Poop

With the snow melted, the goats exploring again beyond the (previously) hay-covered areas near the barn, and the chickens spending more time outside, this is often our welcome home greeting in the evening.




This change of seasons has also brought on spring cleaning... shoveling poopy straw out of the barn,



loading some into our friend Rob's truck for him to take for his compost pile,



and piling the rest into a large mound and hoping for other friends to call in need of poop (there's way more than we need for the garden).



Here's the mound from above. What you can't see are the many many mice who had found shelter in the barn and are now finding shelter in the warm poop-straw pile. Luckily, in the absence of a cat, some of our chickens have stepped up to the plate and are catching mice. It's actually pretty impressive, although I'm guessing they're not catching more than one out of every ten at most.




We've also been trying to be more conscientious about turning our piles of previously-cleaned-out poopy straw, so that they actually do turn into compost, rather than just accumulate as piles of poopy straw that exceed our ability to make use of them.



It would be nice if we could train the goats to help rather than just stand around watching.




We also spent some time the last few weekends raking up the hay that's been dispersed and standing in the way of grass re-growing, and adding it to the poop piles.



This, by the way, has created things like a new space underneath the hay feeder that Ernie can exploit, sitting underneath it, out of the reach of any bullying goats, to eat from the bottom.




And finally, we put the kennel back together, so that we will have a space for our mama goats, separate from the others, to have babies. It had been blown apart by wind over the winter and our duct tape fix jobs were no longer quite doing the trick. Here is the frame partly reassembled, flat on the ground.



Here's the frame fully assembled and upright, with Mike in the background wrangling the chain link that has to be stretched around it. Even though there were no "walls" on the kennel at the time, some of the goats were very polite and only came in through the "door."



Ed was less polite, and instead spent his time trying very very very persistently to stay in the middle of all the action.



And these are the two goats the kennel is back together for -- Frosty on the right and Gigi on the left (see growing udders?)



We are leaving for a Passover trip to NY at the end of this week and have asked Frosty and Gigi to please not have any babies before we get back. Technically they shouldn't be due until May, but they are starting to look a little bit nerve-wrackingly round. In any case, it has been really nice to get some of this season-changing-stuff done before we leave. No wildflowers yet, but things are starting to subtly turn green.


Meanwhile, the cover crop we planted in the fall in our garden area is coming up, albeit somewhat patchily,



and garlic, also planted in the fall, is started to grow.




So with that, I'll leave you with a goat-alpaca shot, and go back to packing for first stop conference in Seattle, and second stop eastward-bound. Hopefully there will be some goat babies and burgeoning gardens to report on once we're back and settled again...