Farm Farm

What the Farm’s Been Up To


While I was away in Wyoming my friend Cyrena, who is my official farm-sitter when I can’t be there, was kind enough to bring Kiki and Grace to be in the nativity pageant at my friend Cristy’s congregation. Unfortunately the pictures and video from the actual pageant did not turn out well, but here’s one of Cyrena in her shepherd’s costume with the goats. Apparently Grace, normally wanting to be the center of attention, was a bit frozen with stage fright. And of course they pooped on stage too. We anticipated that though and they’d laid down plastic and hay just in case.


Two new colonies of bees have been ordered for Spring. One for my old hive, and one for the new hive I built with the viewing window in it last winter. I’m very excited to get that colony going!

Winter is a lazy time on the farm. All the animals are bored. The goats are getting fat. Our wether has been very erratic this winter so far, and we’ve had extreme temperature ranges. This seems to be making Princess Kate, my Tennessee Fainting Goat, particularly stiff-legged, and she’s walking around like one one of the Queen’s Guard’s in the Royal British Army.


The chickens fly out of the fenced area to free-range, but discover there’s not much out there to eat either this time of year. So I find myself going out several times a day to throw them some cut up apples or kale or scratch grains just to keep them well fed and give them something to do. I’ve been scouring the bargain rack in the produce department at the grocery to find past-prime bargain produce to give them for treats. The bananas are a particular favorite, and the goats adore pears.



One of my beautiful Buff Chantecler is molting and looks rather miserable right now.


And while Corn Flakes the rooster is getting more lovely by the day, what started as a small garbled crowing in the coop in the morning is slowly, day by day, developing into a full-blown crow. He’s not crowing often at this point, so for now he can stick around.



It was Christmas time last year that Melina and Cissy went away to be bred. While I thought about breeding Melina again, and possibly breeding Princess Kate to a more traditional dairy goat for a meat/dairy cross, I guess I still haven’t recovered from the loss at birth of my Cissy and the strain of bottle-feeding Kiki and Grace from birth. I still have time to breed them should I change my mind.

Comments

  1. thank you for your post..I love it

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