Itty Bitty Hooves

Glutton For Punishment

I was just sitting here thinking earlier today about how suddenly we got back into the goats. Not really thinking about it with regret, but I do have to laugh at the fact that just last year I was saying, ‘no more hay eatting animals’. I wouldn’t care if hay was easy to come by, or not getting more expensive every year. Goats can be a better alternative than most hay eatting livestock as they can do quite well on weedy vegetation that would make most farm stock sick. They can’t live on it completely however, unless you have a vast acerage with year-round grazing. We have pretty good pasture areas for goats. Lots of trees and weeds which they love a lot more than grass. They’re not grazers so much as they are browsers. They like a ‘little bit of this, and a little bit of that’ and just adore posion ivy and other noxious weeds other animals wouldn’t dream of touching. After this last week of escapes and extreme heat, and worry about hay shortages and drought even though we’ve gotten a fair amount of rain this month and are no longer in drought danger, so much of the country is, and it’s such a tenuous balancing act, I think I may need drug rehabilitation myself before too long. I don’t use drugs, and I’m not much of a drinker as a rule, but these critters could really drive you to it. Certainly I’m begining to think I’m just a glutton for punishment.

Goaty Milk

With all of the commotion I almost forgot to take the morning’s milk out of the freezer. One of the problems with goat’s milk vs cow’s milk is that goat’s milk is much more delicate. It will last almost as long as cow’s milk will if it’s handled properly, but if not, it will go ‘goaty’ long before it goes ’sour’. To keep goat’s milk from tasting like you’re licking the behind of a big old buck, it must be cooled very quickly after milking. When it comes out of the goat it’s about 101 degrees. The best way I’ve found to easily cool it is to strain it into quart jars and put it in the freezer. Circulating cold air would be even better, but most of us don’t have such a contraption. You can make them. People who love wine have a machine that will chill a bottle of wine in just a few seconds using forced cold air. I’ve seen the plans to make the machine and if I had lots of milk to chill quickly I’d invest in the parts to make it, but for just a few quarts a day it is just as easy to pop it in the freezer. I just have to remember to take it out.

Frozen milk is okay to still use, it just tastes less creamy. Something about freezing the milk dilutes the cream. Some say that if the milk goes ‘goaty’ you can put it in the freezer and freeze it then thaw and the ‘taste’ will go away. I haven’t tried that yet, but it’s a good tip to try.

Smart Kids

Well, they did it again. Three of the weanling dairy goats got out of the back fence into the woods. I don’t want them back there even though the perimeter is fenced in, because there are too many wild animals that trapse through there and they’d be fair game even though they have horns. One, however didn’t get out. Maybe she wasn’t smart enough, but Amelia never gets out when the other three do. She just will not shove herself through a hole not even big enough for a goat half her size. The others will–no problem. Getting back, however is a problem for some reason. Maybe Amelia is the smart one. One things’s for sure, she’s a great tattle-tale. I was sitting in my office typing the previous post when I heard her screaming outside my window. There’s only one reason… well two reasons a goat will scream like that. She’s caught in the fence (she wasn’t) or she’s all alone. Goats hate to be seperated from their herd. Sure enough, I went out there and she was all alone, and the other three were no where to be seen. A quick investigation of the back fence found them just outside it, eating the great weeds and trees in the woods. Now, before you think I starve them, there are plenty of weeds, trees, and grass in the 1/2 acre yard they are SUPPOSED to be in. But they’re goats. The grass (weeds, trees, etc) is always greener on the other side of the fence. And if the fence is weak… well, they’ll be over there.

Thank heaven’s for little tattle-tales.

Finally some Nice Weather

Wow what a wonderful day yesterday was! It was actually a bit cool. Today is even nicer with a little bit of warmth but not much humidity. What a break from all those 87% humidity days in the 90’s. It’s supposed to be wonderful all weekend. I was hoping to get to the farm swap on Sunday, but I forgot our trailer license needs to be renewed and I don’t think I’ll get it in time. Figures. I really would like to sell the two stallions in the barn. I have too much horsey testosterone running around here still. It helped a lot selling the two 2-year-old colts in May finally.

Pure Heaven

Between all the escapes this week, and the extreme heat and humidity I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than go on a cruise. As vacations go cruises have to be the most relaxing, and complete way to unwind and forget all about the troubles left behind at home, or work. You don’t have to do anything, just lay back on a deck chair and enjoy the breezes, listen to the lapping water hitting the hull, stare at the bright blue sky, and eat. If you WANT to do things there are always various forms of entertainment going on at any given moment, but for me it would be pure heaven just to lay on the deck and let the sounds of the ocean sweep all the aches and headaches away.

Fences And Water

Well I now believe the old adage that if a fence will hold water it will hold a goat. It’s obvious that there are several ‘leaks’ in our fencing. This morning I rescued one goat that got her head caught in the fence–no big thing, happens all the time since most of our goats have horns, but, one of the young dairy girls got outside again into the wooded area of our property. By the time I got back around to that pasture after releasing the stuck girl the escapee had gotten back into the pasture she was supposed to be in and I couldn’t find where she’d gotten out at. Not good. You can’t fix what you can’t find. I’ve been looking to get a fullblood doe addition to the herd, but thankfully the one I was looking at seriously was taking some time to get back to me and during this week I’ve found just how escapable some of our areas are. I need to work on that first before adding any more.

Fences and Barns, neverending work

I’m keeping all the goats in their pens again today. Just one more day of relaxing without having to worry about checking them every hour or so, and retrieving them from escape. I think I have all the holes fixed except one and I know what I have to do to fix that. It won’t really be hard but it is slow going in the heat we’ve been having. It did rain a bit yesterday. Not long though and once it was over the humidity was deadly. I also put the fence by the milking barn back the way it was last week. I’d tried pulling it out and letting them have access to the inside of the barn but that just wasn’t working out. The feed and hay, and the actual milking stanchion was blocked off in a stall by itself so they couldn’t get in there, but the problem was, neither could I with fifteen goats all crowded around it. Not without a hassle anyway. So I pulled the fence line back again and it’s much easier to feed and milk that way. I think the cat’s happy about it too. One of our barn cats had her kittens in that barn and she wasn’t all that happy about all the goats milling about in there.

The Great Escapes

Three in one day! I didn’t even get online yesterday because I was so busy retrieving goats, and getting them back in the yard, and fixing the weak spots they found in our new fencing. It seemed like I was just finished with one spot and a couple of the goats found a new spot. It didn’t help that it was in the 80s yesterday either. A cool breeze would have been nice. By the end of the day I was ready to swear off goats for good and considered very heavily the thought of taking them all to the sale on Sunday. That passed after I’d relaxed for a bit in the house and had taken a half hour long cold shower to cool off. They’re all staying in their pens today though. Not so much as ‘punishment’ for them, but as a ‘day off’ for me.

Strange Finds

On any given day you can walk our property and find all kinds of strange things you might not think you’d normally find on a farm. Walk through our wooded acerage and you’re likely to find broken arrows discarded from our archery range, paint ball remnants, some even unused from one of our many ‘wars’, and even used golf balls from when Bob has gone out to ‘hit a few’ and couldn’t find it afterwards. As expensive as those little round bullets are I have to clue him into the site where you can get great deals on used balls. Then if he looses them it’s fine if it takes days for me to come across them on a walk through the woods. Of course, it may take longer for him to get them back if I have to crawl back because I’ve slipped on one of those little slippery suckers and broke a leg in the process. I wish he’d keep them on the green.

No Other Way To Watch A Movie

I remember about 20 years ago when Bob and I first got married how excited we were to get something that was cutting edge technology… our first VCR. Yep, we were on the winning team with that one. The big war between BETA and VHS was going wild at the time, and for non-geeks like us it was very confusing to say the least. And scary. Machines back then were so ‘high-tech’ that they cost in the neighborhood of eight hundred dollars a piece, and movies on tape at that time ranged from fifty to eighty dollars. Movies took years back then to make it to VHS, not months the way they do now. The big fear was however, after investing so much money, would VHS win, or would BETA? Would we have to buy a new machine again? All new tapes? Scary stuff for an average young married couple just making ends meet and trying to save to get a house and raise their toddlers as well.

Kind of makes you laugh now doesn’t it?

You can run out to the store to pick up a new VHS machine for about thirty bucks. The new kid on the block, not so new anymore is DVD and even those machines, once selling for hundreds of dollars now goes for about fifty. Of course there are ever new inventions, blue ray, recordable DVD players, etc… But we’re used to the changes now. Everything moves so fast in technology today that we know if we buy something it will be outdated the moment we walk out of the store. Thankfully movies now only cost about twenty dollars on the high end, and you can buy all kinds of older ones for less than ten dollars.

The big craze now is home theater systems. We have one. Bob looked at me over the weekend when we were sitting around watching movies during a rain storm and the sound from the movie was all around us and said ‘There’s no other way to watch a movie’. True, and yet a mere ten years ago we wouldn’t have dreamed of such a thing.

For some folks even that’s not enough. If you have the space, and the money you can create your very own theater in home complete with theater seating. It’s actually pretty affordable. What a wonderful way to really enjoy the movie. You can get everything you could even dream about and turn your family room into a real live theather complete with popcorn and movie posters.

I can only imagine us watching a movie in a few more years thinking, ‘there’s no other way to watch a movie.’