Memorial weekend already!

Got some kid pictures finally.  Only the two dairy goats had kids this year.  Tara and Samson are out of Toffee, and the triplets are out of Sprinkles. 

 Toffee had quite the time giving birth.  She had Samson first, a fairly easy birth, although I had to pull a bit, he was a big baby!  Then almost a whole hour later, Tara came out. When I went back in to check on Toffee and Samson, here was another thing laying behind Toffee.  Looked like a capsule. Tara was fully inside the birth sack, legs folded, still attached umbilical cord and all.  I quickly opened the sack so she could come to life, which she did, and all was almost well.  Since Toffee had Samson an hour earlier, she decided that was her only kid.  She pretty much ignored Tara, barely licked her, and didn't want anything to do with her.  Still barely looks at her now at two weeks old.  The only time that I can see she lets her nurse is when I tie Toffee up in the milk stand and feed her some grain.  Then Tara jumps up there and gets her belly full.  I do that morning and evening. She must be getting a little more than that, or she wouldn't still be doing well. She must sneak a quick drink when her brother is drinking when I'm not around.    

The triplets are doing quite well, almost two months old already! With only these 5 kids, I am spending time with them, and they are friendly.  I must say, it's been nice taking a break from kidding on the cashmere side.

  I am selling the buck I have now.  I just don't like the looks of most of the kids out of him.  For one thing he has wattles, and I totally dislike those.  For over 20 years I've had clean necked goats, I don't want to start in with wattles in my herd now.  He's only 4 years old, very lightly used, so he has plenty of breeding years left in him.  He does have impressive horns, I will say that.

 You can't see his wattles with all the hair on his neck, but when he's shed out, and also with his kids, they are very visible.  Being white, he doesn't stay clean with his buckly antics.  He's hard to catch, but once caught he is easily handled.  He'll eat out of your hand if you are on one side of the fence and he's on the other. Once you are in his pen with him, he's elusive.   His fleece is nice, he's too nice to go to the auction, but that is where he is headed in a couple of weeks if he doesn't sell.  I have an ad on Craigslist, nothing so far, but one can hope.

Now I am going to be on the hunt for a new buck with short guard hairs, no wattles and lots of cashmere. Color doesn't really matter. Sam is the first white buck I've ever had.   Others have been black, red, badger, and a tan color. My herd has all colors in it. Including white not from him.

It has warmed up nicely today.  Sunny and near 70 degrees.  I'm heading out now to work in the flower beds.  I relinquished control of the veggie beds to my husband John so I can get the flower beds looking good again.  So many things to do, and I want to take better care of the animals and get this yard looking nice again.  I can't do it all, and since John loves to garden, he can do the majority of it.

Here is my latest weaving project.  A set of pinwheel kitchen towels.  Very soon they will be listed in my GoImagine shop.  This time of year, there isn't much time for spinning or weaving, I'm outside more often, especially now that I'm feeling better and my body has recovered from all the injuries Skippy caused running into me.  Never take walking for granted!  It is so nice to be able to move freely again around here.  Still a bit stiff but getting better every day.  I can get down on my hands and knees again for the first time in over a year.  Life is good!!

Hope you all have a good weekend, and the weather is behaving itself wherever you are. Thanks for reading this!
  

Happy May

 April went by fast!  Spring is here, it seems.  We usually get a June cold front around the 8th, which sometimes means snow, (sometimes a lot), and other times a mild cool down for a day. Right now the grass is green, the daffodils are blooming, the wild Glacier Lilies are in bloom, and I see lots of buds on the Oregon Grape that covers our whole place.  A sea of yellow pretty soon!  Smells good, too.  The dang deer are coming in and eating every blade of grass as soon as it comes up, so the goats don't have anything to eat.  I have to feed them hay till the grass is growing faster than the deer can eat it.  Skippy isn't much help; he rarely barks at them anymore.  Someday I want to put up an elk fence around the perimeter, which is around 8 to 10 feet tall, to keep out all the deer and other critters and then the goats will have plenty of grass and things to eat. We are surrounded by literally thousands of acres of forest service land, with plenty of food for the deer, but they come in here on our little patch of 20 acres and eat this. They feel safer in here with the fence that mountain lions and other predators don't go over.  A bear did breach it last fall.  Squished it right down to the ground almost.  Before I do start letting the goats out into the big world, I will have to go around and check the whole fence line and do some repairs.  The deer also land on it sometimes and push it down.  We had to rescue a deer last week that got caught in it.  At midnight we were out there in our pjs and bathrobes releasing a deer that got its back legs stuck in it, jumping and pulling its legs forward too fast and sticking them through the wire. Skippy was barking fiercely at that incident. He let us know something was amiss out there. We have a woven wire field fence around the perimeter of our place. The deer is fine; she's back to jumping again and coming in the yard and everywhere.  Just had some hair missing on the underside of her legs.  

It's almost time to start getting the garden ready to plant.  I usually don't plant anything till late May, even as late as July and we get a good harvest of everything.  Of course, there are always one or two almost crop failures.  Not a total one, but not a good one either. 

Finally got all the goats combed, except one.  He won't let me catch him for some reason.  He's always cooperated before, usually coming into the combing room and jumping up on the stand with no problems.  For some reason this year he doesn't want to get combed.  Maybe he knows his fleece has gotten too coarse and he'll end up in the freezer, who knows. It's very annoying. I can't get him into the smaller catch pen, he knows what that is for, so he stays back even with food offered and won't get within arm's reach of me. He's a big goat, too.  One of the 4 big wethers I have.  He's the biggest one.  You can tell he doesn't miss any meals at all.  He is quite fat.  The other three are of a good weight, but he's verging on obese. Last year his fleece was still quite soft. He must know something I don't yet. Oh well.

I've been doing some spinning and weaving lately.  A friend and I did a weave-along, and we both actually got our projects done in the allotted time! Towels are what we both made, with a pinwheel pattern.  I will be adding the two I made to my new Go Imagine shop pnf cashmeres.  Gotta get some good pictures of them first.  I really struggle with taking good product photos.  

Time to get to work.  Hope you are all staying safe in the areas that are having all the bad weather, and everyone have a great day!   

Some pictures

Finally got some pictures on here!  This year I took a break from kidding any cashmeres and just bred the two dairy goats. Sprinkles had triplets on March 30th. Cute little squirts. Toffee, Sprinkles' sister, is due mid-May.  They are a total mix of breeds. The Doe is a mix of just about every dairy breed, plus a little Kiko and Boer thrown in. The buck is an Alpine Nigerian Dwarf cross. I think these kids have a bit of everything.  Their ears sure are cute! 

Here are the baby blankets I wove on the floor loom, (they are just displayed on the rigid heddle loom), for John's niece who had a baby boy on the 4th of this month. Got the "happy baby" 8/2 cotton color kit from Cotton Clouds and wove these up using my own design. Hopefully they get well used!   

This is an interesting cloud formation in the valley below our house. I took this picture from the hill behind our house.  I swear this is a real photo, taken with my phone, no photo shopping or AI used.  It was kinda spooky, very cool, the ETs are here!  

And lastly, here's a fairly recent picture of Skippy at about 18 months old.  We got him to be an LGD, but that he is not.  He chases the goats whenever he can, he goes after the chickens.  I can't trust him around any of the animals.  John likes him, otherwise he'd be in a new home.  He might end up in a new home anyway if he doesn't shape up.   

I do have a new online shop up and running.  I gave up on Etsy.  They have become too big, too focused on shareholder profits and don't seem to really care about handmade anymore.  Just who sells the cheapest, most product. I'm not selling my items cheaply. I'd rather keep them myself or give as gifts than lose money just to make a sale.  I put way too many hours and work into making these to sell at a loss, that doesn't even make sense.  I get very little profit as it is at the prices I do sell them for, just slightly above breaking even.  So I closed my etsy shop and moved to Go Imagine.  

Go Imagine is only in the USA so far, but since I haven't sold anything to any other country for a couple of years, that's ok. Everybody is squawking about the tariffs here, but other countries have had pretty steep tariffs on goods from here for years. Customers pay way more in taxes and shipping to get my products than the actual item costs. The link for it is: New Shop   I have 10 items in there now, and I plan to add 10 more soon.  Adding a listing takes a while, there are a lot of things to fill out, pictures to add, and all of that. I still don't seem to be able to take a good product photo for the life of me.  I can get pretty good photos of scenery, animals and all of that, but my creations? Not so much.  Don't know why that is, but I keep practicing.  One of these days...

Well, that's it for now.  Please check out my shop and let me know what you think about it. I'll make myself a note to check back here for comments, which I always forget to check.  I write a post, then forget about it till the next post.  Not a good way to do a blog. 

 I'll be adding some more things pretty soon.  Maybe some handspun cashmere yarns, and some kitchen towels made out of cotton.  

Have a great day and thanks for reading this!