Goat Pen and Chicks

Maaa! Maaa! I am greeted every time I leave the house and every time I come home with the lonely cry of our pygmy goat, Snickers. You see, Snickers was given to us when his owner passed away and he is the only goat on our farm. Goats are herd animals and need friends to keep them company. Right now we do our best to keep Snickers from feeling too lonely while we wait for the Nigerian Dwarf whether that we are getting to be ready to come live with him and keep him company.

In case you are wondering, as my husband's friend was, "What's the point of the goat?" We have him because I like him. He makes me happy! I like hearing his little voice calling out when we are outside and having him follow us around the yard while we are doing farm chores. We aren't breeding, milking or eating goat. He is a pet that does his job of making me happy very well!

In preparation for Snickers' friend's arrival we will be building a goat pen. Snickers currently resides in a dog house that is inside a dog kennel. He is tethered out in the field when the weather is nice enough. There is not enough room for two goats to live in his current arrangement. We will be building a goat pen inside our big building. It will give them room to sleep snuggled up together and they will eventually have a fenced in yard so they can come and go as they please. It will also give us room for goat supply storage and free up that space in the chicken barn.

We also plan to start saving eggs to hatch out some chicks. The plan is to eat the roosters and extra hens and to increase the size of our flock of laying hens. We will also be getting a new rooster so that our flock doesn't get too closely related and because our current rooster has started getting aggressive even with our daughter who is the one who cares of them on a daily basis.

Snickers

Snickers is a new addition to our small farm. He is a cute little pygmy goat who came to us when his owner passed away unexpectedly. Snickers is really more of a pet than a part of the farm since he is our only goat and we have no plans to ever eat him and, quite obviously, can't milk him. He is very friendly and "talks" to us whenever we are outside. When he is out of his pen he follows us around the yard tasting the landscaping.

Housing
He currently resides in a dog house inside a fence. When the weather permits he is moved out to the field on a line so he can get more exercise. We have been told that goats are herd animals and he will need a friend to keep him company. There isn't room for a friend in Snickers' current accommodations so we have to figure out how to make room for a friend for him. It's possible we might be able to make space in the RV garage for goats. Our barn is small (12x16?) and currently houses 6 rabbits and our small flock of chickens so there is no room in there for goats, even pygmy goats!

It's Independence Day!

We were supposed to go to a friend's house for a picnic but Daniel was called in to work (there is a problem!) at midnight and he is unsure of when exactly he will be home, Amira is at another friends' house and I'm not feeling well today.

The town we live in had their fireworks display last night so we got to enjoy that. Now, today, we are celebrating our Independence by independently doing whatever we want. 

I do want to send out a huge thank you to all those have served or are serving to protect the freedoms we enjoy in this country every day. Without your sacrifice we would not be here today. Thank you!

Adventures with Roosters

We now own a flock of 11 chickens. We bought 6 Buff Orpinton hens and 1 Araucana hen to start our flock. (The Araucana was chosen by Alexander as "his" chicken since he had never been allowed to own a pet/animal before.) A few weeks later we ordered 3 Buff Orpington hens and 1 Buff Orpington rooster to add to our flock. Our friend went in with us on the second order since neither she nor I wanted to order enough to brood them separately.

After a few weeks, we discovered that our Buff Orpington hens in the new order didn't look at all like they were supposed to. After doing a little research we discovered that we had been given Golden Comets instead. My friend has a large family with many small children and she really wanted the Golden Comets so she and I agreed that I would take 3 Australorps from her flock and my rooster and she would keep the Golden Comets.

It's been a few more weeks now and we have discovered that one of her original Araucana hens is actually a rooster and my Buff Orpington rooster is a hen. After some more discussion between my friend and I we have decided to trade chickens once again! One of her Australorps will be returning to her home and her Buff Orpington rooster will be joining our little hen.

The original plan had been to end up with 9 Buff Orpington hens, 1 Araucana hen, and 1 Buff Orpington rooster. What we will actually end up with is 7 Buff Orpington hens, 1 Araucana hen, 2 Autralorp hens and 1 Buff Orpington rooster.

All of that so we can have a self-perpetuating flock of egg-laying chickens.

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Adopting J

We found out about J back at the beginning of November when we went to a waiting children mixer where loads of children who were in foster care and waiting for forever families were showcased. Daniel and I felt an instant connection with him and talked to all of the staff members who were there that evening about him. We asked our caseworker, who was there that evening, to send us his CSI (Child Study Inventory). We received it the following week and devoured it. His caseworker was on vacation but as soon as she was back to work we called to let her know we were interested.

The next step was having his caseworker and ours come out to the house to do an "interview" - basically discussing him with us and how we might handle certain situations that might arise with him. We had to wait while other interested families were interviewed and a matching conference was set up

On Thursday, Dec. 9, we got the call at 4:45 that we matched with J! I had been a nervous wreck all afternoon but Amira did a fabulous job of entertaining me. Daniel had been waiting for me to call and let him know when I heard something so by the time he arrived home at 4:30 he was convinced that I hadn't called because I had gotten bad news and was crying. He had even planned to get up early the next morning and remove J's bed from his room before I got up so I wouldn't have to deal with it - what a wonderful husband I have!

On Friday we got another call from J's caseworker saying we needed to decide how much subsidy we wanted to ask for to cover the cost of having him in our home. We have never done that before so we ended up making a bit of a stab in the dark. We can go back and ask for more if we need to but we have to have some amount of subsidy when he arrives. If we didn't ask for subsidy before he is adopted then we wouldn't be able to go back and ask for it later if we found out we needed it. We also picked up half of his file to start reading that half while the adoption supervisor finishes reading the second half.

Over the weekend we spent a few hours reading through the half of J's file that we have - no surprises in it thankfully. And today, after Jacob's final electricity class, he and Daniel will be stopping to pick up the rest of J's file so we can finish reading it. His caseworker will be coming out on Wednesday to have us sign off on his file and to pick up a letter and gift from us to him. We are planning to have our first visit with him on Dec. 26th.

Morning Routine

Eventually I want to put this in the side bar but I have to figure out how to do that first so for right now it's a post.

Morning Routine:
Make Coffee
Make Breakfast
Make bed
Get dressed
Pick up bedroom
Wipe up bathroom
Wipe up guest bathroom
Soak beans
Grind wheat for the day
Feed sourdough
Strain kefir
Check calendar
Wake son