I cried...

It was Nate's first day of kindergarten today.

Since it was only about an 1 1/2 hours this morning I was just going to drive him. But he's been begging to go on the school bus since February and will be on it the rest of the year. So we started from day one with the routine of waiting at the front gate for the bus.

When they drove away I cried. I'm jut not quite ready for this. Letting my baby go. By himself into the big world. He was thrilled. I was in tears. I guess I should be thankful it was me crying and not him. He's ready...even if I'm not!

Anniversary continued...

Like I said before Yesterday marked the 2 year anniversary of the creation of this blog. It was started the day after our offer was accepted on  the Acreage. The first post is Here. And Here is yesterdays post re-capping our first year.

Which leads us to 2010.

We went into it with an attitude that was kind of similar to get serious or go home. We were determined to add more animals and have a much more "farm" attitude the second year. (Most of these pictures have links to the blog post about them)

The Spring of 2010 marked Nathan's first Rodeo. He rode his first sheep at a Bull-a-rama, and was the greatest Mutton buster ever. He got to meet some real cowboys behind the chutes and this one let him check out the real gear.

We bit the bullet and order 25 baby chicks. That was an experience of trial and error. We definitely learned a few things stumbling our way through a first season of chickens.

We had another bird move in about the same time. The fact that she would so fiercely defend her claim on the hay bale lead us to believe she was sitting on a nest.

We had lots of outdoor meals this year been campfires and tent picnics with the boys. As well as lots of pool time in the summer months.

We started a bunch of seeds indoors hoping for better garden success. Nope. Garden #2 was also a gigantic FAIL.

By June we got better at recruiting help. Like my Dad who spent a weekend up here cutting down dead trees, or watching playing with the kids while Chris and I tackled insulating at least one wall in the garage.

Nathan did a second rodeo event in June. He was even better. Clinging to that poor sheep for all his was worth.

We eventually discovered that Mama Goose was in fact sitting on a nest, and when she just disappeared one day, it was over to the dug out with all the hatchlings in tow. We had a fun afternoon tracking them in the field and the pond trying to get a count of how many little ones were there.

By the end of summer we added our goats to everyday farm life. It's been an adventure getting the dogs and kids used to goats and goat antics.

It also lead to some farm lessons when we were outside with the goats and the cat caught a mouse in front of Nathan.

Most of our chicks survived and grew and GREW. We bought and constructed a chicken plucker machine, but in the end wussed out and took them into a processor.

The warmish fall saw us busy. We painted parts of the house, built, dug  and painted new fences from scratch. Sourced hay for winter feed. Painted and insulated barns.

And as the snow began falling we learned some hard lessons about hypothermia and goats. We heartbreakingly fought for and eventually lost one of our favorites. Added another just to lose him too.
It's made us reconsider a lot of things.
We have so many more plans, for how to do things differently in the years ahead. What types of animals we're interested in pursuing, and what we might give up on completely. But again this post is getting long. So I think I'll share some of what lays ahead and where we are so far this year in another post tomorrow.

An Anniversary of sorts

I've been thinking about and writing this post for more than a few days now.
Today marks the second anniversary of this blog you can see the first post here, I wrote it and started this blog the day after our offer was accepted on the acreage in hopes of chronicling our journey.

Rather than doing the Sunday Round Up I wanted to talk about the BIG picture. What we've done and where were headed (hopefully). To be honest it's not the greatest week to be doing a re-cap. Having Little One abort her pregnancy means we're at 3/4 of the hopeful offspring and milking ability that we wanted this year. Both Chris and I are frustrated right now. But we are working on some alternative plans. Like buying goat milk from another local producer and spending the summer experimenting with cheese and soap recipes anyways.

But before I go into a lot of detail about what were planning on doing I want to show you some of the successes and failures we've had in our almost 2 years here.

When all the snow melted in the spring we discovered that there was a lake in what was suppose to be a yard. One of our first major undertakings was jetting water from the yard to the field.
(or as you can see by Nathan and Maggie in the picture the major goal was splashing and playing in this fun new lake)

Next came A LOT of fencing. Poor Chris. The wire addition was an attempt to keep a tyrant two year old out of the dug out. Who knew it might also come in handy for penning in future goats.

We made an attempt at a garden (FAIL) with morning sickness it became nothing but an untended weed patch.

In May we started to add animals. What's a farm without animals. Most of these attempts were MAJOR FAILS as you can probably guess by the fact that only one of the above animals still resides here. (You can click on the pictures to read the stories.) or here is the stories of what happened to Mac and the baby goat

We added our first (only) piece of farm type equipment in July. Wow did that make mowing over an acre of yard easier.

We also made discoveries about the water cistern (like if the float shut off isn't working properly the entire basement may flood) leading us to make the acquaintance of small local creatures like this salamander, who thought the nice wet basement might make a good new home.

The fall finally saw us add a pick up truck. Nathan and I loved (okay mostly me) to take it bumping across the field to gather some firewood in the trees.

We also added Jasper to the mix that fall. Our second Pyrenees but really? our only official guard dog since Maggie is a little to city-fied, read sissy.

Of course our Biggest and smallest addition was the surprise arrival of Greg in 2009. On Christmas Day. He wasn't due until January. But what a sweet Christmas present and way to finish off the year.

Since this post is getting awfully long and crowded already I think I'll break it up and talk about our second year 2010 in a post tomorrow stay tuned...

more learning, more disapointment

One of the goats Miscarried last night.
Chris found a small hairless baby goat on the barn floor.

We weren't expecting babies till sometime in April so this is really early.

In Kathy's hypothermia course she sent out a picture of a baby that was born 4 weeks too early. Although the picture was a little hard to look at it was a clear example of the signs of a premature kid. Lack of hair, soft translucent hoof and eyes still fused shut.

These were all present in our little one, plus ours weighed in at less than 2 pounds. where a full term baby should be 7-9 pounds. Telling me that one of the goats couldn't sustain the pregnancy and miscarried too early for the little one to have a hope.


I'm a little sad, but I don't think we could have done anything different.

We're going to make sure there is even more hay in the barn for the next two months.
(one of the other tips was that Labor begins when blood sugars drop.  Blood sugar drops when the demands of the fetus exceed the reserves of the mother. )
We're also hoping that the weatherman's right this time and our temps will be going up at least for Saturday. We have plans to get the bedding all changed out.

Rodeo Memories

I finally filled the memory card on my camera. I'm finally being forced to delete things off of there. Which means a few days of organizing pictures on the computer and making sure all files are there before I delete them off the memory card. (Yes, I realize I should probably do this every time I download...)

In organizing i realized I never posted about some of my favorite Events this year.

SEE- sometimes procrastination pays off, you find things you forgot in the process. Right???!?!?!?

Anyways

Nathan was in 2 rodeos this year. Mutton Bustin'


The first was a Bull-a-rama event in April.

He did pretty good, although they held him on the sheep the whole time.

The second was more of a real rodeo, outdoors with all events. And this time they put the kids on the sheep and let them run. It was fun to watch. Although I'm not sure I'll be able to convince him to do it again. He fell off at the end "on his head" according to him.

 Making sure he was on, and got a good grip before releasing the sheep.

This pic is my fav. With the clown racing full out to keep up

Look at him hang on right to the end. It was the sheep coming to an abrupt stop that finally caused him to fall

And the tears about falling off after. Needed hugs from both Mom and Grandpa.

I love being in the country where these kind of events are more accessible, I really can't wait till the boys are at an age for 4-H. I'm going to talk them into to going so I can tag along, and figure out some more things too. Maybe they should offer 4-H classes for adults with no clue about farming? I'd join.

Because Santa doesn't deliver goats

As I mentioned in the previous post, we hit up the Sheep and Goat auction yesterday

ME + Auction = B-A-D

I could have come home with a hundred critters, without batting an eye.

I already said how tempting the lots of 7-12 wethers were. Especially one, that had 7 or 8 cuties. All with shiny well brushed coats. They were full of life and energy, and only averaging at 35 pounds. They were just babies. The only reason they escaped coming home with me was, I could just imagine the look on Chris' face when I told him to cram 8 of them in the back of the minivan.

Then there was the Sheep. I was smart enough to sit on my hands every time the auctioneer called out something was a cull. But one little sheep stole my heart completely. It was a good thing all the boys were fussing or it would have been in the van too!
It was the sweetest little brown and white lamb. In a lot with two little white ones. Every time they were prodded in one direction, this little brown and white cutie would take a flying leap trying to hurdle the other two and be in front. If sheep had true elbows it would have been a sheep mosh pit. I loved his antics and truly thought about ignoring the sheep ban for this little one.

About 3/4 of the way through the sheep (which was 2 and half hours of just waiting for us), a hutterite came in with a crate full of puppies. I was up pacing the floor trying to give a cranky Greg a new view. One glance at those puppies I knew they were at least a good part Pyrenees and I made a bee line back to my seat. There was 4 of them. 2 girls and 2 boys apparently. They were still releasing and catching the pups as the bidding started. The bidding went up and up fast for first selection. Bidders choice was at $110 before all the pups were sexed. Which determined there was in fact only one female, who was of course snatched up by the bidder with first rights. Left with 3 males Chris was giving me the evil eye not to bid. I wasn't going to, until the auctioneer dropped the price back to 25...then 15. I was busy giving the puppy dog eyes to Chris (all puns intended) when the numbers rocketed again 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 42...47. I think it ended up at 57 a pup, all I know is the bidder took them all. So not 3rd or 4th tries. I'm sure Chris was saying a prayer of thanks under his breath.

We sat in the very front row at the auction. And although it tugged at my heart strings to meet half of these darlings eye to eye. Especially when they came to the bars to cry out their protests and frustrations of their situation. It was also quite the education. A massive amount of sheep were there from a herd dispersal. The auctioneer said the owner was headed in for surgery and selling everything. These turned out to be great bench mark sheep. Watching those sheep come in, some with obviously pregnant bellies hanging low. I started to watch the way they all moved and was able to access the differences from a healthier flock to the culls. Of course many of the culls were blindly obvious. A pair came in missing a massive amount of wool from their back ends and sided. I just had this flash of "How would you keep these guys from getting frostbite?"
There were others too. One came in with only half a back leg. A full grown Ewe, but from the knee down there was nothing.
Another mixed lot of about 15 came in, and some of them looked like they had clubs instead of a hind leg. The leg was swollen and thick, with no bending where a knee should be. The herder that worked for the auction house announced they all had foot rot. So I got a "ring side view" of what that looks like.
I've seen illustrations of how you DON'T want a sheep's hind legs to look

Once when a flock came in together, half of them were tripping over each other, and most of them fell. That's when illustrations like these started to make sense. As soon as the animals were standing still you could see almost everyone of them had deformities like this, or even more pronounced in their hind legs.

Overall, we came home with just one male goat; which is what we went for. Although he's a billy instead of a wether like I'd hoped. He is however a decent size at 60 pounds he should be fine around Romeo. (Who seems to be in constant Rut) I hope it all works out as planned.
It was a fast lesson in sheep too. If your paying attention you can learn a lot sitting that close to the action. Although I still can't always be sure how much something is going for. Is there an Auctioneer to English dictionary you can get somewhere?

There is a goat in the house

There is a goat in the house, and not for fun.
Calgary, AB was the second coldest place on earth today, right after the South Pole. Edmonton fell somewhere around 6th on the list, and one of our goats fell victim to the cold.

We were out most of the afternoon, and when we got home, we found poor Little Linus lying in the snow. He was right outside the barn, but since he still acts like a baby and never wants to be left alone, the best we can figure out is he was waiting for Romeo to come with him. So he got tired, laid down where he could still see Romeo, then got too cold to get back up.

Chris found him as soon as we got home, scooped him up, and came running for the house. He held him against his own body for probably 40 minutes with a blanket wrapped around him. Then we added an electric heater to the mix. For the last few hours he's been lying on the floor wrapped in a blanket next to the heater.


We haven't been able to convince him to eat or drink yet. So I know we're a long ways from being out of the woods. When he came in, he was limp in Chris' arms and since then, we've actually got him to bleat at us a few times and hold his head up. He'll turn his head to Chris' voice at some points. But it obviously takes a lot out of him and he curls back up and falls asleep again.

I don't know if he'll make it through the night or not at this point.

Most of the info I can find online talks about newborn kids getting hypothermia. Linus is nearly six months old. I read on one source we shouldn't be trying to force any food or liquids into him orally because...
when the temperature of the goat falls dangerously low for whatever reason(s), various internal organs begin to shut down as well - the rumen included. Therefore, it is never a good idea to try and orally stimulate a goat with food or liquid. Doing so can create equally dangerous (and often fatal) conditions by contributing to harmful bacteria build up within the digestive system itself. Always ensure that the goats temperature is within the normal limits before providing food or liquid orally. Any stimulation given to a goat suffering hypothermia should be administered intravenously.

I tried to shoot about 1tsp of molasses into his mouth when he first came through the door hoping that the sugar would help perk him back up and give him some energy. It obviously wasn't the right thing to do, but I'm not too worried about it because he seemed to let most of it run out the other side of his mouth anyways.
Right now, we have him in the kitchen in the big metal dog cage with the heater still going beside him, and blankets wrapped around him. He's twitching and shivering a bit. But I see that as a good sign, as his body is starting to try and generate it's own heat again. His breathing also seems to be deeper and steadier.

I wasn't expecting a half grown goat to experience hypothermia. I'm struggling if I should take advice meant for newborn kids that suffer hypothermia, or treat him like an adult goat. With him being right in the middle I'm not totally sure what to do?!?!

I read one article that suggested injecting them with a saline solution to ward off dehydration. I'm hesitant, because I can't find any other sources that suggest the same. So if he's still to weak to drink tomorrow, I'll probably have no choice. I need to ensure he gets his fluids somehow, but for tonight, I'm hoping he drank enough today to survive without more fluids for a bit.

So for now, cross your fingers that he makes it through the night.

Sometimes being one of the herd isn't such a good deal

We learned some interesting, and kind of hard (well hard on our son) lessons about Goat Herd Behavior in the last month or so.
In case you don't know every herd of goats has a a "Herd Queen". She is usually the oldest most experienced Doe, and tends to lead the herd around. The Queen also expects to be greeted first when you walk out to the barn, and when we start to milk she will have to be the first on the milk sanction.
Although we knew there would be a Queen in our herd we watched for a few weeks to determine who it was.
The obvious Choice was Hopper since she is the biggest. But Hopper is very unassuming and not particularly dominate.
Little One, on the other hand has been the biggest bully in the herd. She is constantly butting one of the girls. She is the same age as Hopper, but has always been smaller.
We monitored this behavior for awhile, and finally came to a conclusion. Although Little One is the most aggressive, whenever she started to bother Hopper, she would be put back in her place so to speak.
Hopper was indeed the Queen.
And we've been treating her as such.

The only problem is Little One still doesn't like this. She's a little social climber that one, and would gladly take over the queen title at any moment.
We watched this behavior and jockeying for position with a detached amusement. Until nearly a month ago.
We were spending quite a bit of time outside working on the barns, and Nathan (our oldest son) was often with us. He spent most of his time playing, frolicking, and leading the goats around.
One afternoon, I was standing only a few feet from the entrance to the barn door and he had disappeared inside with a few of the goats. I heard the sound of hooves moving at a faster rate and then Nathan yelped.

Little One had butted him, right in the stomach.

Since I hadn't seen the events the moments prior to this, I couldn't be totally sure if it had been provoked or not.

I separated the two of them and went on with my day.

Of course it didn't stop there.

Every time Nathan came anywhere near Little One she would lower her head and charge at him. She would even seek him out around and behind other goats.

Of course my Husband and I were there, and would immediately grab a hold of the goat and separate them so no one got hurt. But we knew this behavior couldn't continue.

So I hit the Internet.

My first search was "Goat Discipline" hoping to find a way to curb her aggressive behavior through some form of discipline.

Just so you know its not a very valid search in terms of goats it turned up many parenting discipline blogs because people refer to their kids as like a bunch of goat kids climbing on things.

So I looked up "butting" "butting problems with goats" and a few others until I ended up on many forms talking about how to handle a goat that butts.

The advice ranged
Many people suggested that once a goat starts to Butt you may have no choice but to sell it (although we were aware that may be the end result we were hoping to correct the problem)
Another suggested a much more aggressive approach- smack a goat across the horns with a piece of wood.
(We weren't about to teach our 4 year old to hit the goats with a stick)
The last piece of advice we found suggested that with Bucks you may have to pin them to the ground and rub their nose in the dirt to show that they cannot dominate you.
We also reread a lot of information on overall herd behavior.

That's when it all clicked into place.

We had been allowing Nathan to run with the herd. In some ways I think he was being adopted into the herd. This is where the herd hierarchy was coming into play, if you add a new goat into a herd the doe's will butt and carry on with the new addition trying to maintain or raise their status in the herd. Since Little One was trying to raise her status, she was butting Nathan trying to make sure she was above him in the social standings.

We decided that although we could keep dragging them apart the best way to solve the problem permanently was going to have to be teaching him to show her that he was in fact higher ranking than her.

Chris went into the pen with him and waited for Little One to make her move.
When she came over with her head lowered. Chris taught Nathan to grab her by the horns before she could hit him, and turn her by the horns forcing her head to turn back towards her body.

It took several attempts for Nathan to perfect the move, and for Little One to realize that she wasn't going to win.
Overall Nathan still has to be on the lookout for her when he enters the goat area. She will still try a sneak attack once and awhile if she thinks he's not watching. But this seems to have solved the problem.

It was hard to do, because you want to make sure your kid isn't going to get hurt. I also didn't want to have to sell her. We realized that we couldn't keep separating the two of them, if the problem was going to be solved, we were going to have to let him do it himself. Since she was treating him like a goat our intervention was not going to ease the situation. He needed to put her in her place and show her that she could not be above him in the herd. It was something we couldn't teach her for him. So we had to teach him how to stop her, and show her that he was in charge. I know it wouldn't have worked if he was younger or weaker, but it's worked for now.

The Hay finally arrived!

Yeah!

Our goats won't starve this winter. We finally got 5 huge bales of hay. and for only $10 more per bale they delivered it. Saving us a huge headache of moving it one bale at a time on the back of the truck. The # of trips would have sucked.

All 5 bales on the trailer

But to get the top bale off the trailer, Chris hooked it to the back of the truck and started to pull

And Pull

Until finally!

Ahhh the joys of not having a tractor for some Jobs!

The rest of the bales were easily just tipped off the sides of the trailer by 2 guys pushing.

And Chris manged to rock-and-roll them all into two neat little lines by himself after the guys left. So they are all piled neatly against the tree line in the yard.

Where did October Go?

Really?
It's been a hectic stressful month around here. I had some very sick kids 2 trips to the Emergency room within 12 hours kind of sick. And a husband who although technically employed seemed to be on "standby" and thus here all month. Although we (and by that I mean HE- to a large extent) managed to get quite a few projects done. The money issue of staying home and working only on the farm has been a nightmare.

I'll try and get some pictures posted of the work that has gone on. The most noticeable to the whole landscape of the yard was about 100 or so feet of fence that my hubby built and then wired in so we effectively have another goat pen. It leads straight to our "big" field out front, which not only means 3 pen rotation for the goats but also no goats chasing across the front yard when they decide they'd rather go on an adventure then head into the front field.

We also finished the boys barn, insulation, new wood, and about 80% painted. So at least its livable for winter. And obviously their pasture is all enclosed now.
The Girls barn still needs some work, but is getting there. It's comfortable enough for our first snow. but I'm not sure it's -40 proof yet.

Right now our big concern is getting hay.
Although lots of people have it for sale. We're finding a lot of people have no way of loading it. (explain that to me?- yeah here's a 1200 pound hay bale -good luck!?!?)
We've also realized it's going to be quite an engineering feat to unload hay bales once we get them here.
If I could go back in time...
We've learned since buying this place, that most people will write the current tractor into the farm offer. And I can't tell you how many times I've cursed us, for not knowing and not doing that.
As of right now, a tractor, just isn't in the tight budget. So although I'm sure we'll be able to secure hay bales and get them loaded. our adventures getting them off the truck may end up being YOUTUBE worthy!

Guess what we did yesterday?

It was the end of the line for the chickens.
Well  the end of the line with us, and the start of the conveyor belt for them. I'm sure I completely traumatized Nathan as he watched the chickens get hung upside down on a device that resembles those spinning dry cleaners carrousel's, but the chickens just disappeared through the wall never to be seen again.
Not until we pick them up frozen and bagged on Monday anyways.

I know we bought the chicken plucker and spent hours putting it together.
But the fact is, we couldn't coordinate Chris' time off with enough good weather to get the chicken processing done ourselves. (especially knowing he would probably take us hours per chicken)

I'm also pretty sure that chickens should be "finished" at about 16 weeks, and these guys were nearing 5 months. I'm hoping we don't end up with stringy nasty meat. I guess there may be a lot of marinated chicken in our future if we did wait to long and have "18 STEW birds"

And...I have a horrible confession...
at 6:30 this morning Chris and I were rounding up the birds and shoving them in the dog crate in the back of the truck. *** Our dog crate is the greatest thing EVER BTW. I was convinced we needed an old horse trailer, but we've managed to move all our animals in this over sized metal cage and the back of the truck- so Awesome- especially considering a horse trailer isn't really in the budget for awhile***  Anyways, The Chickens were not very impressed that we were scooping them up, and taking them somewhere. And that the somewhere didn't seem to be to their outside pen. A few of them got right cranky. Or more like a few of the roosters got territorial/defensive/aggressive??? One of them literally attacked my boot. I'm not talking pecking at the toes. More like full on fly towards me with wings beating and start pecking at my shin.
Luckily my rubber boots go nearly to my knee so it did no damage.
~Except making me shriek like a girl, side stepping (or running-whatever) away from insane rooster. And then refusing to pick up any more of the roosters.~
In my defense I did haul the rest of the hens out to the truck.
By WOULD NOT go back near the Roosters.
Yeah, not my proudest "I'm a true farm girl" moment.
My only excuse is I was incredibly tired and this seemed really really early to be chicken wrangling.

I really don't think I could work at the chicken processing plant. You can't see him really well in this picture (the combination of bad lighting and me not wanting to be a total freak getting in every ones face with my camera- although I'm sure they all thought I was anyways taking pictures) But the dude is carrying 3 of our chickens at once upside down towards the scary looking chicken loading machine.

And here's a closer (as close as I was willing to get) picture of the chickens being loaded for their "last ride" on the conveyor belt/dry cleaners rack/ medieval torture device.

I have to admit I'm pretty relieved that there just gone. Without me having to stick my hand in a freshly slaughtered chicken and remove...well you get the picture.

And the really, really, really best part. It's like having my chores cut in half. Not having to feed and water them anymore.

only in my life...

Only in my life does stuff like this happen.

The shed we couldn't finish taking apart the other night? We got back to finish the job yesterday afternoon and discovered this.

The shed was in behind a mobile home that they were moving. They moved it yesterday. and backed it right over my shed.

We ended up getting our money back without a fight. So all were really out is 4 hours of headache taking it apart the other night.

Oh and the goats still don't have any shade in the field now. Back to square one with that.

who needs a playhouse?

When I was a kid we had a little playhouse in the backyard. I can't tell you how many hours I spent in it, I even had sleepovers in it. The playhouse was my hideout. It even had a trap door on the side. Just a board with some hinges so you could slide out the side without having to use the front door.

I've been debating all summer building one for Nathan, or buying a playhouse package from the lumber store. But man are they expensive.

Today while in the corral with the goats. Nathan got bored and took over one of the barns. With a bunch of the boards missing off the one side, it already has a "secret trap door" built in.

So really who needs an actual playhouse. Besides with all the junk in there it's hours of entertainment finding buried treasure built right in.

and then the RCMP showed up

After deciding were not quite prepared enough to butcher the chickens this weekend we realized that meant we needed more chicken feed. ummm we were completely out.

So Saturday morning we headed for town. Actually I guess it was closer to the afternoon.

Since it was 12:20 pm when the incident occurred!

We pulled up to the feed store and even though the parking lot was completely empty all the lights in the store were on.
Chris tried the door. It opened.
He walked in
There was no one around.
He assumed someone must be in the back and started looking for the chicken feed on his own.
and then...
and then the alarm starting going off.
yeah. the store was close. the alarm was set, but they'd forgotten to lock the front door.

He came back to the truck and told me what was going on. I suggested he head back to the door and see if there was a number for a manager or owner on it. He got a hold of the guy. and as we were waiting for him to show up...that's when the RCMP showed!!!!
Nice.
Luckily the owner showed up just as we were explaining the story to the cops. He walked right over shook Chris' hand and thanked him for calling. The officers went into the store to check over things with the owner, and I posed Chris in front of the cruiser. Mostly because I needed documentation, for how funny I thought the whole story was.

In the end the owner also let us buy some chicken feed off him.