Early Summer

 

The garden heavily mulched with old dusty horse nettle-filled hay. It'll be a while before the mower's fixed and we can go back to grass clippings.

Planting melons in heavily mulched hills outside the garden. The vines will have plenty of room to spread, and the planting holes will make great future sites for fruit trees. These hills have mostly watermelons and winter squash.

The fodder station. Currently only sprouting winter wheat and oats. Will soon add barley and sunflower seeds to the mix. I'm building a permanent fodder station out in the front of the coop in the barn this week. It'll have three 8' shelves all gently sloping to a drainage bin. The trick will be keeping the guineas out of it.

This is Josey, Mabel's doe. She's about 2 weeks old now. We'd planned on selling or trading her as we've got enough does, but Mabel's milk production at 3/4 of a gallon for a first-freshening Nubian is so extraordinary we've decided to keep her. She's the brightest, most hyper and curious and vocal of all the doelings we've had. And she's taking right away to foraging and browse and garden scraps and eating soaked grain - though she loves her bottles. Once she's bigger we can start integrating her with the rest of the herd.

Our three Sanaan/Lamancha cross bottle babies - Lily, Shadow, and Pinkie, now 2 months old. Lily was disbudded before we got her, and she's on her way to becoming the bottom doe of the three - though she is very affectionate. Lily's on the left and Shadow's on the right. Shadow got her name because as a teeny baby she was always shadow boxing with herself in the corner, doing practice kicks and headbutts. Pinkie got her name simply for her pink collar used to differentiate her and Shadow, as they were identical. Pinkie has rapidly become the top doe among the three, sucks down her bottles in seconds, and has even starting testing the waters with us by rearing and shoving her head against us.

  Mabel and Lily

Marley, a Lamancha, the mother of Pinkie and Shadow, whom we've been babysitting in exchange for keeping the babies. She came to us very thin, is still too thin but doing better - sort of plateaued for the moment. Her milk production has been steadily declining from 5 quarts down to a little under a gallon a day. But the last 2 days we've seen an increase in milk - it's either increased alfalfa in the diet or increased water consumption. Our goats must have absolutely fresh water put out every day or they won't drink it and can become dehydrated. And for a lactating animal that's very bad and will immediately cause a noticeable drop in milk.

A view from the ladder to the upper story. The front corner is now being used for a temporary goat stall for Josey. The area was originally going to be a workshop/dairy station. But I think now it will become a permanent goat stall.

Me putting Mabel out to pasture. She's often a little stubborn to go out but piles of fresh browse cut and thrown out in the pasture have made her more motivated. 

Rachel and I went out taking photos of all the wildflowers on the property - hawksbeard, colicroot, yarrow, wood and sheep sorrel, white and red clover, and some grasses with purple seedheads. The board's for a movable background. I had her get a photo of the sunflower up at the coop though of course it's just come up from all the seed dropped up here when the birds were here. You can barely see the run in the background but it's become a jungle in there. The power of chicken poo.