Pix of goat stuff

These are the permanently mounted 'flat sided' buckets with hardware at TSC - hardware is sold separately

Beautiful facility - see they 'feed thru' - less mess and no goats poop in feed, easy to get to and maintain

Be sure to get latches that require a thumb...tricky goaties

Uses garden hose to make sure no one gets scratched up

We like these latches and clasps

Super easy to mount feeders for baking soda and such. Available at TSC..this is also what we use in the front of our milking stand

One of the "S" shaped bucket holders from TSC - so cheap! we never would have found them in the horse section if someone hadn't suggested it.

Our corner feeder - see they pull the hay thru. Its mounted with those heavy duty fence staples that need to be hammered in. We had a top on it (a wooden triangle) but this somehow fell in and trapped Debbie. She can reach her head in the top holes...but the wood piece fell into the feeder and she was trapped. Honestly, she couldn't have made this up if she tried.

Farm Breakfast

Suck it monkeys, this is breakfast

This is why I farm - bacon

The last of the sunflowers

This is what cold looks like. A frosted sunflower hanging onto the suns first warm rays. This was from our first hard frost. The morning sparkled.

There is nothing cuter than a baby duck....

Seriously, what could possible be cuter than a baby duck? This little angel is just one day old.

Ode to Bramble

This is Bramble in the garden this summer. She is one of our three Bourbon Red Turkey mommas. She is really a wonder. This year she hatched two clutches back to back...and she's paying for it now. Suddenly she is molting and looks like hell. But in this picture she looks pretty - as far as turkey mommas go.

But, the babies - called poults- are doing great. The six that she most recently hatched and lively and fun. They are in the flippy-flier stage now.

Two males from her first clutch are huge jakes - they will be mature toms soon. We call one The Ostrich because he is so tall. He might just give our flock sire, TurkZilla, a run for his money.

When the sun gets warm enough we let Bramble and her poults run around in the garden until they get tired or cold. They'll need protection from the cold weather until they are about 4 months old. Even tho they don't need to sit under her anymore, they still need their momma.

Thanks, Bramble, for all your hard work!

Our 'peaceful' evenings....

Ahhh... evening finally. My friend Eliza wrote me an email the other day and said how peaceful and quiet my evenings must be with all the barnyard safely tucked in for the night.

HA!

What a laugh! I tell her that she has an idealized version of my life on the farm.

Here is what its really like:

About 4:30pm, when there is about an hour of daylight left, the turkeys decide they need somewhere to roost for the night. So the young, trouble making jakes (young males) get up on the deck, then up on the roof of the house. This sends the housecats into a frenzy. So we have to spray them with the garden hose to get them (the turkeys not the cats!) to come down. The dogs help us round them up and drive them into their night coop in the Turkey House.

The geese scream like mad hatters when corraled into their night coop. This, sets the guinea hens off. They sound like howler monkeys shrieking.

There is the muddy chase to round up all the young hens and get them into their night coops in the hen house.

Don't forget the much-hated-pigs. Its a slip-n-slide thru the mud to get them fed.

My husband and I, exhausted from building the Duck Garage all day, huddle together as the sun goes down behind the trees and make sure we have everyone bedded and fed. Ducks? Geese? Turkeys? Baby turkeys? Ducklings? Chickens? Goats? Pigs? All set and in we go.

Fast forward 3:00am.

My eyes fly open, "Honey! Honey! We forgot Runner!!"

I grab my sweats and glasses and head outside in the moonlight. The dog at my side we run to Runner. She is our last turkey momma to set a nest - a very late season nest. Of course she made her nest is the most inconvient place, again. We built a shelter around her - well, lets call a spade a spade. We built Fort Knox around her. In fact, we don't even have a door - we just screw boards over the opening each night. Except this night.

Fearing she's been attacked and killed by raccoons I peer in gingerly, hoping not to find the headless turkey momma....She looks up at me! She's fine! Whew!

The dog sniffs around until I can get the boards screwed back in place.

Finally, I get back into the warm bed. And here comes the kittens. One after the other they come walking across the bed and tickle my nose with their whiskers wondering what I've been doing. I hear the dogs start pawing around. A kitten stampede flies over the bed. Why did I even bother to go back to sleep?

The sun rises about 6:45am and we get up and do it all over again. My first stop? To un-screw the boards and let the sun shine in on Runner.