The Kids Are Growing!!

Summer is fast approaching and all the goat kids are getting big! Here are the latest pictures:



All the kids want to be in the picture!


Crystal says, "What are YOU looking at?!"



Here is HeftyMan. He is the biggest of the babies.



This is Cindy Lou. She is a Nubian goat.



Cheryl says "Hello"


Here is Black Bart. I will be using him for breeding my goats this year.

The Goats: 2009 Edition!

Here are the newest set of kids. This is Pepper's twin does that were born yesterday morning.



This is another picture of little Madge.



Here is Lucy and Matilda.



This is big Gloria.

It's Black Bart! One of Lucy's twin boys.

Here's all the older kids that were born this year. There are twin boys, twin girls, a boy and a girl. All are healthy and love to jump around.

Baby Goats Are Here!!

Finally my goats have started to have babies! This weekend was a busy one with goats having babies everyday. On Friday, Matilda had twin girls. On Saturday, Gloria had a boy and a girl. On Sunday, Lucy had twin boys. All babies are doing well and are already starting to bounce around.





Here is Cheryl and Martha. They are Matilda's kids.





This is Hey-Zeus. He is Gloria's kid.





This is Hey-Zeus' sister Madge.




These two are Lucy's boys. I don't have names for them yet - I need suggestions.




Here is another cute picture of Martha.

Mud Season

Those of you not from the North Country (when I say "North Country" I mean Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Northern New York) may be wondering what "mud season" is. I wondered what this new season was when I moved up here to attend Paul Smith's College in 2000. I had never heard of it and was sure it was some interesting and fun fifth season that was particular to climate zones 3 and above. Well, it is a season, but it isn't a fifth season. It is actually a replacement of one of the better of the four seasons that most other parts of the country have. Up here there is Fall, Winter, Mud Season, and Summer. There is no spring up here. Spring is like fall in reverse in the North Country - there are no flowers, no happy chirping birds, no smell of delicious cherry blossoms... Nope, none of that. Basically all that happens as the snow melts and the temperatures rise, is the leaves come back out on the trees and there is mud, LOTS of mud!!

No one here uses the word "spring" except in reference to daylight savings time. Everyone refers to this time of year as mud season. Right now the snow is melting and the ground is still frozen. The water from the melting snow runs and pools into the most inconvenient spots because there is still frost in the ground and there is nowhere for the water to go. Most of those inconvenient spots seem to be in people's driveways, around people's porches, and in the middle of my goat barn. With lots of water and semi-frozen dirt, comes mud -- lots and lots and lots of mud. Mud that sticks to everything, mud that swallows wheel barrow tires and tractors whole, mud that ends up on your bathroom floor whether or not you took your boots off outside of the house. MUD!

Mud season also spawns a particularly interesting occurence of "frost heaves". Frost heaves are not something you get from eating too much Ben & Jerry's. Frost heaves are when parts of a normally flat, paved road thaw and freeze unevenly. They come in all sizes from a single tire-popping pothole to a truck eating trench. You know when you are approaching a frost heave when you see a little, tiny orange flag by the side of the road. When I first saw the orange flag on a road, as I raced well over the speed limit to get to class on one of my college days, I thought someone must be having a birthday party or a garage sale and pointing the way with cute little orange flags. Well, ten feet after I passed the orange flag, my car was launched into the air only to slam down in a bone crunching crash back to earth. The road behind the flag was gone. I don't mean there was a little dip in the road, I mean the road was completely gone! The trench where the road should have been was 2 feet deep and equally as wide. From then on, whenever I see a little orange flag, I slam on the brakes and creep past towards whatever canyon lays in the road from the wonderful frost heaves.

Then with all these pools of water and pits of mud comes another interesting part of living in the North Country ---- BLACKFLIES!! Blackflies are these little biting bugs that fly around in man-eating swarms and have been known to drive full grown moose to the point of drowning themselves to find reprieve from the biting. Shortly after mud season comes the blackflies. Living in the North-Northeast it is not uncommon to see more people outside working and playing when it is -30F than outside in the peak of blackfly time. Blackflies are not discouraged by bug spray or citronella candles or agent orange. The only way to get away from blackflies is to stay inside or stay completely, 100% covered. You will see people all over the North Country covered head-to-toe on the most sunny of days just trying to not get their blood sucked. Blackflies not only suck your blood, but they bite you and leave a huge welt. The welt is extremely itchy and turns quickly to a bloody mess after a few short bouts of scratching. The welt also stays on your body for at least 3 weeks. Some people have scars from blackfly bites that have never gone away. And, if you are like me, you can have an allergic reaction to too many bites. If I get bit more than a dozen times at once I develop a fever, sore throat, and headache for days. It's wonderful. So you will see me out an about (gardening, doing chores, grocery shopping) covered in long pants and a mesh bug shirt that covers my head and face. The bug shirt keeps the blackflies from getting to my skin and taking a chunk out of me. It isn't the most appealing fashion statement, but it works and I recommend it to anyone.

Spring is in the air!

Recent weather has been very nice and warm. It was in the 40s this weekend and the snow is melting fast. Of course the change in weather gets me thinking about spring time and new baby animals. Soon my goats will give birth. I have three that are due around April 10th and one that is due around April 24th. All of them look huge with their ever-growing pregnant bellies. I can't wait for the babies to get here!!

There are two new additions to the farm. I got some really cute dwarf rabbits last week. I originally got them for my mom, who breeds dwarf rabbits, but I don't think she'll be able to convince me to give them up anytime soon. Here are some pictures of Bonny and Gem:

Bonny and Gem

Gem

Bonny

More Pictures of the Farm!

Here is Herman the Flying Cow!!





Look at my silly Polish hen.






Here is KC looking very surprised by the camera flash.




EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Matilda and Lucy. Seems like every time I take a picture of them it winds up being of their noses!

Herman the Flying Cow!

Happy New Year! So far this year has been eventful. I have found out that Herman (my 9 month old steer) can fly! There has been some pretty cold nights here in the North Country that have guilted me into putting Herman in the barn during the deep freeze. I only have one empty stall for him to go into and it is not very big. When I put him in the pen, I fully assumed that he would push the gate down and get loose. Well, in the morning he was loose, but the gate was not disturbed. Nothing was disturbed about the pen walls which was odd because Herman is pretty big and I can't figure out how he managed to get over a tall, tight pen wall to be found standing in the barn aisle the next morning. I chalked it up to levitation. Luckily he didn't knock over any of the feed bins and gorge himself on grain (which would have been very bad). Instead he entertained himself with some hay I had on the milkstand and a tarp I had on the ground. I put him outside in his big pasture and went about my day.

The next morning he was standing in my flowerbed. Tom went out to put him back in his pasture and I went out to figure out how he had escaped. I deduced that he had walked over the snow and ice and stepped over where the fence was low. Tom shoveled some of the snow away from the edge of the fence and I made sure the fence was on and working. Herman stayed in his pasture the rest of the day and we assumed he would continue to stay there.

Yesterday I came home from work to find Herman in the dog pen. I was puzzled but didn't feel like thinking about it too hard. When Tom came home he explained that Herman had seen Tom plowing in his truck and decided he wanted to play. He jumped high in the air over the fence and ran circles around the plow truck, kicking and snorting for joy. Then he ran down the road and skidded on two legs around the corner to the barn. Tom caught Herman in the barn and put him in the dog pen (which is the tallest pen we have). He is there to stay until we can figure out a "flight proof" fencing situation.