Wednesday, April 04, 2007

A Little Update

Well, I am working on a new blog template, so bear with me. It will be goat-themed, if I can do it correctly. I'm trying to push the limits on my web coding. And I am succeeding.

A lot has been going on lately. I will be getting some new livestock soon, and it is NOT GOATS!! You will have to wait to find out... less than a week.

L and I went to a big goat seminar on Saturday, it was wonderful. We both learned a lot.

We are still struggling 2x a day to milk Cindi. She is such a pill! I have been successful in getting her on the fitting stand by myself, and have just had to do it that way. I would love for her to be able to stand and eat in her stall, but she fights me so much and tries to run away, I have to tie her up. It's strange, because my milking has not bothered Precious or Tango, but seems to bother Cindi. I can't see any cuts or injuries on her udder, which leads me to believe she's just being a diva.

Spring sprung, which means that our outside to-do list is reading and waiting. We have been given an immense amount of wood from a construction project, so we have TONS of materials that were free for the taking. I bet it is $500 or more worth of wood. We are going to construct a buck pen and redo a hog house for shelter for the goats. I already have the electric fence charger, and need to just buy the fencing and t posts and put that up. We do already have some permanent fence.

I've also been toying with the idea of fencing off the front of the house. If you picture three pastures on the sides of our house-- one on the right, one on the left, and one in back. So they make sort of an angular U shape. Our house sits right in the middle of the U, closed off at the top by the road. We could easily fence off the front and put a gate on our driveway. It would isolate us from folks somewhat, but it would be more peace of mind. We are always worried about the neighbor dogs, the three "jobless" Great Pyrenees who make our farm their job. I am terrified that they will attack one of the goat kids. Also, if any goats got out of their pasture, that would be another fence that they would have to go through to get to the road and actually escape from our property. And MK thinks that we should turn them loose in the yard anyway and forego the mowing. : ) I bet that B agrees with that.

So we have plenty of projects, and as the temperature lapped at the 80 degree mark on the thermometer, we were motivated. However, as I woke up to 30 mph winds, with gusts up to 50 mph, 20 degree temperatures and flurries this morning, I just wanted to crawl back in bed with my cats and a book. Alas, there was a sassy goat and twin kids waiting for me to tend to them. And my day started.

But it's Wednesday! And Easter this weekend. Hopefully my Easter lilies that are erupting in my garden will not be deterred by this frost! Same for the lilacs.

2 comments:

Michael said...

We had snow today...
Happy Easter.


Take Care
Michael

Iowa Greyhound said...

What happened to spring???