Beans climbing in the morning light
I love summer mornings on the farm. Once morning chores are done, I love to just poke around the garden and take in the splendor in the beautiful morning light. Here are some pictures from this morning.
Broilers, finished with their morning grain, looking for more
Bee and mustard flowers
Announcing the birth of Flyrod’s girls (named by Charlotte, who assisted the births): Emma Rose, born at 10:45 yesterday morning, weighing 8 pounds, and Alice, born at 11:15, weighing 7 pounds, 4 ounces. Mama and babies are happy and healthy. If you’re counting, that’s a total of 5 doelings born this season–the herd has almost doubled–must be something in the water this year. We’ll post more pictures to our facebook page later today.
We jammed a lot into the three day weekend — so much so that it took us until Wednesday to post something about it. It’s a remarkable feeling to look back now over the weekend and revel in our accomplishment. Here’s a quick recap:
Saturday was a day of doors. I got the new duck house facade built with a drop down door/ramp. I got the garden gate hinged and working (we’d been propping it up with a stick). And I got a door on El Diablo’s dog house in the chicken yard. (He can make it up the 8 foot high chicken ramp, but in the summer prefers to hang out in the dog house. The door will keep him safe, and muffle the crowing in the morning.)
Sunday, the girls and I painted the duck house, and then I took out my newly tuned and sharpened chainsaw (that lasted about 20 minutes) and cut up all the limbs and branches we’d had taken down from the big oak behind the house. In the afternoon, our dear sweet girl Charlotte saved a mouse’s life.
Monday, we brought the ducks out of their box in the barn and introduced them to their new house and yard. We put the goats on the hill underneath the oak to clear out some of the bramble that had been taking over, and to expose the groundhog hole. We then turned to mowing and planting, and somehow got the entire back 2 acres mowed (thank you garden tractor!) and managed to plant our tomatoes and a few other things in the garden.
For photographic recap of the weekend, check out our page on Facebook.
The real revelation of the weekend, and I think we’ll be writing more about this in the days to come, was the discovery that we have, after 4 years of doing nothing but letting it sit, beautiful, amazing compost.
In honor of the season and the wakening farm, I’ve been reading Janet Lembke’s beautiful translation of the Roman poet Virgil’s Georgics. Written between 37 and 30 BC, the poem is both a celebration of the natural world and a treatise on farming. It’s lovely and lyrical, and has been bringing a thoughtful quiet to the end of my day. Surprisingly, much of its practical advice is also relevant (though I have no idea what arbutus leaves are…).
Some instructions on goat keeping from Book Three:
…I exhort you to supply your goats with arbutus leaves and provide access to a fresh stream and place their pens away from the wind, facing the south and the winter sun at the time that Aquarius begins to set and sprinkle the end of the year with cold rain. The nannies, too, must be tended with no trifling care, and profit from their milk will be no less, although Anatolian wool dyed in Tyrian purple is traded for a high price. From them, sturdier kids; from them, a great plenty of milk; the more the pail brims with foam from the emptying udder, the more free the rivers that stream from pressure on the teats. Not less, meanwhile, do herdsmen cut the beards from the hoary chins of Libyan billy goats and shear their coarse hair to use in soldiers’ tents and jackets for shivering seamen. They browse in the woods, yes, and on Arcadian summits, feeding on sharp brambles and thorny shrubs that love steep places; leading their kids, they themselves remember to come home, and they barely clear the doorstep with their bulging udders. Thus, the less their want for human care, the more eagerly you should protect them from ice and snow-bearing winds, cheerfully providing them with hay and brushy fodder, nor should you ever close your hayloft for the whole winter.
Early this morning… 12:30 am to be exact, I awoke to the noise of Chansonetta’s labor pains coming from the baby monitor we hooked up for just this occasion. I woke Margaret and rushed out to the barn to find Chansonetta minutes from kidding. The hooves and snout were just emerging with each push.
A few minutes later we would be introduced to the little black goat who would be the third baby doe born on the farm this year. Margaret suggested we name her Prunella, but Charlotte couldn’t say it, and instead said what sounded like “Vanilla,” which I liked. When Charlotte decided on Lily, we decided on a combination of all of the names, and are pleased to introduce our new doeling, Lily Vanilli Prunella Hathaway Schatz.
While they’re not quite ready for full barn duties, Charlotte and Bea are learning to start their days with chores. Ours is a family farm, and we encourage the girls not only because we want them to learn responsibility, but also because it’s just fun to work together. Watching them, intent on their respective goat kids, reminds me why, when my hands are blistered and my back aches, I keep shoveling or tilling or planting or doing whatever is my day’s project. It’s one of those simple and profound lessons of parenthood: I want to be as good an example for them as they are for me.
Introducing the newest additions (plural!) to the Ten Apple Farm family, Sarah and Nadine. (As with Toka and Tonni, Charlotte did the naming.) Toka did an amazing job, and Margaret will write more about the birth later, but for now we have two healthy happy baby doelings sleeping peacefully in their box in the backhouse. Sarah came out first, weighing 7.5 lbs, followed soon after by the smaller Nadine, who weighed just over 5.5 lbs. It’s hard to believe after a long streak of nothing but boys, we finally have our girls, and not one but two of them! As Charlotte said to me afterward, “Today is the best day ever!”
Two weeks ago, after much procrastination, we took Little Guy, the only buckling born on the farm last spring, to the Windham Butcher Shop. We had held off because we worried about Charlotte’s reaction–anxiety that turned out to be completely unfounded when she declared that she thought he would be delicious, and then asked if we could make his pelt into a blanket for her bed. (We shipped the hide to The Tannery, in Lander, Wyoming, and were told we could expect it, tanned, in a few months, just in time for Cha Cha’s birthday.)
I don’t think our children are exceptionally bloodthirsty, but I do think that they understand that the meat we eat was once a living being. Though they’ve seen us plucking chickens and have been prepared for absences from the barn, we’ve shielded them from the actual moment of slaughter, which is something I think we’ll continue to do until they ask to be present. We haven’t shielded them, however, from the reality that the flesh we consume had a life and a death, and that it’s our responsibility as farmers to make sure that both are humane. The girls are kind to our animals, eager to help in the barn, and anxious for the arrival of spring babies.
And so they were delighted when we discovered, just days after Little Guy’s departure, that Toka’s udder was beginning to fill out, and that her wide belly was wiggling even more than the usual gurgles of rumination. Because of Little Guy’s prolonged stay in the barn, the kids were together into sexual maturity and, well, nature took its course. We never saw Toka go into heat, so the date of conception is a mystery, but we’re expecting a baby goat or two in the coming weeks. In the spirit of the French: Little Guy is gone, long live Little Guy!
We were extremely proud of ourselves this year for getting right on an early breeding schedule. We had bred both girls by mid-November and would be expecting baby goats in early and mid-April–our earliest kids yet. We were pretty sure that both does had settled (been successfully bred): we didn’t see them coming back into heat, and both seemed to have the predictable drop in milk production that should follow the first missed heat cycle after breeding.
But goats are always full of surprises, and so it was that yesterday morning when I went out to do chores and milk, Flyrod was flagging away. “Flagging” is what they call it when a female goat wags her tail, which is one of the signs that a doe is in heat. The goats often wag their tails when they know their grain is coming, but settle down and stop once we put the food in front of them and start milking. Flyrod was not stopping. We sprung into action. We called Phil Cassette, to make sure he was going to be home and we could bring Flyrod down for another shot, got the kids dressed (Charlotte and Bea, not Toka and Tonni) and in the car, filled the back of the Subaru with hay, loaded up Flyrod, and headed to Saco for a second date with Jaylen, the Cassette’s Alpine Buck.
By the time we got to Saco, Flyrod was clearly in standing heat. She was still flagging, and her vulva was swollen and rosy. The last time we brought Flyrod down to Saco for breeding, she was pretty skittish and not very cooperative, which may have contributed to her not settling. Not this time. She just walked over to a half bale of hay, started eating and stuck her bottom right in Jaylen’s direction, and waited for him to do his thing.
It’s still hard to believe that she would go into such a strong heat in February, but she did. Assuming that it takes, and assuming that Chansonetta settled, too, we’re going to be kidding in April and then again in July! It looks like it might be a long summer of bottle feeding, which could become tedious, but then again, we might also have baby goats all summer long… and what could be bad about that?
And the winners of the Antiquity Oaks blog Q&A book giveaway are:
The Year of the Goat: Catty Jackie
Living With Goats: Annette
Congratulations!
IN STORES NOW! Our new book, Living With Goats: Everything You Need to Know to Start Your Own Backyard Herd, comes out in October 2009. Stay tuned for more information about book signings and Goatstravaganza II! Read more...
This is how it all started! The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese, tells the story of our journey from New York City to a farm of our own. Hop in the "goat-mobile" and join us on our cross-country goat trek across America. Read more...