Hello Again (part two)

Ok, so we left with Michael heading to NY for his annual meeting.

One last thing we needed to do before he left was tattoo the two babies. The last time we tattooed baby goats we had our friend Raspberry do it.

This time we thought we would do it on our own. It is hard to cause them pain but the ADGA requires that all members of your herd have their own unique tattoo. I was surprised that we didn’t make more of a mess with green ink everywhere. Here is Sandie. No pictures of Jessie.

Life went on as usual (school, milking, boys fighting, chores, cooking, boys fighting). I knew Brown Sugar should be going into heat by about Thursday. I really wanted her to be bred with Tamarack ( a Misfit Farms buck). However, they had one doe that they were not sure if she was successfully bred by Tamarack so they couldn’t give him to me. I wanted to make sure she was in heat so I took her over to our bucks. Here is what it looked like:

She wasn’t obvious (making a lot of noise and flagging her tail) but the bucks knew she was in heat. I decided to take Brown Sugar over to Misfit Farms. It was getting late in the day and Thursday is our day to head to our previous church in Tualatin to attend AWANA. I had to call my leader and let her know that we would not be there because we needed to get a goat pregnant. She understood….I think.

The boys and I got Brown Sugar into the back of my wagon (please don’t pee or poop).

When we got there we put her into the pen with Tamarack. She was not happy. She ended up getting really stressed. Foaming at the mouth stressed. He showed interest but she didn’t want anything to do with him. We all decided it was best to take Tamarack to our place and if their possibly unbred  doe goes into heat then I could quickly bring him back.

So, into the car they both went. Back to our house.

We put water and hay in the stall and in they went. Brown Sugar had calmed down by then and was accepting of Tamarack.

The next day Oreo seemed to be in heat so we stuck her in there too. Lucky guy!

On Friday we had a sectional sofa delivered that we picked out about a month before. 

We wanted to make this room our “family room”. There is more room than upstairs and now we have plenty of seating.

Michael returned home that afternoon. Yeah!

It looked like Rose was in heat and we already had Jasper so in she went.

Mouse went in a few hours later. It took the girls a while to accept the fact that they were sharing a stall with a boy, but eventually they accepted it.

Two “Love Shacks” going at the same time. It felt like I was running a brothel. I guess that would make me a “madam”. Hmmm.

The weekend was upon us again and with Michael out of town for the week prior it meant he had a lot of chores to do.

The first chore on the list was to get all the fire wood previously cut  stacked in the wood shed. While that was going on Michael started a burn pile with all the scrap wood.

Gosh, we might have enough wood for two years.

The next day, Nicholas and I spent time in the garden while Michael and Joshua continued to burn. It had rained a lot that morning but by the time we got home from church it had mostly stopped.  We cleared out one of the raised beds and planted garlic in one-third of it. It should winter over and then next summer we will have big heads of garlic.

Nicholas went to cut kindling for a nice fire in the wood stove that night and I went to dig up potatoes.

I don’t have any pictures of it but imagine me in cowboy boots, Wranglers, sweat shirt and a rain jacket over it. Now picture me completely covered with mud. Completely. When I got done with the potatoes, I just hosed myself off. Since I had mud inside the sleeves of the rain coat, I had to take that off and hose the inside.

I don’t think I found all of them. When Michael gets time he will dig for more. Not sure what it is that likes to drill holes into the potatoes but they really bug me.

In addition to all that, Michael has designed some goat feeders and is trying to sell them. So far he has sold three. Here are our girls testing out the free-standing ,two-sided one.

Here are two other styles. These both mount to walls in a stall.

My handy hubby.

Life is back to normal again….for a while.

I hope to keep up to date more since these catch up posts are quite long.

Enjoy your week,
Karen