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.

~~~~~

satisfactory

Do you try to take the maximum possible satisfaction from even the simplest or tiniest improvements? This is my latest:

Decanting a hoof treatment from the big, messy, hard to control containers it comes in, to these:

25 ml plastic bottles that will fit in a pocket and administer the small amount needed to the exact spot where it's meant to go.

Ten minutes well spent.

What little changes have made you hugely happy?

~~~~~

quick tip

I haven't been doing anything adventurous in the kitchen (or anywhere else) lately, but this handy trick for making easy-to-spread butter is something I've been doing for months and have been meaning to share.

For years I assumed the pricey "spreadable butter" on the market is blended with oils in some sort of fancy industrial process. And it probably is. It never occurred to me to try to make it myself.

This simple and effective method comes from Nancy Birtwhistle, a Great British Bake Off champion and author of four books on "green living." She generously shares loads of recipes and tips online, including this one, so I think it's okay to describe it here.

Nancy recommends using a handheld "electric whisk" - not sure what that is but I have a handheld mixer and use that - to cream butter for a couple of minutes. Then gradually add an oil (in a bit more than 1/3 the weight/volume of the butter), whisking constantly to emulsify. So far I've used grapeseed oil, canola oil, and olive oil. So far they have all been delicious.

The whole process takes just a few minutes, including transferring the mixture into containers for refrigeration or use. The clean-up actually takes longer for me, in part because I make a pot of bulgur at the same time and when the spreadable butter is done I "pre-wash" the buttery beaters by sinking them briefly in the hot bulgur so not a bit of the butter will be wasted.

I love butter but I don't love trying to scrape hard butter across a piece of bread. This has  been a very helpful tip for me. Maybe for you, too?

p.s. Just found an Instagram post from Nancy last year, demonstrating her technique. Fingers crossed the link works - I don't know much about IG. 

p.p.s. Turns out I do have an "electric whisk" - every day's a school day!

~~~~~

blue-sky day

 

It rained all last night and this morning, with a forecast of "continuing" and a warning about high winds. But yesterday was a blue-sky day, and so warm that I was able to do something I've been wanting to do for weeks:

gather up the feed pans and give them a scrub.

Very satisfying result.

And because it was so warm and sunny and the forecast was for this 24-hour rain we are currently in the middle of, I dragged the chaise out and spent an hour or so just enjoying the day. The deep blue sky, the tiny downy woodpecker bold enough to visit the suet feeder even while Moxie and I were lounging only a few feet away. Such a perfectly pleasant day - a warm clear day with no biting insects - is a rarity in my neck of the woods. Very much a "seize the day" event.

So I did the Daily Markmaking, with this water-soluble graphite sketch:

This sketchbook snap is from a cell phone. It's an experiment, because I suspect my actual camera is signalling it's pending retirement with various mysterious behaviors. I know many cell cams take excellent snaps, but my phone is very basic, the images are not high res, and I'm not sure about their blog-ability. Please feel free to comment/advise.

And to bring us back to today, here is a barncam snap taken a few minutes ago: Violet and Sambucus in the barn, waiting out the rain.

Very wise, goats.

You know Room Service will always come to you.

~~~~~

zipping right along

February is zipping right along, that is. Not me.

But I'm keeping up. Just.

We've been having some cold days, but clear, mostly. Cold but not windy, mostly. Cold but sunny, mostly. It's been, in other words, an exceptionally fine February so far.

Which is great, because regardless of the weather, or how I happen to be feeling physically, I'm outside and in motion for a minimum of two hours every  morning and every evening. The goats provide the core of my personal healthcare system, and I'm grateful for the incentive.

red maple, on a day when it was warm enough to hold a pencil

I've started to write a blog post at least four times after evening chores in the past two weeks, and each time have fallen asleep over the laptop. Or, more accurately, under the laptop. Actually, under the laptop and two cats. It's an easy way to fall asleep, I suppose, if one is very thoroughly tired. But it's certainly a strange way to wake up.

So even if this post is only a jumble of random jottings, I am going to post it before evening chores today. And I'll add equally random snaps. Like these:

And these:

vase, view 1

vase, view 2

And in conclusion, two short random notes:

• Good news follow-up: I took delivery of three additional pallets of chaffhaye, and the forklift operator got them close to the barn. This makes every single day easier for me: there's still wrestling and sweating and occasional swearing involved, but no sledding or dragging through gates.Those 90 bales should take us to May Day.

• A happy "find:" the field technician who got my internet and phone line reconnected a few weeks ago dropped his (quite costly) Leatherman tool into deep snow whilst repeatedly to-ing and fro-ing between his truck and my house. He looked, I looked. He thought they would probably be near the pole where he reconnected the line. I thought they would probably be near the stone wall he scrambled over to take a shortcut. Well, I was able to give him some good news this week:

they were in the garden

I hope your days are full of good news and happy finds.

~~~~~