Nigerian Dwarf Goats for Sale

This is Itsy, the larger of the two does. She is the mother of two bucklings and one doeling.


This is Bitsy. She is very small yet easily raised three kids.

The doeling in the foreground is out of Bitsy, and the one in the background is a real beauty out of Itsy.
Another doeling out of Bitsy.

Here's Itsy's beautiful girl. We call her Cloud.

This is Bitsy's buckling. He is a real character and definitely the most animated of the three.

This is a boy who knows where his food comes from

We take animal slaughtering very seriously and the kids are on hand to help or watch if they so choose. So far Eliza has chosen to opt out, but Scotty has been a willing and thoughtful helper.

Here is our outdoor abattoir, or chicken slaughterhouse.

Scotty helps to bring in the chickens and keeps them calm


and he has begun to learn how to eviscerate them. Here he is working with Crystal, our most faithful helper on butchering day.

Recent livestock photos

I went out recently with the camera to snap some photos of the cows because they were looking particularly beautiful now that they had shed their winter coats. The pasture and sky were also lovely that day.
The sheep are spending the summer on the next door neighbor's pasture. This year they are sharing the pasture with two beautiful horses.


Here are the new goats, Itsy and Bitsy. No, I did not name them, and their names would have been changed in an instant were it not for the fact that I happened to mention them to the kids, who thought they were great and completely vetoed any renaming. In this shot they are both very pregnant.


The piglets are growing fast and learning all of their mothers' bad habits. They are small enough to get through the cattle panels and graze the irrigation ditches.

Bear

As promised, here are some photos of our new livestock guardian dog, Bear. Bear is around 14 months old and he came to us from a farm in very rural Kansas where he was the faithful guardian of a flock of chickens. We chose to purchase Bear as opposed to a new puppy because he was already trained to work with birds and he was also good with kids. He does not disappoint! He has settled in beautifully here at the farm and he guards his poultry with great attention to detail. He even protected them from a ferocious toad the other evening. I caught the toad and reassured Bear that toads are welcome visitors on the farm, but it was pretty funny to see him snarling and growling at the poor toad.

Bear is a Great Pyrenees dog, a large breed that is historically used for guarding livestock. I became interested in this breed for several reasons, not the least of which was meeting Thistle, a Pyr owned by our farm friends at Sunflower River. Bear is a big boy--he is about 105 pounds right now and will grow a bit more. A nice thing about Pyrs is that they don't eat very much relative to other breeds so even though he's big, we are able to feed him well with bones, organs, and other meat products from the farm (chicken heads, etc). We have not lost one chicken to raccoons since he came home. He lives with the chickens but gets lots of love and attention during the day from people. We are just thrilled with him and will probably never again be without a livestock guardian dog, at least for as long as we have livestock.

Here he is hamming it up for the camera:

Here he is meeting Sylvia for the first time. This gives you an idea of his size and his love of people.

Oh, and he works sometimes too! Here he is patrolling the chicken yard for invaders.

Piglets!

Our first litters of piglets were born a few weeks ago. These are special births because they are American Guinea Hogs, a rare heritage breed that is near extinction. Through the efforts of several enthusiastic breeders around the country their numbers are climbing, which is a good thing because this small, gentle breed is a real treasure. The piglets are the size of a soda can at birth and are unbelievably cute.

Here is one of the moms a few days before farrowing. This one had 8 piglets!


More cute little babies for the kids to hold.


Less than one day old!

Farm progress

Several times recently I've gone out with the camera to document the status of the farm but I'm so bad at keeping up with the blog that most of the photos become outdated before they get posted. So I'll just give you a summary of what's been going on here the last couple of months.

Here is a shot of the greenhouse in March after I managed to get some greens planted.







In April we were visited twice by students from the UNM Sustainability Studies program. These folks were wonderful to have here and they were terrific help. The first time we planted potatoes, worked on the solar panels, and worked on the rainwater catchment system on the greenhouse.



When they visited again two weeks later we planted the sweet potatoes in the greenhouse and continued the catchment installation.


We really enjoyed talking with these students and their instructor and hearing their thoughts and ideas on sustainability. Here we are discussing the merits of aquaculture.

Meanwhile we have been following the progress of the pig pregnancies with much anticipation.
The girls are very friendly and just love having their bellies scratched so it's easy to get them to lie down for a belly shot.


This is Aelita about three weeks ago.


And here she is just before she farrowed. I know the feeling!


Of course it wouldn't be springtime on the farm without lambs! We have 10 little bouncy lambs on the ground and there is a possibility for a couple more. The lambs have formed a little gang and they roam around together looking for trouble in the early evening. One of their favorite activities is to "hop on pop" in which they jump on and off the ram.


Stay tuned for new piglets, Bear the dog, and a little road trip.

Solar lamb warmer

This is from before Chris' injury but I just had to share this great idea we had back in early January. We had a lamb born to a skittish and reluctant mom and we found it in the morning, chilled and lethargic. Lambs like this need to be warmed quickly so after a warm water bath we set him up in the kitchen with the reflectors from one of our solar cookers, a sleeping bag, and a towel which we used to cover his eyes. It worked wonderfully and the little guy perked up pretty quickly.

Recent photos and the winter routine

I just uploaded the most recent batch of photos from the camera so I figured it was time for another blog post. I took this one of the pantry a few weeks ago to document the season's canning efforts before I cut into them too much. The shelves hold jars two rows thick so there is actually at least twice as much as you can see here. I have jam, pickles, relish, ketchup, paste, whole tomatoes, salsas rojo and verde, BBQ sauce, chicken stock, and chicken pieces here. It was definitely my biggest canning season yet.


Here is the winter setup for the hoofstock. The carport in the foreground was our summer shelter for chicken processing, but soon we will build a stanchion into it and it will be the milking area when Chloe calves in early March (hopefully). The carports in the background are for hay storage. We keep the animals in this area overnight and for feeding and watering, but let them out during the day into one of the larger paddocks so they can get some space. We currently have 18 sheep and 5 cattle. The area where they are fed, watered, and kept overnight will be gardens next year. No manure spreading for us, thank you very much.



And we are now finally getting the greenhouse built! It is going to be 64x24 feet and we hope to have it ready for early Spring crops.



This was just pretty so I snapped a photo.


We filled the pond in the front yard for the first time and invited the geese and ducks for a swim. They LOVE it!!! Unfortunately they have been digging into the sides and collapsing them so we need to rethink it a bit before we invite them back, but for a while it was great goose and duck TV out the front window.


We have an abundance of lamb meat this winter. Here is a nice souvlaki that I made with some lamb sirloin recently (cooked on the grill, just in the pan for serving).


Other than that we are in a holding pattern at the moment, and grateful for our health, friends, and family.

The farm, early September

Here are a few shots of the farm that were taken earlier this month.

We fenced in the former sweet corn patch and put the piggies in there so they could eat the corn stalks and start tilling the ground for a cover crop. Sunflowers grow here like weeds and we like to leave them where we can for the wild birds. In the foreground you can see the early girl tomato that I planted in April in my little cold frame. It really likes that spot!



You can also see one of my strawberry patches in this shot of the piggies:



This is our amazing patch of grinding corn. It's a variety that is popular in the South called Hickory King, which makes large white kernels that are mostly used for hominy and grits (the equivalent of posole and masa here in the Southwest) but we will probably grind most of it into cornmeal. This is an open pollinated variety so we will also be saving a lot of it for seed. It is a tall variety as well, and can be expected to reach ten feet under good conditions. We gave it three trailer loads of horse manure from a neighbor's farm, which it apparently loved because it is easily 14 feet or better!



We think we can even do a corn maze this year for our fall harvest festival. It's quite an impressive stand of corn, I must say.



Oh, and Scotty is learning to drive! He can drive the tractors, the little Geo, and the old F250. He has trouble reaching the gas pedal, so he does best with the vehicles that will just cruise along in low gear while he operates the brake and steering wheel. It's amazing to watch him go!