Three fall sagas

The egg saga



Our chickens have been getting older. For the hens, that has meant egg-laying time. But not egg-laying in the nice little straw-filled laying boxes provided for them. Rather, eggs turn up hidden in gopher holes in the pasture, on the floor of the coop, or in a little indented spot in the straw under an overhang at the far end of the yard. Nevertheless the treasure hunting and omelet potential have been fun. Meanwhile, for our roosters, getting older has meant crowing in the mornings, chasing hens around the yard, sparring... which was waking us up at 4:30 in the morning and making the barnyard a bit chaotic... especially once we realized that we had six roosters.

We had originally bought 12 chickens -- six egg layers and six meat birds. One of the meat birds had been killed by a neighbor dog early on, and two others were commercial breeds that needed to be butchered a couple of months ago... so we had thought we only had three left. But friends of ours had also gave us three chicks that needed homes, and it turned out that all three were roosters too (it's hard to tell when they're young). So we decided that it was time for some chicken butchering, even though it's kind of sad.

So we decided to have a party. A housewarming, birthday, sukkah-building, fall, chicken butchering party. Of course that was somewhat over-ambitious and made for us running around between a sukkah (outdoor hut built for the Jewish harvest holiday of sukkot) and a chicken-killing station (which was for some reason :) populated by fewer people than we had hoped) and a barbecue grill and a normal party. Anyway, eventually all six chickens got turned into freezer meat and the sukkah got built (but subsequently fell down in the winds that blew up that night -- see?)...


Before


After

...and we even got to spend a little time at the party party part. And the next morning, there were no roosters crowing in the yard. But when we went out in the afternoon, we heard a cockle doodle doo. Turned out it was Gimpy, our limping chicken who had been battle-wounded in the same dog attack that had taken out our first meat bird. Gimpy had been a bit of a mean chicken -- pretty feathered, but mean to the others, kind of an attack chicken -- and we had just attributed that to chicken post-traumatic-stress-disorder. Turns out, in hindsight, he was just an undercover rooster. With 6 other non-limping roosters around, he had kept it under wraps, but with the rest of them out of the way, he took his presumably rightful place as crowing head of the barnyard (note his non-chicken-like upright posture -- limp compensation it seems).


Gimpy standing with the baby goats (Ed & Gigi)


Gimpy chilling

And we were foiled in our quest for no roosters (the saving grace is that he only crows once out of the coop in the morning, so no more 4:30 am wakeups at least).

Meanwhile, once the 6 other roosters disappeared, the hens seemed to stop laying eggs. We just weren't finding them anymore. The laying boxes were just filling up with poop and none of the normal egg hiding spots were seemingly being used. So we got worried that we had traumatized all the eggs out of the hens by getting rid of half the flock all at once. I bought a dozen eggs from the store in response. One day, though, there were two eggs sitting on the ground next to our yard's gazebo-made-out-of-a-satellite-dish. And then the next day, a friend suggested that maybe they had been laying under the gazebo and that those two eggs had just rolled out from underneath. So I looked underneath (which involves lying totally flat on the ground on smooshed goat and chicken poop) and sure enough there were a couple more eggs.


The space under the gazebo

And reaching under, there was another. And another. Turned out there were about 20 built up under there, and we had found the solution to the mystery of the halted egg production. All of a sudden there were 3 dozen eggs needing to be used. Come over for omelets please!


Eggs :)


The milk saga

Our baby goats have been getting older too. Ed, the boy, has turned out to be very vocal. He bleats and bleats whenever anyone is around. He cries and struggles when we try vaccinating him (whereas all the others doen't particularly like it, but don't protest nearly as much). He seems to think he's a chicken, and bleats indignantly when we lock him out of the chicken coop so that he doesn't eat all their food. Some of the other goats have been following suit as well. This is only helpful in that when you come home and the yard is quiet, it's a clue that the goats have broken into the barn where we store their hay. It's a dead giveaway.

Meanwhile, we'd been trying to figure out when and how we could separate mama Frosty from Gigi & ed so as to wean them and start milking her. Mike built a milking stand that she could eat grain at while being milked, and Frosty has learned to come into the barn and jump up onto the stand and look for grain snacks -- but we've really only gotten a couple of squirts out of her -- probably because the kids are still feeding some, probably because she's holding back (goats can do that), and probably because we're not terribly skilled tiny-goat milkers yet.


Ed and Cle (non-milk-related :))

So... milk, not so successful yet. Eggs, quite successful. In light of that we bought 25 chicks online who arrived by mail, and they are currently living in our bathtub waiting to get big enough to live outside and be integrated with the rest of the chickens.


Baby baby chick


A couple of weeks later

We're reorganizing the barn so that the chickens will have a bigger place that can accommodate more of them, and so that the goats will have somewhere to be inside if they want to when it gets really cold (we've had 3 little snows so far at our house, but none yet in Wenatchee where the elevation is lower).


Snow!

We're also needing to put up another little fence because Ed, when he gets to be 3 months or a little more, has to be separated from the girls unless we want more baby goats. Meanwhile, the new chickens should start laying in the spring, which might give us a little on-the-side egg business. Maybe if we can do some eggs and a few goat baby sales and a bit of honey and/or who knows what, we could transition to more time doing farm-y type work and less time doing desk-y type work... not yet, but we'll see how things go.


A travel saga

Mike and I are planning to visit his brother & sis-in-law & new nephew in Paraguay in December, and also to go visit my old friends/places in Peru. It has been a bit of a saga to get all that together -- between few airlines flying to Paraguay and attempts to make frequent flyer miles work, and internal Peruvian airlines who say you can pay with a credit card on their website but then you can't and then flights get more expensive if you pay any other way, and this and that and the other thing. But it's looking now like it will work as a trip... which is exciting!

Meanwhile, less exciting is figuring out how to have the goats and chickens taken care of if we're away for two weeks, especially in the winter, when getting up and down our road to/from town can be tricky with snow (so we hear)... I already hit my first deer on our road -- well, it hit me, early in the morning in the dark, just sort of ran out from a hiding spot into my side mirror (and knocked the mirror off, but otherwise didn't do any damage -- I assume the deer just got a bruised shoulder too and moved on).

Anyway, all this to say that the goat-chicken-sitting is a bit of a challenge -- so if you're looking for a rural Washington getaway for Christmas/New Years time with all the omelets you could ever want, let me know! :) Actually, though I think it'll work out. We just went to Utah for a weekend to visit friends, and one of our neighbors watched the animals. It seemed to work out okay, so we'll see...

That's about it for now. Here are a couple of pictures to leave you with -- one from a little hike near our house; and a couple from the above-mentioned trip to Utah :)


Hills overlooking the next-door-canyon


Utah


With Zhao

Til soon!
:)

Catch-ups

This summer has been busy, and so somehow I haven't been able to catch you up on goings-on of late. The baby goats are already 5 weeks old, and really big (well, relatively speaking), but I don't have good pictures of them being quite this big and running and climbing and chewing all over everything and everyone, which is what they seem to do best these days. So I'll settle for posting some slightly older pictures and assume that eventually I'll get some better climbing shots in here (hopefully before they get older and once again less springy) :) So here's Frosty and the babies (now named Ed & Gigi) and then Ed & Gigi on their own, probably both within their first few weeks.





I have to catch you up first on their being born. It was actually all pretty seamless, Frosty took care of it all. Mike and I had been planning to put new straw in the kennel and close Frosty in there for the nights near when we thought she was ready to kid, so that she would have some space to herself, without the other goats bugging her all the time. And of course we kept running out of time to set it all up, but the night that we finally did, about an hour after we put her in the new pen, probably around 10pm, we heard a bigger-than-normal goat yell. And went out and there was one baby goat on the ground being licked. And then Mike went inside to get some towels, and while he was there, there was another goat yell and another baby. Took a little bit of helping to get Ed & Gigi to be able to nurse, and Mike and I both spent the rest of the night getting up every couple hours to check that everyone was still okay and warm enough, but that was about it. They've all been quite self-sufficient.

Anyway, even without getting to see them more consistently in pictures, you can still see fast changes -- here from climbing during their first couple days to running around several weeks later.





Meanwhile, the other goats have also adjusted well to the babies. At first there was a bunch of head-butting (which doesn't really seem fair when the kids are so tiny, although I guess that's how it works) but now everyone seems to get along fine. And by now the babies are almost as tall (but not nearly as wide) as the adults. Dublin, who was so, well, mean, when we first got her, has really mellowed out and has taken to letting Gigi climb on her and stand on her back. Frosty, no longer pregnant, no longer hides from Dublin's head-butts, and so I think the two have established a more stable and realistic pecking order, which maybe has helped as well.

Anyway, that's pretty much the scoop on the goats. Ooh, and our chickens just started laying eggs! They have been hiding them in little corners of buildings and little holes in the ground rather than in our belatedly-installed laying boxes made out of milk crates, but I'm sure we'll all settle into a routine sooner or later -- for now it's a daily treasure hunt.

Besides that, we've got here a few wedding pictures (borrowed from people who've sent their photos along -- thank you!) and pictures from the Enchantment Lakes wilderness area nearby where Mike and I went camping post-wedding... with, of course, a little commentary here and there. I'll try to get some additional photos up on some site somewhere at some point so those of you who like details can browse through them. But here's a start.

Wedding pics:


The roof of our house plus some of the tops of shade tents, taken from the nearby hill.


Our pitchfork inspired requests to pose as "Cashmere Gothic."


Signing paperwork.... and, well, these next ones are all pretty self-explanatory too so no more captions for now.











Anyway, we lucked out with a lovely day, and really felt honored by all the people who were able to make it out to celebrate with us and by all the tons of help friends and family provided -- as, of course, even a reasonably laid-back wedding takes some planning. It was also nice in that "long lost" friends and family got to spend some time with each other. And it is not too often in life that you get to see people you know from so many different places together in a spot where many of them wouldn't have ended up going otherwise. So I, and Mike too I think, really appreciated it all quite a lot.

That said (you know I can't just leave it at that), I have to say that the process of getting married is (at least from my perspective) kind of a pain in the butt. And perhaps, in many cases, the wedding is as much (or more) for other people as it is for the people getting married... and while I really appreciate being able to provide that opportunity for other people (as I've also really enjoyed going to other peoples' weddings over time), nevertheless the cultural lore suggests that that's not quite how you're supposed to feel.

And so that cultural lore makes it hard to publicly express anything but sheer happy-glowies at a wedding without disappointing others or somehow diminishing their happiness about it -- so, I'll just say a little of it here. Please don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't have wanted to get married in any other way, and I don't have problems with the institution of marriage -- but I guess to me it rings somewhat false to celebrate something gradual and ever-changing as if it were a one-time event. I understand that weddings give some sort of societal credibility to a relationship, and I understand that it's nice to establish markers so that we make time to appreciate and celebrate pieces of life, but, well... it's kind of like a dissertation (and I do have to credit Mike for this analogy).

With a dissertation, it's not really about the dissertation defense. It's about the multi-year process of learning (which is in itself both rewarding and annoying and a privilege and a pain), and which was preceded by other seasons of learning and which will be followed by other seasons of learning, albeit in different capacities. And so, while defending a dissertation can be a big deal, if we're really being honest about it, the work and the accomplishment and the real core of it came before, over time, and comes afterwards for many years following. By focusing too much on the defense, we tend to miss or minimize the bigger process, and perhaps tend to candy-coat it as well. So I guess what I'm saying is that it would feel more true to me to celebrate life things in little small everyday bits and pieces rather than bigger "more legitimate" celebrations.

Of course, a lot of good came from our wedding, as with most, and I'm very happy about the marriage... but all in all the wedding itself was, for me, a mixed bag -- and I don't think it actually should have been or could have been otherwise.

But in any case, enough of all that :).

After the house emptied out, Mike and I went backpacking for 5 days in the mountains nearby -- and the trail up was STEEP and the trail down was STEEP, but it was a nice trip. The Enchantments is to Washingtonians a little like the Boundary Waters is to Minnesotans (but more mountainy) -- you need to get a permit to camp there (so as to limit the number of people in the "wilderness" at any given time), and it really is a beautiful beautiful spot, but when you get up there, it's just like a parallel universe, just 6000 feet higher and full of people on vacation (well, except for the people who do the loop in one 18-mile 6000-foot elevation gain day as their trail run -- note that in most places, I'd consider myself to be in average shape; here, I'm way at the bottom of normal).

Anyway, it was a lovely outing away, nice to be outdoors and walking, and it has been good since then too to be getting back to normal, back to routines, and back to the day-to-day.

Hiking pics:


On the way up.


We mis-estimated time and had to sleep one night on the steep-ish (but pretty!) gravelly bouldery rocky ascent trail. We found the one spot the whole way up that was flat enough to accomodate a tent.


These photos don't quite do it all justice, but the Upper Enchantments (at 7800 feet) looks like the moon...


...while the Lower Enchantments looks like fairyland peppered with mini-trees and bigger mountain goats.


On the way down.


Snow Lakes from above.


Me hiding in zee lower corner with zee big backpack for scale.


I wouldn't quite call Mike hiding but it still works for scale.

So, with that, we'll call it a day -- til next blog time.

Baby goats :)

Summer in Olalla

Summer in Olalla Canyon has been good. Worthy of some updates:

Visitors!

Mike & I have been lucky enough to have visitors this summer. In June we hosted Shea & Kari from Minneapolis, did lots of sleeping and eating and touring and hanging around in the yard, oh, and strawberry picking:



Also hiking the Icicle Gorge trail near Leavenworth, a couple of miles past where the Icicle Road washed out last spring (see here where the road used to be).


So now you hike around the washed out part of the road and continue along the road (where you used to be able to drive) until you get to the trailhead.


It was a really nice outing.






In July we hosted Rachel & Micah. Micah, who is almost 2 years old, took a real protector role with the goats. In the morning when he woke up, he would hear the goats bleating, stand by the window looking at them, and shout "I coming, goats! I coming!" and then go with Rachel and let them out of their small nighttime pen to go out and graze in our (finished!) larger fenced in area. Rachel & I had timed the visit to do a triathlon reunion tour, picking up where we left off 3 years ago at a sprint triathlon in Minnesota and keeping it going with a sprint triathlon in Chelan. In the end, Micah ended up getting sick and throwing up in the car on the way to the triathlon (poor kiddo!) and so Rachel mama stayed with him in the park while friend Amy & I did the triathlon. Here's the start and a couple pictures:






Both Rachel & Micah and Shea & Kari's visits included a trip to the new Leavenworth Farmers' Market where friends Tony & Amy (yup, triathlon Amy) grill pizzas as their first venture of a new catering company (plus there's lots of normal farmers market fare too. We've ended up coming to this market a lot to help out a little, buy food, and support the pizza booth.


Goats and chickens!

I promised last time to tell you about our new goats. Dublin and Breezy are pygmy goats, the meat breed equivalent to Frosty and Cle (who are dairy breed nigerian dwarves). It's been fun to have a few more goats running around keeping the grass in check, although Dublin seems to have a bit of a mean streak. Goats have to establish dominance when they first meet by head-butting for a while.



Okay, fine. But Dublin didn't know how to stop. She had not been the dominant goat in her previous herd, so she never learned how to be dominant graciously. And with our goats, she's by far the biggest. But even after her dominance was quite accepted by all, she'd run and head-butt the others, but sneakily in their side or stomach, rather than head to head. Which we wouldn't have worried about too much except for Frosty being pregnant and having goat babies in the belly that Dublin was head-butting. But they've seemed to pretty much work it out by now.

Frosty, by the way, is ready for babies any day now. Since our fence is done, we've stopped locking the goats up in the kennel inside the fence, instead leaving the kennel ready for Frosty, so she can have some space to herself rather than get bugged by the others during goat-birthing-ness. Already she's started keeping her distance from everyone else. Cle and Dublin and Breezy, especially now that the weather has cooled off a bit, go bouncing around the pasture, while Frosty just hangs out and chews on grass.



Meanwhile, Cle has really done well with the larger space -- he's back to cute and friendly again, no more mean and pushy (maybe because Dublin has that role now?). Nowadays, Frosty, Dublin, and Breezy go off minding their own business, eating while Cle wants to be part of the action -- see desire to be near camera.



Yesterday he started half-climbing up the ladder I was standing on to re-paint some numbers on the barn, deciding it was important to chew on my sneakers and untie my shoelaces.

But when we open the door to the chicken section of the barn, all the goats take notice and run to try and sneak in and steal chicken food. Meanwhile, the chickens themselves are now big and grownup.



The layers (6 of them) have gotten over their initial role as scaredy chickens. Originally, anytime we'd open the door or try to let any other chickens in with them (including the much younger and smaller meat chickens) they'd all huddle in a corner hiding and hoping no one would touch them. In part this makes sense because when we tried to introduce them earlier on to three "jungle" (i.e. half wild) chickens that we inherited from friends, the jungle chickens just kept pecking the layers until we separated them again.

Anyway, now they're all big enough that they all get along fine, they sleep inside the "coop" (a little room in the barn) and then run around outside during the day. Of the 6 meat birds we got originally, three have worked out well. The other three were breeds designed to live inside tightly packed chicken houses and eat nonstop. So they were kind of lazy, messy, not good at finding their own food, and generally just not too sharp. One of them was killed by a neighbor dog who broke through the chicken wire while we were at work, inspiring us to redo their barn room security (no problems since (so far)!). The dog also paralyzed one of the layers, but she has recovered astonishingly well, and still limps, but otherwise does just fine.



Meanwhile, the two commercial-style meat birds who were left after the dog incident had to be butchered at 8 weeks (or else they would get too heavy to support themselves), so Mike & I had a chicken-butchering sunday a couple weeks ago, which was a little sad, but okay in the end in an existential sort of way, and resulted in chicken in the freezer and some chicken soup.

Since then, all the animals have gotten into sort of a groove. When we come home, they come running (I'd like to say it's because they like us so much, but mostly it's because we feed them) and trip us because they're running so close under our feet. Meanwhile, we're trying to keep up with watering the pasture that feeds everyone. Central Washington gets almost no rain in summer, and so everything has gotten yellow and crispy. But so far so good. We've also managed to plant a few small fruit trees and a few tomato plants -- not the garden we had hoped to put in this year, but not bad for a busy first season :)


Work updates

All is well on the job front. After some job uncertainties, I seem to have more jobs than I need. The project I am on now got re-funded, and I've also committed to working with a faculty member from my (ex-)department (Community & Rural Sociology, which has since been cut, but many of the faculty are getting shifted to other departments) on a grant of hers. It shouldn't be more than full time all put together, but I have in the back of my head the idea to eventually cut down to slightly less than full time and get to spend more time on goats and gardens. So that may be pushed off a bit for now.

Meanwhile, although I still don't love research, the new project might be a good change from some of the frustrations of the old. I really do like the outreach portions of the old project, although I still feel like they're just half-efforts at good outreach. The team I work with is used to working with the tree fruit industry (i.e. growers, shippers, packers, etc.) and not with farm workers. And so, even though my job is in part to do outreach to workers, when push comes to shove the priorities are a bit different.

A couple of examples: We held 4 field days to help teach growers to use softer pest control methods. Four of us (plus several others from other WSU divisions) spent days preparing and then four full days out at the different sites. Attendance ranged from 20-40 people. I also helped organize two health fairs this summer at two migrant farm worker housing camps (well, really the community health clinics mostly organized them, but the project I'm on sponsored them). When the time came, no one I worked with had been involved with or really knew when the fairs were. I sent them an invitation, and no one came. Of course, the health fairs were held on a weekend, and the project did sponsor the events, which is great and a big improvement, but beyong that the level of involvement was pretty low. Nevertheless, we had 2-300 people at each health fair. So hours and hours and hours and personnel and personnel and personnel dedicated to 20-40 person grower trainings, but very little time dedicated to 2-300 person worker trainings.

A second example: When our final report was due to the state department of agriculture (who funding the project I'm on), four of us spent a full week sending drafts back and forth and perfecting it. When the final report was due for the section of the project related to environmental/labor issues, I was asked to write it and send it around for comments. After a week, no one had responded. I sent a reminder and got a few helpful suggestions. Granted, this second report was for a grant that provided less money than the first, but still, priorities are not as evenly distributed as I would like them to be, even if there is lip service to them, and so it makes it harder to invest as much in what I'm doing when there's little institutional support.

A third example: I went to meet with a toxicologist in Seattle who works on pesticide safety issues. He is concerned about farm worker health issues related to pesticide exposure. When I came back my boss said, "Oh I think I know who that guy is. Be careful -- he has an agenda." But from my perspective, he doesn't have any more of an agenda than anyone else. He has different politics and different opinions, but framing it as an "agenda" just serves to undermine his scientifically "objectivity." Which of course is a really slippery concept, since all scientists choose what questions they ask, what data they notice or don't notice, etc. in ways that are influenced by more than straight "facts." (of course, this perspective got me into lots of trouble with economists during my dissertation, even though it is philosophically and scholarly-ly quite well researched and supported). Anyway, point being there's a real hesitance to engage with anyone with different perspectives on the tree fruit industry and it's done under the guise of calling people "unscientific."

Here's a little break for a picture (of the bird babies that were living above our porch), and then back to the work stuff:



Okay, one more. My boss, who is actually a really nice guy and really really good at what he does (so I don't mean to downplay that), goes to Guatemala every year with his church mission to help build schools, hospitals, etc. It's a nice way for him to give back to "humanity." But at the same time, he doesn't seem terribly interested in this kind of "charity" for the people involved in his own community and own industry even (i.e. worker spend years moving from one housing camp to the next having their kids miss school, picking fruit, and making well well well below the poverty line in terms of wages). Not that the farmworkers are all doing so badly -- they have a lot of good opportunities and possibilities, but it seems as though it's easier to invest in social problems in a country far away where you have no involvement in the social problems you find there. Engaging more fully with farm workers here means questioning what the "industry" is doing in terms of providing a safe workplace and opportunities similar to what it provides to other workers. And if your professional life is wrapped up in supporting the industry (although i'd argue that the WSU tree fruit center, as a public institution, defines its clientele too narrowly), then it's easier to do your charity work away from home. But it also feels like restricting your broader social engagement to once a year and meanwhile sticking your head in the sand a little bit so you don't have to engage as much with what is around you.

Nevertheless, I can't be too negative about this (and keep in mind that I'm not so invested in my job that this particularly upsets me or makes me not like my boss (as I said he's a really nice guy) or makes me want to look for another job -- it's just one of those things that in an ideal world could be better). Actually I did just see a job posting for someone to do farm worker safety trainings, which is kind of appealing, but not the right time). Anyway, when we were writing a recent grant proposal (the one we just got), my boss really emphasized that he wanted a strong component in there to focus on outreach to Hispanic growers and workers. He also seemed really impressed by the number of people that attended the health fairs, even if after the fact. And also, our final report (the one that took four people a week's time to write) really did highlight the work we had done on outreach to workers (of course it's good publicity no matter what realities it represents, but still, it didn't have to highlight it quite as much as it did). So I can't really say there's not some commitment to the outreach portions, it's just really not the way I would approach it at all, and when push comes to shove, action priorities come out differently than what's proposed on paper.


Meanwhile

Other summer happenings have included a trip to Madison, WI for a conference (work-related), a trip to Minnesota for a funeral of Mike's grandpa (sad-related), and lots and lots and lots of logistics for having a wedding at our house in a couple of weeks (exciting-related).

So, that's pretty much all I've got for the moment, but see you again, if history holds, in another month or so.



p.s. Aren't those cool looking clouds? (from our yard one evening this summer)

Animalitos

I guess I'm sort of a monthly blog post-er. Good to know, I suppose.

This month has been pretty packed. Mike & I moved into our new place, managed (with tons of help) to get it painted (yes, there is one wall of one room that is that bright orange color)...



...and fenced and full of cardboard boxes (here's a picture from a little ways down the road)...:



...and also went to NY for a wedding of friends and also a little pre-wedding party for us too at my folks' place (lots of old friends in the garden on a pretty day, it was lovely).

There are also all sorts of animalito updates, starting, of course, with the goats.

Frosty and Cle have changed a bit the last few months. Where Frosty used to be the dominant goat, Cle seems now to have taken her place. And not that she (Frosty) was all that kind to Cle in her dominance, but Cle has gotten even a bit less kind and more annoying with his. He's always been more hyper than she, but now he's also more aggressive, pushing her off the top of wherever she's sitting, and just generally being a bit of a pain. Not that she doesn't push back, but it's just different than it used to be. They're less attached at the hip, a little more independent (well, it's all relative) and kind of combative.

The other funny thing is that all of a sudden everything we had in the old house -- leashes, lawn, goats -- now looks so small against the backdrop of our current (versus former) yard. There's no way that two dwarf goats on their own can keep up with their jobs as lawnmowers anymore. Luckily, the previous resident of the house left us a push mower, and Frosty is looking pretty pregnant (check out the udder!)



so we might be getting some extra goat help this fall (and we also found two pygmy goats on craigslist in need of homes who may join the herd as well this week -- p.s. I wrote this a little while ago, so we do in fact have two more goats now -- updates and photos pending).

Anyway, the major goal at the new place so far has been getting a fence up. There already is a horse fence, but that's just big wood slats that would not keep the goats anywhere near inside it. So Mike has been lining this fence with smaller-holed wire fencing. It's almost done, and so the goats almost have free reign of that part of the yard (which is actually really exciting and fun to see, and I think it'll help mitigate hyper Cle too -- p.s. true, Cle is much less annoying and way cooler in the bigger space), and meanwhile it's given us the opportunity to try out some different goat pen configurations.

At first we just had the goats in their normal kennel and we'd take them out on leashes when we were around. Then we tried tying the leashes to posts when we were around, which used to work at the old house. But with these bigger spaces, somehow it just didn't go as well. I think the goats, even though they don't really like us getting too too close (well, at least Frosty doesn't), didn't want us to get too far away either in this new unfamiliar place. Every time we were out of sight, Frosty would just start bleating and bleating. Whenever we came back over, she'd be fine.



So one day Mike figured out that if he attached their leashes to our push mechanical reel mower they would mostly stay in place but if they got really excited, they could pull it around the yard behind them. Think goat-style ball and chain. (And note fence-in-progress too below).





That way they could stay near-ish to us as we worked on the fence or the moving boxes, but couldn't run outside the bounds of where they were supposed to be. That worked great until all that pulling snapped the two leashes and started wedging the wooden handle off the mower, at which point we started just tying their leashes together to make them one anothers' ball and chains.

The other problem with the lawnmower system came out one day when, untying them from the mower to put them back in the kennel, Cle, in his infinite hyper-ness, just pulled the leash out of my hand and took off running, dragging the leash behind him. As Mike and I started after him (he's way faster than us), we saw him coming around the side of the house, leaping off the porch with leash in tow. A quick dive tackle got him back under control, but it reminded me of the dive tackle chase adventures from when we first got them last fall. (apparently we haven't done our duty well enough training them it seems -- the pygmies who we've adopted are rumored to understand "here goats" and come when called... although we haven't really seen it work yet -- it seems that that kind of training works better the more goats you have, and the more of a herd mentality you can develop).

Anyway, we've meanwhile added some chickens as well -- 6 (meat) chicks, 6 young layers (may start laying in the fall), and 3 inherited "jungle" (i.e. kind of wild) chickens (who started pecking at our layers when put in the same space, so we've just let them out to wander the yard and feed themselves instead). The meat chicks are living in our bathtub in a cardboard box with a heat lamp, until they grow enough feathers to be out in the barn.





The layers are in the barn until they grow enough feathers and get big enough to be outside and defend themselves against the jungle chickens (okay, this photo is actually a preview of them being a bit bigger and exploring outdoors, more to come).



The first few days with us, one of the barn chickens got lost under a pallet on the dirt floor, but after a rescue (which she probably didn't need, chickens are pretty self-sufficient even if not so smart), they're all back in the game.

In other bird news, we have a nest of wild baby and mama birds inside the electrical box right outside our house, which probably will need some disrupting once the babies leave the nest, as I can't imagine it's that good for the electrical box. And in non-bird news, we saw a (bull?) snake in the grass -- well actually, while laying fence, we had a fence coil that had been spread out and then slipped and rolled itself back up, catching the snake (that was 10 feet from us but we hadn't seen it) up in it and throwing it across the yard. It was a bit of a scare for all of us, snake included I'm sure.

And in non-bird, non-snake news, we were driving back up to the house one evening after dark and saw a young deer in the road who didn't quite understand how to get out of the way of a car. So as we slowed down, the deer tried to run away, but did so by running ahead of us on the road so that we just had to drive slowly behind, following it. Eventually he found a side road and figured out how to get onto a different path and we could make it the rest of the way home at more than 5 miles per hour.

So I guess our lives have gotten a bit farmier in the last few weeks. Mornings and evenings checking on animals and chasing wayward goats inbetween. I like it, though. A bit overwhelming in terms of getting things all settled, but I like coming home in the evening and getting to spend a couple hours outside putting up chicken wire (well, I didn't like the chicken wire itself that much, but I liked needing to be outside) or rototilling a garden space (well, just a little bit so far -- the rototiller is still a work in progress (ooh, and we got a snowblower for winter too)). Will keep you posted.





I think that's it for animal news, surely as we unpack more there will be more house pictures and updates... Meanwhile, a question for you readers: is there too much goat news on this blog or are we liking the balance? Weigh in and be entered in a raffle drawing (well, maybe).

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pictures from bike-riding the loop trail by the Columbia river in Wenatchee.





Hope all is well and be back soon.
N :)