Garden
Last year we wanted to plant a garden. We figured that since we were moving into our new place in May or June, we'd be just in time to plant, allowing a little time of course for moving and settling in, painting the weird flowery interior wallboard walls, fencing off an area for the goats, and rototilling. I even started seedlings in the greenhouse at work. Needless to say, the fencing and gate-making and painting and scrubbing and carpet-changing and tiller maintenance and mouse hunting all took us a bit longer than planned, and so sometime in July we threw a few raspberry transplants and some overgrown tomato plants into the ground, and eventually harvested about 10 cherry tomatoes.
This year prospects look better. We've moved the goats into a new pen, leaving a big garden space (with lots of straw and goat poop) in their wake. Tilling is done.
Rototiller and garden space in progress
Although the greenhouse at work is full this year (and my work greenhouse planting buddy is on maternity leave), we're just about ready to start seedlings at home. Our neighbors say not to plant anyway here until June 1, since we can get freak May cold snaps at our elevation, so we're not even running all that behind.
We got some tree seedlings from an Arbor Day fundraiser, and some shrubs and berry plants from a gift certificate given us by a friend for a nursery in the area that grows native plants. Those are already in the ground. And a few of the raspberry starts from last year survived, as did, magically, the garlic we planted in the fall. So we're almost ready to go.
The only funny thing about all this planting and prep work is that a lot of the improvements that seem to precede planting a garden, or at least that have gone into it this year, take a while and are sort of long term. Like fences and gates and tilling large areas. Like planting trees. I don't imagine we'll still live here by the time those trees get big, but eventually they'll make the place look different.
It makes me wonder just how many times one ends up wanting to move and repeating this process of setting up shop, especially in a farm-y-like context. It's enough of an effort just to move from one house to another, but I'd imagine there are only so many times you really want to wire and plumb a barn (we haven't done that yet, and may never do so, but it's an idea). Nevertheless, it is definitely interesting to get to live in different places. And if we ever want to grow/raise much more than we're doing now, we'd definitely have to move somewhere with more water.
In any case, I sometimes think the ideal would be to settle in someplace longer-ish term and then take periodic 6 month or year long sabbaticals to places that you're curious about, or places nearer various family & friends. Anyway, we'll see...
Goats et al
The goats like it when we're out working on fences and gardens because it means they can come play with us. For Gigi that means chewing on any and all zippers and strings and pant legs she can find. For Ed it means head butting our knees. For others it means standing on whatever it is we're trying to move to a different pasture.
We have the opposite problem of what we used to -- the goats actually like us and want to climb on top of us and in between us and stick their heads into the chicken wire we're fastening and the fencing we're nailing in. But it's a good problem. Way better than when they were scared of us and didn't want us too close (Breezy and Dublin are still like that, but maybe we'll win them over eventually). The chickens, for the most part, keep their distance. Except when it's afternoon and they've decided it's time to go back into the barn and eat. Enough of this scrounging for worms and blades of grass. Then they just run around following us.
In any case, the animals are all pretty happy that it's spring. They can now mow the grass. And run around and jump on stuff. And not be cold. They're losing winter coats and sleeping outside. It's been so green around here... well, I guess in a relative sort of way. It's not really green in an absolute sense of the word, but compared to the yellows and browns of late summer and the white of winter, there are a few weeks in spring that look remarkably green. Here's spring green compared to the same hill in August last year.
early April
early August
late April
late August
The other thing about spring here is the wind. It's amazingly crazy wind. We had wrapped our kennel with a tarp and used it as a shelter for some of the goats this winter. We emptied it out as we were moving the goats to their new pen, but hadn't yet moved the kennel itself. Came home from work to find it flipped over on the other side of the fence. The wind had grabbed the 7 x 13 foot metal chain link kennel, using the tarp as a sail, and flipped it up and over our 5 foot fence, knocking out little willow branches along the way.
Saved us the trouble of moving it our of the garden-to-be. But wow. So now we're thinking of covering it with clear plastic (and staking it down somewhere else) as a makeshift greenhouse.
Two other recent developments with the goats. First, we've taken to feeding our food scraps to the chickens, rather than composting them all, and when bringing a bucket out to them one day, Gigi stuck her nose in the bucket and started chowing down on orange peels. Now, these goats have never wanted anything but grass, hay, sticks, and leaves, no matter what else we try to feed them. Granted we hadn't really tried all that hard since the babies were born, and so we figured maybe it was just Frosty and Cle that had been picky eaters. Turned out to perhaps be the case (although they now tried the orange peels too). Plus, as we found out later, our neighbors have been coming over when we're at work and feeding them carrots, which seems to have helped.
Second, Ed, our one non-neutered buck, is grown-up. We know because I went out the other day and noticed him peeing on himself. With people, that might be an indication that he's not quite so grown-up, but with goats, well, at least with male goats, it's the opposite. They think that the smell makes them more attractive. I think he's attractive just the way he is, no self-peeing necessary, but then again I'm not a goat.
Eggs
Meanwhile, the egg business is up and running. We've sold probably 10-12 dozen eggs a week for the last several weeks. Demand is even a tad higher than supply... people we work with, swim team colleagues, friends, the dental hygienist who cleans my teeth, it seems to be easy to find takers.
The eggs are multi-colored, and when one of our friend/customers' kids saw the eggs in the fridge, he took out a green one, sure it was an Easter egg, put it down on the counter, and smashed it with his fist, expecting a colorful-hard boiled-egg explosion. The raw egg effect kind of freaked him out, but I hear he's gotten over it.
Chickens taking a dust bath
Our neighbors have been excited about the eggs too. They had watched the animals when we were in California in March for Passover (more to come on that in the next post). It was the beginning of our egg boom and so we just told them to keep as many eggs as they wanted and leave the rest in our fridge. They ended up keeping them all -- not a bad deal really, a couple months supply of eggs in exchange for a week of animal sitting. Anyway, all this to say that they have and are becoming fairly invested in our animals.
They've always liked the animals -- some of them (the neighbors, not the animals) are retired, others just work from home, and so at times they probably keep a closer eye on the goats and chickens than we do. The retired ones keep a pretty close eye on us as well. Their house sits above ours, so we provide good people-watching opportunities for them anytime we are outside. They knew, for example, as soon as the baby goats were born. They knew when the new chickens started coming outside. Each time we see them they ask, "Oh, what was it you were doing the other day with such and such when you X, Y, and Z?" They really are on top of it.
So the other day, we were home and got a call from one of these neighbors, who said, "I just saw a raven sneak into your barn and fly out with one of your chicken eggs. Then he stashed it somewhere, returned and took another one." We thanked her and set out to go collect eggs and chase the raven away. "Oh, one more thing," the neighbor said, "of the two eggs the raven took, one was green and one was brown." Now, these neighbors do have a good view of our place, but their house is not that close, probably a couple hundred yards away. So either this lady has eagle eyes or she has a pair of binoculars. No wonder she knows what we and our animals are doing well before even we do :).
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