Katie's Farm Pics

Since I'm too lazy to make an effort at creating an interesting blog post, I figured I'd dazzle you with Katie's lovely photos. These are the twin baby girl goats who will find a home next month on approximately a million acres over on the other side of Lynchburg. Today was such a fun day despite the alarming global warming that came on so suddenly. In the morning we read stories to children at the library, then went to the local pool with friends. At home we mellowed out in the central air watching Rupert Everett as Sherlock Holmes while Laura prepared a delicious dinner of glazed pork chops with wild rice pilaf. Afterward, we met a delightful family through, you guessed it... a Craigslist goat posting.

@#%&#!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Nutmeg's Labor Day Celebration

If you're on facebook with me, you've already heard this news. If you're a hold out against social media, this is my passive aggressive way of getting even with you for making me work at having a relationship with you. I'm way overdue with the quadruplet post!
This is the day they were born. They were all large and healthy seeming. After this was taken, we lost the two brown and black ones.
We're pretty sure that they were killed by the huge Nubian kids of Tilly's. We had never mixed sizes of goat babies before and had no idea that all goats aren't as safe and careful as Nigerians.
At any rate, we separated the big goats, and the two surviving kids are doing fine.

Udderly Delightful

Nutmeg is 7/8 Nigerian with 1/8 Oberhasli blood. She has all of the best qualities of her mom and grandma plus the same sweet temperament that they had.
Since she hasn't kidded yet, and as you can see, her udder would become uncomfortably full, we started milking her.
We've never had a goat who goes on ahead and produces milk before kids, but since we froze all of her colostrum, and were already planning to bottle feed her kids, it should be ok that she's in full blown milk now.
She's a dream to milk, with a butter soft udder that just pours out a half gallon a day. She takes no hand strength at all to milk.
When she raised her first set of twins last year, she got confused when we started milking, and tap danced around on the stand. Hopefully when we pull her kids this year, she'll settle right into a milking routine and we won't be crying over spilled milk.

Bucket O' Babies

Merope's twin daughters were asleep in this bucket, so Becky ran for the camera and captured them for you.
They're even cuter in real life.

Spring Things

On her pictorial tour of Providence Farm this morning, Katie found beautiful peach blossoms.
Two animals are sleeping on two different round things. The goatling is on her throne, which is a garbage can lid. The horse is in the center of her favorite stuff- hay.
The lambs still have their tails at this time of the day.
Later, however, they got their tetanus shots and lost their little tails.
This was our first tail docking experience. Q-Tip got lucky last year because I had a pinched nerve in my neck and couldn't do much of anything when her tail was due for docking.

Bun

This is Grandma Honey's new daughter, so the girls called her Bun.
She's a darling little thing. I can see that white spot of hers jumping around in the dark barn while I milk at night. It looks like a rabbit's in there.
Tuscany's little Surprise is also here, jumping up on Katie.

Ebony and Ivory

Romulus is the buckling in the bucket of pine needles. Surprise is Tuscany's black daughter from November 13th.

While the Cats Are Away...

All three Griffith Girls went with friends after church yesterday to attend a concert.
Big Daddy and I found ourselves all alone on a Sunday afternoon.
We discovered that we're still the same wild and crazy people we were before the kiddos cramped our style.
First we took advantage of the alone time to milk goats together, and spend a little quality time with the goat mommas down at the barn. Then we kicked the fun into high gear by kidnapping (haha, KIDnapping, see how I made a pun there?) Honey's daughter from the barn and bringing her into the house for a snuggle.
Yeah. Mommy and Daddy are pretty darn cool.

Blah

Here's a view of all sorts of animals on Providence Farm. Like the humans, they're just sitting or standing around.
Waiting.
We're all waiting for spring!
The days are often gray this winter. It seems like we're perpetually in some part of the cycle of: getting ready for a storm, watching a storm, cleaning up after a storm, repeat.
I have a copy of the garden catalog. You would think that would cheer me along. But when I see it, I think of how hard and hot the work will be, weeding and harvesting and canning in August.
Is winter the dues we agrarians pay for being the ones who get to feel so fully the joy of a newborn goat, or the smell of grass growing in spring, or the satisfaction of beef and milk and eggs and garden vegetables all coming to fruition after a long season of dormancy?

Hebrew Midwives' Secret Exposed

On November 13, my best milker, Merope, had these two boy children by Bambi. For reasons unknown to me, I kept them a secret from the public.
I think I meant to blog them, but for some reason didn't get a good picture of them... or something.
Karen at Holes In My Jeans is hard to fool, though. She caught me hiding the births of all male children on Providence Farm.
Remus, the orange one, got sold to a good home. His brother Romulus, on the right, and Janner are getting wethered tomorrow, I hope, and will go on Craigslist as pets.
I will also try to photograph our beautiful little doeling named "Surprise" and get her birth announcement up on the blog.
Better late than never.

Tilly's Winter Look

Tilly gets cold and shivers.
So Becky and I helped her out by dressing her in a fashionable, and quite safe, down vest.
Around the barn, she can wear it tan side out. But out in the woods, she can reverse it for blaze orange visibility.

Tilly

I've been looking for a milk goat for months. The ram bred all of my milkers and they haven't been able to kid since he's been with them, so I've been out of milk.
Yes, I do have beautiful Dexter cows who are fresh, and I could milk them. But I just never got used to cows as dairy animals and it's hard for me to make the transition.
I visited a good friend today who milks Dexters but never did get the hang of dairy goats. She needed to get Tilly's big grown up Boer kids off of her because as you see, they were tearing her health down. Emma explained that she just doesn't think of goats as animals to milk.
So I got Tilly for $20. I also got a place to buy 2 gallons of Dexter milk each week.

Farewell, Nutmeg and Echo

Here are two sweet sisters who went to live at Good Enough Farm today. I had been praying that someone would mention in my hearing that they're looking for pet goats to lavish with attention.
Well, Laura was the answer to that prayer when she blogged that she wanted goats.
I hate to send you to her blog because, like the other blogs I follow, hers is more interesting and in this case also much funnier than mine.

Population Explosion

We started with a dog and two cows. This is what's happened...

Gratuitous Goat Photo

The triplets are getting even more adorable. Now they hop around and play so friskily! I'll try to catch a video so you can enjoy too.

Big Kid, Little Pet. Little Kid, Big Pet

Couch Goat

Leeli is the name of the runt. She got her name from a book the girls are reading called, "On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness" by Andrew Peterson.

She spends a lot of time in people's arms, which is fine with her and also with her mother.

Kids These Days

We came home at dusk and found this little fellow stranded almost all alone up at the far reaches of the field. Fortunately, a good Samaritan pony youngster stood by him till help came.

Ginny's Family

Here's another "goat in the grass" pic and also the whole family together.
The babies seem to be doing as well as babies twice their size. They're entering the cute phase where they jump and flip and make goat ownership seem like an excellent idea.