june

June 2024: a month of very high heat and frequent rain.

Most days, the first thing I do when I come in from chores is peel off and throw all my wet clothes into the dryer for a few minutes, so I can put them on again for the next round without gritting my teeth. Because knowing that I'll be soaked to the skin again two minutes after stepping out the door doesn't make it easier to put on wet jeans. 

Or maybe I'm just getting soft.

The morning after the evening when I didn't turn the empty feed pan upside down.

But we've also had some June days of bright blue skies and sunshine and - that icing on the cake of a sunny day - a refreshing breeze. I've tried to take a leaf from Betula's book and not waste a moment of those days:

It's raining this afternoon, but it was quite nice this morning. 

The daylilies are blooming:

And the bee balm is just on the brink:

I'm thinking about making a big bowl of cold tahini ramen, and I'm also thinking about making a big kettle of lentil soup. It's that kind of day.

~~~~~

notes from the goats

Betula is doing well. 

He's staying in the barn paddock with Violet and Sambucus for company until I feel confident the broken horn will not start bleeding again. So far, that has happened twice. Most recently yesterday. Meanwhile he's eating very well, resting well, and generally acting comfortable.

In other goat news, cashmere shedding is definitely underway. 

Almost as soon as combing began there was a hiatus of a few days due to suddenly very cold, very wet, very windy weather. But now it's just cold and muddy, so we can expect weeks of combing. I'll try to comb at least one goat on any day that is not raining. There's no point in trying to harvest damp cashmere.

Did I mention weather?

In the past week we've had snow, rain, freezing rain, and a world coated in ice. Then the ice started melting from every twig of every tree, and now we have mud. And that's all I'm going to say about weather.

I'm continuing to fine-tune the system for distributing chaffhaye to the goats every morning and evening.

At this point I don't have to tie every goat, every time, in order to get every goat fed, huzzah. Just some of them, most of the time. And I'm still doing individual pans, morning and evening.

If I could shift them over to free-choice feeding, it would be a lot less labor for me. I couldn't try it right at the introduction of the chaffhaye, because there would have been a few very assertive - and chunky - goats and many very hungry goats. But now that they all know there will be pans for everyone I'm experimenting by doing both: giving them each their pan of grub, and then putting out additional feed in big bins, and keeping an eye on behavior.

So yesterday I asked my Occasional Helper to leave a couple of extra 50-pound bags of chaffhaye in one of the shelters for my convenience, next to a bin in which I opened a third 50-pound bag for self-serve.

Here's what the extra bags looked like by last night:

In case my description wasn't clear: there was a bin containing a wide-open 50-pound bag of chaffhaye literally 8 inches from these "backup" bags.

The forklift operator had made small holes in these two  bags, so maybe that was considered an invitation? Or a challenge? I don't know. But once these bags are open, they must be fed out quickly. For the next couple of days I'll have to carry empty feed pans down to this shelter and fill them from these wastefully punctured bags, and then carry those full pans all over the paddocks to distribute. 

So far, this experimental free-choice supplementation has not been what one could call "a time-saver."

Oh well, everyone is eating, that's the important thing. Here we have three generations - Lily of the Valley, Tsuga, and Fern - demonstrating synchronized chewing:

And I'll close this Note from Goat World with my birch boy, Betula,

resting his chin and soaking up some vitamin D:

~~~~~

drama week

I know it's only Wednesday, but it feels like a week of drama.

Not this. This is not drama. This is Azalea's response to my suggestion that we do a little preliminary combing to see if the cashmere she and daughter Hazel are carrying is ready for harvesting.

Nope. Azalea's still hanging on to her undercoat, for the most part. She did allow me to lift off some of the loose fluff accumulating around her head.

Hazel, Azalea's daughter, followed Mum's example.

Don't they look like two peas in a pod? 

I wish so much I could have bred Hazel, and continued to breed Azalea, because they have some qualities I really value. But when very young, they each had a problem with weakness at the base of their horns. Azalea's son Mallow had it too, so I had to conclude it was genetic, and even though they all seemed to outgrow it by adulthood, I didn't want to perpetuate the trait. Azalea did break one horn last summer, though not at the base, thank goodness. And it may not have been related to the original issue at all, but I mention it because...

this is not what one wishes to see when sweeping out the barn.

And this is the drama.

Betula broke a horn on Monday. It may have happened shortly before morning chores, because the trail of blood drops was very fresh, and when I got to Bet, he was missing about a third of his right horn and was very bloody indeed. (Don't worry - I won't include a picture.) As you may know, the end of a goat's horn is "dead." But horns feel warm right at the base because there is a blood supply persisting partway into the horn. In the past I underestimated how far beyond the warm-feeling part of the horn the blood supply persists. I'm pretty clear on it now, though.

Betula did not have any problems with horns as a youngster, but in the past few years he has worn down a section of the arch on both horns by rubbing them against the metal fences. I've been worried that there would be a injury one day, as a lot of head-banging and horn-smacking goes on out in the paddocks, and the challenges to authority amongst the goats never completely stop. Especially relevant to Betula, since he is the biggest goat in the herd.

Things were a bit worrisome all day and all night Monday, and there were extra barn visits throughout the day and a barn cam for non-intrusive night surveillance. Happily, by yesterday afternoon the slight residual bleeding had stopped and Bet was eating well.

Today I had to repeatedly point out that if Betula wanted me to put kelp in the mineral feeder (he did), he would have to step back and let me get to the feeder for five seconds. He remained firmly wedged between me and the feeder, and honestly I was so relieved that he was feeling bright enough to forget his manners, that I fed him kelp from my hand instead.

This barn cam snap was taken after I came back into the house following morning chores. Betula had already gone back to eating. You can see his chaffhaye bucket is clipped pretty high because on Monday I wanted to encourage him to keep his head up while eating. I don't think Gravity is our friend when we are bleeding.

Anyway, I had hoped to catch up on sleep last night but it didn't happen, and now I can't stop yawning at dusk so I'm going to head out for evening chores before I fall asleep.

Peaceful, ordinary, routine evening chores, I hope.

~~~~~

betula

 having a think.

~~~~~

is it time?

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch during my unplanned hiatus - it has been very much appreciated. I've thought and thought about writing again. It's hard to know where to begin. And how to begin. And whether or not I should begin.

Perhaps the only way is to just dig in.

And see what I come up with.

 

Wish me luck?

~~~~~

sunday snaps

We've had two days of genuinely pleasant weather.

Not too hot.

Not too steamy.

Not as many mosquitoes and biting flies.

I turned off the fans in the barns!

For the first time in months I was able to enjoy staying outside after chores,

instead of heading inside to peel off soaking wet clothes and dry my hair with a towel.

Today, Della helped me photograph the bees in the perennial gardens:

"There's one!"

And Moxie helped me work in the big vegetable garden:

"That's enough work for a while. Let's sit in the shade."

But Piper said,

"Honestly? Gardening has never really been my thing.

And Those Goats are EVERYWHERE!

I'm going back inside for a nap now."

Okay, Pip. I'll open the door for you, and put a treat on your pillow.

Then it's time to check on Those Goats.

Moxie spends a lot of time in the goat paddocks.

It looks like she's outside the fence here, but not really - 

she's in another paddock with other goats.

It must have been a huge relief for the goats to have fewer biting bugs.

This Spring and Summer has been, in a word, terrible.

This weekend all the goats have been quietly browsing or resting in the sun.

Not kicking at flies or flapping their ears to get rid of mosquitoes every few seconds.

I hope these gentler conditions will continue...
right into Winter would be nice!

Everyone relaxed.

Not a squabble, not a row.

Just the way I like it!

~~~~~

being there

While I was doing a second round of chores today, snow began to fall. 

First, just a scattering of flakes.

 Then a bit more.

The goats moved between the barns and paddocks,

eating their hay, as bigger flakes began to fall.

 Beautiful flakes. Falling slowly. Falling densely.

I brushed melting snowflakes from the paddock chair

and sat to watch for a while.

It was that rare, lovely snowfall that looks the way

I imagine people who do not live in snowy climates think all snow looks -

almost unbelievably perfect.

 I exhausted one camera battery and switched to a second.

By the time that battery was nearly done,

my clothes were wet through with melted snow.

It was time to head inside.  

For all the snow that fell, what remained later in the day was not much more than a dusting. Just enough to make everything look very pretty. If I hadn't been out in it as it was falling, I could not have guessed the way it looked coming down.

Isn't it a gift to be there, eyes open, for beauty?

~~~~~

winter

ice on motherwort

None of that shilly-shallying, dusting-then-a-warm-spell, off-and-on easing into Winter this year! Our first snow was the night of the 15th, and it was a heavy, wet snow requiring the tall boots. Since then, we've had more and more snow but often right on the edge of freezing rain, so it's a bit of a mess out there.

Still plenty of color, though! Doesn't this Rubus look lively despite it's icy snowcap?

After the most muted Autumn foliage season I can recall in all my New England years, my eyes are reveling in shrub colors right now. I painted this watercolor the day after the first snowstorm, when the sun was reflecting off the snow and backlighting the Kerria japonica between the porch and the stilt barn:

The kids are taking this new snow situation in stride, and of course the rest of the herd is very familiar with all aspects of Winter. All is well, as long as there are plenty of sheltering options when wanted - such as during the freezing rain episodes - and Management keeps the hay coming.

 My boy Betula, reaching out from under the stilt-barn to have a bite of hay.
What? Doesn't everyone recognize their animals just by their noses?

This past week, despite the weather - and the fact that the zipper on my work coat broke completely so I'm now wearing multiple fleeces and moving like the Tin Man - a long-delayed barn project is finally seeing progress. The doors - which have been a headache/backache for a long time - are now 80% functional again. A little more effort and they may be perfect. If I can avoid wrestling with them every day this Winter, it will be a BIG improvement!

Campion says, "Doors are all very well,
but let's focus on that hay you mentioned earlier."

It's definitely Stone Soup time, and the crockpot has been on a constant simmer. Do you keep a soup pot going, and add different things to change it up as you go along?

At this point in it's evolution, my current soup has beef, onions, mushrooms, bone broth, carrots, rice and chick peas. I sometimes add shredded cheddar or curry seasoning when I dish up a bowlful. Yesterday I also cooked a pot of lentils, so now there's an option of roasted squash and lentils with soup poured over. I am eating well. We all are. Bonus: at the feedstore Saturday I bought a new kind of chewbone that Piper seems to enjoy - huzzah! It looks like a rolled rawhide bone but it's not rawhide or bone, it's completely edible. I gave it to her Sunday afternoon and she worked on it for four hours, non-stop, before she had to stop for a nap. Today she was back at it again, so if it retains it's allure and lasts more than a week, I'll order a whole bag.

Time to paint #324 of the DailyMarkmaking2018 and call it a night. Here is a group of one-inch squares I've done recently as a change of pace between "regular" sketches:

Always something new to explore, isn't there?

Amidst all the other stuff we do, and deal with,
let's not forget to have some good fun.

~~~~~