Furry Snow

     We had a freezing fog one morning last week which created ice crystals on top of the snow.  It made the snow look like it had a layer of fur on it.  Pretty!  I took a walk around the upper pasture and saw all kinds of critter tracks, rabbit, grouse, mouse, and of course, deer.  No mountain lion or other predator tracks were seen, thank heavens!


This yarn I spun for one of the CSA shares.  It's hanging to dry in this picture.  Now it's in it's new home waiting to be knitted up into something wonderfully soft. 

    The does are all bred now for next Spring.  There will be lots of babies bouncing around here come March and April, even into May.  There were a couple of does that didn't take on the first try in with the buck, so they are now bred for May kids.  The week of the 24th of March will be when the majority will pop out.  A busy week that will be!  Hope the weather is nice then.
  We are having a fairly mild winter now.  After that first blast of 16 inches, it's only snowed about 5 inches more since then.  Yesterday it was 45 degrees and sunny!  That melted a bunch more snow.  We are down to about 5 inches in most places now.  I am rather enjoying the lack of snow.  A half inch here and there to freshen things up, and I'll be happy. :-)
  The goats are all in full fleece now.  I love going out and petting them this time of year.  They are so soft.  Little Oksana is still squeezing through the cattle panel squares and getting into everything.  I think she's ready for another growth spurt, then she won't be able to get out.  She can barely get out now, it's a pretty tight fit!  Her brother Socks quit a long time ago.  He got stuck one day, luckily I was here!, and decided that it wasn't worth it to try that any more.
   I don't know how other goat raisers can keep their bucks together and not have catastrophies.  I had Hercules and Midnight in together, they grew up together so you'd think they would be okay, but once breeding season started they were fighting all the time!  Both of them ended up in pretty rough shape, so they are in seperate areas for the rest of their lives.   Every time I've tried to keep any bucks together, they end up almost killing each other.  So from now on, each buck gets to have his own space. 
   I pulled each one out and took them to a different pen out of sight of each other for breeding the does, but once they were back together again, the fighting started up again.  Never again will any two bucks be together past the age of one year.
  I'm going to have to get a new buck that is completely unrelated to anything I have here for next year.  I need "new blood" around here.  I'll cross that bridge when I get to it late next summer.  Maybe a road trip is in the works!  That would be fun.
  Well, I hope everyone has a wonderful, spectacular, Holiday Season!!  May 2012 be a year filled with Peace, Joy, Happiness, Abundance and LOVE for everyone! 

   Today was a beautiful, wonderful day!  The sun was shining, there was a little inch of new snow to freshen everything up.  It was great!  I took my interns, Colin and Heidi, up to the Rocks so they could see the spectacular view from there.  It's about a 45 minute hike up, and 35 back down.  That is, if you follow the trail as it used to be.  Sometime in the last year or so, a microburst went through there and knocked down a whole bunch of trees, so now detours are the norm.  I'm going to have to re-flag the trail so we can find it easier again.  We did some bushwhacking today. ☺  There sure is a lot of good firewood up there now, with no good way to get to it!  Bummer!! 
   Surprisingly enough, the only tracks we saw were from rabbits, squirrels, and deer.  No mountain lions, coyotes, or any other predator.  There was an old track up near the top of either a lion or wolf.  There was new snow in it, so it wasn't really clear anymore.  I thought I saw toenail prints, so that would be a wolf.  It was a big print, that's for sure!  Bigger than any dog around here.

Here are Colin and Heidi up on the Rocks.



Here is the Rocks from our place down below.  A half-moon is rising.



 Here is the view to the west from the Rocks.  Our place is tucked into the hillside below here so you can't see it from up here. 
 
     I do believe I am one of the luckiest people on the planet to be living here where I do.  There are a few inconvieniences to living here, but on days like today, they are nothing, and it is well worth it to be able to be here!  The goats love it, wandering through the woods eating all kinds of good food all summer long.  I love it, following them around through the woods, watching them enjoying their goat lives.  Winters get interesting around here sometimes, but it's beautiful. ( after we are all dug out and everyone is adjusted to the snow).
   LIFE IS GOOD!

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!