Baa Baa Baad Goat

We have been working on leash training our goats by taking them for walks to the park.  Some days they do well, some days we have to practically drag them the entire way.  It helps when Adam takes the girls and walks ahead so the kids have something to follow.  Carmen is growing a lot she is a bundle of spindly legged energy.  People who see us walking down the street are often intrigued and ask to pet the goats.  We oblige, but warn that Carmen is sassy.  She invariably lunges at the poor people and jumps up, prodding them with her stiff hooves.  Rico just sidles up, fat and agreeable.

Adam and I recently replaced the dog crate with a more permanent housing structure, a three sided lean-to made from pallets.  I thought that four feet would be high enough to deter the goats from climbing up on top.  But that Carmen, she is incorrigible! For the summer we are leaving it as is but when fall comes around Adam is going to insulate at least two of the sides. I haven't put in a permanent feeder yet but we are getting close to weaning them.

Rico and Carmen, little miss sassy pants

New Home!

They only have approximately an week separating them age-wise and yet their sizes are still very different.  I thought that Rico, being a male, would have had a growth spurt and caught up to Carmen in height.  It hasn't happened yet but maybe that is the effect of castration at such a young age.  This slow growth is making me curious about the lineage of my goats.  Rico very much looks the part of a Boer goat but I expected him to be putting on weight more quickly if that were the case.  Maybe he will escape the butcher block and I will sell him as a pet... We will see how much weight he puts on by September.

I am constantly perusing Craigslist to see if there is a deal on goats that I just can't pass up.  At this point I am leaning towards purchasing a doe and buck, so I can get Carmen serviced without taking a blood sample and going through all that business.  In theory it makes sense, if I can get a decent deal, that I would get a two goats from the same place. Keep the buck around long enough to impregnate Carmen and then send the new buck and Rico to the butcher together.  Logistically we will see what works out.  I just hope that September won't be too late in the season to find some decent goats.

In other news, Lavender is doing well. She is hopping differently, keeping her tummy aloft as she gingerly moves around her cage.  I have been trying to leave her alone for the most part, ever since Adam reached in and she snapped at him.  It could be that I am imagining it, but she seems to be enjoying herself, like this is what she was supposed to do in life.

Candace is sitting on a nest full of eggs! Last time I counted there were twelve, it could be there are more now!  I am excited for ducklings! I don't want to get too excited though, the Muscovy duck incubation period is 35 days, gasp! That is a long freaking time!  I can't tell but I think Lucy started laying too.  Both are looking ragged from breeding.  The feathers on their backs are grimy and shredded.  Ducks really get the short end of the stick with mating.  At least I don't have a water feature for Ken to drown them in as he does his stuff. It's bad enough that he is twice their size.

I have been incubating quail eggs too and the first set should hatch tomorrow... If they are going to hatch... ever.  I am not holding my breath.  The second set looked more promising when I candled them.  I might have to break down and buy an actual egg incubator.

I pickled seven quail eggs today.  I wasn't satisfied with any of the pickle mix recipes that I found or did not find.  So I kinda winged it.  I took apple cider vinegar and added sugar, salt, coriander, cloves, and ground red pepper. I microwaved it all in the mason jar and stirred, microwaved one more time just to be sure I got it hot enough and of course that was the time that I didn't watch it and it boiled over.  Then I added the hard boiled and shelled eggs to the hot mess and screwed the lid down tight.  I put the jar in the fridge and when I checked it a couple hours later the lid had sealed.  I am debating how long to wait before I try a pickled egg.  I hope to forget that they exist and surprise myself with them in a month or so.

Nothing helps me forget current projects like take my goats for a walk.  It is possible that walking the goats would be enjoyable if I did not bring my children along.  Not that my girls aren't adorable and lovely, because they are!  It's just their legs.  They have these little short legs and it takes them FOREVER to walk anywhere.  Unless, of course, you carry them.  But maintaining hold on two goat leashes and carrying one of two toddlers is a precarious endeavor.  Not that I haven't managed this task, I would not say I succeeded at it, but I have managed it out of necessity.  It requires a lot of guiding goats with your feet (to the untrained eye it might look like kicking), skillfully leveraging children onto hips and muttering frustrations always helps class up the operation.  I have tried to delegate and carry Aida while giving a tether to Mildred.  Most of the time Millie just drops the leash the moment the goat pulls against her.  The last time however, I was coaching her to hold on to it, hold on tight!  And a second later the leash was gone and she was picking herself up off the pavement in a deluge of tears.  Awwww, poor Millie.

Musky Ducks

Candace (my oldest Muscovy duck) laid her first egg, hurrah! That was on the 23rd.  I took the first three eggs and to eat and see if they were fertile.  They weren't. Then she took a break.  The she laid two more eggs. These were fertile. She took another break.  I noticed she was looking panicky and trying more vigorously to escape their pen.  I thought that perhaps she wanted to find a nest that was more secluded. I let the ducks start free ranging again.  She laid an egg behind the compost pile a few days ago and apparently abandoned it.  After two day of her not laying, I moved the egg to one of the nesting boxes in their pen.  Two days passed and nothing.  I am still letting them free range, my hope is that Candace has found a nest so sneaky that I haven't found it.  I kind of doubt it, our yard is pretty small and I know it like the back of my hand. I can still hope.

Two of my Muscovy ducks, Ken (left) and Candace (right). Candace is giving me some attitude.

All God's Creatures

So much to keep up with, our mini-farm is really coming along and this week we had a SUPER exciting new addition.  American rabbits!

Jennifurr the blue steel doe

Jefferson the white buck

Our beautiful little Americans are just that little. They were born on January 14th and weaned this past week.  I wanted to get them as young as possible so that I could become comfortable handling them before they reached full weight (a whopping ten pounds).  They won't be ready to breed until May at the earliest and until then we will be working on acclimating them and taming them down.  We are planning for a trio but wanted a little diversity so in a month *fingers crossed* we will be going over to Flying Fossil Farm to check out a litter of brand new Champagne D'argents. 

Rosey, Melanie and Betsy our amazing Ameraucana layers

Ken, Candace and Lucy our Muscovies (in the terrible early morning light)

And just because I was out there with a camera I took a couple shot of our other backyard companions.














In other animal news our quail are officially a week old and beginning to feather out.  All four seem strong and are growing fast.  Soon I will have to move them to a larger brooder!

And a larger brooder will soon be an unequivocal necessity. While scoping out quail online I perused many a hatchery, searching for one that did not require the minimum purchase of 50 quail.  I did not have luck with that but I did fall prey to Cackle Hatchery "Cackle Hatchery Surprise".  For $60.95 you get whatever they send you. But... they guarantee a sweet deal.  How could I resist? Only after submitting my order did I have the sense to consult Backyard Chickens (the best farming forum IN THE WORLD).  There was a "Cackle Hatchery Surprise" thread with over 80 pages and I read all of them.  Most people reported 40-42 birds, with a varying assortment mostly, of course of chickens, but with a few geese, ducks, turkeys and guinea fowl thrown in.  One person reported 82 birds were delivered. To my dismay, people said that they requested specifics in the comment section of their order form and most people said that it was honored.  One woman got seven turkeys!  I requested the shipping date of March 31st because according to the hatchery's calendar ducks, geese and turkeys are all available in March and according to my Google search a Thanksgiving turkey needs six or seven months to fatten up.  Part of me hopes that I am that lucky that I get a pair of geese and five turkeys and a dozen ducks and the rest a happy handful of meat chickens, layers and cute bantams.  But the sane part of me yells WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO PUT THEM?!  Luckily I did just buy a dog run (in hopes that we will get a duo of mini Manchas in the future), I guess its time we set that sucker up! 

An Optimist Does Not Give Up When Faced With His/Her Own Shortcomings

So, perhaps it was a little too optimistic for me to be able to catalog all of the progress we made on our kitchen renovation, considering it pretty much concluded with the birth of our second daughter.  But, hey, I tried! Now there is no time like the present.  I am not going to catch you up without too much exhaustive detail but I will give you the highlights.

I did a brief stint working with my husband, Adam, at a local research facility.  I made it about 10 months before I got canned for "recurring behavioral issues".  I know that I am not everybody's cup of tea and this most recent experience just proved that over and over again.

In early October I was released and a certain degree of relief came over me.  I was free to stay at home with my girls and be...  Awww! Wait. Be what?  Huh?  Yeah, when I was growing up the only thing I really wanted to be was a great mom.  Now I am a mom and I don't really know what to do with myself.  I didn't realize it a first when I started moving in the direction of urban farmer but slowly it became more and more clear.

The first thing I did after getting fired was go to a poultry show and buy a small flock of Muscovy ducks.  I ended up with three ducks and five drakes, lucky me.  A few weeks before I had purchased a Costco chicken coop.  I got to work, my daughters in tow, and put the coop together.  Then I brought the box that the duck rancher had dug out of the feed store to pack the flock in.  It was roughly 1'x1'x4' and as I carried it from the car all the ducks scooted to one side and I lost balance and the box went crashing to the ground. Whoops! A bumpier ride than anticipated but the ducks seemed like they were alright with the exception of some ruffled feathers. Mildred and Aida were enthralled.  Aida loved (loves) climbing in the small run attached to the coop and chasing poultry around.  It became evident very soon that there was a rivalry between the two older lady ducks.  Sophie (named by Mildred) hid in the coop all day and then when it got to be night and all the the other ducks wanted in she would have to vacate and wait for dark to fall before Candace (who I named, because I think Candace is a bitchy name) would let poor Sophie back in without pecking her to pieces. 

Aida and Millie helping construct the new coop

Muscovies!

Now to add a run/yard

Adam and I discussed gardening quite a bit around that time, conversations driven mostly by the giant pile of composted horse manure that sat in our driveway (provided free of charge, complete with delivery by Craigslist Angel Chuck).  So one fall weekend while the weather was rather nice we demolished the shed that took up the majority of the barren dirt plot that forty years ago had been known as a garden.  My husband, who has a checkered history when it comes to constructing things (like play kitchens) is a demolition monster.  Yeah, my stud made short work of that shed.  He was even gentle enough that there were metal panels we could salvage.

Our First Garden Beds

Using the salvaged iron siding from the shed that stood here before

A week or so later I went to a rabbit butchering tutorial at a local hobby farm and learned A LOT! Like rabbits are incredibly easy to skin and gut (and when you are at someone else's house and they do all the prep and the clean up it cuts butchering time in half). While at Flying Fossil Farm, as Jessi and Danny like to be called, I was introduced to the local permaculture meetup group.  All sorts of doors were opening for me.

A week or so after that I saw, as I was obsessively surfing Craigslist, that a local egg farm was piecing out their chickens because they were going out of business.  Once again I packed up the girls and headed into the great unknown of rural Reno.  The former owners of Reno Egg, were super nice and even did the chicken wrangling for me.  I came away with three Ameraucana ladies, Betsy (white), Rosie (red-brown) and Melanie (black).  I had re-used the duckbox for transport and this time I made sure I had a firm grip on either end of the box before hefting it to the coop.  I tried housing Sophie with the chickens, while letting the rest of the ducks free range... no dice. Sophie seize the opportunity to be top duck (as it were) and pecked those poor girls raw.  Coming from a chicken farm the girls didn't have feathers on their rumps to begin with and after a day with Sophie they each had bled a bit.  What can I say? I tried! So Sophie was exiled from the coop and then ultimately shunned by her flock.  Sigh... The animal kingdom.

I started reading up on urban farming and sustainable agriculture and ecologically conscience living.  I read Farm City by Novella Carpenter and The Quarter Acre Farm by Spring Warren, I tried reading My Empire of Dirt by Manny Howard but could not get into it, boy was long winded.   I also perused a slew of gardening books, all courtesy of Reno Downtown Library.  Every Tuesday I take my girls to story time there and gather an armful of books.  I rarely read them cover to cover but I find helpful tidbits in most.  The first day I decided to "expand my mind" I found that what I really needed was to increase my arm strength because carrying a sixteen-month-old and herding a two year old was near impossible with my arms wrapped around twelve hefty garden tomes.  Luckily one of the librarians took pity on me at check out and gave we a promotional tote. A tote for my tomes, it made things easier but, dude, knowledge is heavy! no matter how you lug it around.

Novella Carpenter had an epiphany of sorts about urban farming and through her self-expression I was freed.  Instead of combing Zillow every other day looking for a homestead that was close enough to town to be convenient I was free to homestead what I already had!  It was like underneath my conscious being I always wanted this.  When we were house hunting I was firmly opposed to HOAs, I didn't want some nosy neighbor telling me what I could and could not do with my yard.  I wanted my chickens! And I didn't want to have to be in the country to have 'em! But now I was having to reel in my enthusiasm for urban homsteading and reason with myself that although a mini dairy goat would be AWESOME, we just didn't have space for it... yet. In time all things but first things first.

It became very evident that we needed more garden space.  I had used some the metal panels leftover from the shed tear down and made some raised beds but we needed to up the ante.  I mulled and pondered our options.  I wasn't ready to commit to tearing out the entire front yard but I was thinking that we could bring in the back yard a bit.  While I thought this to myself and made mental sketches I also tried to intuit Adam's reaction to this new scheme.  We are constantly getting in tiffs because I want to do some project (and of course I want his help) and he is less than enthused.  WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GET BEHIND ME ON THIS!  I frequently shouted and in my mind I was shouting it again so you can imagine my surprise when Adam suggested that we bring the back yard in a bit by adding more raised beds. What?! Yeah, I love this guy.

Back to Craigslist I searched for pavers, thinking we could build the beds with those.  I lucked out and got a good deal on left over pavers from two different people, both times strapping my girls into their carseats and heading out to load up our Honda Pilot with concrete bricks in a rainbow of dusty rose, gray and tan.  Once home though it seemed obvious that the pavers I had acquired would look best in the form of a path.  I got to work and laid out a path around where I visualized the beds would be.  Then Adam sacrificed another weekend to me and cut out raised beds using the plywood that had previously made up the floor of the long gone shed.  At long last the horse shit had a home and our driveway was emptied.

Ah, beautiful pavers

Raised beds and a new location for the chicken coop

Itching to fill our plots with something I bought a Farmer's Almanac and was enticed by ads for Burgess Seed Co.  I gorged on sense of purpose and bought a slew of seed packets and spent tens of dollars.  They promised to deliver live plants in time for fall planting, if not they would hold the order till spring.  Fair enough I thought.  Days stretched from late October to early November and I accepted that I would have to wait till spring.  Then one night, there came a knock on our door and all of my Burgess packages had arrived.  So November 19th I planted three Canby Raspberry canes, a 5-1 Pear tree, a cocktail tree, two kinds of grape stalks, and a twenty Mary Washington asparagus crowns.

That lasted me for a time, snow came. Christmas. New Year's. And then as is the wont of our fickle Northern Nevada microclimate we got some unseasonally warm weather.  Enter Steve, a Craigslist Angel with a dump truck full of clean fill dirt.  The local permaculture group had recently introduced me to the concept of hugelkultur and I was very, VERY eager to give it a go.  Another person was giving away rocks (small boulders it turns out). Yet another Craigslist Angel delivered a truckload of branches.  Perfection!  Adam had just made short work of chopping up a dead cherry tree from our backyard.  There was cellulose a plenty and some dirt to cover it, along with some dead leaves that we never bothered raking up in the fall. The last couple weeks I have been stacking the wood in long strips along the garden beds in our front yard and slowly mounding dirt on top of it.  I enlisted Adam's help for the bed separating our driveway from the driveway of our neighbors Gene and Emmy.  We had just piled on the last wheel barrow and collapsed into a leisurely viewing of Black Snake Moan when it started to snow again.
                          

                                     
               



My most recent adventure is quail, I don't even know how the idea originated but I decided quail would be a welcome addition to our backyard flock and next thing I knew I had two dozen hatching eggs on their way to me via the USPS.  Turning to my best friend Craig to list some of his friends that could loan me an incubator for a month or so I was turned onto the local 4-H chapter that graciously loaned me the equipment. No questions asked. And... no instructions given.  So my eggs arrived and I thought I had figured out the incubator situation but after checking several times that first day to find it scorching and then languishing at room temperature.  I have to pray that my baby quail didn't sacrifice their embryonic lives to my learning curve. February 17th or 18th my babies should be here.  In a few days I may try to candle a few just to get a picture but my inexperience coupled with the dark shells doesn't give me much hope for reassurance through that process.  I plan to keep all the eggs in the incubator for 22 days (incubation period is 17) and I hope that all the people who said infertile eggs will explode after a while meant like a month by "a while". 

I admit I am eons away from declaring myself an urban farmer by vocation but I can aspire to it and it feels incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully, euphoric to be working toward a goal.  Especially one of those goals that really is all about the journey.  If life is a road I am tired of hitchhiking and waiting for rides.  Look on y'all, I am striking out and I don't care if my feet get sore, or I wear holes through my shoes, here I am and here I go and here I enjoy the going.