Wet Weather...

I hope all of you are doing well during what has been a stormy spring. I am hoping all these storms are about to leave us. It is making my life harder. With all of theses storms we have a lot of mud and standing water. Of course this mud is worse in front of the barn. It will be a job leveling all of it out after all this rain dies down.
Last year we dug a drainage trench from between the two big stalls at the top of our hill. It has helped, but the horses are not leaving the front of the barn so all this mud mixed with all their manure is making it all worse.

I had the vet out to check out my 6 new goats and to castrate a calf and goat. I also had all horses vaccinated. Then next week the vet will be back to wether all but 2 of my 6 kid goats. Then we will be saying goodbye to some of the kids as they will leaving us for their new homes.

I just bought some new herbs, tomato plants, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. I am hoping to at least get the herbs in the ground tomorrow and then the rest in this weekend along with some more seeds. All this rain seems to have washed away some of my seedlings and possibly rotted my potatoes!

Good day to all of you!

Kids...

So our kids [baby goats] are getting big! They spend a lot of time outside on the nice days and we have even moved our little Ruth to the barn. They are all on bottles now as I am milking all three does. Now bottle feeding seven kids is a chore. We are trying to come up with a system so that we are not allowing bad behavior or one kid stealing too much food. So in our attempt to keep things better organized we added two new stalls to our barn. This is going to help with our kidding next year and with keeping kids away from moms. It is always amazing to me how goats can escape anything. We built four foot high stall walls and 3 1/2 foot gates with a board running across the top. I have one doe Twinkle who can still manage to squeeze out! And believe it or not our little Ruth, the bottle feed, smallest kid we have can jump out too! She jumps higher then any of the bucklings! So I have gone to placing a gate across the new pens on top of the gates on the stalls!

My father in law is purchasing some acreage down the road as his retirement home and will be closing on it soon. He is buying five acres and allowing us to use three acres as we please. So this is the best answer for the horses and cows. This will also free up my two acres for more goats. I know this land will take some work, putting up fences and a barn/lean to. Not to mention driving to care for the animals. It is only five miles away so it will be an easy quick drive. But I can not help but already planning what I am gonna do with the extra room here! It is amazing what we can all do with just a little bit of land. If you rotate animal's, and use good management, you can keep healthy happy animals on small acreage. So in my head I am growing my goat business, raising more poultry and allowing more room for gardens.

I hope you all are happy and healthy as we enter this wonderful time of year.

Well here are some new pictures. ENJOY!

Here is our Ruth, when she was inside.

She is such a couch goat!

Here are all seven kids!

And Again!

It has been a long week...

It has been a long week. Have any of you had one of those weeks or maybe days? You know the ones, where you feel tired just getting up. I have been really sick. Let me tell you if I am saying I was sick, it was bad. I usually just grim and bear it. I have told my girls many times smile, nod and keep going. That is what I do.But this week, well really two, have not been good.

I have had a showing fall thru, and a FSBO that gave me a hard time, even though I sold his land! I am closing that deal nest week. And I am still trying to get my farm running better.

Had a sick baby goat, who pulled thru and is now doing great. Getting used to another horse and goat here has been hard. I have small dairy goats. This goat is a pushy giant Nubian mix that is full of bad habits. He even broke down a fence to get to the horse.  And then today I lost one of my favorite hens. She was so egg bound her abdomen was swollen and purple. I guess in my own sick days I did not notice her illness. I have been wanting to get all my kids on bottles and no more moms. I just do not have the time. I feel exhausted all the time.

I hope all my followers are doing good and having better luck.
God Bless you all!