The Big New Fence

New Perimeter Fence

We finally finished clearing a fence line around our 10 acres across the road, and hired a fencing company to put up the fence.  It is a 4 foot 4x4 wrapped wire fence.  It took the workers about a week to get it done, and it looks good.  We are now contemplating turning the goats loose inside the new fence and just using the electric fence to protect certain areas of interest.  We are eager for the goats to do enough clearing so that we can determine our future housing site.  Jeff will be attending a two week cob building workshop this fall to get his feet wet (and dirty!), learning lots of good things about building earthen structures.

Timbuktu

Our herd has now grown by 2 for a total of 8 goats.  We bought two young purebred Kiko goats about a month ago. They were both sired by Katmandu, so we went with an exotic city theme and named the male Timbuktu and the white female Geneva.  Timbuktu is a nice big buckling, and we hope that he will throw kids that grow faster than the Spanish kids born here this spring.  There are a few possible factors that could explain the slow growth of the Spanish kids, which we can correct during the next kidding season, so that should help too.

Geneva

 Xander appears to be doing a good job staying with and guarding the herd.  The fence workers said that he barked at them a lot, as a good guard dog should, when strangers are nearby.  We've had to make some adjustments to the feeding system, but hopefully the "moat" we created around his self-feeder will keep the darn ants out.  We were able to find the other dog a new home, so we will probably get Xander a new girlfriend at some point.

The other new additions to the farm are the chicks that hatched out in June.  The Dominicker hen hatched out 11 chicks, and there were no issues with snakes this time, even though we didn't end up using any snake repellents.  When the chicks (or, as Raine likes to call them, peep peeps) were 2 months old, we moved them into the chicken house.  All of them transitioned well, except the one New Hampshire Red cockerel.  I found him dead under the roosts in the chicken house on the second day after the move.  I'm not sure what happened to him, but I've heard that chickens will attack a chick if it looks different from all of the rest, and that cockerel was the only light colored one of the bunch.  The chicks are now like teenagers, and someday soon the 6 or so males left will be ready for harvesting.  This year, we have started banding the chickens so we can tell one hatch set from another.  The 2013 chickens have green bands.  

The gardens are doing fairly well.  I had a pretty good cantaloupe harvest this year.  I was particularly happy with the flavor of this year's variety, but almost every melon had worm holes and/or blow outs (from too much rain).  Since they weren't saleable, we ate tons of cantaloupe and froze the rest.  We are looking forward to trying out a new cantaloupe ice cream recipe that we found. :-)  There were a bunch of pickling and canning sessions at The Haven this summer, using the combined produce from my garden and my in-laws' garden.  Fred, Pat, and I made green tomato relish, several different types of cucumber pickles, dilly beans, and green salsa, among other things.  Most of the tomato and squash plants are finishing now, and I am getting the fall garden underway.

-Annie

Our First Truck

We finally bought our first truck, a 2006 Toyota Tundra.  It's a big boy (or maybe girl - we haven't decided yet).  Now we can transport livestock and haul all of our farm-related materials.  The truck's first job was to carry trash bags of leaves back home from the B&B that we were staying at, near the town we got the truck, on our first baby-free weekend.  Anyway, now we feel like real farmers.  :-)

In other news, the barn and first goat pasture were completed across the street, and the goats and dogs were moved in.  The goats have done a great job clearing the brush, and we are working on expanding their pasture to give them access to more green forage.  Unfortunately, we lost another kid: one of Morena's boys.  He had hurt his leg, but seemed to be on the mend, when he turned up dead in the middle of the pasture one evening without any marks on him.  Xander appears to be doing quite well, but the 3yo female dog we got back in April isn't working out.  She doesn't stay inside the fencing, and it turns out she isn't a purebred Great Pyrenees.  She appears to be part Golden Retriever, which helps explains her friendliness and desire to be with people.  She's a sweet dog, but we are trying to find her a new home.

The chickens are doing well, and egg production has been good.  The Dominicker hen went broody, so we have her sitting on some eggs in one of the chicken tractors.  The hatch date is Father's Day, and I'm pretty sure she hatched out chicks on Father's Day last year too.  We are looking into getting a snake repellent to keep snakes from eating eggs and some of the baby chicks again this year.

The garden is coming along - somewhat slowly this year, but it is coming.  I grew sugar snap peas this year, and we got a good harvest from them.  The vines are about done, but the cucumber plants are eager to take over the trellis. The carrot crop was really good this year too.  I've had a hard time with carrots in the past, and it seemed like they weren't going to germinate well this year either, but they finally came up and thrived.  I've got lots of peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, melon, and squash planted.  This year, I planted most of my viney squash at a friend's place, where they have lots of room to roam.  The sweet potatoe slips are due to arrive this weekend, and my luffa plants still aren't in the ground yet either.   I am in the process of harvesting my first crop of lavender, which is exciting.  Small bundles of lavender are hanging all around the house.  I am vending at the farmers' market again this summer, but this time, I am sharing a booth with my friend, The Frantic Organtic.  Together, we are the manic mommy contigent, as we both have 2 year olds.

 -Annie

A New Goat Adventure

Morena and Luz (Spanish for dark and light)

 Three weeks ago, Jeff and I purchased 2 Spanish does, thus beginning an adventure with meat goats.  They are currently in one of the old goat pastures at The Haven until we finish building a goat shelter across the street and train the goats to electric fencing.  Spanish meat goats are reputedly very hardy goats, which should work well with the limited management system we plan to establish.  Both does are pregnant and due to kid this month, so we should have a respectable herd in no time.  :-)  We're excited about having goats again and eagerly anticipate the arrival of cute baby goats.  Keep your fingers crossed for more girls!  We will hopefully get a buck this Spring from a farm in Chatsworth in northwest GA, which has a very cool meat goat operation.

Jeff's Dad, Fred, and his friend, Shane, have been a big help in developing our new goat infrastructure.  Using Fred's tractor, they have bush hogged future fence lines around the Haven and across the street (Jeff and I have not settled on a name for our independent farming operation yet) in addition to building the goat shelter.  We hope to completely enclose our 10 acre lot with wrapped wire fencing, and then use electric fencing to control what the goats clear inside that.  The trees and brush have grown up quite a bit since the last time the land was clear cut, which makes the bush hogging a very intense job. The tractor has needed a number of repairs, including a new grill which was made out of an old hay feeder and chicken wire. Fred's big red tractor has been an object of fascination for Raine.

Raine on "Pawpaw's tractor"

Alexander, the Great Pyrenees

Since the plan for the goats is to have them clear the land across the street, where we won't be able to have as close of an eye on them, we decided to acquire a livestock guardian.  We considered donkeys and llamas, but we went with a Great Pyrenees dog, which is commonly used around here for this purpose and has a good reputation as a guardian.  Great Pyrenees will also guard a flock of chickens!  So we purchased a puppy from the Chatsworth farm, and he is currently in the pasture with both our goats and chickens. He is cute, although he is already a good sized dog even at 13 weeks old.  He is still a bit timid with us, but he typically stays with the goats, keeping a small distance from them as well.  However, as he has started to settle in more and get more lively, he has started giving playful chase to the chickens occasionally, which we need to try to put the kibosh on.  We named him Alexander and call him Xander.  We're considering getting a female in order to breed them.  I am a novice dog owner, but Jeff's family use to have hunting dogs, and Jeff is very happy to have this dog.

-Annie