Long Time, No Post

Yes, yes--I know that I've been remiss in keeping up with the blog and lots has been going on. Here's the rundown on what's been happening.

PASA's 17th Annual Farming for the Future Conference
Nearly 2,000 people from 39 states and 8 countries attended this year's successful conference. It was such a whirlwind event that I took very few pictures. The Everything Small Ruminants pre-conference track was sold out. Sheep & goat farmers learned about nutrition, managing pasture & browse, sustainable sheep farming, fiber production, managing parasites and my personal favorite, prescribed grazing which was presented by Kathy Voth of Livestock for Landscapes.
Dr. Steve Hart from Langston University's E (Kika) de la Garza Institute for Goat Research gave a demonstration on how to prepare and read your own fecal tests for parasite egg counts using a McMasters slide. Dr. tatiana Luisa Stanton from Cornell University's Extension gave an informative presentation about managing goats and sheep on pasture and browse.
One of the funnest parts of the conference this year was the entertainment on Thursday evening. Adrienne Young, a very talented singer & musician from Nashville. On Saturday night after the conference, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Adrienne and her boyfriend about their beliefs in and dedication to sustainable agriculture.

Snow, Snow and More Ice

Winter just won't give up. Poor Jess has had school canceled three times in less than a week due to snow & ice. You would think she'd be excited, but it decimated her spring break and extended her school year. Pax, the Great Pyrenees pup in training, looks over the fence and asks when all this white stuff is going away so she can roll in the brown stuff and do her Chocolate Lab immitation.

Goatie Visitors

Bella & Jazzy have come for a 'visit' with the buck while their farmers have gone to Australia for a few weeks. The bleat with an Aussie accent.

Hay Day
I wish the barn was big enough to store all of the hay we need to over-winter, but about February our stores run thin and it's time to rustle up small bales out of someone else's barn.

Tractor Supply's Out Here Magazine
For the next few months when you visit Tractor Supply, chances are you'll see a familiar face on the cover of their spring issue of Out Here magazine.

Kidding Season, Round Two
It started again on Sunday morning when I went out to feed & milk. Kay had a fresh pair of twins on the ground--both does. These kids are out of the BIJO buck owned by Earl Martin.
And when I went out for the evening feeding & milking, Mischievous had another set of twins--a buck and a doe.

The Winter of Ice

Here we go, another ice storm. This one even worse that the others we've had so far this winter. Truthfully, I'd rather it be snow. Snow isn't as destructive or treacherous. It was so miserable out this morning that the calves refused to come out of their shelter when I walked out with a bucket of milk. I took that as a sign that the animals had battened down the hatches and as soon as I was done milking, I should go back in the house and do the same.
In the middle of milking I heard two cracks that sounded like rifle shots followed by a creaking and then a crashing. I feared looking out of the barn door hoping not to see major damage to our beautiful large pine tree. It was one of the smaller shade trees that had lost two large limbs. Although I wanted to inspect closer, many of the canopy branches sagged under the weight of the ice and I thought it best to keep my distance.

Ice on the fence line as the goats gobble up a meal during a break in the storm.

Cinderella begging for attention.

Mimi and Andy were more interested in the fresh round bales we put out yesterday than staying dry. Only during the worst of the storm did they seek shelter. Other than that, they had their faces in food. The other round bale looks as if it's sprouted some sort of weird fur as ice formed on the tendrils of loose hay.It may be winter and covered in ice, but soon spring will arrive and the old iron will be hard at work once again.

Paying for a Big Mistake

As I've posted earlier, there wasn't supposed to be any kids born between Christmas and mid-February. But it turns out that Rip was a busy buck while he was loose with the open does last summer. To get to the doe herd, he had to squeeze through THREE sections of six-wire high-tensile electric fence. Hormones are a powerful thing.

So now I'm paying for this mistake in a couple of ways. Yesterday, out of seven kids born only four survived. Cocoa, one of our solid red senior does who has been an excellent producer had triplets, but one was stillborn. It could have been for a number of reasons, but I'd bet that it was nutritional. I like to increase feeding the last six weeks of gestation since fat does have a harder time kidding and run the risk of pregnancy toxemia. However, the first of the year is when I started ramping up their feed in preparation for the February/March kidding. Because of this I also missed the boat on their pre-kidding vaccinations/selenium, worming and foot-trimming which would have been done this week.

Cocoa with her buck and doe kids. Lots of solid dark does being born this year.

Secondly, right now the temperatures are in the twenties during the day and the teens at night with howling winds taking the chill down into single digits. Pumpkin Pie is a lousy mother to begin with so when she kidded during the night, despite the deep bedding and shelter, she walked away from her twins and by the time we found them in the morning, they were frozen solid to the ground...not pretty.

Marilyn's twins--a buck and a doe.

The third, but probably the least disappointing of this whole mess is that the does were bred to Red Hot N Ripped instead of the tall, long, black-headed buck bred by BIJO Boer Goats. Don't get me wrong, I love Rip, but I've got some older does who are slowing down and I really wanted to breed them to a longer, taller buck since I've already got lots of offspring from them out of the stockier MAX genetics.

Fortunately, the BIJO buck is owned by my neighbor and chances are good I can get him back for another 'visit'.

Finally!

Clara has been getting rounder as the days went by. Her udder swelled to the size of a bright pink and somewhat hairy soccer ball. She grunted and groaned. Her vulva dripped. We locked her in the maternity stall in the barn. Yes, another batch of single digit weather is on the way and I thought it would be the old listen-to-the-baby-monitor-and-trot-out-to- the-barn-every few-hours-in-the-miserable-cold routine. But THANKFULLY, Clara decided to pop tonight with a pair of twin bucks each weighing ten pounds! No wonder she was so wide.

Another Surprise!

Rip was a busy boy this past summer when he sneaked into the does' pasture while I was out of town. Phyllis sprung this darling doe on Ralph this morning while Jess and I were still at the Farm Show. I wonder how many more 'surprises' are on the way?

We didn't win any big ribbons, but Rip did place third in his class behind two serious show goat breeders.

What's wrong with this picture?

I'll give you a hint. This is the 'dry' herd, meaning they are not scheduled to start kidding until after we return from the PASA Conference in February. Look closely. What do you see? KIDS! As we were loading up Jess's animals she'll be showing at the 92nd Annual Pennsylvania State Farm Show this week, she said, "Mom, there are kids out here." Mary Kate had a fine set of twins--a buck and a doe--vigorously nursing in the balmy January sun.

As we drove toward Harrisburg, I began counting backwards. 150 days ago I was in Burlington, Vermont at the American Cheese Society's conference. It turns out while I was gone, Jess admitted our young buck, MAX Red Hot N Ripped, got in with the open does that weren't scheduled to be bred until October. Great. I'm sure there are a few more 'surprises' are on the way. Cocoa and Clara are extremely large for a February kidding so they've been added to the maternity ward. The ultimate goal is to have no animals freshening from Christmas to mid-February, but it looks like we missed our mark this year.

Parting Shots for 2007

L-EEE (pronounced "Elly") made sure she didn't have to go to the Pennsylvania Farm Show and get all dolled up for the Junior Breeding Stock and Open Boer Goat shows this year. She was one of our daughter's strongest show does this past summer. We knew she was pregnant, but unsure of if she would kid in this round or the next, due to start in mid-February. She gave us a buck and a doe. Since the doe is the dark one, she'll be registered as "L-Vira" as in Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
We bred to have everyone kidded out prior to the start of the Farm Show (beginning on Friday). Clara is the lone hold-out on us. She looks like she's ready to pop any moment. We're hoping she goes before the low of 11 degrees on Thursday night. If not, I'm seriously considering building a kidding pen in our basement.

The current batch of babies are all snug in their kid-warmers that Ralph builds out of 55-gallon plastic barrels, a light fixture and a 100-watt bulb.

UDDER UPDATE

Can you believe this is Emma's udder? She's healed quite well considering the extensive wound and loss of the front quarter. As you can see, the teat and quarter is entirely gone. The rear quarter and teat, while intact, isn't functioning. We won't know if it's a complete loss until her next freshening, which will be in September to Sunset Canyon Matinee if our AI guy hit the spot last week when she came into heat. The other half of her udder is perfectly normal and pumping out as much as three and a half gallons of rich milk each day.

A Pair of Presents from Peaches

Our Christmas presents didn't only appear under our tree this year, but were also left in the barn. Peaches, one of our original does (and also our most prolific) dropped a set of twins--buck on the left and doe on the right. Ralph has been sick so he didn't go along to the family gathering at my brother's over in Perry County. No sooner had we sat down to our holiday dinner when the cell phone rang with the good news. By the time we got home later in the afternoon, the kids were clean, dry and had bellies full of colostrum.

A Pair of Pumpkins for Cinderella

Cinderella blessed us with a pair of twins today--a buck and a doe. Two down, one to go. Let's hope that Clara chooses to kid while the weather is still warmer than when the first babies came.

I just couldn't wait until Christmas

Call me worse than a little kid, but I just couldn't wait until Tuesday to break into my Christmas present this year. You see, Santa brought a Gem Dandy Butter Churn for me. Until now, I had been using both my Kitchen Aid mixer and Cuisinart--one made a mess and the other did a lousy job. Neither did more than a quart of cream at a time. So when the jugs of cream began building up in the fridge, I couldn't bear the thought of doing nine batches of butter when I could do one.
The first archaeological evidence of butter making dates from 600 AD with the dasher and barrel type churn. In the 1800's, mechanical churns began to emerge. Electrical motors were added in the mid 1900's. There are plenty of smaller Gem Dandy churns--both manual and electric--on eBay and in antique stores.

Butter is a finicky thing. Cream won't turn to butter until it is slightly acidic and approximately 50 degrees. If it's too cold or too warm, it just froths. I add an aromatic culture to the cream prior to bringing to room temperature to help increase acidity and add flavor.

Butter & real buttermilk.

The butter needs to be rinsed to remove all of the buttermilk or it will go rancid faster. There is still plenty of liquid left in the butter so I work it in smaller batches folding it over on itself in order to remove the buttermilk while rinsing under cold water. 2 1/4 gallons of cream yielded about a pound and a half of butter and 3 quarts of buttermilk.

In addition to the churn, I also got a set of German butter molds--the small one has a flower, the medium one has grapes and the large one has a chick.

Butter!

This is up close & personal of my first batch of butter made from Emma's milk. Prior to churning, I let the milk sour for 36 hours in a crock to develop a little more flavor. Stay tuned for a step-by-step pictorial of future butter-making sessions. I'm still working out the kinks, but thanks to my dear friends (and awesome wood workers) over in Perry County, Doug & Jim, I'm working with a pair of hand-made wooden butter paddles.

After I finished the butter, I wanted to have freshly baked bread to go along with the butter, but when my second batch of bread in a week failed, I knew I had some stale yeast. Time for a trip to the Country Pantry.

As Predicted

Yes, just as I though. One of our senior does always waits until the temperature is sub-freezing to drop her kids on the ground, usually around four in the morning, too. This time was no exception. Found a pair of bucks in the barn this morning and they've already discovered the warming barrels.

It's supposed to be even colder tonight so what are the chances one (or both) of the other wide bodies in the barn will choose to kid tonight? Anyone want to place bets?

SUCCESS!

It's been 52 days since Emma calved. That's 104 milkings by hand and let me tell you, it takes a while to build up the stamina to milk the whole way through without resting. Granted, cows don't come on milking like gangbusters right out of the chute and my cow only has two working teats, but as of yesterday, her daily average output has been at 25 pounds a day...that's a cup over three gallons-- one and three-quarters in the morning and one and a half in the afternoon.

Our hands are amazing pieces of engineering , requiring numerous joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles to functions. From the tips of my fingers to where the subscapularis attaches to the bone, I have become distinctly aware of each and every moving part.

I've longed for nothing more than to walk out to the parlor, flip on the vacuum pump and attach a vintage surge milker to my cow, get clean beautiful full-fat Jersey milk from which cultured butter will be hand-crafted. From there, it's anybody's guess...melted down over bread fresh from the oven, holidays cookies, pound cake, on potatoes...the possibilities are endless...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
A number of events have unfolded over the last two months that have been most discouraging at times, but we reached a new milestone at Friday's evening milking which offered a new sense of accomplishment. After a complete restoration of the vacuum pump and the surge milker's pulsator unit as well as several deliveries from Haby's Dairy Supply, we hooked everything up and it worked. It was the first milking in 52 days that I didn't get stepped on, kicked, crapped on, peed on or a combination of all of the above.
With a closed milking system, we can now use the milk for our own consumption as there is no cow hair, hay or manure that ends up in the bucket either from the regular hand-milking action or when Emma scores a point in the put-the-foot-in-the-bucket game (which we quickly squelched with a handy figure-eight pair of hobbles I still had from my back-country packing days).
Emma's calf, we call her Gray, has a few weeks to go until weaning so she takes a gallon a day. Until now, we've been giving the rest to our fat, dumb & happy bull calves, but with the advent of the fully-functional milking system, they've been cut back to a rich skimmed milk because I'm taking what's above the creamline from now on.

The Ice Castle

Walking out the front door of the house this morning was hazardous to our health as you can see from the build-up of ice--yes, that's all ice. Those stepping stones are slicker than a freshly Zamboni'd skating rink. Everyone is snug in their barns, huts and shelters. Even Andy finally gave in and took shelter.

As much as I love to hang laundry on the line and and not waste energy, it will be a while until the clothes go back out on the line.

You can see how thickly the ice has built up on the Dogwood tree.
And just what do the humans do when it's so nasty outside to the point school is even canceled for the day? Why, they curl up with the critters and take a nap!