First Kids of the Year

On January 10th of this year, Sprinkles had her first babies, twins. Milo, the top photo, and Jan (because she was born in January). The problem was, Sprinkles came into heat in August and her triplet brothers, who were bucklings, got out and in with her and her mom and sister.  Luckily, she was the only one in heat. So, these two are totally inbred.  Milo wasn't right from the beginning; he would just stand around and not move much. Jan seemed fine.  Sprinkles is a good mom, especially since she is a first-timer.   

These two were born on the 10th, and we went into a deep freeze on the 11th.  One night it was 30 degrees below zero.  For a week I was going out every two hours with a hot water bottle and putting it in with them in their "baby box" day and night.  I didn't even sleep in my bed, just dozed in the recliner each night.  You might be wondering why I didn't have a heat lamp or bring them inside instead of going that route.  We live off-grid, and a heat lamp takes way too much electricity. I figured in the long run; it would be easier to do the hot water bottle.  They survived in fine shape. 

You can see in this photo; Milo is standing off by himself.  He always did that, and when he went to nurse, most of the time he didn't take in much milk. The photo below was on one of the not so cold nights. Sprinkles has her head in by the hot water bottle, and the kids are on each side of her outside.  I did move them inside the box after I took this.  There is a hay bale in front of half the box to block the cold.  Anyway, the kids survived the cold in good shape, with Sprinkles staying warm with her head in the box with them.  After the cold snap ended, I had a good night's sleep in my bed again.  

Twenty-one days after they were born, I went out to feed in the morning, and Milo was gone.  He had passed away during the night.  I figured he would, he was getting weaker by the day.  After I found him, I did a necropsy to see what was going on inside of him.  He didn't stand a chance, a fluid-filled heart that was quite large, and some strange intestine arrangements.  

Jan seems fine, nice and sturdy and full of energy.  I think her brain might be wired wrong, she is very flighty and nervous.  But, when I do get a hold of her, she calms down and lets me pet her.  I just need to pay lots of attention to her every day. Her grandma, Olga, is the same way.  In fact, I am tired of dealing with her. Once Sprinkles' sister Toffee has her kids the end of May, Olga is going to freezer camp. I am literally the only person on the planet that can get anywhere near her, and that is only if everything is normal and in place. If there is another person anywhere that she can see, she heads for the hills.  Once she is in the milking stand, she's fine, and easy to milk, but getting her there is an ordeal most of the time. She's not the highest producing doe, either. She's got some Boer in her and that made her milk production not as much as a full dairy doe. So, after 7 years of dealing with this, I am done.  I can't go anywhere for more than a day trip; I have to be there to milk her. It will be hard to do her in, but at the same time, it will be a relief to be able to have a bit of freedom. 

This is the first time in the 22 years I've been raising goats that I've had kids born in January. Last time, too! Also, the first time I didn't wether the male dairy kids, that won't be happening again, either.  Those three went to freezer camp, too. Live and learn.

Now we are having snow and regular winter temperatures, so all is well.  We had an abnormally warm start to the winter; the ground was bare on Christmas Day. That's rare.  I am looking forward to Spring and the ground being bare again.  Lots of projects coming this year!  Especially to do with the goats. Some big changes coming. 

Hope you are having a great day!      

 

Finally, Some Pictures

                                           Here's a cashmere shawl I wove. Totally handspun and dyed yarns. This is in my Etsy shop, and yes, it's expensive. It's a nice size, 81 inches long and 22 inches wide. It's warm, too.

                                        A Cashmere clasped weft wall hanging I wove, all handspun and hand dyed. This is at a friend's lake cabin. Traded this for a spinning wheel.

                                       Another Clasped weft item I wove. Handspun yarn and hand dyed. This is now in London, England. A commission.

               A HUGE spinning commission I'm still working on. Should have it all done by the end of May. Southdown wool off 14 sheep.  

                             A Tencel scarf I wove out of handspun yarn.  This was fun.

                           Cinnamon and Skippy. It took Cinnamon, the smallest goat on the place, to stand up to Skippy first before any of the other goats would.  She was Rocky's buddy, always beside him, and so when he died and we got Skippy last fall, she just accepted him as the new guardian dog.  Since he was just a puppy, guarding wasn't (and still isn't) top of his list.  He's now 7 months old. Starting to think about actually protecting the place, but not entirely.  He's not confident enough yet to be of any real service.  He does bark once in a while, but not much.  Which is a good thing, for now.  He has a very big, deep voice when he does bark.  I think once he's an adult, he's going to be an incredible guardian.  He is very smart.  Understands everything I tell him, catches on to things very fast. And, he's going to be huge!  He's a Grand Shepard, which is a mix of Anatolian, Saint Bernard and Mastiff. All giant dogs. Should scare everything and everyone away.  If we both survive his puppyhood stage, we'll be set. This morning he crashed into my leg and did some damage, I felt some ripping going on.  At least it was below my knee and I can still walk ok.  A couple of months ago, he crashed into my knee and threw everything out of whack. I couldn't walk after that one.  Had to use crutches for a while. He was trying to get away from Olive the goat, both times.  She has it in for him every time he goes in the pen.  I told him this morning he has to stay at least 20 feet away from me from now on when we are in the pen. We'll see if that happens.  He goes in there while I'm feeding.  

Well, that's it for this post.  I will be posting a bit more regularly now, with pictures. Have a great day!    
 

Time is just flying by!

 Sorry for not answering the comments.  I haven't even looked at this since I wrote the last post.  Quinn, I hope your wether is ok.  I haven't ever had that happen with any of my goats. 

I still haven't added any pictures on my computer.  I just haven't been in a blogging mode at all this fall. I will try to be better next year.  Hard to believe it's the end of the year already!  Christmas is a week away!

On a sad note, we lost Rocky, our other guard dog in October.  Here he is with Cinnamon, his best buddy, and Junior, one of the other kids.  Cinnamon hung out with him more than the goats, and she really didn't know what to do when he died.  When I went out to feed that morning, she came out of the stall where he was yelling and yelling, telling me he was gone.  I went in there, and sure enough, he was laying there dead.  He went downhill pretty fast.  He had an enlarged heart, something myocardiopathy.  We did get a new puppy, but he's got a long ways to go before he'll be a guardian. Luckily, the neighbors rescued an older Great pyr this summer, so she's been keeping the predators away all along their property line, which is the direction the predators used to come in from. Skippy only 6 months old. I don't have a picture of him on here yet.  He's a Grand Shepard, a mix of Anatolian, St Bernard and Mastiff.  He's a fawn color with more of a st bernard face.  I have him in the yard instead of in with the goats.  Instead of just being with the goats, I'm going back to having a "property protector", so he'll take care of everything.  Like Nellie was.  He's already been attacked by the adult goats.  The kids he's wanting to chase some, so that is not good. It took Cinnamon to stand up to him and butt him in her little way before the adult goats would stand up to him.  They ran at first.  The dairy goats still run from him, they haven't had any guard dogs over by them since they have a barn that can be closed up.

Dealing with a puppy is a lot of work!  I haven't had to do that since Rocky and Cloud 9 years ago. Skippy is a fast learner and knows the word no pretty good.  He also sits on command.  We're getting there, but this next year will be interesting. I hope we both survive!  Skippy is going to be a huge dog, he's already very solid and heavy.  He crashed into me trying to get away from one of the goats while we were in the pen feeding just before Thanksgiving, that bungled up my knee pretty good.  It's finally good enough I can walk normally and weave and spin again.  Still a bit painful, but it is improving slowly but surely. Now I keep an eye on him all the time, since he's not the most coordinated beast yet.  Although for his size and age, he's somewhat graceful at times.

Well, I hope everyone has a good rest of the year, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!  I'll try to be more consistent in posting next year, and include lots of pictures, but who knows.  Time goes by so fast, it seems it's a couple of months between postings!  Who knows what next year, or even the rest of this year, will bring.  Hang onto your hats!

Kids and Weaving

 Three of the nine kids born this year in May.  First time ever having goats with wattles on their necks.  I've always had clean necked goats, but got a buck through a picture without seeing him in person, and his cashmere covered up the wattles. I'm getting used to them. Most of the kids look alike this time.  I have a very hard time telling who's who.  Junior is the first, and then I think that's Mariah and Curly next.  They are waiting for me to load up the hay wheelbarrow, then let them all in to eat on the hay bale while I feed the rest of the herd.  I am feeding the big square bales, which are 3 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet in size.  Weighing around 1250 lbs. 

I have 40 goats right now, counting the dairy crew.  Some will be going to freezer camp pretty soon.  Remind me to always castrate the boys from the dairy goats.  This was the first year I didn't, and boy are they stinky.  I don't need any more bucks.  Although next year I might be looking for a new cashmere buck.  We'll see how the fleece is on these kids come combing time.

The garden is still going, although it is starting to wind down.  Did you know that if you leave the base of the cabbage plant in the ground after cutting off the cabbage, it will grow a circle of little cabbages around the edge and you'll get a whole new crop of baby cabbages, about the size of a baseball, up to a softball?  The plant is doing double duty.  Can't beat that! Perfect little individual sized meals.

Here is a wall hanging I wove earlier this year from my leftover bits of cashmere handspun yarn. |The throw on the chair is also woven from handspun Cashmere.  I traded the wall hanging for a spinning wheel. A Louet Victoria.  Still have the throw, it is a wonderful thing to wrap up in when I get a little chilly. I really do love weaving. It's funny how it took such a long time to start doing it, I avoided it, said I would never do it, too much math.  Now I absolutely love weaving, don't pay a whole lot of attention to the math part, it's not as bad as I thought it would be.  I'm still learning how to read a draft. I usually make up my own patterns after looking at something.  

This summer I haven't had much time for spinning or weaving, too many outside projects to do.  I have the fleeces from 14 sheep I'm spinning, which is taking a very, very long time.  I did warn the owner that it would take me probably a year to get it all done.  I think the month of October I will focus on that and crank out a lot of yarn. 

We were without internet since the 12th of September.  Had to upgrade the system and the old plan ended on the 12th, we didn't get the new one installed until yesterday. This plan has more data and much faster speeds. Our old equipment was pretty outdated.  

Well, I think that's it for now.  Gotta get more pictures onto this computer so I can show you more of what I've been up to the last couple of years...   

Ok, so I wasn't back

 Now I might be posting more regularly. The goats are all doing well. There were nine kids born this year, only three of which are bucklings, now wethers.  The only thing is, the buck I got has wattles, which I didn't see in the pictures I saw of him. (I bought him by the pictures, not seeing him in person first) So now 8 of the kids have wattles.  I don't really like those, I like clean necked goats.  We'll see if they "grow" on me or not.  They don't go against any conformation ratings in the cashmere goat association listing so at least it's not a problem if I were to start showing the goats again.  Which probably won't happen anyway. I just need to get over my aversion to the wattles.

This has been an interesting year so far.  I'm done hosting hipcamp, 7 years was a good run. Now I want to do something different. With more neighbors up here, the joy of hosting has left.  On to bigger, better things...

The garden is starting to produce really well.  Got a late start planting, but it seems the plants know when to put on their fruit no matter what their size.  The pea plants are tiny little things compared to ones in the past, but they are putting on lots of pea pods. We did get a good cauliflower crop, asparagus was plentiful, and the green beans are now coming on.  We are even getting strawberries from June bearing plants now, and it's almost the end of August!  The carrots are getting bigger. I finally did a good job of thinning them this year, so am looking forward to some good sized carrots in another month.  Hopefully nice straight ones, not strangely twisted, gnarly things.

My old computer crashed, so this new one doesn't have a single photo on it yet to upload onto here.  Soon I will get some transferred.  I've gotten away from an online presence the last couple of years.  Now I think I might get back into it a bit.  

Weaving is fun, I've been making a few things.  I have a huge wool spinning commission I'm working on.  14 sheep's worth of wool.  That is taking a while to do, what with everything else I've got going on around here. It's easy spinning, so it's fun to do anyway. I did tell the guy that it was going to take months and months to do, and he was okay with that.  I am going to attempt to have it all done by the end of this year.  If not all, most of it anyway.  Then I will have it all done by March for sure, unless something drastic happens.

Rocky, the LGD is doing well on his own.  He's going to be 9 years old in October!  Where did that time go? Seems he was just a pup not that long ago.  Since we have neighbors on three sides now, the predator load has gone down a lot.  They don't come in close to our place much any more.  

Well, next post will have photos, I promise, and it won't be 6 months down the road either. Hope everyone is doing well.  

I'm back!!!  I might start posting regularly now again. It's been awhile!  I've been weaving a lot, doing some spinning, and hand dehairing cashmere. A very time consuming occupation!  

Since last writing, Cloud has passed away. Rocky is now guarding everyone solo. We have more neighbors, so the predators have moved to less populated areas for the most part. The guineas have decreased.  An owl or two got a couple of them, one froze her legs off in December when it got down to -25 degrees.  Not sure why she was the only one damaged, she was beside the others up in the tree.  They are all fine. We now have 5 guineas is all.  

The goats are all doing quite well.  I've downsized the herd by quite a bit. Counting everyone, there are 30 goats on the place. I have 20 goats that I am harvesting their cashmere from. That's about half or more of what I used to do!  But, with feed prices doubling, me getting a bit older, and lots of things going on, having fewer goats is a good thing right now.  

I'm really enjoying weaving. I think I like that better than spinning and way more than crocheting for sure.  I still love to spin, but weaving is the best now.  I do get Analisis paralyses when I look at all the colors of yarns I have.  So many to choose from, I have a hard time deciding what to do.  Then all of a sudden one day, something clicks and a project is created. I've still got my Etsy shop, Wild Mountain Handmade that I have some things listed in. I seem to sell more locally and to the Hipcampers that stay here, than on Etsy. But I do have a few sales.  I just did a bit of an update on there and will be adding some handspun yarn again soon. One thing about it, the fiber arts is not a fast modality. It is rather Zen like when you get a rhythm going and things are going well though. 

The hipcamp thing was a lot slower last year than the previous two years. There are quite a few new sites that are less remote than our place on there now, so I think that is keeping campers away from here.  We'll give it another year or two and see what happens.  It's been wonderful meeting all the campers and visiting with them. That has been fun! Everyone has been quite nice, and they've kept a clean campsite, so my job cleaning after they leave has been pretty easy.  

Well, that's the update for now. I'll post again pretty soon with some pictures. Babies will be born starting next month and into April, so there will be pictures of those. What I've woven, too. Have a great day!

Kids

 Here are the dairy kids, Max is on the bench, his brother Romeo is on the ground beside him, then Bianca is in front, and Buster is the black and tan one with tiny ears.  They are all healthy and very active!  Max is the friendliest, he comes right up to me to be petted.  The other three aren't so sure about it.  All four have the same dad, my Kiko buck, with Max and Romeo out of Olga, and Buster and Bianca out of Speckles. 

Timmy the house goat was outside, but now he's back in for a few days till it warms up again.  We got 2 inches of snow and down to 22 degrees last night, and it's supposed to stay below freezing at night till Thursday, so he's in till it warms up again.  This round he doesn't have free range of the house, he's having to stay in the big kennel with supervised outings.  He discovered the house plants, and was getting into all kinds of mischief before I put him outside before. Luckily my husband is on vacation for a couple of weeks, so he's taking care of Timmy. 

Yesterday I got to get away for the day and went up to Libby to their inaugural fiber festival they had.  It was fun.  Not a whole lot of people, but enough to make it an enjoyable day. 

I am so enjoying weaving!  Too bad I waited for so many years to start on it.  But, when the timing is right, it happens. 

I'm almost done combing the goats.  Only 3 more to go.  I am spinning up all the icky cashmere I got back from the mill a few years ago.  I decided to spin it into rug yarn and make a cashmere rug out of it!  I will post a picture of it when I get it done later this year.

Well, that's all for now, hope you are having a good spring!  Or, fall if you are in the southern hemisphere.