December Already!

    Well, the snow did melt quite a bit.  We still have about 6 inches or so, but that's way down from the almost two feet we started out with!  Now our road is pretty much solid ice.  Glad I don't have to drive it every day.  I will have to go get a big round bale of hay this week-end, so the chains will have to be put on the truck.
    Today was a nice sunny day.  I've started the trimming of the goat hooves for their winter pedicure.  The wether pen is done, and today I did a couple of the does in the main pen.  I'll have everybody done by Sunday.  Lots of little feet out there!  188 hooves all together.  I've almost wore out the orange hoof trimmers I got 10 1/2 years ago when I first got my goats.  They've held up well through all the trimmings.
   It's hard to believe this year is almost over with already.  It's been an eventful year, that's for sure!   Lots of interesting events here on the farm.  Getting my interns has been the highlight, I think.  It has been so extremely wonderful having help with all the projects needing done around here.  The goat pens are the cleanest they've been in two years, and they all have enough shelter now, more than enough, actually.  There's room for expansion! :-)  With 19, soon to be 20, does pregnant, there will be plenty of new kids that will need housing next year.  The last week in March, especially around the 25th, is going to be a busy one!  Kids will be popping out left and right.  Hope the weather is good that week.
   I'm almost done with dehairing outside cashmere for this year.  Then I can get to mine, which I should have all dehaired by Christmas!  At long last.  I have two years worth of my own cashmere to dehair now,  then I'm shutting down the machine till Spring.  Next year I'm doing mine first, then I'll do other people's.  Somehow I let myself get talked into doing everyone else's cashmere before doing my own, when the whole reason I got this machine in the first place was to do mine.  But, not anymore, mine comes first. ☺  I'll be happy to do others' after I'm done with mine.  It's been a good learning experience.  I've seen a good cross-section of the cashmere on this Continent, and mine is as good as anyone else's, and it dehairs easier than most, so I've got some good goats to work with!  I'm a happy person.
   Now that the Holidays are upon us, I hope everyone has a wonderful month!    
    
  

Winter is Here!!!!

   It is COLD out! 8 degrees at 8pm.  It has been snowing all day today, 9 inches on top of a settled base of 15 inches.  We've had snow for only 5 days and I'm ready for Spring already.  Sunday night and Monday we got 16 inches, then a break, then 5 more on Wednesday, then more today. 
  Things could get quite interesting next week as it's supposed to warm way up.  I hope a lot of this melts, we are already out of room for plowed snow on our access road.  It's pretty narrow.  This is the amount we usually have in March, not the start of winter! 
  I took the runner sled out this afternoon and did a run down our driveway, which is a very steep hill.  That was fun!  I need to wax the runners though, I didn't go very fast.  I'll try it again tomorrow.
  I'm sure glad the goats have good housing this year.  For once I'm not too worried about them in this cold.

 This picture was taken on Tuesday, before all the snow today!  We are getting way too much snow!

    Here is Luna, one of this year's kids with all her cashmere on.  This will be easy to dehair next Spring, no long guard hairs!  I call her Looney, she's such a wild girl.  I don't like having goats I can't just walk up to, but her and her mom are fairly wild.  Once I get a hold of them, then they are okay, but they sure don't want to be caught!
     I'm not even attempting to run the dehairing machine in this cold.  I'll wait till Sunday when it's warmer.  Now I'm spinning and crocheting, in between all the shoveling, etc.  Ah, winter.  One is supposed to be able to slow down a bit, but not around here with it snowing all the time!  Oh well, it could warm up and all of this melt in a month, too.  We'll see.
   Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!    

Ready For Winter

   Well, I think I'm ready for winter now.  The goats are all situated, everything is picked up and cleaned up, and the does are all bred except for one.  Somehow I missed her heat cycle this last time, even though I was watching her pretty closely.  So, next time around she will get put in with a buck.  It's probably a good thing she will be bred later.  She seems to have her kids in the very early morning hours, which I miss most the time, so if it's in the middle of April, it will be warmer, and hopefully they won't freeze like the last ones did.  I just barely saved the little boy, and the girl was already dead when I got out there.  So I really don't want that to happen again! 
   Today was a beautiful sunny day in the upper 40's.  I got all the gates into the hayshed re-done so they swing easily, then dehaired all afternoon.  Now that the days are short, I have to quit dehairing at 4pm so I have time to do the chores before it gets dark. I can't start till noon, so it's short days for dehairing now.  Good thing I'm almost done with outside orders!  Then I can finally do my own! Yippee!!!

   Tonight just before dark as I was filling water buckets, I watched the local Murder (flock) of Ravens, 36 of them! do their nightly fly-by.  They have a rookery, or whatever you call the nesting grounds of ravens, over on the other side of the hill behind us somewhere.  They always take a nightly group flight in a big circle around this area.  Kind of eerie when they fly over enmasse like that.  Especially when they call out occasionally.  Spooky!  Someday I'm going to go find their rookery and see what it looks like around there.
 
   Well, I'm off to spin some more yarn and crochet some mitts for a customer.  More as it happens....

Hunting Season

Today was the first day of the general hunting season around here.  I didn't hear a shot all day, which is nice.  It's bucks only this year, so there aren't as many choices for the hunters.  I haven't seen a buck up here since early summer.  There are plenty of does around.  They are getting into the gardens and even right up by the front door.  I swear if we left the door open they would walk right in.  The dogs are afraid of them since grandma deer used to attack them.  I don't think she made it through the spring this year.  I haven't seen her since April.  I think a mountain lion got her.  There for a while, about every three days, another one of the "gang" that hung out here would disappear.  Kind of sad that grandma didn't make it, she had been around for a few years.  Although now she can't bring any new generations of deer in to learn to eat all our vegetation.  She was a big deer, too!
   The fall colors sure are pretty.  Looking out "across the way" to the other side of the draw, it's all golden with the larch and aspen trees turning color.  We have plenty of aspens and larches on our property, too, so it's a beautiful time of year.  Makes me wish I still had a horse to ride.  This is my favorite time of the year for riding.  Oh well, life changes, goats take over, and the old days are gone forever.  I can still hike all over the area, it's just not as fast as on horseback.
  We are having a pretty good rain right now.  Hope all the goats are in their shelters!   They are so mean to each other, it's unbelievable.  One goat will take over the whole barn area and not let anyone else in, even though there is a good 15 feet of open space to share.  Glad I have lots of little "pallet" houses out there.  They actually work better than a regular barn.  The low ceiling keeps their body heat in better, it's a small space, so they stay warmer easier.  They are easy to build and tear down, and move.
  Well, that's it for now.  Things are coming together quite nicely around here.  I'm a happy camper these days. :-)  

Busy Times

  Lots of things have been happening around here lately!  Colin is almost done with the pen cleaning, which I'm sure he's quite happy about.  He is a great worker and a huge help around here.
   The deer have eaten the garden, so that is all but done now.  I still have to get the carrots out of there before the ground freezes.  We haven't had a killing frost yet, so if the deer hadn't gotten in, we'd still have food coming.  The apples are starting to get nice and ripe.  I made some applesauce today, yum! 
   I'm almost done with the last batch order of cashmere, then I'm on to the individual fleeces, which will be great!  I did a little bag of my combined fleece from way last year.  I did separate out the different fleeces, and came up with some nice variations in shades of brown now.  Since they didn't get my 2010 harvest dehaired at the mill before they quit dehairing, I haven't had time to do it yet.  But that will change here pretty soon.  Then I will have a nice assortment of natural colors in my fleeces.  I am getting excited about that!  White, cream, silvery gray, a couple of shades of brown/taupe, it's going to be pretty nice.
   It's breeding season now.  All four dairy goats are bred, at least they all visited a buck.  I will wait till their next heat cycle to see if they all "took" and are really bred.  The end of the month, all the cashmere does will be ready to breed.  15 of them will be bred this year.  There will be babies everywhere next spring.  It will be a fun time.  There is nothing cuter than a baby goat!  I'll put lots of pictures on the website.
   It sure is nice to have an extra set of hands around here.  This place is starting to come together nicely.  The goat pens are almost done.  Then it will be feeder building time.  I'm going to re-do some of the pen configurations to make it easier to feed and handle the goats.
  I'm finally going to haul some hay next week.  I haven't been making enough money dehairing other people's cashmere to get any hay money saved up, so I've been a bit panicky lately.  I was at my wit's end trying to figure out where enough money was going to come from to buy the winter's supply of hay, when I got a call from a friend who has goats too, and she offered to send me some money to get the dairy goat's supply in for the winter.  Thank-you J.!   I can't get to their barn once the ground gets wet and snowy with a vehicle to put hay in, and I really didn't want to have to carry 3 tons of hay, bale by bale, up the driveway and around to their barn.  I don't think I could do that and survive to tell about it.  But, now I can go get their supply of hay next week and at least have that taken care of.
  Our road isn't conducive to pulling a trailer full of hay up in the winter time.  It's too steep and slippery.  Once there is ice on it, it will be practically impossible.  I'm not sure what I'll do about the cashmere's hay yet.  I'll get the dairy goat's hay in and then worry about the other.  That will be 15 tons, which is $1800.  I could sell the goats, but then I wouldn't have any cashmere to work with and sell, so there would be no point in having the dehairing machine.  I've worked pretty hard to get the lines I have now, and my cashmere is easy to dehair and spin, so I really don't want to have to give it all up now!  My fiber CSA  shares are starting to sell, one at a time.  If all those sold, then I'd have my hay money.  It will all work out in the end, somehow, some way. 
  I do love dehairing and working with cashmere!  From raising the goats to spinning, to crocheting the cashmere into wonderfully soft accessories, it's all good.  What's that saying?  "Do what you love and the money will follow"?  It's following a bit too slowly right now. :-)  But, I've made it this far, so I expect I'll continue to make it, day by day.  I've got lots to be thankful for, it's a good life up here, even if it does get to be a bit challenging once in a while.   I'm healthy, all the animals are healthy, I have helpers now, I'm doing what I love, I live in a great place, it's all wonderful!

September Already!

This year is going by way too fast!  There are just not enough hours in the day any more, it seems.
  My helpers are here and getting settled in.  It is so wonderful to have some help around here!!  The goat pens are getting cleaned out one, by one.  Colin is doing a great job!  The goats are happy with their clean pens now.  The mountain of poop is getting quite large.  Plenty for everyone who wants some for their gardens.
  Colin is getting pretty good at milking now.  He's still not getting quite all of it out at a time, but the goats are getting used to him now and are starting to be a bit more cooperative.  Miss Dottie still can be a real pain.  She just does not do well with change at all.
  Heidi is busy teaching school.  I think she is going to be one of the best teachers in the country in the coming years!  She's coming up here and helping out a bit on the week-ends, getting used to the goats, and they are getting used to her.  Teaching all week doesn't leave much time for working around here.  She needs time to do things around their house on the week-ends.
   The dehairing is going okay.  I'm in a big push to get a couple of orders done by the end of next week.  Don't know if I'll have them done, or not.  Each batch of cashmere is different and they take different amounts of time to dehair, so trying to keep to a schedule isn't really working all that well.  Batches that I think will go fast, don't at all, and the ones that do go faster are rare.
  I have quite a bit to do before I shut down for the winter!  I'm done taking in new customers now.  When I get done with the ones that are scheduled now, I'm done for this year.  I still haven't got to do my own fiber yet.  I did a few fleeces a couple of months ago, but now I'm back to doing everyone else's again.  I did do some kid fleece, and it turned out really nice.  I spun it up into yarn and am now making a cowl with it.  It's so soft!!
  The goats are getting their winter coat on pretty good now.  Even the horses are starting to get fluffy already.  The geese are starting to fly over heading south now.  Nellie sure doesn't like them!  She's out there barking so hard I think there's got to be something major going on, so I go outside and here she is barking at the sky and a flock of geese flying over.
  We lost Stubby yesterday.  He was the guinea whose toes froze off a couple of winters ago.  He survived and was getting along just fine.  But yesterday the neighbor's rottweiler chased them on the driveway and I think Stubby died of a heart attack or something.  He disappeared into the woods and I haven't seen him again.  The dog didn't get him, so I don't know what happened to him.  The two remaining guineas are very quiet now.  They are also staying home now and not venturing outside the fence where they are fair game for anything.  Maybe they learned their lesson yesterday with Stubby's demise.  Rather sad...
   I think next spring we will get some new guineas and some new chickens.  There is a hen sitting on 5 eggs now, so hopefully they will hatch out around the end of the month.  These girls are all getting past their prime, so it's time for some new ones.  Maybe I'll try a different, more colorful breed this time.  The Jersey Black Giants are good birds for both eggs and meat, but I'm tired of black chickens.  It's time for some color out there.  Might even get some turkeys again.  
   Well, that's all for this post.  I'll try to remember to write sooner next time!      

Life!

     Are we having fun yet?  The days are getting shorter already.  I can't believe summer is almost over with!  It seems like it just began, and now it's winding down.  At least the temperatures have been almost perfect this week.  Not too hot, not too cold.  The sun has been shining most of the time, too.  Good for working outdoors in.
   
    Poor Astrid, her kids are driving her crazy. ☺  They are mr and miss independent, and do not listen to their mom when she's calling to them.  They can squeeze through the fence still, although it's getting pretty tight, they are struggling to get through.  They kind of just go where they want to.  At least they are getting a good variety of food.  Socks always looks so innocent, and Oksana is always right beside him saying, "who me?  I didn't do anything."  They are cute, even if they are little pains.
  This morning when I got up and looked out the window, I about had a heart attack.  The goats were all in the yard and all the gates coming into the "inner" yard were open!  I got out there very fast and made sure there wasn't major damage done.  Thank heavens there wasn't.  The poor lilac got trimmed again, but only a couple of branches and not the whole thing like in the past.  They ate one of the lily buds, but only one.  I'll still have some pretty tree lilies.  The goats did do something good while they were out.  There is patch of thistles at the top of the driveway that they ate all the tops off of, so that got rid of the seeds and flowers.  So that was good!  They didn't get to the fruit trees, either.  For once, no major damage was done.  With 28 goats being in the yard, that is pretty good!  The ones in the other pens that didn't get out were quite bummed and complaining because they weren't out, too.  Ah, goats, the most loveable, frustrating creatures on the planet. ☺

   I have re-done the website, which took 10 hours!  No wonder the website designers charge so much, it's a time consuming ordeal to do a site.  Now it's official.  I'm only doing individual fleeces and I've started a cashmere fiber CSA!  Kind of scary going in a new direction and against the norm.  It's all on the website now.  I think that doing the individual fleeces is a good thing.  The ones I've done of mine are spectacular!  It's amazing the difference they have when done by themselves.  Much more uniform and smooth looking, and the fiber is easy to work with.  It spins up beautifully!  For people with a few goats and that like to spin it themselves, this will be perfect. 
   I also found a mill in Colorado that actually likes to process cashmere!  They do a good job, too, from what I've heard so far.  He seems to know what he's doing, and is one of the few people that like to work with the cashmere.    Spring Too Fibers is the name of the mill.  So if you have fleece that you want made into yarn and you have more than a few fleeces, this is the place to send it.  If you only have a few fleeces and want to spin them yourself and want them individually done, then I'm the one to go to. ☺  Now there are starting to be choices for us cashmere raisers.

   It's almost time for my helpers to arrive!  They should be coming this next week, if all is going well.  I have a list of projects to do that will keep us all busy until the snow flies.  It's going to be good to finally be able to get all of this done! 

   I heard a wolf howl last week!  That sure set the dogs off.  Nellie was barking and howling, the neighbors dogs were barking and barking.  They don't know when to quit!  At least my dogs quit barking and listen to see what's happening.  The neighbor dogs just bark and bark, and bark.
   The wolf wasn't too close, probably a mile or so away, over across the way on the switchbacks.  They've been around for years, but the only other time I've ever heard one was on my birthday in the wee hours of the morning a few years ago.  It was fairly close, it woke me up!  Didn't bother any of the goats or other critters, just howled for a bit then left.  That was before we had Nellie, too.
   We live out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by national forest, with every predator known to man up here.  I have only lost one goat to a mountain lion, and that was 6 years ago.  Everything since then has left my critters alone.  They reduce the deer population, but do not come near my goats, chickens, or anything else.   We have an agreement, they leave me and mine alone, and I'll leave them alone.  So far everyone is holding up their end of the bargain. 

   It's time for the annual rat migration.  Two so far.  yuk!  I hope there aren't very many out there this year.  Well, that's it for now.  More as it happens.....