azalea

Azalea isn't feeling well. She was off her feed last night, and today I've spoken with the vet and spent the day doing everything that can be done to help her feel better, with no apparent improvement by evening.

Now there's a cold rain falling, everyone is settled for the night, and all I can do is hope Azalea has a comfortable night and will feel more herself in the morning.

Not eating is a very serious matter with goats.

Fingers crossed.

~~~~~

sambucus

The black goats - especially the solid black goats - are always difficult to photograph.

So I was very pleased to get this portrait of Sambucus today.

Did you notice her lovely little smile?

I think Bui deserves to have an entire blog post, all to herself.

~~~~~

ice

This morning when I stepped outside to pick up an armful of stovewood, I was delighted to find the air warmer than expected. Maybe as high as 20F, I thought. Almost balmy.

I can generally estimate the temperature within a few degrees, so on the way back inside I checked the thermometer by the door: 11F.

Eleven.

Balmy.

After a series of very cold days and nights, I apparently need to recalibrate my internal thermometer!

There is ice everywhere, and most of it is now under six or more inches of powder. This is not a great situation, and I've been very careful going from house to barn to workshop to stilt barn and into the paddocks to fill water buckets and distribute hay.

There are de-icers in both big water buckets - huzzah! - but I still use smaller buckets at times, and they freeze quickly. If they freeze overnight I can't just break the layer of ice on top - I must thaw the ice enough to get it out of the bucket. Here's how, in case you've never done it and ever need to: turn the frozen bucket upside-down and slowly pour a little warm water over the bottom and sides. Listen for the sound of cracking, and then one quiet thud. Lift the bucket off with a boot - to keep dry gloves off the wet bucket - and find a wide-based crystalline vase of ice, with a core of water that trickles out and leaves an huge ice goblet.

Last week I took photographs from inside these hollow cores, looking out through the curved walls of ice. There's one at the top of this post, and here's another:

Winter can be hard. Why miss an opportunity to have fun?

Today I actually had to leave the place for the first time in a week: get in the truck, deliver the recycling, pick up a book from interlibrary loan, and do some grocery shopping. When I got home in the afternoon it was still very cold but not too windy and off-and-on sunny, so I decided to take time to visit with all the goats and then do evening chores early.

Tsuga says, "Yes, do come visit!
And do you have something good in your pocket?"

While I was sitting in the barn waiting for the last goats to finish their grub,

Rocket discovered bootlaces.

He'd never seen them before, because I usually wear pull-on rubber barn boots. But today, since I had just gotten home after being out In Public, I was wearing my "nice boots" which I bought last month. They are like calf-height, waterproof, insulated slippers with rubber soles. And very long laces. Rocket took one look and knew what had to be done.

Here are Azalea and her little boy Mallow - not so little anymore! - hanging out on a bench after having their buckets of oats. Everyone gets a little something extra to help stay cheerful in this ongoing cold, snowy, icy snap; extra oats, with a little sweet feed on top, and carrot pennies for afters. Even my careful rationing of hay - I feed multiple times in smaller amounts each day instead of the total amount all at once, to reduce waste - has gone by the boards for the time being. In weather like this, I believe it's more important to have hay available to everybody, all the time, than to avoid waste.

The sky looked like this for just a few minutes,

as I was coming back to the house after chores.

I'm so glad I didn't miss it!

The forecast says the weather is going to change tomorrow.

Warmer.

And then warmer.

I'll definitely be wearing the pull-on rubber barn boots.

~~~~~

iris

Iris, Vinca, Rocket

My Very Occasional Helper was here for 3 hours yesterday,

so together we made a little progress on the barn.

Iris was also a Big Help.

Although I couldn't help feeling that she had questions about the whole idea of turning the airy, spacious barn into four narrow cubicles.

Not exactly cubicles; more like slip stalls.

Rectanguloids?

"Why? WHYYYY?"

Lately I've been noticing that tiny Iris has grown.

There have even been a couple of times when she was standing apart from the other goats - so, no frame of reference - I wasn't sure if I was looking at Iris or her brother, the chunky Rocket.

"Now I am a BIG goat!"

But then I see her next to an average-size human,

and she immediately becomes tiny again.

Big on personality, though!

That's one thing that hasn't changed since the day she was born.

~~~~~

wednesday with words

Quite often when I'm on the porch looking out at the goats,

there's a goat standing in the barn or paddock looking back at me.

We've had some genuinely brutal weather since the snowstorm on Saturday and Sunday; bitter cold and high winds. This has meant extra rations for all, and an extra check every day to make sure everyone is comfortable. I shifted Violet and Sambucus up to the barn paddock which has extra options for shelter; that just leaves LeShodu and the four biggest boys in the stilt barn and south paddock.

Extreme weather also meant two nights of going out around 8PM with a flashlight, and tying the three meanest does in one side of the barn so everyone else could get into a shelter for the night. The wind was blowing from the northwest - not typical - which made one of the shelters into a wind-tunnel; more goats than usual needed to be in the barn. I don't like tying goats (except when they are having their buckets of grain) but there was simply no alternative.

As a result, I've decided to replace the old bashed-up stockpanel dividers in the barn, using solid boards. It will make the barn much less convenient to work in every day, but for the rare situation like this recent weather, it will be helpful to have the option of four separate stalls with doors. Small group suites. No tying.

Today it was warm enough to work outside for an extended time - halelujah! - so I began making one such divider. I had a lot of help.

That's Rocket, above.

And here's little Iris:

Unfortunately I had to stop when I needed an extra pair of hands to help shift long, heavy boards from a stack under a snow-covered tarp.

Despite years of practice at looking on the bright side, hitting that kind of previously-surmountable hurdle in the middle of a task can still sometimes mean discouragement or frustration. Today it was discouragement, because I was too exhausted to feel frustration! I'll shift those boards soon, when I've got someone here to lend a hand.

Meanwhile, we are now expecting 24 hours of rain, on top of the frozen snow. Should be interesting out there. I'll be dusting off my cleats.

Winter is here!

~~~~~