Taming of the nigoras

In September I purchased two nigora goats from White Fireweed Farm, a three year old F1 doe, Belta a third year freshener (hopefully presently bred), and her 3/4 angora doeling, Olga Petunia, who is now 10 months. They were pasture goats, enjoying free reign of many acres of pasture in the summer. They are pretty wild and unaccustomed to much human contact. I knew I was facing a challenge when I bought them with an intent to milk them.

Living in semi-remote coastal Alaska presents some transport difficulties with obtaining livestock in itself, not to mention the fact that Alaska is huge and the goats were 12 hours away by road alone. Add on to that another 2-3 hours aboard the ferry. And consider that that 14-15 hours is just actual in transit time, not including the waiting, the overnighting, the stops, and the general slower pace at which traveling with a toddler requires. I planned the pick-up in Fairbanks in conjunction with my return from a lower 48 trip in order to reduce overall travel, but neglected to look into the state ferry schedule, the last leg of the trip home. The ferry we were counting on to get us home had been postponed another 4 days! Long, drawn-out explanations aside, the poor goats ended up spending a total of 6 days in the back of the truck! =( Not a good start to our relationship! The confinement, combined with an unpleasant attempt to get them some fresh air in Anchorage (resulting in Belta running around the suburban streets of my mom's neighborhood while the school bus dropped off junior-high kids! yikes!), made for a flinchingly uneasy introduction to life with their new people.

So when I first brought them to the farm, I didn't have a whole lot of time to gently get acquainted with them right away. I hadn't completed their quarters, and life with a toddler while Daddy's working on the tug boat doesn't leave a whole lot of time for leisurely time with the animals. I hadn't finished buttoning up the garden for the winter either... I kept repeating the mantra "there is only one me" to remind my self that I can't do it all. 

For the first week or so, they'd pretty much hurl themselves against the opposite fence when I went anywhere near them. They seemed to enjoy the chickens, so I decided to show them that the chickens liked me. I sat in the yard and let the chooks give me their kind of lovin'. I worked around the goats without giving them much attention, just to let them get used to me at their own pace without exerting too much pressure on them. And I kept leaving them forage: raspberry canes, outer cabbage leaves from the garden, parsnip and carrot tops. 

Belta and Olga keeping a safe distance from Evil Me

Belta accepting raspberry leaves from Evil Me. 

Unexpectedly, Olga is taking longer to warm up to me than mama Belta.

I try to not be in a hurry about them liking me although, seriously, my heart aches to be able to touch their fiber and have them love me like the goats we had before. We've had them for about a month now and the other day I realized that I had better start making some progress with them, especially Belta whom I hope to milk after she kids in January or February. So this week, I started putting my son on my back and taking him with me to grain them, so we could try waiting it out until they eat out of my hand. To my surprise, a few moments after I knelt down in the pen, my outstretched hand brimming with grain, Belta approached closer than she had ever before braved. She sniffed a bit, and chowed down. I refilled my hand three times, and during this time Olga snuck up but didn't get involved. 

I've been feeding Belta about a cup or more of grain out of my hand at every feeding (twice a day) for about 5 days now. Then I feed the rest in two separate dishes, and this way I'm ensuring that Belta, who is hopefully pregnant, after all, is getting a bit more than Olga at each feeding. Last night I tried to scratch under her chin while she was munching, but I think she still needs a bit more time- she pulled back. I'd like to have my other hand free so that I can try and scratch her between her hornbuds, but she eats so fast that I have to refill my hand rather quickly. And she's still stretching her neck waaaay out to reach my hand; we're not quite pals yet. But, they don't leave the shed when I come in, or even dart out their popdoor when I enter their quarters to refresh water or hay. They know when it's grain time, checking me out as I dole out their individual portions. Belta approaches the gate when I'm done, knowing to expect some hand feeding. Olga hasn't braved it out yet, but I'm sure she will after she's confident that her mama knows best.

Chickens & Weasels

I started my flock out this spring with 9 chicks from Sterling Meadows Hatchery, a motley little clutch of 3 Orpingtons (Black, Lavender, and Black and White Splash), a Black Copper Maran, 2 Mille Fleur D'Uccles, and one each Rhode Island Red, Aracauna, and Barred Plymouth Rock.

They pretty much took care of themselves this summer while I was on overload with setnetting, and grew into beautiful (and handsome) pullets and cockerels.

Well, this fall wreaked havoc on them, particularly the influx of weasels looking for a good meal or just a good massacre. The first to fall were my noisy bantam Mille roos. Both of them in the same night. I never did get a good picture of frilly little Tilly and Dilly! Although they were slated for butcher anyhow (too much cocky action with three roosters), it is a seriously unfortunate event to find that some little foot-long bastard already finished them off for you & tainted all that good stock you were looking forward to! We set a livetrap with one of the Mille carcasses, and caught a slinky little ermine, of which we promptly dispatched to smithereens.

Shortly after that event, three pullets escaped their newly-expanded run on nightfall, and the Rhode Island Red didn't make it back the next morning. So we were plodding along modestly at about an egg a day (the Orpingtons or Aracauna hadn't started laying yet) for about two weeks, everybody pretty content with one big ROOmonster, Pharaoh, and his 5 hen harem.

Then the little bastard struck again. I found my beautiful big rooster sprawled out in the sopping duff by the light of my headlamp. By the way his beak was tucked down into his chest, it looked to me like he had been drug around by the neck a bit. I guess I had gotten a little lackadaisical about securing them in the coop by nightfall after I started giving them supplemental light in the evenings until 8. The light did not deter the ermine as I thought it would. I didn't make it out to the coop until 830, and by that time Pharaoh was already cold and stiff. Now not only was this a magnificent specimen of cluck-cluck cockiness to be simply appreciated and missed, but he would have provided a good hunk of meat too.

I panicked and felt my heart up in my throat as I buried Pharaoh in the compost pile and worried about the hens. I set the livetrap again (baited with salami now- just couldn't deal with hackin' off a hunk of Pharaoh at this point), and while I was fumbling with the contraption, I saw the nasty cute little bastard scampering through the run IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!!! Now, from everything I've heard and read, these small weasels pretty much only hunt during dusk and dawn.  And here goes this brutally brash little bugger traipsing through the chicken yard, darting between scrawny pullet legs, and nary taking a nibble! My dog Hazel and I spotted him and yelped, barked, charged, and generally raised a ruckus. I dashed inside to grab the cat, and staked him out (not physically literally staked) near where I saw the ermine skitter away to.

At this point, I'm resolved to lock up the chickens and rabbits snugly before dusk, which is an aggravating task with a toddler in tow in the pouring rain when the animals aren't quite ready to hit the hay. I could take the more proactive road and set out to kill that ermine bastard, but I know another one would quickly take his place, and the trapping and drowning (how I imagine offing an ermine) would never end. Another (impossible) option would be to try and make the entire run weasel-proof. They have been reported to fit through an inch opening, can climb, gnaw, dig, and rip welds. Nah, I think I'll take the more preventative, precautious, permaculturally trodden path of avoiding predators, like our native prey would naturally do.  Perhaps over time and generations, evolution and natural selection will give my strain of chickens and rabbits a heightened sense of predator evasion? For now, I just have to be sure their safe-havens are just that. Ramshackle bomb-proof. And put the cat on duty.

I'd be interested in other peoples' approaches to rodent-control. I've done a bit of poking around in online forums, and I've only come across the two options of trapping and fencing them out. Does anybody out there have any other ideas? Some kind of voodoo herbal mojo chant or the likes?

Background Noise....

I'll start out on this journal venture with a little about this place and what we're doin' here. We live on 42 acres of steep coastal northern temperate rainforest land in Seldovia, Alaska. The ridge slopes down to a flat meadow which almost borders the slough lagoon, emptying into and filling up with Seldovia Bay waters. In the forties, the original owners of the two-acre parcel pastured a few cows in the meadow, so even before the mud-wracked road was laid in the nineties, this was a farm. And we have always called it 'the farm' from the time my dad purchased it in 2001. But a decade ago, our intentions of farming were limited to a small kitchen garden and landscape renovation.

More recently, we purchased 200 bloomin' blueberry plants from Michigan, planted them in rows atop rotting spruce logs, and failed miserably at protecting them from their first Alaskan winter (which was unusually cold and barren of snowcover), and hence also failed at cultivating our blueberry ranching dream. Temporarily, at least. I did manage to have the foresight to plant a small nursery patch of each of the various cultivars, and those are thriving, albeit needing elbow room and row-covering to truly reach their potential. I'll write more on that at a later date, as I do plan on dividing and expanding our berry patch in the near future.

Around that time, my dad also acquired two wethered dairy bucks (which was another adventure worth a few jaunts down the memory lane of goat antics), and my sister and dad dabbled around in beekeeping.  They kept them for two years, and actually had enough luck to see quite a few bees through the winter. But the second summer was a year notably low in pollen availability, and they ended up providing the bees sugar water throughout most of the summer, and the quality of the honey suffered. No color or depth, but still worth harvesting. In retrospect, both my dad and sister say there was probably enough spruce pollen at least to suffice. This is another topic I'll revisit later in this blog, as I do plan on rejuvenating the hives with a spring bee order.

This property was purchased in two parcels. The lower 2-acre piece came with a two-story 2 BD, 1BA gingerbread ticky-tacked cottage house tucked back in a sitka spruce copse, a pooshky & fireweed field flopped out before it, with a protected but spacious cathedralesque view of the saltwater lagoon, that briny artery to town. There was a redwood snorkel hottub and faded shingle shopshed, a rotting log bridge across our tricklin' crick, and no direct sun in winter. Dad weed-whacked a ton that first summer, then finally bulldozed the field of native herbaceous growth. I started my inaugural garden here with a covered double-swing to enjoy it on. We shoveled labrynthine pathways through the snow and I returned from college & settled in. A couple years later, Daddy-O bought the forty-acres caddy-corner to the lower field. 40 acres of steep lowlands alder scrimmage and prickly thickets of spruce and devil's club understory. A year-round creek, and one top corner of the parcel even corralled the gorgeous gorge biting into said creek. South-western exposure.  Dad had a road cut in up the mountain the same summer I put up a wall-tent over-looking Seldovia Bay.

We've made a lot of changes to this little slice of landscape, and we've gone through a lot of alterations in  other aspects of life, too. A whole lot happens in 10 years. We've added on to the shopshed to accommodate goats and chickens, turned a relocated greenhouse into a new workshop, fell and milled choice swaths of spruce, expanded gardens and tinkered contentedly. My man and my son and I currently live in the original 80s era cottage and keep up with the continual maintenance. Future projects include building a milled-log house, sauna, and greenhouse out of salvaged windows. Current preoccupations include chickens, goats, rabbits, and permaculture intentions.

Here are a few shots of our place & life.

So that's the short story on the neck of these woods. What's led you to deliberate your intentions?