Great Day!

We had a very nice day today. Well, first we started with raking and cleaning out all of the pens, not so much fun, but productive. Then we went to Fran's. She taught me and the boys how to do fecals on the goats to see whether or not they need to be wormed. (Gma and Gpa, I'm finally using that microscope from Drake!) Fran showed us all around her property and we got to see all of her animals. It was really nice. Fran also took a puppy; we are trading her for an Alpine goat.

After Fran's we went into Elgin and picked up 22 chickens. I saw an ad in Craigslist and couldn't pass it up. 14 of the chickens were 2 or 3 months old and 8 of the chicks were 3 weeks old. We got them for $1 each! What a bargain. Oh, and Gpa, they are Barred Rocks.

So we had a great day. Learned to do fecals, found a puppy a new home, got a new goat, and 22 new chickens. Pretty good for a days work.

The Duck Goosed the Chicken

I actually said these words today. Too funny!

Tortillas

This was my first homemade tortilla. My first batch was hard,thick, and non-pliable; we are using these for pizza crust. For the second batch I almost doubled the shortening and milk in the recipe and came up with beautiful tortillas. They are whole grain, of course, and very yummy. Tortillas are easier to make than bread, so instead of sandwiches, we might be eating a lot of roll-ups!

Pups

We sold another female pup today. One male, one female left. Fran, my local goat mentor, may be interested in the female. I picked her out the best one and only let these last people pick from one female and the male. Lala has an appointment to get spayed July 30th. I would get the puppies done too but they have to be 3 months old. I would also get JD fixed, but he freaks out when I try to get him to go anywhere with me. I think Stef would have to carry him.

Stef's dog is named DD. It stands for Dad's Dog or as Niko says,"Dum Dum".

Property layout

This is obviously not to scale, but GGpa asked awhile back for a rendering of some sort of the layout of the land and buildings and such.

The dotted lines are fenced areas.

1. house
2. pool
3. dojo
4. storage shed
5. barn (2 kidding pens, milk and food storage room, loafing area)
6. storage shed/ young buck pen
7. chicken coop
8. rabbit colony
9. buck pen
10. barnyard
11. young buck outer yard
12. garden (by next spring, after we clear out the million and five rocks, this area will be a complete square)
13. future compost site

Humanure!!!

Yes, we are converting our household to a no flush zone. I got a couple of toilet seats and 5 gallon buckets today and Stef is going to built a little cabinet to set the bucket in and put the seats on. You can check out http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html for more info on human waste composting. In two years we will have the best compost around, not to mention the greenest garden! As you can imagine the boys were less than thrilled upon hearing this news. Niko was especially disgusted, not by the idea of carrying excrement around in 5 gallon buckets, but because his friends will think we are crazy. I told him when he is older he will be impressed with his childhood in this family.

We are also going to divert our greywater from the septic tank. Not sure where it is going though. I'll update you all as this progresses.

Puppies

One more down, 3 to go!! Tell your friends! BTW, Niko is not keeping Covert. He changed to a different puppy and named him Taco. It is actually some my fault. I liked Taco and asked if either if them would be willing to switch.

Chicken and Kid

Just a couple random pics. We are keeping a rooster with the chickens to fertilize the eggs we will be getting soon. We are going to build an incubator to make new chicks! This is our favorite Roo. His name is Mr. Tibbles.
He is the prettiest chicken I've ever seen. You can't really see all of his colors in the picture, but his tail is green and purple, he is just so pretty.

Speaking of pretty here is another pic of the baby girl.

Hoof Trimming

Well thats one way to get it done. Poor Trouble didn't think this was very funny but I sure did. We trimmed hooves today. It is a tedious job and we hate doing it so it doesn't get done as often as it should. We have decided though, it will be easier if we do it once a month.

Holy S*#%!

As inappropriate as these words may be, they were nevertheless the first words out of my mouth today as I walked up to the rabbit colony. I saw a baby bunny. We have Bunnies! I only saw one and I ran to tell Stef. We walked back and saw one again. It went into the rabbit hole and we haven't seen anything else from the rabbits today so I haven't got a picture yet. I hope there is more than one. I'm so excited!! Yea!!