A Beautiful Springish Day!

Today was a beautiful day.  It felt just like a perfect temperature spring day.  We had to take the day off from home schooling and go out into it.  I cleaned out many of my raised beds and started preparing them for planting.  William and Zeke helped me with two of them, we got a lot done.

I had planted two of these barrels with bunching onions late last summer and wow did they grow and get happy thru the winter.  I have been harvesting them as I need them in the kitchen and they just keep multiplying.

We had a few unusually harsh spells this winter.  Much of the things I could usually winter over outside died.  But while I was cleaning all the dead stalks out of the mint bed there were little new mint leaves emerging!  So we still have mint!

I also cleaned out all the dead ferns from the asparagus bed and found this two inch tall little guy.  ;)

I am planning on making a chick order this week.  I am still sticking with White Leghorns.  As they work the best for our large family on our tight budget.  The feed to egg ratio just can't be beat.  I always keep 2 or 3 Silkies around for hatching out eggs as well.

Our chicken area has not had a break from chickens for at least 13 years.  So we decided to get a whole new flock this go around and give away our current flock in a month or so and let that whole area have a good rest.  While it is empty, we will repair any fencing and the coop in places and clean and disinfect things really well.

In the goat area of our farm we are eagerly expecting kids soon!  I gave away my goats that were in milk last fall so have had the first break in many years in milking.  I have missed the fresh milk but on this particularly colder than normal winter, I was grateful most  mornings not to go out and sit and milk twice a day.

Milky Whey should freshen first.  She was much wider than this but as you can see in the second picture her babies have dropped down almost into position.  :)

I think the next one that will freshen is MiniBell.  She and her sister Amelia are a mid-sized goat.  A cross between a full sized LaMancha and a Nigerian Dwarf buck.  It is both Mini Bells and Amelia's  first freshening and I can't wait to milk them.  Mini Bells first new little udder is coming down and growing as her due date approaches.  No, she is not about to get sick.  I could not get her to stop following me so I could photograph her so pulled some privet down for her to eat.  I caught her with her mouth open!

 Her little udder, growing larger every day.  I am very happy with the teat length of both her and her sister.  Great size for hand milking.

Amelia is Mini Bells twin sister.  (Amelia was born with the Nigerian Dwarf ears.)  Amelia must have been bred a bit later as her tummy is not quite as big.  She would not hold still either.  Here she is battling for privet with her sister.

 Amelia's udder is just coming in now.

I really want to get Calfy bred for fall/winter milk but she has not come into heat at all.  Neither has the other goat I was wanting to breed for then, Plenty.  I might get a break from milking again next winter if I don't get one or both of them bred soon!

Here is Calfy.  Very curious about my cell phone camera.

I really love goats and think that they are wonderful creatures.  They have great personalities.  Especially when bottle raised.  They are very functional on a small farm for forage control, fertilizer, meat and milk.  Great little animals!

Pray your spring farm planning is going well!

Blessings and Happy Farming!

susan

 

Unusual Winter

We have had some very unusual weather this winter.  It has not only been unusually rainy but quite a bit colder as well.  We also have had three substantial snowfalls.  In a normal winter we might see a few snow flakes a few times or get a dusting of snow. 

The end of January we got this.

Since it had been several years since we have had snow like this, I gave the children off from home schooling and let them just play in it.  Here where we live in Georgia a snow like this will usually be gone by the next day or two.  It was a dryish snow and not packy enough for a snowman but the kids had fun out in it throwing it at each other and playing around.

Then Tuesday of this past week we got this snow fall of about four or five inches.

It was a wetter snow and the kids made this little guy.

Even though there was not a huge amount the children had a good time and had fun.

Some of it melted on Wednesday but that night we got sleet and then five or six inches of snow more, so woke up Thursday to this! 

It was breathtakingly beautiful for the Deep South to see and believe it or not was nearly all gone by the end of the day!  I never remember us having this much snow at one time since we have lived here on the farm for the last 15 years.  The ice that we got before the snow came this time made the snow stick to the trees, fences and electric wires.  Many people lost power from this storm.  We had it go out for only two hours in the morning. 

As far as farm life right now???  I gave away my two full sized milkers to a friend.  So I am actually not milking at all right now.  I don't ever remember having such a break in milking.  The children miss the fresh goats milk terribly but I have enjoyed the break from milking.  I have not had to go out twice a day in this weather to milk but must admit I am missing making cheese and foods from the cheese for my family.  Our first goats possible due date is the end of this month.

When Milky Whey came into heat last fall, I put her in with Sergent Pepper box.  If she settled her due date is around Feb 24th.  But she came back into a light heat a few weeks later.  I knew I would be needing milk and she would be my first of the year to freshen, so I put her in with an experienced buck, Joseph.  So if she did not settle the first time she will be the first to kid in March.  I also bred Amelia...this will be her first freshening and her sister Mini Bell, this will be her first freshening as well.  They are my experiment goats, the offspring of my full sized La manchas and a Nigerian Dwarf buck.  Hoping to have a happy medium in amount of feed they consume and amount of milk they give.  I am very excited.

I am getting the urge to have chicks in the barn and start my gardens.  So I guess spring is around the corner!

Blessings and Happy Farming!
susan

Freezing to Flooding

Our winter this year has went from unusually cold temps to flooding. 

We live in the North Georgia Mountains but in a lower portion in the mountains.  A little dip or valley.  All of the excess water from rain runs to us and down our property when the water table is up and the ground is saturated and has reached its limit.  We usually get flooded at least once a year in the spring time.  But after having much cooler temperatures this winter and even a dip down to 4 degrees one night and 7 another night, we have now gotten a lot of rain on top of it.  Our temperatures are still going to freezing many nights or lower but  now we are quite soggy.

During that very cold spell where night temperatures were so low we did loose a young goat.  The little goat that had polio last year and survived by a miracle, Pacer.  I brought him and his field buddy up out of the fields for the cold snap and made them comfy in a barn stall but surprisingly he still could not handle those temperatures.  We found him down and cold but still alive.  If you put your finger in the mouth of a goat and inside its mouth is cold when they are down, the only way to quickly rise their core temperature is to immerse them in warm water, slowly adding warmer and warmer water till they are warmed up.  We brought him in the house and tried this.  I have successfully done this with chilled kids that were born unexpectedly in winter and were dying but we worked on this goat for hours and he did not  make it.  Bless his heart.

Here are some pictures of our farm from the heavy rains we have had recently.

Water pouring down our drive way from the hill behind the barn.

Flooding down by the manure pile. Yuck!  William could not believe I was taking pictures of him by it and was laughing about it.

Water running across our fields and to our pond.

This is a picture I took of my daughter last spring.  You can see where the dock is compared to the normal water level of the pond.  Our dock is anchored with T-Posts for times when we have flooding.

 This is where the dock is with this flooding.  The road around the pond is even flooded.

When we get flooded like this, this is the only time our pond has and inlet and and outlet!

Inlet.

Outlet.  Right across the road behind it.

Looks like we are going to continue to have a wet/colder than normal winter!

Blessings and Happy farming!
susan

Freestanding Goat Hayrack

Happy New Years to all my farming friends! 

Today, I thought I would share one of my hay rack plans for anyone looking to put one out in a field for their goats. (polled or hornless goats) It was very inexpensive to  make because we had everything to make it laying around the farm here. 

When ever we do a project we take the good left-over scraps and put them on a pile in the shed.  We affectionately call that pile, Papa Depo's.  When ever we do a project we always look in the shed to see what we  have available before going to Home Depo to buy anything.  :)

Again, make this at your own risk and it is based on the plans for my hay saving hay rack for goats.

Two years ago I wanted to have a hay rack out in one of my buck fields for my goats.  I wanted it to be hay saving like the ones I invented for in the barn but yet keep the hay dry and be easy to fill. 

What I came up with was this.  Not to pretty but very functional and again it was the right price as we had all we needed to build it laying around the farm.  So it was just labor and we built it in less than a day.

The outside part of it is one of those cages that huge water tanks come in.  I had a bunch laying around here that I use for extra quick pens for baby animals.  Here are two I have laying in a field so you can see what I am talking about.

My dad and William helped me build this one.  I took the water tank cage and cut a goat sized hole into what I wanted to be the front.  (I used a saw zaw (recipricating saw) with a demolition blade)

Then cut a hog panel (that their heads fit thru the squares) to fit down the back third and secured it with zip ties and wire. 

Then I bent the hog panel below the neck high square, at an angle to go behind that, to hold the hay slanting toward the back like in my origional design and cut a board to fit over it so the hay would not fall thru.

 

Then we took some thin tin we had laying around here and secured it to the outside by puting small boards on the inside to screw thru the tin into.  So the cage was sandwiched inbetween the tin on the out side and thin board strips on the inside. (I used 2x2's)

I then build a hinged lid for the top and put some siding on it to keep some rain off it.  It turned out very well. 

Then this fall I needed another one of these before winter hit.  I needed the one we had built for some baby bucklings and a new one for a field for my full grown bucks. 

Our faithful dog, Yellow, watching us do our project and guarding the goats.

He is such a huge lug.  We love him dearly.

I did not have the time to make one like we did before.  So Carolyn and I built this one in a few hours. 

It is the same design we just put a tarp around the outside for the outer skin instead of tin.  I can change that and put something more long lasting on it once the weather is warmer before next winter.  On this one I did not have a scrap piece of hog panel that their heads fit thru nicely so had to cut two holes the right size. 

These are cheap and easy to  make.  I made both of these totally from scraps we had laying around here.  Even the siding we used for the roofs to help protect the plywood from rain was just laying around here.

 
Hope this helps give some ideas to anyone thinking on this subject. 

Blessings and Happy farming!
susan