Hellifino (Perimeter Patrol)

Yesterday, our neighbor with the hotel-sized-house (the HSH) called to tell us our goats were eating his garden. Luckily, we were home, and we ran right over and herded them back in before they did any major damage. It wasn't immediately obvious where they had jumped the fence, but we definitely saw a few saggy spots, so we hitched up the trailer and hurried down to the farm store before they closed to buy cattle panels.

Twelve cattle panels, a couple of hours, and $450 later, we thought we had taken care of the problem. Not so. As the sun was setting, we got another call. The goats were in the garden again.
This time, we rounded them up and put them in the more secure sacrifice area. We know this small area is secure against adult goats because we have been keeping the buck in there, separated from the does, and he tries mightily but fails to escape. The babies, however, might still be able to squeeze through the space been the gate and the hinges. I didn't think they would wander far without their mother, however, and so it proved. In the morning, all goats were still contained.

Perhaps foolishly, we let the goats back into the big pasture to graze. There's absolutely nothing to eat in the sacrifice area except poisonous tansy, and I was afraid they would all eat it and die. We carefully walked the fence line on the HSH's side of the pasture, and finding one more potential low-spot, dragged another cattle panel out and tacked it up. The morning went by; the afternoon was well advanced and still - the goats were causing zero havoc. It looked as though we had solved the problem. Homero left to go to the junkyard and I took the kids and went to my sister's house for dinner.

An hour later, when each of us were an hour away from the house in opposite directions, Homero got the call. The goats were in HSH's garden yet again, for a third time.

Let me pause here to describe the garden a little bit. HSH is a retired Indian gentleman, and his garden is his main occupation and evidently his pride and joy. HSH spends at least two hours a day and often more out in the garden, which is something like 60' x 80' and laid out in beautiful rows, each straight as an arrow and meticulously free of weeds. He grows onions and garlic, collards and spinach and lettuce. He grows potatoes and squash and cilantro and carrots. He grows tomatoes and chickpeas. He has a lovely little hoop house wherein he grows all sorts of colorful chiles. He has a tall stand of corn, just coming into tassel. His family really eats out of the garden, and he is generous with his substantial surplus. It amazes me no end that one elderly gentleman can maintain a garden of such size and splendor, while I, a full twenty years younger, struggle to raise anything that can outcompete the weeds. Anyone would be annoyed to find his neighbor's goats had devastated his garden, but HSH has more to lose than most.

Homero sped home at a breakneck pace, no doubt roundly cursing goats the entire way. When he arrived, HSH had already put our goats back in the pasture. HSH was nowhere to be seen. Most likely, he had retreated into his home so as to avoid the temptation to punch Homero in the face. Taking no chances, Homero decided to hobble the goats. He used twine to tie their front feet together, so each goat could only take tiny little steps and could not possibly jump. He then walked the fence line, searching in vain for any place the goats might have done a Houdini.

When I got home, I decided to do my own perimeter patrol. I had been thinking, and I had come to the conclusion that the goats were not jumping over the fence at all. My does don't jump much, especially Flopsy, who is hugely obese and spends most of her time on her knees. Yet, Flopsy had been out with the others. It seemed to me most likely that the goats were escaping under the fence rather than over.

But when I walked the perimeter, I saw that there was no way they were going under, either. The grass in the pasture does not get mowed or cut, ever, and so it has grown up in a thick mat over the bottom of the fences and more effectively tacked them to the ground than we could ever do. I was pretty much at a loss. Nothing looked mashed down anywhere. Hell if I knew how they were getting out.

But on my second time around, I found it. I can't blame Homero for not seeing it - it was pretty invisible. Along the bottom of the pasture, not on the side facing HSH, right about in the middle, there was a breach. The goats had gone neither over the top nor under the bottom of the fence. They had gone straight through. Right alongside one t-post, the welded field fencing had come unwelded vertically and had a slash in it like a curtain. The top wire was intact, as was the bottom, and so it was not obvious at all. There was simply a slit through which the goats had slipped, single file, and then gone marauding.

I found the breach just after sunset. I only had time to grab some baling twine and tie it closed. Tomorrow we will patch it with a new section of fence or with yet another cattle panel. In the meantime, the goats remain hobbled. Let this be a lesson to me that I must resume perimeter patrol. I used to be in the habit of walking all the fence lines every month or so, but I have slacked off shamefully. This isn't the first time I have found breaches in the fence: they are a pretty regular occurrence. Fences must be constantly maintained, or else periodically repaired.

Just like neighborly relations. I have no idea what to offer HSH, beyond my abject apologies and, come fall, a nice fat leg of goat. I'm thinking a real, handwritten letter with a gift certificate to the farmer's market.

New Pasture (No More Monkeys)

A couple of weeks ago, during a short stretch of good weather, Homero and the Unofficial Farmhand (hereinafter U.F., also known as Phil, my daughter's live in boyfriend) spent the day fencing in the orchard.

The orchard occupies about a sixth of the easternmost side of the property, a section about sixty feet wide by 100 feet long, just big enough for about twenty fruit trees. At last count, we had three pears, three cherries, three plums, two big hazelnut bushes, and four giant old blueberry bushes that aren't doing very well and probably ought to be uprooted and replaced with more apples. This area is also home to my rhubarb plant and to a mess of raspberry canes I got a few years ago from my sister.

And to a whole lot of grass. 60 x 100 equals 6,000 square feet of grass, which at this time of year is a lot of biomass. The grass is about knee high at the moment - fresh and green, squeaky clean and bright glossy green. It looks so healthy I almost want to eat it myself. For years, I have wanted to fence in this area and use it for the ponies - it can't be used for the goats because they would, of course, prefer the fruit trees. My does are big ladies and on their hind legs they can reach a good seven feet high. They would kill all the young fruit trees in about fifteen minutes. But I can't stand to see all that good grass go to waste under the mower blades when it could be transformed into meat and savings in hay over the winter.

This spring has been so very cold and so very wet that we had to wait until a) the ground thawed, and b) the ground dried out a little before I could have the U.F. drive fenceposts. It was just two weeks ago that both those conditions were met, along with the third condition of my bank account having enough money in it to buy T-posts and four foot woven wire no-climb fencing.

Half the fencing was already in place - there was already a fence between the backyard and the orchard. Years ago we realized that if we wanted an orchard at all, we would have to protect the young trees from goats. I say "realized" as though it were a spontaneous development; as though it hadn't taken us six dead trees to come to the aforementioned "realization." Alas, it did. The fence deciding the orchard from the backyard went in some five years ago.

All we needed to fence in was the eastern boundary of the orchard, and the short southern side. That's about 160 linear feet of fencing, plus some 18 T-posts. Fencing comes in a 100 foot roll and it costs about $125 per roll. Six foot T-posts are eight bucks apiece. Throw in the fence clips and I dropped over $300 at the feed store. Even so, the men ran out of fencing about six feet short. I'm not sure how that happened, unless the rolls are short, or unless I am VERY bad at pacing off distance. Luckily, just like any farmstead, there are several bits and pieces of fencing laying around and we were able to find one to fit the gap.

Now every morning when I go out to milk, I also take the calf and the pony and put them into the new orchard pasture to graze. The stupid dairy calf gads not yet learned to walk on a lead and it is a difficult task to get her into the pasture, but she is already filling out a bit about the hipbones. I was nervous she would eat my raspberry canes, and actually it seems that yes, she is eating them. Luckily I have other raspberries in safer areas, and she doesn't seem to care about the rhubarb. Here's hoping that 6,000 square feet of grass is enough to fatten up one shrimpy, gimpy dairy calf by autumn.

Function Over Form

the calf keeping me company

Recently, I made a fairly large purchase: a dozen cattle panels. I have a long term goal of eventually having all my pastures fenced and cross-fenced with cattle panels, instead of with the droopy, non-functional field fencing we put up when we first moved here. 

After MUCH research, some of it by trial and error (The Forever Fence (Is It a Myth?)) I have made the discovery that cattle panels are the most economical and effective form of fencing for goats. Goats like to stand up on field fencing, which is why most of ours is now mashed down to a height of about twenty-five inches. That is a height which obviously provides no impediment to a goat who wants to be on the other side. It would be marginally cheaper to replace the old mashed down field fencing with new field fencing, as opposed to using cattle panels, but it would be a LOT more work, and no guarantees that the new fencing would last very long, either.

Cattle panels cost about $37 apiece, here, with tax figured in, and are 16 feet long. The dozen I just bought cost  $440 and are just sufficient to re-fence one side of the smallest pasture. At this rate, I will achieve my goal approximately six months before I die of old age. Once, I did find a whole bunch of cattle panels for sale at $20 a pop on Craigslist, but that situation turned out to have a few drawbacks, as well (Cattle (Panel) Rustling).

Today is a beautiful day, sunny and somewhere above fifty degrees. This fact, combined with a general lack of aches and pains when I woke up this morning, convinced me to get out and put up the panels. Dragging a sixteen foot long, wobbly panel through a gate and across a muddy field is not an easy task, and after I had done it six times I went to go find Homero and ask him to help me with the other six. We laid them out along the old fence, and then I went back and tied them to the fence posts using - what else - baling twine.

Every winter, we go through forty-five or fifty bales of hay, and each one has two lines of twine holding it together. When I was a child, these were made of natural jute, but now, of course, like everything else in the world, they are plastic. And very durable. I have pulled these bright orange strings out of the compost pile after years, and they are still just about as strong as ever. They do pile up, too; my work today demanded some thirty-six of them, and I had no trouble at all finding that many here and there about the place.

It would make sense to go back with some wire cutter and actually remove the mashed down field fencing. I'm not sure what it's good for at this point, since it is almost impossible to restore it to it's original shape, but aesthetics alone dictates I eventually get rid of it. The fences are quite a sight as they are now - tangled up, bent, tied together with string, festooned with horse-hair and the occasional plastic bag.... pretty, no they are not. But after today's work, they are a little bit more functional.

Ivory enjoys the sun

Pasture Puzzle (Chucking Monkeys)

Bully

Hope has been bringing home logic puzzles as homework lately. A man is trying to get a cat, a dog, and a mouse across a river in a canoe that only holds himself plus one animal at a time.... you know the rigamarole. I hate these things. Buy some cages, dumbass! Or maybe, you know, a bigger canoe? In fact, if you have to cross this river with such frequency, think about investing in a freaking bridge.

Similarly, I know that the real answer to my pasture puzzle is more fencing. But, like the man with his problematic menagerie, all I have is an inadequate canoe. Here's the situation:

-One main pasture.
-One sacrifice area.
- Both areas have good shelter, thanks to Homero's work expanding the field shelter last month.
- It's winter. I need to protect my main pasture as much as possible from hooves.
- One small herd of dairy goats
- Two ponies who are vicious bullies where food is concerned
- One dairy calf who is apparently very stupid.

In this scenario, the dairy calf is the annoying cat who cannot be left alone with either the rat or the dog. The goats and the ponies will both bully her and steal all her food. Additionally, only the calf gets expensive alfalfa; everybody else eats local grass hay.

Currently, the goats and the horses are in the main pasture and the calf is alone in the sacrifice area. This is the dumbest arrangement because it leaves almost all the hooves on the main pasture. Last night I put the horses in with the calf, but they kicked her out of the field shelter and she slept outside. And they ate all her hay.

There is one more piece of the puzzle that seems like it ought to be useful but so far I haven't been able to make it so. I have a calf hutch ( Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's.....)  in the sacrifice area with the calf and the ponies. Theoretically, I could put the calf's alfalfa in here and she could get to it but the ponies couldn't. In reality, I just spent a half hour crouched inside the hutch rattling a container of grain, biting my cheeks in frustration as the brainless calf peeked timidly in at me and occasionally barked her shins against the lip of the hutch. It's no use. She's just too stupid. It's not her fault.

The goats, on the other hand, are used to the calf hutch and have used it before. They will all crowd in and sleep in there together. That would leave the field shelter to the farm bullies, the ponies. The calf could go into the main pasture all by herself. She'd have the warm barn to herself - not counting the chickens. The main pasture would have only four hooves on it, instead of twenty-four.

I'd need to buy one more cattle-panel (Cattle (Panel) Rustling) before I can try this arrangement, because there's a small low spot in the fence around the sacrifice area and the goats can jump it. The vulnerable spot is right by the fruit orchard, too, and it would only take them five minutes to destroy the trees. And the van - which I need to bring home a cattle panel - is out of commission.

The logic puzzle just keeps getting more complicated. It's as if, while the man is standing on the riverbank with his cat, rat, and dog, somebody starts chucking monkeys at him.

Cattle (Panel) Rustling

One of the larger jobs on my to-do list is to finish fencing the smaller pasture with cattle panels so we can use it as a sacrifice area and get the hoofed animals off the big pasture in the wintertime. Re-fence actually - it is already fenced in field fencing, but the goats just laugh at field fencing (For a re-cap of our fencing woes, see The Forever Fence (Is It a Myth?)... Goats Are Pure Evil...Maybe Goats Should be Allowed to Run Free?... November Blues) I have been slowly acquiring sixteen foot cattle panels, but they are quite pricey ($45 a pop) and at 100 x 120 feet, I need 28 of them to fence the perimeter. That's $1,260, not including tax, delivery fees, or supplemental hardware.

And that's just the smaller pasture - eventually I need better fencing all around. Hundreds of cattle panels.

So, when I found a lady on Craigslist selling some forty cattle panels for $25 each, I jumped all over it. She's sold her house - is already out, in fact - and selling everything she can. The panels were still attached to the fence posts, we'd have to come knock them off with a hammer and load them ourselves, but we could take as many or as few as we wanted. I offered to take all forty of them if she'd drop the price to $20, but she told me she knew that $25 was rock bottom already and she'd had plenty of interest at that price. "I know," I said, "it's a great price. Just thought I'd give it a shot."

The first order of business was finding a way to transport the panels. We don't have a trailer of any kind (have to rectify that one of these days- we constantly need one). Luckily, I thought of Veggie/Oil Man. He's our neighbor with whom we trade goods and services - mostly eggs and cheese for vegetables (he has a sixty acre organic farm), or mechanic work for vegetable oil and the use of equipment. Recently, Homero fixed his car for him and wouldn't take any money, so it was our turn to ask for something. He was very accommodating, and offered us his hay wagon any time. We ran right out to pick it up and then drove to the cattle-panel lady's place to start taking down panels.

It wasn't super easy work - each panel was attached to three posts, by some four U-nails on each post. Each nail had to be removed with the claw end of a hammer, and many of them were stubborn. After being detached, each sixteen-foot panel had to be dragged through a muddy field and hoisted up onto the wagon. The lady was helping us, but even so, it was slow going.

Homero and I were working on panel number twelve or so, when suddenly a middle aged woman came hustling across the neighboring field, flanked by two large Rottweiler-y dogs. "Just what the hell are you doing?" she screamed at me.

"Umm, I'm buying these cattle panels," I said.

"You can't do that!" She yelled. Her dogs were barking, and it occurred to me that I was busily removing the only obstacle between me and them.

"I'm sorry," I said, "are these your cattle panels?" I knew they weren't - they had been nailed to my side of the fence posts, and there was old mashed down field fencing nailed to her side.

She sputtered. "It's my FENCE! Her damn horses ruined my fence..."

"But do the cattle panels belong to you? Did you buy them?" I pressed. If she had claimed ownership, obviously we would have called it quits. But she didn't.

"I'm calling the cops!" she stormed off, and thankfully her dogs followed her. At this point, the Craigslist lady came up, asking "What did she say to you?" I gave her the blow by blow, and she said "I hate that woman, she's half the reason I'm leaving. Seven years, and we've fought with them just about every day. Don't worry, the panels are mine."

So we kept taking down panels and loading them up... but meanwhile, the Craigslist lady was getting more and more nervous. "Oh God, there's her husband. He's an even bigger #$%hole."

Then: "Do you think you have enough? I know you wanted more, but you can always come back tomorrow."

Then: "Here, don't bother, you can tie them down when you get to the gas station. I'm just afraid they might block the driveway..."

Now, we are getting nervous ourselves. "Look here," I ask, "is there going to be gunplay?"

"Oh no, no no... but let's just get out of here."

So we carefully and slowly drive the quarter of a mile to the gas station, and as we are tying down the cattle panels, a sheriff's car pulls in to the parking lot. "Here we go," I think, but the deputy just trolls slowly by, makes a circuit around the gas station, and leaves again. Either they never called the cops at all and this was just part of the deputy's regular route, or they did call and the department decided it wasn't worth bothering about.

I'm pretty sure we didn't do anything illegal - I believe the woman that the panels were hers. Her entire property was fenced in them, not just the side bordering the mean neighbors. The neighbor herself never said they belonged to her. If what Craigslist Lady says is true, those neighbors made a habit of calling the cops every other week over something or other. Who knows - I never met either of them before tonight, so I don't know Jack.

I hope, however, that nothing further comes of this, because now I have enough cattle panels to create my sacrifice area for half of what I thought it would cost - and just in time, too.

Shoulder, Meet Wheel.

Now that things are back to normal - houseguests gone, holidays over, home improvement projects completed - I need to get back to work. Just catching up on the rounds. Making inventory of work that needs to be done and categorizing it.

-Work that can be done now, in the dead of winter, and that which needs to wait for spring.

-Work that requires cash funds and that which doesn't.

-Work I can do by myself, and that which requires masculine muscle.

-Work that has to be hired out.

-Work that requires tools we don't own, and the work of acquiring or renting them.

-Work that is quickly accomplished, and work towards long-term goals.

-Work that is long overdue.

-Work related to livestock or farm equipment and work related to running of the household and the raising of the children.

-Work related to Homero's business.

-Physical work and mental work.

Clearly, there are a lot of different ways to cut up the work-pie. Those categories were written in about twenty-five seconds. And I haven't even begun to talk about prioritizing the work. A few things that spring immediately to mind, in no particular order:

-Preparing the taxes for Homero's business. That always takes me a good month, and although it feels far away, April is right around the corner.

- Finishing the greenhouse. The men left it 85% finished, but it won't be usable until we have sealed it, added the last bits of siding, and caulked all the glass panels. Luckily, we have until March. Also, get some open-sided shelves and potting benches and decide how to organize the space in there. At 10 x 12, the greenhouse is plenty big enough for a single family, if I make good use of the space.

- Put up the cattle panels around the small pasture so I can put the goats in there along with the horses. This should have been done in November, so as to get all hoofed animals off of the back pasture for the wet season, but we didn't have the money to buy panels then. Now that we do, I have bought most of the requisite panels, but haven't done the grunt work of putting them up. So the goats are still hard at work destroying the main pasture, which is their - and our - bread and butter.

- Stock up on basic farm supplies. It looks like the hay we bought from neighbors last fall will last out the winter, but I have been skimping on grain for the pregnant goats, and they are starting to get skinny. Also, there have been no minerals out for them for a couple of months now, and minerals are vital during pregnancy. Otherwise I might get a whole crop of floppy kids come springtime.

- Seed the pasture with grass seed, as soon as I get the goats off of it. I have such trouble with pesky weeds (hemlock, buttercup, thistle, tansy, burdock, oxeye daisy, etc) that I over-seed every year. It certainly doesn't eliminate weeds, but I think it helps give the grass a fighting chance. This can be done anytime between now and mid-April.

- shovel out the deep litter in the main barn. We've been using the deep litter system (keep throwing fresh straw over all the poop, daily) since mid-November. It probably makes sense to leave it until mud season comes to an end in late March, but if we do that, we won't be able to use the resulting compost this year in the garden. Goat and horse poop is fine, but chicken poop needs to be composted for at least a few months before you can plant directly in it. Therefore, it makes sense to get the deep litter out of the barn and onto the compost pile ASAP. That is not something I can do - it needs Homero-sized muscle. And even for him, it's an all-day job.

- order seeds for spring. Do a little research - this year I have a greenhouse, so I will be ordering a slightly different profile of plants than in most years. For the most part, I see the greenhouse as a season extender, but it is awfully tempting to try a few things that would otherwise be impossible, like melons, hot chiles, eggplants, and basil.

Okay, that's a good start. That ought to keep me occupied for a while, dontcha think?

Caprine Incest and Inter-Species Affairs (Oh My!)

Storm Cloud, our handsome herd sire, seems to have impregnated every doe on the farm. None of the three have gone into heat for well over a month now, which means they are knocked up.

Yes, even his own dam. I know - it gives me the heebie-jeebies too, but goats just don't care about incest. I tried to prevent Flopsy from getting pregnant by selling her before breeding season, but nobody wanted her because of her history of mastitis. I think that's silly - her genetics are as good as they ever were (which is great) and she's fully recovered with no recurrence this year. She threw me triplet doelings last spring and she's a good mother, a good milker, and the healthiest doe I have as regards parasites. She also has good feet.

Oh well - next spring I will have some inbred little goatlings jumping around. Real goat breeders use line breeding all the time (usually sire/female offspring crosses rather than dam/male offspring. I don't know why except perhaps because we humans find it marginally less skeevy. The genetics involved should be identical). However, that's no excuse for me. I'm not a breeder trying to concentrate certain genetic traits; I'm a lazy broke homesteader without enough money or muscles to build a good buck pen.

Any offspring of Storm Cloud and Flopsy will simply be marked as a meat animal from the start. I don't care how cute they are. If they're super spotty and adorable we can always tan their little hides and use them for rugs. Or something. I can't sell an inbred animal that might be bred. Of course, I could wether the males and sell them as pets or brush-eaters.

But all those considerations are in the future. Right now I want to tell you about the sweet love between Storm Cloud and Rosie Pony. While the does were in heat, Cloud was naturally distracted, but as soon as he had done his duty by them, he went faithfully back to his first love: Rosie. He follows her everywhere.

He stays by her side most of each and every day. He loves to rub his head against her neck and shoulders and flanks, like a cat rubbing their face on a person. It's absolutely adorable. And really funny. We tease him. "How you gonna get up on that, Cloud? Huh? She's mucha mujer

for you, Cabron."

Nor is that the only inter-species affair going on. Why it's a regular hotbed of beast-on-beast bestiality around here. Poppy is in love with the mammoth jack who lives in the field to the east of us. She flirts with him shamelessly. And - as I was walking the perimeter the other day (slowly and carefully) I saw there is a section of mashed down fence over where they all hang out. I'm worried it might be possible for that jack to tag Poppy right through the fence. Goats and sheep can occasionally do it, and a donkey's pizzle has considerable more reach than a goat's (sorry, cabron, it's true.). If he did manage to get her pregnant, that would be an absolute catastrophe. She's just a yearling, and he's five times her size.

Better make fence repairs. Again.

The Forever Fence (Is It a Myth?)

If I could go back in time, there are a lot of things I would do differently here on the farm. Well, yes, of course, seriously, there are a LOT of things I would do differently in many areas of my life, but I'm not going there (yes, I mean you, Bad Boyfriend 1994-1997)

But let's just talk about fences. First off, I might actually have paid more attention to real estate listings that listed "fenced and cross-fenced" among the assets of the property. I had no freaking idea how expensive fencing is - and you probably don't either. This property had no fences at all when we moved onto it. I wanted to make three pastures so I could rotate, which added up to about 2,500 linear feet, plus four gates.

I went to the local professional fencing place and talked about my options. Since I wanted goats, I looked at really secure fences like five foot chain link, or five foot split rail with field fencing tacked on. As soon as I discovered that those options would run me somewhere between 9 and 14 dollars per linear foot, I coughed spasmodically and exited the building, pretending to have something caught in my throat.

Even cheap welded field fencing costs about $1/linear foot, and the six foot t-posts cost six bucks apiece. Then you have to buy wooden posts and set them in cement on every corner and everywhere there is a break in the fenceline, like at gates. This is just materials cost, you understand. So of course, that's what we decided to go with.

Turns out, there was still a lot we didn't know about fencing. Like, for example, you really really need to have some way of pulling the field fencing very very tight between t-posts. Something with superhuman strength, like a tractor. If you just have a couple of guys, one pulling and the other clipping the fence onto the post, in a few months what you have is droopy wobbly fences. And if you further try to skimp on manpower and money by just using t-posts at your corners instead of posts set in cement, what you get is this:

A fence that looks like it was constructed by a couple of dumb monkeys. Which, in fact, it was. Clearly, as anyone who knows goats can see, this fence is not much of an obstacle. What you can't see in this picture is that our young orchard is right on the other side of this fence. So far, we have lost five trees to the goats, and several others are hanging on by the skin of their teeth (so to speak).

If I could go back in time, I would have spent more money on the fence in the first place. But I didn't and I can't so now I have to re-do. After going back to the professional fencing store to price the cost of fencing in just the one pasture closest to the fruit trees, and again being blown right back out the door by the sheer audacity of asking ten thousand dollars to fence in one 100 x 100 foot pasture, I decided on cattle panels.

Cattle panels are stiff welded fence panels that come in a variety of heights and gauges and lengths. The ones I bought are 4.5 feet high and sixteen feet long. The advantage of them is that they will (probably) contain both the goats and the horses; that we can use the existing t-posts to fasten them to; that they do not need to be professionally installed; and that the cost is about one sixth that of chain link. That is, they are still expensive - just to fence in that one pasture will be about $1,800 - but not absolutely prohibitively so.

As for the other 1,900 linear feet of fences - I haven't the vaguest notion. I'm hoping that if I have one really really secure pasture, I can keep the goats in it most of the time, and then when I put them in the other pastures - which are quite a bit larger - they will be so happy they won't try to escape. Hey, it might work.

And before you suggest electric fences, I have to admit that we have tried. We have tried and tried. We have not been able to keep an electric fence functional for more than a couple of weeks. Initially, it is intensely gratifying to watch a troublesome goat get the shit shocked out of him, but the charge gets progressively weaker until you can grasp the wire in your bare hand and feel only a semi-unpleasant thrumming.

We are a couple of dumb monkeys, remember?

To-Do List: 3/10

In order of immediacy, more or less:

- Take a sample of Iris the goat's diarrhea in to the vet for microscopic analysis. She's had serious scours for four or five days now, and she's only eight days out from giving birth to triplets. This is the goat who had a hard time keeping the weight on while she was pregnant - I fed her and fed her but by the end of her pregnancy she was skin and bones nonetheless. She is a star milker - she produces well over a gallon of milk a day and in order to do that, she needs to be in prime condition. If she's losing tons of nutrients and losing hydration due to chronic diarrhea, well, that's just not a sustainable situation. I could concievably lose four goats - Iris and all three triplets. None of the other goats have scours, so I don't know what's going on.

- Fix the washing machine. It's broke again. I swear, I will never again buy a high tech, fancy-schmancy appliance if I can help it. I'm looking for appliances from the seventies - or better yet, the fifties - back when they made things to last. Go ask your grandma how long she's had her blender. If it's less than forty years I'll eat my hat. Even I, who am still under forty years old, had the same washer, dryer, and refrigerator for all fifteen years I lived in my old house in the city. I move up here, decide to buy all new appliances, and they've all broken down - some of them twice. Planned obsolescence. Please, industrial engineers, give it at least five years on a big appliance like a washing machine before it goes kaput. Less than that, and you just erode product loyalty.

- Fences. Oh my god, fences. Fencing is neverending. Never. Ending. The main culprit now is Poppy pony - she has completely mashed down the field fencing between her paddock and the main paddock. The fence is now about two feet high. I don't even know if it's salvageable, or if we just need to cut it out and replace with new fencing. And if we replace it, with what? What I would theoretically like is fences like my sister and brother-in-law have: split rail wooden fences reinforced with field fencing so it works for both horses and goats. However, they have a paddock about fifty by fifty feet: I have over two thousand linear feet of fencing. Homero could do it - in ten years. We could hire it done - for twenty grand. Solution eludes me right now.

- Buy more hay. The grass is growing now, but I don't want my animals to eat it to a nub before it really gets started. One more pick-up load of hay - say, twenty five bales. That ought to bring us into prime grass season. The last hay we bought was total crap. I sent Homero to pick it up, and he knows nothing about how to evaluate hay. It's not his fault. But if I had gone myself, I wouldn't have bought it. It's mostly timothy, stemmy, dry, and not a hint of green in it. We are basically using it for bedding. The hay we bought before that was fabulous hay - alfalfa and orchard grass mix, third cutting, green as grass. The goats tore into it like it was chocolate laced with crack cocaine. I want more of that.

- Garden work. Homero plowed up a gigantic garden and has basically ignored it ever since (a big "I told you so" is choking me right now. Gakh - Hack - Haaawwk- ok I'm fine now). Now we have a thousand square feet of garden space which is rapidly growing grass, clover, burdock, thistles, and blackberries. I have hand-cultivated and planted a few rows here and there - spinach and swiss chard, forty row feet of potatoes, some italian parsley - but the great majority of it is going to waste unless it is either planted or mulched, fast.

Oh there's most likely a lot more, but just writing this much has worn me out.

2010 To-Do List

A few days ago, I was walking the property and making a mental to-do list. I like to to do this about every month - just walk the perimeter, checking out the fences; go up and down the pastures looking at weeds and rocks; scope out the state of the orchard and the compost pile and the outbuildings. Usually I take the camera and take a few photos of what's going on here and there and everywhere.

Looking at my photos, I see I didn't take any useful pictures that would help remind me of what needs to get done in 2010, so I will rely on my memory, impaired though it is by several glasses of New Year's Eve champagne. I did however, take this lovely picture of Poppy, still nursing although she is clearly several inches taller than her mama. Horsey people, spare me: I already know I should have separated them long ago.

In fact, I may just make that my first resolution: Get serious about training Poppy to walk on a lead, wear a blanket, let me pick out her feet, and generally not be spooky. The farrier suggested I start her on long-leads, as she might make a very nice cart pony someday. She is an adorable pony, very sweet and affectionate, but all ponies need to be trained and the more I handle her the better. Let's make a concrete goal of thrice weekly training sessions, at least a half hour each.

Next: plan a garden. Yes: plan! That means draw out on paper how many square feet, what I am going to plant when and where, buy the seeds and get starts going by the first of February in the sunroom, and generally get my ass in gear. The vegetable garden in MY responsibility, not Homero's. If I need him to do some of the heavy lifting, like building beds or shoveling compost, fine, ask him... but the kitchen garden is the kitchen witch's arena, and I am she.

Next: Plant four to six new fruit trees and a hedge of hazelnuts. Of the original twelve fruit trees we planted, only seven are alive. Damn goats. There is only one apple left and it is pretty sickly. Considering that I own a press and cider is a long-term goal, I think I should plant four apple trees. I have three pear trees and two cherries, but only one plum. I'm going to say, four apples, two cherries and another plum. Plus three to six more hazelnut bushes. I'll need Homero to run the billy-goat brush clearer, but I'm willing to do the shovel-work myself.

And to protect the orchard, we need more fences. I'd be satisfied if we just do the minimum necessary to protect the fruit trees and the garden, but I'd really like to finish fencing in the whole property. Then I could just turn out the goats and the ponies to graze and browse and not have to be a full-time shepherdess. Also my damn fool dog Lancelot would stop bothering the neighbors and chasing cars. But fences are expensive and they are not something I can do myself, so I think it likely I'll have to settle for the minimum.

I think that's as much infrastructure as I can commit to. I'd like to install the woodstove. I'd like to get the rainwater catchment system running smoothly - I have 1,250 gallons worth of storage available and it seems a waste not to use it. But once again, not something I can do by myself, so I can't make any firm plans.

Areas where I can plan firmly include food storage: this is the year I'd like to complete my goal of having a full year's worth of food on hand and of preserving a goodly portion of that food myself. We have a new piglet who will be ready to butcher in April or thereabouts, and now we know a very fine butcher (Crecencio) who is willing to do the job for us, so I guess one of my resolutions is to preserve that pig. I bought an industrial meat grinder, and by God I intend to use it. Ditto for this next year's goat kids.

Cheese. Last year I learned to make fine hard cheese, but I didn't cure it or store it. This year I will. With three milking does I ought to be able to make a two-pound wheel of cheese every week and still have plenty of milk for daily use and for yogurt and cajeta. Out in the shed we have a half-size fridge; I'm going to ask Homero if he can modify it to be a cheese cave: 50 degrees F.

Okay the champagne is getting to me. I think I'm done for the evening. I may think of more resolutions, but if I get most of these ones done I'll be doing pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. Happy 2010 to all of you and may all your resolutions come true!

Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's.....

A flying calf hutch!

We knew the windstorm was coming. We took precautions. As usual, we parked a car next to the trampoline and chained them together (this is since the trampoline hit the roof year before last). We brought in the kiddie pool (which we have fetched from the neighbor's field once already), loose tarps, anything like that.

But it just never occurred to me to tie down the calf hutch. For those city folks among you, a calf hutch is about nine feet in diameter and maybe four feet high. Weighs perhaps 100 pounds. Looks like a UFO as it is gliding silently over three fences and across a state highway.

It's back. And tied down. There's another windstorm predicted tonight.

Goats Are Pure Evil

Sure, they're cute, but in fact they're pure evil

Just as I was arriving at my sister's house for a visit this morning, some twenty miles away from my house, I got a phone call from my neighbor. It seems he had ten goats in his front yard eating his flowers.

This is after Homero spent four hours yesterday fixing the fence. I apologized profusely to the neighbor and asked if he had some place he could put them until I could get home. He said he'd put them in a trailer. My husband called me soon after to say he was on his way home, so I called my neighbor back to tell him Homero would come pick up the goats in fifteen minutes. He was huffing and puffing when he answered the phone. He said "I've got nine of them in there, but the last one is a fast little bastard!"

I'd better bring him some fresh baked bread or something.

Homero arrived and put the goats in our most secure pasture, then returned to work. I was running around doing errands all day, so it came to pass that he arrived home before I did in the afternoon. You guessed it - they were out again! Luckily, the gate was open. Homero, understandably irate, yelled into the phone "I don't know if they've grown thumbs or what but I closed that gate!" I had my doubts about that, but decided not to voice them.

Now, back in the same pasture, they have remained contained for all of four hours. It's full dark, so I doubt they will escape again before sunrise. We absolutely must figure this out, though, because in a few weeks we are going to Mexico and leaving the farm with a farm-sitter. It's not reasonable to expect her to chase goats all over the landscape night and day, no matter what I pay her.

Wish us luck!

Houdini Goats

They are escaping again. I understand this is a common and recurring issue with goats... although clearly not the brightest of domestic animals, they seem to be savants when it comes to escaping. Not that we have the very best of fences...

Oh well, at least it's Homero out there in the rain fixing fences, not me. I do have some hot coffee for him, though. Better go bring it out.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

Note for my Goat Book: All my females were most likely bred today. My Rent-a-Buck, he of the infinitely aromatic testicles, has quickly forced most of my does into heat.

This afternoon, during a sunbreak, I decided to let my goats out to browse while there is still anything alive for them to browse on. I used one of my goat beaters (long sticks) to prevent the Rent-a-Buck from following them out through the gate. I didn't want to risk him getting hurt on the road or eating anything poisonous or whatever, as he isn't mine.

Needn't have bothered. It took him all of two minutes and two attempts to jump the fence. He was not going to let any of those does out of his sight. During the thirty minutes the goats were out, I definitely saw him tag the two little girls (who probably shouldn't be bred yet; they are still pretty small) and Xana. He attempted to breed Django and Flopsy, but I don't think he closed the deal.

The funny part was watching our little buckling, Storm Cloud. Having a senior buck around to observe and emulate has certainly advanced his development. You can see him watching and copying the older buck. It's hysterical. In a previous post, I have described goat sex, which is pretty funny. The male goat "blubbers" to excite the female, which means he sticks out his tongue and goes "bblvlblblblblbldlfv" like a frat boy all over her. Storm Cloud learned to do this from watching Rent-a buck. Until now, he simply tried to jump on the girls without preamble, which didn't work at all.

As any woman could attest. Fellows, you gotta blubber first.

Victory is Mine (For Now)!

When I got back from my 8 hour trip into town, all the goats were still inside their enclosure. 

Maybe Goats Should be Allowed to Run Free?

Since they can't be contained.  Good Lord, I am royally sick of trying to contain my goats. The electric fence has been fixed again, and seems to be working at 50% capacity, anyway, but it does no good whatsoever. Might as well not even be there. The goats go underneath the fence.

We didn't know diddley-squat about fencing when we put up the fences, and we didn't research it as well as we should. Here's a note to all you would be farmers out there: there's nothing wrong with researching something, even as seemingly simple as field fencing. "How hard can it be?" is not research. You don't weave the field fence over the t-posts, you keep it all on one side and use the clips. (pictures of the wrong way to follow; please don't bust a gut laughing at us.) Even when you do it the right way, two people simply cannot pull a fence tight enough to stay taut. You have to use a truck or a tractor. And that means that yes, you actually DO have to sink wooden corner posts in concrete at all four corners. And wait for the concrete to dry. 

If you don't do all that, then the fence will get all loose and wobbly, no matter how tight you think you have pulled it. It's like filling a grave: you take out dirt, you put a body in the hole, you put all the dirt back, and yet still the hole isn't full. How is it possible? I don't know, and I don't know how a taut fenceline goes all wobbly in a few weeks, either. So anyway, the goats can slip under the loose edge of the fence. We would have to take the entire fence down to fix it, and that's just not in the immediate future. So I jimmy-rigged a temporary solution. I bought about a hundred of those heavy wire "U" shaped things, they are some kind of landscaping tool, and I went around tacking down the edge wherever it was floppy. 

I really hope it works at least for today, because I have to drive to Seattle and I'll be gone all day long. Yesterday the damn goats killed two more fruit trees and there aren't many left to kill!

Electric Fences Are the Bane of My Existence.

I think our electric fence represents the poorest return on investment of anything on our farm. I've spent hundreds of dollars and wasted countless hours on it, yet it works only feebly and sporadically. I've bought two shock boxes and walked the perimeter over and over again, making sure that there is no unlawful contact between things that shouldn't touch each other. I've cut my hands pulling wire tighter and tighter. I've bought special tools to test it and hired handymen to fix it, yet it defies all attempts to force it to actually shock a living animal. I can put my hand on it and feel only a dim, unpleasant tickling sensation. The goats probably can't feel anything, through their fur. 

I had to put all the animals in the small pasture with the alpacas this morning so that the guy with the excavator can come and excavate all the trash. The plan is to keep them all in the small pasture for about six weeks, while the new grass that I'm going to plant gets established. But that plan won't work unless the electric fence does. 

For the moment, I'm at a loss.

Shock Happy

Hooray! The electric fence has been working for three whole days now! And the goats are starting to wise up. At first they were getting shocked right and left, especially Iris because she loves to climb the fences. I was so fed up with them I just laughed and laughed whenever I heard a big

"Ble-a-a-a-a-a-h!!" from their direction. Now I have to train myself not to touch the wire when I lean over the fence to feed them their grain.

Great Goat Escape

Nobody I know has the troubles I do with containing their livestock. Remember the chickens that almost started a neighborly feud? Remember when Xana kicked out a window of the barn and cut herself to ribbons? The piglet in the bathtub episode? 

Well, it's happening again. The goats are escaping. The twins were out yesterday, bleating to get back in, and tonight when I got home, four goats were out. The twins, Xana, and Iris! Iris is not a leaper, which makes me think they must have mashed the fence down somewhere, but it's too dark to see. I'll have to wait until morning. 

For now, I'll have to lock them in the big barn (and hope that Xana doesn't just kick out the other window!). I'm terrified of the highway that fronts our property. It's pretty well traveled at all times of night and people speed along at 65. The goats could all get mashed flat, and not only that, they could cause a dangerous accident. 

The lady who owns the buck I bred my does to this year is sending her husband tomorrow morning to help me get the fence working. Homero gave his consent for me to seek help elsewhere a couple of weeks ago, after a full day of failed-fence-fixing in the rain. I won't repeat his actual words here, but they were along the lines of "frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

November Blues

Nothing works on the farm. The electric fence is still broke, despite two temper tantrums on my part and a first class marital spat. Homero didn't agree with me that an electric fence is supposed to deliver shocks EACH and EVERY time you touch it. He declared the fence fixed even though it delivered only a low-grade buzz that was rather more stimulating than painful, and then once every three minutes or so, a fat jolt that made your arm fly involuntarily up in the air. Currently (no pun intended), the shock-box has been taken down and apart to see what the hell is wrong with it, and I doubt it will be put back up before spring.

Unless I secretly hire someone and risk a major fight in favor of a working fence.

I had four yards of drain rock delivered, a week and a half ago, and it is still in a big pile doing nothing to solve the mud problem because I hurt my back and can't spread it out. Homero says he will do it "soon." Maybe my back will heal "sooner." I don't think I bought enough rock, anyway, because the mud is OUT of HAND. It is well over ankle deep, and it is getting pretty difficult to traverse some areas without losing a gumboot. All in all, the farmyard is a wet, stinky, disgusting swamp, and nobody wants to be there, animals included.

I haven't closed the pig in his pen since it started raining. It would be inhumane. He sleeps in the barn with the goats, making himself a big old pile of straw (compost) and digging a kind of trench in it to bury himself in. He's really a very cute pig, and nice as pigs go, and I'm starting to feel bad about eating him. Though I did buy a book yesterday called "Home Sausage-Making."

The catch pen, which was meant for the pony, is the wettest part of the yard, oddly and frustratingly. Rain pools right under the roof, and it's useless as a pony pen. The poor pony would be standing in water up to her knees. But, like the alpacas, she doesn't like to go in the barn, so she stays out in the rain. 

The alpacas are the saddest, most bedraggled looking things I've ever seen. 

The white rabbit escaped and is gone. The brown rabbit is all alone, and seems miserable and lonely. I'm projecting.

No eggs in quite a while.

I hate this time of year.