As yet, I have not named him. He's a bouncy little guy, and at birth was the same size as Belle's son, Stitches is at one week of age.

Anyone have suggestions for his name?

I found this hatchery, Larry's Poultry, and thought, oh, maybe I'll buy from them. I started checking out his website.

Then I noticed a link on his front page that said: IMPORTANT NEWS.

So, I clicked on the link and lo and behold, it was a notice from the Democrat Party warning people of those of us who don't like the Obama Agenda.

Yes, we are "Anti-Reform" Mobs. We are evil. We must be stopped. Oh, and we are afraid! Because we are too stoopid out here to understand the nuances of Obama's Socialized Medicine push, I suppose.

It goes on and on and sounds like a Nancy Pelosi sound bite.

The whole screed was signed by

Jen O'Malley Dillon Executive Director Democratic National Committee

Apparently, Jen is unaware of the many Democrats who have joined Independents and Republicans in protesting the "transformation of America" that far-left Democrats and the President and the Left Democrats in Congress are trying to force upon us.

I wrote the company, Larry's Poultry, and I told them why I would never purchase anything from them. Ever.

Never. Never. Never.

(Cross-posted at She Who Will Be Obeyed, the 2nd Coming)

I brought them both into the garage instead!

This is Stitches, Castle Argghhh!'s newest addition:

And here is Belle, his mama:

Anyway, as I said, my fiber, yarn, wheels, drum carder and all kinds of other stuff have slowly taken over the house. last week, we drove up (through a big snowstorm!) to a lawn and garden show in St. Joseph, Missouri, and we saw this really cute little portable cabin with 2 lofts and a little front porch.

And before I knew it, John bought it for me, for all my fiber stuff (and my other hobbies). It's 10 ft x 18 ft and has 4 windows and two loft storage areas. It's just as cute as it can be.

He hopes that someday I will be able to break even with my fiber stuff, pottery stuff and my animal stuff, but in the meantime, it is so incredibly wonderful to have a husband who supports me and has faith in me.

Now, I just have to wait for the snow to melt and the ground to dry so my little fiber studio can be delivered.

While I'm waiting, I'm trying to figure out how to power it. I'm looking at both Solar and Wind possibilities.

I don't need a lot of power. Some good light, and a fan for summer. And possibly a solar heating unit.

Have any of you tried out any of the solar options on the market? Have any advice?

I have a few weeks before it will get here. I'm pretty sure John can't wait for most of my fiber stuff to migrate from the living room, kitchen and laundry room to the cabin. :)

Goats have a 5 month gestation period. Angoras are seasonal breeders - pretty much, they can get preggers from September through January. That's a long time to try to figure out when these two goaties got knocked up.

Serafina is a bitch. She is getting a little less bitchy than when I first got her, but she will not let me check her to see if she is 'bagging up' - which means her body is getting ready to produce milk for her kid and her udders start growing. Generally, when they start bagging up, that means they are nearing the time for kidding.

Belle doesn't mind me checking her, but she is very funny about it. She acts like I have cold hands or something when I check her udders and hunches up funny. Belle's udders are kinda squishy at this point, and growing, but I hope she is still some time away from kidding, but darn, I could be wrong!

My friend, Robin, had 2 of her milk goats kid last month - she knew they were pregnant, but did not expect them so soon, and Robin has been raising goats a lot longer than I have! So, every morning, I go out, I call Belle and Serafina and check to be sure they have not already dropped their kids.

I'm honestly not too concerned about Serafina - this will be her 5th delivery (she is 6 years old). Belle, though - well, this will be her first, and she is a smaller goat than Serafina. Right now, she looks almost as wide as she is long.

I have all the kidding supplies ready. Non-latex gloves if she needs help getting the kid out - the iodine for dipping the umbilical cord in, and nutridrench for goats to give the does a good boost of energy after they give birth. (among other, emergency kind of things). I still need to build a mama/kid temporary stall where they can bond to each other for a couple of days before letting them out with the herd at large.

I will take pictures as soon as the new arrivals get here. Stay tuned!

This is a photo of Darling from last July. She likes to sit on the steering wheel of our Polaris Ranger until I start it up and then she flies off.

Darling has decided that she will not sleep with the other chickens this winter. No, she has made herself quite at home in the feed room in the barn. She perches atop an old, no longer hooked up, water heater in the corner of the room at night, and in the morning, when I enter the feed room to get the chicken feed, goat feed and horse feed set up for the critters, she flies to my shoulder and "talks" to me while I'm working.

What she really wants is the entire barrel of chickenfeed to herself, so after I load up a couple of pails with feed I will distribute to various feeders outside, she flies into the large barrel of feed and helps herself.

For an hour or so.

You would think that Darling would get fat. I know if I ate that much in relationship to my size, I'd be humongouser than I currently am!

Darling spends part of her day in the Rabbit Room, too. That is where my 6 French Angora rabbits are housed.

She hops around the cages, fussing, and when I go in there to feed the bunnies, she usually hops on my shoulder and supervises.

Sebrights are very friendly little chickens. If you have ever thought of getting a chicken as a pet of sorts, you can't go wrong with Sebrights.

I have the rabbit cages set up in the old milking room in the barn. I discovered that cleaning those cages was pretty difficult because my wheelbarrow does not go through the doors from the milking room to the larger barn area, so I had to either push the wheelbarrow through the goat pasture and through the door to the outside, or carry the 30x30 litter pans to the narrower inside doors and try to tip them just right so I could empty them into the wheelbarrow parked outside the door. It was a pain either way.

So, I looked for some kind of a wheelbarrow that would go through the inside doors, and I found one -

And it works well. (And if you want one, please get it by clicking on that link and I will get a gift card from Amazon!) The bunny's cages are being cleaned much more often because it is so much easier with that dump cart.

As for the Goats - Oh, my, they are such naughty, naughty goats! I looked out the garage door a little while ago, and there were goats in places where goats are not supposed to be! They were all out and hanging with the chickens. Buffy and Gunner and Kiki were all sitting on the hill keeping an eye on them, so they were safe, but as soon as I walked out the door, the goats all looked at me, and started sidling into the barn and then back through the gate that they had managed to open.

This is actually quite gratifying. Back when we first had the goats, if they got out, chances were that Serafina and Morgan would take off like the wind. We had quite a time finding them once, they were gone for days. Apparently, they all seem to realize that this is home now.

I might even try taking them out and letting them graze in back without a fence, if they will stay close. They will come running when I call them if they think I have treats for them. Maybe i don't have to build a bunch of fences for them.

Update: Here is are a couple of photos of the goats in escape mode: That's Horus!

and, Miss Maggie:

Yes, Maggie is quite tiny. She is the goat we almost lost last November - she spent Thanksgiving night in the kitchen, and I was terrified that when I got up in the morning, she would be dead. But, she is a very tough little doeling, and is now running around, jumping and playing like all the other goats!

The goats are out on in the pasture instead of hiding out in the barn, and the chickens are actually venturing more than a couple of yards from the hen house and barn. In fact, Mike, the rooster, was at the front door a little while ago, along with 3 of his hen harem. The fowl DO know where I live, and since I am "She who feeds us, yet steals our eggs", they often hang out waiting for me to bring treats from the kitchen (vegetables past their prime or if it's really cold and awful out, I cook oatmeal with molasses for the chickens).

I like it when it is sunny out because I feel happier and more energized. I'm much more likely to spend more time outside doing chores and preparing for planting veggies and herbs for canning and dehydrating once spring rolls around.

Last year, I had an awful, awful growing year. We had too much rain and the ground was so saturated that my green onions and potatoes all rotted and many more veggies never got going at all. I think I need to go back to raised beds (as I did the previous year). The raised beds are a lot of work to start out with, but the improved drainage really helps my onions, peppers and potatoes. I need to start putting together supplies to build those beds now.

I also need to get some soil tests done. I have some very, very rich soil where the previous landowner fed his calves - it's so rich, though, that I might need to add some sand or something to the loam to make it better for growing things.

So, hopefully, I'll be updating my blog more often and getting some pictures up and preparing my gardens for a successful year, no matter how much rain we might get!

Well, she called on Tuesday, and we agreed to meet at the PX at 10:00 AM yesterday. I was there at 9:58 and waited until 10:25, and the nice woman did not show up.

When I got home, after giving my eggs away to some friends, there was a message on the phone that she had waited at the Commissary for me and then realized she was supposed to meet me at the PX.

Now, I'm not really mad that she made an error. But, that was 30 minutes of my life that I will never get back for $6 worth of egg money that I won't get. I'm thinking that from now on, if someone wants eggs, they can call, and if I have some, they can just drive out to the farm to get them.

Honestly, I'm not making a penny on the eggs in the winter. I'm not even sure that the little bit I make during the market season even pays for the chicken's feed during the non-market season.

Most likely no one will bother to drive out here for eggs. Ugh.

I could just get more egg recipes and use them up and freeze the culinary results until we get around to using them.

Comments, suggestions?

In fact, come to think of it, its the wind that has been bugging me. We have had a whole lot of wind. Until we had a thaw last week, we had snow drifts that were over my knees - because of the wind! We had a drift, a huge drift, that blocked the front door for 4 weeks.
We almost always use the garage door to enter and exit the house, so we didn't bother with shoveling the humongous drifts around the front door. The only ones it bothered were the dogs, and the County guy who drives the plow on our road who sank in that drift up to his butt when he came to check to make sure he was not going to plow up John's body - see John's post!

I ended up making paths through the snow from the garage door to the henhouse to the barn, and every time the darn wind blew, I had to forge through the new drifts all over again.

Because of the deep snow, our Colored Angora Goats had little reason to leave the barn. The chickens would barely leave their house unless it was to run to the barn. I have a lot of mucking out to do once all that chicken poop thaws, let me tell you! In the meantime, I put layers of straw and pine bedding on top of the poops in the henhouse.

For the moment, the snow is gone. It's cold, but so much easier to work outside.

I suspect they have coccidiousis. Coccidia is a parasite that is always present in goats, but if for some reason, their immuity is down, it can affect their guts and cause diarrhea.

So, I have quarantined them both in their own stall. They are both getting electrolytes, B vitamins and a sulfa type of drug. They have their own minerals and hay and water. This way, I can get a much better idea of how much they are consuming than with the rest of the herd.

If they are not better by Monday morning, I'll get some fecal samples and run them down to my veterinarian. But, many goatherds tell me that I should be able to treat this myself.

It is also possible that we could have a worm problem, but they don't appear to look anemic to me.

So, I'm saying a prayer and doing all the medical stuff I have been told to do.

I'll update tomorrow on their progress.

I put my coat on and went out with the dogs - Buffy (the coyote slayer), Gunner and Kiki. We are indeed missing a duck. He must have been taken by surprise, as I could find no sign of struggle anywhere in the area the ducks are known to frequent.

Buffy and Gunner picked up a scent and ran down the field behind the house and into the woods on the other side of the creek. Kiki, being an elderly dog, trotted behind them and then sat down until she figured she had been gone long enough to impress me and then returned home.

In the meantime, Buffy and Gunner could be seen racing through the woods and then back across and to the field to the West of the house - where I have seen coyotes before. They were gone for at least 30 minutes before they returned.

This happened between 4 and 6 pm - prime coyote attack time, in our experience. I am going to have to start keeping watch with rifle in hand during those hours. Last autumn, John shot several coyotes during that same time period - as they started up the hill toward the fowl.

I wonder if the eggs they lay today should be saved and used in a pumpkin pie?