What we've been up to...

I promised to post photos of our new place. Here are a few older shots from this summer, so those first...

coming down the drive, main entrance at the back

new garage

 front of the house overlooks Kachemak Bay

 Barn

 Interior of barn, prior to renovations

Also, since we've moved in, we have three new additions to our tiny herd! Fedderly was born on August 9. We came home from a day trip to Homer, and he was already dry and running around, as healthy as can be! He is the third time Belta has freshened, but this will be the first time she has been milked.

Two days later, poor lil' Olga was out in the yard, when all of a sudden, a kid dropped out! Luckily my sweetheart Will was nearby to notice the new ruckus and let me know "Olga had a baby too!" So I ran out, cleaned the new kid off, and took him in the barn. Both Olga and Belta followed, and Belta was motherly enough to show Olga (her daughter) that she needed to lick her baby off. A few minutes later, Olga backed into a corner and pushed out another kid! I ran over and cleaned it off (A girl!! YIPEE!!), and set her in front of Olga as well. It didn't take long for those kids to get up and about! Olga was still unsure of what she was supposed to do, and Belta continued to show her that she needed to lick them by demonstration. I thought for a moment that Belta was going to let Olga's kids nurse on her, but was glad to see that she refused them, and nosed them toward Olga. Before long, Olga allowed the kids to nurse, and all was well. 

 Olga was overwhelmed at first, but Belta helped her realize her responsibility.

 Olga was very stiff and unsure to begin with (& pardon the awful quality of the pictures!)

 It didn't take too long for her to warm up to the cuties!

We'd been reading a children's book called "The Summerfolk", and Bo was infatuated with the characters, so we named the kids after them. It's a fantastic little book filled with fun imaginative kid adventures, and if you have kids of the human kind, you should check it out! Doris Burn is the author and illustrator.

Meet Fedderly!

and Twyla Loo

and Spinner!

Our plan is to keep Twyla Loo for breeding, Fedderly as a wethered companion for our buck Loki, and raise (wethered) Spinner through the winter for spring butchering. They are almost two months old now, and both the boys are now wethers (I sure as heck hope the Burdizzo emasculation worked because I'd hate to have to perform that procedure twice on the same kid!)

I just started milking the dams 5 days ago. My girlfriend Emily at Wild Roots Homestead suggested that I wait to begin taking milk until the kids are at least 6 weeks in order to be sure they're getting plenty to grow on. I was overjoyed at this suggestion because I worried about the kids putting on weight before winter. I'd be interested to find out how much this delay in taking milk effects the does' milk output. I imagine that it doesn't make too much difference in a full-sized dairy goat like Emily breeds, but because my girls are only partially nigerian dwarf (who put out much less milk than a full-sized goat anyways), I wonder what difference it makes. Perhaps I'll aim at freshening having a doe freshen in the spring some time so I can begin milking earlier without worrying about the kids development so much, as they'll have a lot to munch on in the summer. But because I commercial fish during June and July, I'd like to avoid needing to milk during that time. 

As far as yields go right now, I'm working up to obtaining any kind of yield gradually. For the first 4 days, the kids were not separated at night, so I only was able to milk a cup at most. Last night I finally was able to contain the kids in their pen, and this morning I milked about 2.5 cups, with plenty left over for the kids. And it's going well. I still have to chase the girls about to get them on the stand and in the stanchion, but this morning I didn't have to hobble either one in order to milk. I still don't trust them enough not to kick entirely, so I'm still milking with one hand into a cup in the other hand. But the important thing is that we're making tremendous progress. 

When I bought these girls last September from White Fireweed Farm, they were wild girls. I've slowly been acclimating them to close encounters with humans on a daily basis. I only chase them when I have to for shearing or hoof trimming, but now they'll just have to get with the program and get chased every morning and led to the milkstand. We'll see how much quicker the forced-socialization program works. 

I don't have any milking pictures, as Will has been working this month in Valdez (and I didn't think about asking Bo to photograph!), but I'll post some soon. I do, however, have a few photos of Olga's fall shearing! So now I have two mohair fleeces saved up for processing this winter, as well as Belta's cashmere-type shedding from this spring!

 After I had her completely sheared, she didn't even get up and bolt! 

Without all that mohair, she's barely bigger than her babies

Harvest time has just about wrapped up around here, especially due to the fact that may garden is still at my old place, and I just wanted to feel some sense of culmination to the move. I did a terrible job this summer at multi-tasking between gardening chores, fishing, child-rearing, and animal husbandry. Set-netting swamped me. I thinned too late, weeded too seldom, and left the creek-fed soaker hose on far too often. Slugs conquered too much of the garden to realistically admit to. I was only able to make three quarts of fermented cabbage goodies, two quarts of chard-rib pickles, blanch and freeze 5 quarts of peas, a gallon of frozen raspberries, three pints of black currant jam, and NO FROZEN BROCCOLI OR KALE!!! Guess we'll be spending more money than usual on produce this winter.

Bo helping out with the Cortido

 One quart of Cortido, 2 of Kimchi

Lacto-pickled Chard Ribs

But, the root crops are also in now, and their bounty is easing the sting of my garden neglect. The garlic and shallots I planted last fall in sawdust did surprisingly well. I planted them far later than planned and just covered the whole she-bang in sawdust hoping to insulated it more. I also planted multiplier onion in the spring (totally spaced them out last fall), and although they didn't multiply enough to brag about and harvest, they did more than double the amount for me to plant this fall.

The hard-necks

A couple shallots to harvest, the rest to replant

And, I'm still bringing in potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, parsnips, and Brussels, so I'll be sure and let less time go in between posts! 

How was your harvest? And what will you differently for next season? 

The lil' farmstead is on the move...

Well it's finally final! We're finally home owners. We started looking at this place I'm sitting in right now way back in March. We believed we would be moving in beginning June, but things kept getting in the way, and I'm very happy to say that we are HOME!! Well it doesn't quite feel like home just yet-- our chickens and Maremma and rabbits are still at the old place, as well as tools and things in the storage sheds. And I've only got the kitchen set up and the clothes put away-- still many many things to do before we can have a house-warming soiree.

We bought a place on three acres overlooking Kachemak Bay and Mount Iliamna. It has good western exposure, with some flat grassy areas to the south of the house. There is a new shop on the property and.... a barn!!! Of good size too. I've moved the goats here in order to keep a closer eye on Belta, as I believe she will be kidding here very soon. I think she might be on gestation day 142, but I never actually saw the coitus happen. I love that word. Coitus.

The dang camera is still packed up somewhere in this woodpecker's boardinghouse. I should have dug it out yesterday, but instead I foolishly believed that the sun was going to stick around a day or so. Not so. Today, nothing but rain. Anyways, pictures to come.

This parcel has never been cultivated, save a few cottonwoods transplanted in the yard. I'm super excited to layout the new garden, but not too enthused to actually do the work of clearing what is there. Right now, it's just a bunch or fireweed where I plan to have the kitchen garden, and I thought the goats could help me out on that front. HOWEVER, both times I've let them escape the barn, they've gone the opposite way straight up the driveway toward the road where a big husky lives two plots up. Fearing the worst, both excursions have ended shortly after this by tying the buck up in the barn and luring the does in with grain. It takes a lot of coaxing, let me tell you. I've had the girls for almost a year now, and they're still just about as flighty and wild. I think I'll just wait and enjoy the fireweed bloom, them pick it and feed it to the goats in order to clear the garden plot.

Then the layering begins. Maybe. I'll probably have to terrace a bit. That'll be good anyways to see what the soil consists of. But layering. I'm excited to try this no-dig stuff. Well, I'll dig salmon carcasses into the soil about a foot, so that and the terracing are hopefully the extent of my garden groundbreaking. No till, baby. No turning over. Leave that soil structure alone once it's in place. So back to the layering, the building of this beautiful soil structure. Salmon one foot deep. Thick cardboard to keep the weeds down. All that bedding in the old barn now. Everything in my compost heap at the old place. All the vegetable harvest stuff the animals won't touch. Kelp deposited on the beach by late summer, early fall storms. Then the pile of old bedding that has been piled up outside the old barn all summer. Then, alder leaf fall right before the snow flies.

So, I think I just about have the barn ready to bring home the cluckers. I'm going to try a bit of a different layout than I was using at the old place. Instead of having completely separate areas dedicated to each animal, I'm just going to make the chicken feed area inaccessible to the goats. For the time being, I think I'll just toss the goat's hay onto their platforms twice a day instead of using a hay rack. The reason being that I am still not looking forward to picking all that hay out of Olga Petunia's fleece from this spring!! (I had the rack hung too high.) Also, at the old place the hens started laying eggs in the hay rack this summer, and I can't get them to go back to laying in their nesting boxes. I'm sure I'll end up tweaking this set-up quite a bit as the winter progresses, but one of the main draws to it is that I'll only need one pop-door for all the animals, and fewer interior walls makes for quicker cleaning. I'll eventually have the feed storage area fenced off, as well as a milking parlor, but right now I'm not even sure I'll be able to get my hands on my soon-to-be-milker's teats without wreaking havoc and pandemonium.

As for the rabbits, well I butchered all but two of them, and I only plan on keeping one of them to continue my breeding program. A friend in town bought some Flemish Giants this spring and I'm hoping to get a doe from her to start breeding this fall. From what I've read, the Flemish Giant isn't usually considered a very good meat breed because the bone to meat ratio is high, but I think if I cross bred with the satin I have, I may get a good product. Something I learned from cross-breeding goats of differing size is to always be sure that the doe is the bigger breed of the two, otherwise there may be tremendous birthing complications. Note to self: brush up on sexing rabbits and confirm the gender of each before throwing them together to go at it.

This spring I built a tractor hutch, and was planning on building another one so that I can house one doe in each and also have a separate hutch for the buck. I designed the hutch so that in the summer it can be a tractor in the yard, and in the winter it can hang on the wall in the barn. I'm also exploring vermiculture bins beneath the hutches for composting what kitchen scraps the animals won't eat, possibly chicken manure, and of course the rabbit droppings.

As it is right now, I don't have fencing up anywhere, so that's another project I need to start thinking about very soon. I'm sure Tufo the LGD will grow to be a wonderful protector, but those goats wandering up toward the road worries me so much that I'm not sure I should even let them out again until I have some kind of fencing up, even temporary. As for (semi)permanent fencing, I'm thinking about working on a wattle fence. I've got a large hillside covered in alders, and I think this would make a fairly impenetrable fence. I've also got access to electric fencing, but I know that takes quite a watchful eye (perimeter walks) to keep the current from grounding out on new growth. For the time being, I can borrow some 6'X6' chain link panels to at least let them out to get air and light. Currently, there are no windows in the building. Add that on to the honey-do list!

So for any of you folks reading this out there, I'd be interested in your take on a few topics:
Has anyone done the no-till gardening method long term? Does anyone know how long sheet composting takes to break down?
For anyone who has chickens and goats, do you house them together? What is your layout and how does it work out for you?
Livestock fencing: what works best for you?

Hope your summer has been bountiful and beautiful!