to add to his stash of glass for such a bargain price. We also stopped at this antique/junk shop that I used to drive past years ago when I had a delivery route for work. I told him that I'd always wanted to stop there and check it out, so we did on the way back. It is a small house that is completely packed to the gills with old stuff. We dug through it as best we could while keeping two curious and squirmy toddlers in hand. Paul found a little oil lamp that he brought home and cleaned up and it actually works. I found some old linens and a casserole dish. I want to make some bags for my bread along the lines of this.

Since Heckle has been gone, I've started milking Bella twice a day. I had hoped to get twice the amount from her, but I have to admit to being a little disappointed. Before I was getting three cups a day, which was slightly disappointing as it was because a good milk goat can give around a gallon a day. But I kept telling myself, this will pick up when Heckle isn't with her. But since Heckle has been gone, I have only been getting about 2 cups more per day. Totalling close to 5 cups per day. I know the most accurate way of measuring how much milk you get is to weigh it, but I don't have a scale to use, so I'm just using my measuring cup to check it. And five cups is barly over a quart. We're still buying chocolate milk since Finn loves it, but I've been mixing it with half goat milk. And we haven't had to buy any regular milk since last week. So I guess that isn't terrible. I did have enough to make a quart of yogurt the other day, too. I almost thought the yogurt was going to be a waste because it turned out my thermometer had been compromised. (I noticed when I tilted the thermometer the numbers were sliding all over the place because they were only attached with staples to the thermometer part.) I left the yogurt in longer than usual to let it get to the right temperature, and it did set up. When I was making it this time, I used some gelatin in it to see if it would set firmer, and it really worked well.

This is on my list to buy next. I've been making some simple cheese with lemon juice and buttermilk that turns out like ricotta cheese. But this kit will give me the cultures I need to make mozarella, and I think I will be able to use the whey from the mozarella to make real ricotta cheese. I read several places that chickens love whey and if you have leftovers, they will gobble it up. So I took my leftover whey up to the chickens and they wouldn't have a thing to do with it!

Speaking of the chicks, they are growing like crazy. I haven't put them all together because it still seems like such a difference in size. Amazing what a difference a week makes! The littlest banties are about the size of the chicks we hatched out, but the full-sized chicks are about 2.5 times as big. These pictures are a few days old now and they are bigger yet!

You can see the comparisons in this picture where I put two of the older chicks in with the younger ones that we hatched out. The big black one is one of the barred rocks and the little black one is the Japanese banty. Those two are the same age, but such different sizes due to breeds. The other chicks are a week younger. They eat like crazy and grow like crazy at this age.

And finally, look who pulled into the station at the end of last week. James! If you remember Finn's reaction to seeing the trains when they were first out there, his response was, "Where's James?" So his Nanny and Auntie couldn't leave without adding James and then since they were going to be adding to it, they decided to also paint Sir Toppenhat and Diesel. And Paul had a chance to hang the chalkboard also. (This is on the back of Paul's workshop which is just his place to putter around with the different things he enjoys like woodworking and stained glass.)

Waiting...

We've got eggs in the incubator now. They've actually been in about a week and a half. Which means we have about another week and a half to see how many chicks we get. I'm cautiously optimistic about our results. I put a dozen eggs in for a starter batch, and I only put green eggs in because I think they are prettiest! We started with 10 chicks last summer. So I think a dozen will do fine if we get a good hatch rate. We'll use roosters for the freezer and keep hens for eggs or sale. Paul is going to build a smaller chicken run for these so the big chickens won't pick on them and we can raise them up separately. He's also got to get some kind of brooder setup built this week. The last batch I raised in the laundry room in a couple big cardboard boxes scooted together, but it was summer and really warm. They were a couple days old when we got them, and we got away without keeping a light over them. This time with them being just hatched and the weather cooler, I think we need to get a light in there for them. We've still got one more rooster than we need around here, but we just haven't taken the time to send him to freezer camp.

And I keep trying to figure out if our goats are getting rounder, but unfortunately, they are quite round to start with! As long as breedings took for the goats, we are looking at some time close to the end of June for kids. I'm considering whether we will keep Bella once the others kid out. I'm not getting huge amounts of milk from her, but she's been good about letting me milk her. I usually get between 2.5-3 cups per morning. Since the baby is on her during the day time, I don't milk at night. And she really doesn't seem to be warming up to me any. She only comes willingly at feeding time. We also don't know any history on her. Even though she is a dairy breed and supposed to be registered, some goats are bred more for show lines and not milk lines. We don't know anything about her background and breeding. If you buy goats from a breeder who does dairy goats for milk, they should have records of milk production and be breeding their line to improve production. Betty Bob and Bambi were both from a breeder who has plans to try to get her dairy approved to sell milk. She also shows her goats and keeps careful records of how much milk they produce. So I'm hoping that Betty Bob and Bambi will be good milk producers, and if they are, I am leaning towards selling Bella. I'm going to keep milking her until then, though. Without the baby on her, I figure she should produce about a quart or a little more a day. That's not enough for our family, but might work well for other people's situation, and somebody might appreciate being able to buy a goat in milk already. Nothing is set, obviously, but those are some things I'm mulling over.

It worked!

Shutting Heckle up for the night did the trick. Nobody was crying in the morning, and Bella had a nice full udder. It was so satisfying to get more than a few streams of milk. I didn't measure it, but it looked like around a quart. I know the most accurate way of knowing how much you are getting is by weighing the milk, but I just strained it into a container and chilled it. And don't you think she's smiling just a little in that picture?

Here's little Heckle, who seems to get bigger by the day. He's a heavy little armful now and not so easy to hold onto.

And for fun, here's a couple pictures of our cats who I don't think I've ever shown before. They are named Salt and Pepper. I'm sure you can figure out who is who. We adopted them as kittens from the Humane Society, which was actually cheaper than getting a free kitten somewhere and having to take it to the vet for first shots and spay/neutering. They are about a year old now.

And while we're at it, here is our neighbor's bull. He runs along the fence and scares me. I look at those few strands of wire and know he could come straight through if he wanted to. He is so huge!

Enter Milkmaid

Tomorrow I'm going to milk Bella and hopefully get some actual milk to show for it instead of the two teaspoons I dump in the cats' bowl on the way back into the house. Although I have been milking Bella, I have been getting almost nothing from her. This is apparently because Heckle is taking all the milk for himself. So one way of dealing with this is shutting the baby away from the mama at night so you can milk the mama first thing in the morning and then let the baby go with her during the day. That was my plan from the start, but when we lost Jeckle, I felt bad shutting Heckle by himself. I thought about leaving Heckle out with Betty Bob and Bambi and shutting Bella up for the night, but Betty Bob is sort of bossy and I didn't want her to butt him without his mama around to protect him. So I thought of shutting Bambi up with Heckle because she seems to like him. They will play together in the yard some, and Bambi has fallen to the bottom of the pecking order among the adult goats. But I felt bad splitting up Betty Bob and Bambi because they are very close. They sleep cuddled up together at night, and although Betty Bob is the boss, she doesn't try to keep Bambi in place like she does Bella. I think this is because Bambi knows her place and doesn't present a threat to Betty Bob. So in the end, I just put Heckle into the pen by himself when I fed them this evening. The crying from the goat barn almost broke me when we got home from eating dinner out. Bella and Heckle were both in the barn making a ruckus. She was standing right by the door to the pen maaing for him, and he was inside crying his head off. The goats are right outside our window, and I don't hear anything now. So I'm hoping they've all settled down to bed. I feel so guilty...

Arghh...apparently he felt my guilt vibes because he's crying again. Obviously I have never let my kids cry it out because I can hardly manage to let a goat do it! I'm not going out there...Be strong.

Back on the Net Again!

We're finally connected again. Not really sure why our other router crashed, but crash it did. We hoped it might be able to be reset so we didn't rush right out and buy a new one. But it took a while to find time to check it out because it's more complicated than I feel like going into and presumably nobody really cares anyhow! But I'm back now. Yay!

Things have been going well here. The baby is growing a bunch, but he's taking all the milk. I have been getting so little that I've been just dumping the couple tablespoons into the cats bowl before I come in the house! The plan was to shut up the babies from the mama overnight and milk her in the morning. But when the one baby died, I didn't have the heart to shut the remaining one up all by himself. He's a little bigger now and the weather is a little warmer, so I think I'm going to give it a shot this week. From what I've read, babies on the mama can actually take more milk than they really need. So I know that's why I'm getting so little from her right now, he's just taking every last drop! I'm anxious to see how much I will get with him off her for the night, though. And we settled on names for them. (Or I rather I did!) We're calling the mama Bella and the little guy Heckle. I was calling both babies Heckle and Jeckle after those two old cartoon crows, and it just stuck even when there was only one. (And thanks to those who added their condolences on the loss.)

And if you were wondering about the picture at the beginning of the post, Paul bought 30 pounds of seed potatoes to plant. I was like 30 pounds?! And he said, oh, it's not that much--only three little bags. It will be our first time planting potatoes, and I didn't even know he was planning to until he bought them! He got three different varieties, but with a typical male attention to detail doesn't know what varieties he bought. He's planning to get them planted this coming weekend. I have no idea how many potatoes we'll get from them, but I guess we'll have a better idea after this year! And here's a fascinating link to a page of potato myths. I found the last one particularly amusing and thought they should have prefaced the answer with, Potatoes taste best when prepared in fattening ways, but...(lead into healthy potato habits.)

He also set posts for our rabbit shelter. He decided to make it half for rabbits and half for greenhouse. He is just having them share a common wall between. So one side will be his greenhouse and the other side will be my bunnies. Hopefully we'll be able to get some next month. I've seen someone advertising New Zealand rabbits with regularity in our local Trader's Guide, so I think they probably breed them. I haven't called about them yet since we aren't ready for them and usually when I do something like that, we wind up deciding to get them and then scrambling to get living quarters together! So I'm trying my best to hold off and not wind up doing that again, since I am normally the one who winds up talking him into taking these things on.

Well, I should wrap up now, but I'll be back tomorrow for Make Something Monday--which I've missed participating in for the last couple weeks and am so glad I can participate again!