I’ve been a goat owner since July 2014. I’m very much a newbie when it comes to goat ownership. The folks on the goat forums that I frequent can vouch for that as they must be positively sick of hearing my thoughts and questions. It seems like we’ve been back and fourth about if our […]
And then there was one…
For months a certain someone has been begging to go to her sister’s school. You see we read in the newspaper about how PreK screenings were being done before the holidays and at the mention she was insistent on going. I was open to the possibility but very sure she’d change her tune as soon […]
Lambing, incubating and poop logs…
Today has been a whirlwind ending with lamb for supper…
Kmart’s Online Layaway Program Ruins The Holiday For Many…
If you are a Kmart customer with an online layaway contract you might be unpleasantly surprised this week. At this writing there are about 704 angry consumers battling Kmart over their unfulfilled layaway contracts. Unfortunately, we happen to be one of them. It seems Kmart did a piss-poor job of reconciling the online layaway order contracts […]
Mom, it’s like a zoo around here! St. Francis of Assisi at work?
After quite a stint of pet woes it seems we are getting a dose of some animal cuteness. A chick hatched out last week that we have in a brooder inside the house right now. Super cute! The husky dog returned to have some fun. She’s cute and sweet as long as there aren’t any […]
Favorite Flourless Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Everly’s kindergarten snack day was this week at school. We are gluten free so snacks always take some advance planning. Her class knows she is gluten free but we understand that not everyone will remember or care about her not being able to eat glutenous snacks… so I do my best to find her delicious […]
Mercury in retrograde is effing with us- big time.
It’s been ages since I’ve last posted, we’ve been knee deep in sickness and live upheaval. October has sure kept us scrambling but we’ve come through it. Here is what we’ve been taking on, one step at a time: In mid October madness began… there was a steady rain that wouldn’t quit. Then a chick went […]
All before 8am on a farm…
Most mornings I’ve got Nathan to help me with a portion of the homestead chores but harvest season is upon us so he’s been off working occasional early mornings and even right through the weekends around Tanglefoot Ranch. This means I’ll fly solo for the chores here on the homestead. Here is a glimpse of what flying […]
It came back positive… We’re pregnant!
We got the blood test results back, we are seriously expecting babies this fall… goat kids- you thought I was pregnant again didn’t you? Sheesh! Anyway, On labor day a vet friend came out to draw some of our doe, Poptart’s blood for us. We wanted a pregnancy test for her because lots of things […]
You never can predict or control things on a farm…
Things haven’t been dull or slow here. Sure we bought a clearance hammock to hang in a tree and the change of season is nearing but… We’ve had a wet few weeks and our turkey tractor (aka the rolling poultry pen) has been flooded out twice. Last week a turkey became sick and died. I […]
It’s oddly quiet…
Things are in transition again. It’s very quite here in the mornings and oddly, I’m feeling a touch of calmness. Could it be that we are forging a new yearlong routine? Is it just that I’m down to juggling two kids during this time? Is it because needs are being better met in our new […]
We have hatching…
Over the last three weeks we’ve been monitoring the humidity and temperature of our homemade “Coolerbator” egg incubator. My last post was about counting our chickens before they’d hatched.. So far, our 15 mail order chicks have arrived and are thriving. Today our incubated eggs are cheeping & beginning to hatch! The eggs have been […]
Swimming in chicks this fall… or not?
I’m trying to not count my eggs before they hatch but we might be swimming in chicks soon! Let’s see, where was the beginning of this chicken saga? I believe it all started when we found our beloved Bernice, an Americauna hen, dead near the stock trailer. She was from the first batch of chicks […]
It’s unfortunate when you “golden shower” yourself… Right?
Someone has popped two top teeth through and is getting quite active, so active that the worn out velcro closures on my five year old cloth diapers aren’t doing the job anymore. Must make time to covert the velcro to snaps, ASAP! Last night when I heard a tiny baby cough coming from the bedroom I […]
It’s hard to control a limp teat!
We are almost a week into goat ownership right now and we are loving it. We got our milker, Poptart, on a slightly later milking schedule so we aren’t quiet as tired as initially in the first few days. Yay! As newbie goat owners, we’ve had a few scares. The first one was when Clay, […]
Newbie goat milking at the butt crack of dawn…
It is 5 am and I’m up. Yesterday we brought home our milking goat, Poptart, a 2 yr old Alpine goat. She’s had a certain type of feed and a certain milking schedule… and since we’ve uprooted her living arrangement and shuttled her to our home, in a thunderstorm… we figured the least we could do was […]
To Celebrate our one month anniversary with farm life…
A month ago today we crammed all our things, our animals and our kids into vehicles and we drove two hours to our new country home in southern Illinois. We’ve been here a month now and things are becoming more routine. Farm life is going well and we’ve been making adjustments to better fit our […]
Herding instincts, birthday joy and milking goats…
It’s been 25 days since me and Nathan have watched TV. The one thing about farm life that differs from what we were doing before is, we are working LESS hours but we are working HARDER… Not so hard that you want to fall over and die, just hard as in each part of the body […]
On crashing and lessons learned during the first week of farm life.
We’ve officially completed our first week on Tanglefoot Ranch. Its been a major whirlwind of activity but its been really great. Speaking of Tanglefoot, are you on our mailing list yet?Seeds have been sowed, our future chicken/ garden space is being readied. I’ve taken over care of the 40 meat birds. Nathan learned to drive […]
We’ve made it to Tanglefoot Ranch.
It was a steamy, stormy day but we we loaded a trailer, a stock trailer, a van and two cars with our stuff and drove two hours away to make a new life in the country. The Tanglefoot crew came out and helped us load our lives up and make the trek. They are a […]