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
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.
There isn’t a weekend that goes by now that I don’t wish had at least one extra day in it, and really two extra days: one to get a little bit more stuff done around the farm, and one just to recover. This past weekend was jam packed with parties and cakes, and we were able to squeeze some farm work in there as well.
On Saturday, Margaret and the girls headed down to Massachusetts for a bridal shower. If we ever open that bakery we’ve been talking about, our 11-year-old cousin Brooke will be our first hire for sure. Check out the cake and cupcakes she cooked up and decorated!
While the girls were in Mass., I headed North to the Fedco tree sale, where I picked up 3 new pear saplings, two apple saplings, and four high bush blueberries. I love the Fedco Tree Sale, but what I loved about it especially this year was picking up our pre-ordered trees seeing “Ten Apple Farm” written on the six foot tall paper bags containing the saplings, next to dozens of other bags with the names of other small farms and homesteads, each one clever, or sweet, or poignant. It was a great reminder that we are a small part of a greater movement taking place, with many people striving to make new (and old) connections to the land, to their food, and find a better way to live. The trees are sitting in our basement, roots wrapped in wet newspaper and sawdust, waiting to get put in the ground. We’ll write more about the trees and planting when we do get them in, later this week if all goes well.
The big event of the weekend was Bea’s 2nd birthday party. If there’s one thing we do well, it’s throw a kid’s birthday party. With birthdays in April and June, Charlotte and Bea will always be blessed to have some number of baby farm animals around for their parties, and so will never be wanting for a petting zoo. Between the baby goats romping around the yard, the the baby chicks in the backhouse, and all the kids taking it all in, with cupcakes no less, it was a day overflowing with cuteness.
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!”
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?
Flyrod peers out through the back window of the Subaru
It’s breeding time, and that means it’s time to fill the hatchback with hay, load up a doe and head to Chateau Briant Farm in Saco. For the past two years, it’s been mid to late December before we got around to breeding the goats. It can be tough coordinating schedule when the does come into heat and there’s only a 24 hour window of opportunity, so often it takes a few cycles before we get the timing right. For those of you not in the habit of breeding goats, most dairy does (with the exception of Nigerian Dwarf goats, who can be bred year round), will begin to come into estrus in the early fall. Each “heat” lasts around 24 hours, and if they are not bred during that time, they will come back into heat 3 weeks later. These repeating estrus cycles usually last until late December or early January. At least that’s been our experience. We typically look for that first strong heat of the season, which is marked by a lot of “flagging” (tail wagging), often some discharge, and rosiness or swelling of the lady-goat parts (not the technical veterinary term). Once we’ve seen the first heat, we mark it at 3 week intervals on our kitchen calendar.
So considering how hard it’s been for us in the past to coordinate our own schedules with the goat’s schedule and the schedule of the Cassettes (of Chateau Briant) and their buck, we were pretty excited this year to get both girls bred before Thanksgiving. And assuming they settle (conceive), we’re looking at due dates of April 9th and 19th. (Check out this handy goat gestation chart!) Make sure to check back in April for our kidding posts!
One last thought about driving the goats to be bred… it’s amazing how long you can drive around town with a goat in the back of your car and nobody notices: passing through toll booths, the sidewalk in front of Kinko’s, the Whole Foods parking lot, you name it – no one noticed. (Sometimes we have some errands to run on the way to the farm – those pesky schedules again.)
Charlotte directs Chansonetta as she hops out of the back of the Suburu at Chateau Briant Farm in Saco.
Toka and Flyrod stay perched on high ground and examine the surprise first snow of the season. For Toka, it's the first snow she's seen.
Sandwiched in between warm fall days, we got a surprise cold snap and sudden snow. The goats were unfazed, and still found shoots of grass, and crunchy leaves to munch. The snow was certainly an unexpected, and not totally welcome surprise as we still have tools and hoses and farm odds and ends to attend to before we hunker down for winter. However, there was definitely a feeling of exhilaration breathing the cold air and crunching through the snow with the goats.
Tonni checks out the scene in front of Rabelais Books in Portland, Maine, site of Goatstravaganza II, a book event and so much more...
What do you get when you combine a book signing, cheese tasting, goat meat hors d’oeuvres, goat art and live goats? Goatstravaganza, of course! Goatstravaganza II (subtitled “Return of the Kid” by Samantha Hoyt Lindgren of Rabelais, hosts of the event) turned out to be a splendid afternoon. The food was great. Aurora Provisions cooked up some delicious Spiced Chevon Beggar’s Purses (the recipe is included in Living With Goats – p. 159). We put out 3 aged hard cheeses (all raw milk) – a gouda aged about 1 month, Ten Apple Farm Mon-Cha-Cha (manchego) aged 2 weeks and a Mon-Cha-Cha aged 4 1/2 months. We also put out a selection of fresh (raw milk!) chevres, and a sweet chevre spread flavored with heavy cream, honey and lavender. The walls were decorated with small framed prints of some photographs from the book, not to mention three beautiful goat paintings by our friend and artist, Carolyn Miller, inspired by goats she saw on a recent trip to Sicily. Margaret was signing books inside the store. But for many, the main attraction was out front on the sidewalk. The two newest members of our herd, doelings Toka and Tonni, a black and white Alpine and an all white half Alpine half Saanan, were the real stars of the show, it seemed. They slowed many a car and cyclist passing by, and delighted any pedestrian lucky enough to take a stroll down Middle Street in Portland on Sunday.
Margaret signs copies of the new book, Living With Goats
Sheila Nixon and her Alpine doe Nixon's Wizard Zazu Pitts are ready for their close up on the morning of the Spotlight Sale at the ADGA convention in Buffalo
The “Spotlight Sale” auction on the last morning of the Convention is always one of the highlights for us. Part of it is simply the novelty of seeing goats led into the grand ballroom of an otherwise conventional hotel, and the looks on the faces of the other hotel guests and unsuspecting passersby. But it’s always special to see these beautiful animals, representing some of the best and most treasured bloodlines in the ADGA universe.
This year, because of the economy, the sale was more than ever a buyer’s market. More than one animal was sold for much less than it might have gone for in any other year, and some buyers walked away with some really good deals. Being partial to Alpines, and good showmanship, Sheila Nixon’s Alpine doe, Nixon’s Wizards Zuzu Pitts, caught my eye, and not just because of the bling she was sporting or her sable stole. I wasn’t the only one who thought this was a good looking doe, as Zazu was the highest (at least at the time when we had to leave) bid upon animal – the winning bid was $2050.
Zazu Pitts takes the stage during the Spotlight Sale in the grand ballroom of the Adam's Mark hotel in Buffalo
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...