Frustratedearthmother's Journaling Journey

[frustratedearthmother]

Sounds like a plan - if you can get them past the seedling stage without the chickens plucking them right out of the ground! I tried growing peas on a chicken fence one time and it was an epic fail for me, lol. Chickens thought it was awesome because they got the nutritious and delicious pea seedlings!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Happy days - we got more rain....for hours and hours yesterday! Went from wet to wetter, sloppy to sloppier, depressing to depressing-er...? Can't change it so gotta deal with it.

I shoveled up some horse poop today to put into the big tubs I planted in last year. I've still got a few things in a few tubs, but I needed to 'top off' some of the other ones. The kinda poor quality potting soil I used last year needed some amendment sooooo, today it got some. My horses are quite kind and, like most horses, poop in roughly the same few areas. Lately, because of all the rain none of the critters are utilizing the pasture - they are hanging out in the barn area and staking out the round bale most of the day. It's vaguely similar to a "dry lot" (haha - nothing dry around here) situation. All of that was my round-a-bout way of saying the horses are pooping on one place and it was very easy to shovel up a big ol' wagon full.

So, while I was out in the garden area and around some of those tubs with absolutely nothing growing in 'em, I decided to plant something in a few of 'em. I came in and pawed through my seed drawer until I found some sugar snap pea seeds and I planted 'em in three of those big tubs. The tubs each have a bit of welded wire bent into a circle that sits down in the tubs. The vertical wire tunnels made for great tomato cages for those tubs and to keep the chickens out of 'em. So, why wouldn't they work for peas to climb on too? I guess I'll find out if they'll work for that. Since you can plant peas pretty closely together I could get quite a few in each tub. Hope they come up! I guess if we have a hard freeze pending I'll just fill the vertical wire tubes with hay as an insulator and wrap a feed sack around 'em. In theory it sounds like it'll work.

I keep counting the does that I think are pregnant and it's scary! My intentions were to breed about half of the does to kid in early spring and to breed the other half to kid in the fall. That was supposed to assure a continuous milk supply and to NOT have a hundred babies running around that I need to give a lot of attention to at one time.

So much for planning - my plan was an epic FAIL! My bucks had other ideas. Remember those times the bucks escaped? Well - I think they took advantage of EVERY doe on the place - GRRRRRRRR! I think I've got, I dunno, maybe a dozen does bred right now. Nine for sure, and heck, I can't tell with the pygmies until they start bagging up... Maybe two or three of those will hatch too. What the heck am I gonna doooooooooooo? OH yeah, forgot about the ND too. Oh. My. Gosh.

I have a feeling I'll be trying to sell some mama/baby groups.

But on a positive side I should have plenty of milk for kefir, yogurt, cheese, chickens, neighbors, and maybe a pig or two. That sounds good - I'd like to find a couple little piggies! But heck - I probably won't have room for any little piggies because every pen on the place will be full of GOATS!

Oh well - I'm sure this is a blessing and I'm going to love having lotsa babies around! I'm gonna love having lotsa babies around.... I'm gonna love having lotsa babies....

 

[Denim Deb]

And of course, we want pics!

 

[Britesea]

I hope there are lotsa people that will want goatie babies!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Me too!

Got a strange call from my mom last night....and just when I thought she was doing better. Sigh...

She calls me and says 'guess what - some of my drugs make me drive weird'! O. M. G.!

She says she drove to Wal-Mart which is less than two miles from their house. She told me that daddy was fussing at her about her driving and when she looked up she wasn't even on the road! So, she goes home and looks at her pills and sees that a couple of them have warnings about driving. So - she does the smart thing and just throws those pills away! WHAT????I have the 'talk' with her that it's better for her to take her meds than to drive. She's got folks to help her out with driving.... Now, I'm back to the drawing board on finding a way to get them closer to me. Thinking about completing the project of totally enclosing the back porch. A couple of years ago we had a nice cover put over it and with the idea of finishing it off some day. I had the roof insulated and electricity installed. The access to the porch comes off of our breezeway - which is mostly a storage area that could easily be converted to a living area. I could have a bedroom area and a bathroom installed at the end of the porch. I believe we could tie into the plumbing that is already there from the garage apartment. This might actually work. I'm still not crazy about the idea - would rather they go straight to assisted living, but this would preserve their assets a little longer before the 'big' move to a full-care facility.

I got a little more pre-gardening done yesterday before taking DH to an eye doc appt. He's been going every couple months since he had a vitreous bleed back in May. We finally got news that he doesn't have to go back for at least 6 months and hopefully no more laser treatments for a while also. Now he just needs a new pair of glasses!

I've got a fresh new bruise on my arm from nearly busting my butt in the 'lake' out back. I had a bucket of feed in one hand and was walking through mud/water more than ankle deep when I slipped. I was next to a stock panel fence so I managed to stick my left arm through one of the openings and hold on for dear life resulting in about an orange sized bruise on the inside of my arm. Much better than landing in mud soup deep enough to drown in, lol!

I re-dug a trench that had partially filled back in to help drain some of that water off. Hope it stays open and makes a difference. Heard this morning that we've got the possibility of a light freeze Saturday morning - but more than likely - the freeze will stay north of us. I'm not really looking forward to a freeze, but we need one to help kill off some of the unwanted/unappreciated garden pests. Maybe if we don't' get a freeze they'll all just drown. Now that's an idea that makes all this mud a little more tolerable.

Happy Tuesday, ya'll.

 

[Denim Deb]

 

[Britesea]

Oh dear- Were you able to retrieve the meds your mom threw out? That can get expensive awfully quickly.

 

[Mini Horses]

For mom issues. I feel your pain!

For the bucks ideas -- remember I said mine broke in & began early breeding....also that they were due end of Jan (? +/-). Further that I felt like castrating him AND that it would probably snow when kidding. Well, We had snow Sunday. 2.5" vice .25" predicted ---AND, flurries tonight, AND poss few more inches Friday night AND while still have ligs, they are swelling some in the back end. HOPING they hold out a few more days. 5-6 would be fantastic.

It's been low teens to mid 20s @ night for couple days now. Today we got to 36 for a few hrs.....filled all the tubs!! Hauling hot water is the pits.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

@Britesea - I'm not close enough to get down there and retrieve her meds...but, she did call me back and tell me she got them out of the trash and she's going to hold on to them, just not take them, until she sees the doc again. Now, is that true? I dunno..... Couple weeks ago DH and I went down and she wanted to show me that she'd found some 'important' papers. Things like insurance policies, their burial plans, deed to the house.. all of that. She then asked me to bring them home with me for safe-keeping. Couple days later she tells my aunt that 'someone' must have come in her house and stolen all her papers because she can't find them. Bless her heart... it must be hard living like that. My heart just aches for 'em - when I'm not totally frustrated with 'em!

@Mini Horses - Stoopid bucks! Although they're just doing their job - they sure can make farm life challenging, lol. I swore a couple months ago that I was gonna sell any buck taller than my knees. Now I go out there and can't even imagine that I said that! I love my big boys! However, when the big boys are out possibly breeding pygmy does that is not good.

Really hope your does hold out for better weather! At least I don't have to worry about snow - usually. This has been such a weird weather year that I shouldn't even say that lest we get a couple feet of the white stuff, lol! As if! I really don't know how you do it. Hauling water and hoping babies don't get delivered in the freeze... gotta be tough.

My most challenging kidding time was one year when DH was out of town during a tropical storm that dumped about a ka-zillion inches of rain on us. I had 6 or 7 does that delivered all with in a couple hours. How strange is that! This was before I had built my bigger barn and these gals were in a 12 x 16 barn-ette that has three kidding stalls across the back. I had a couple of does right across a half-wall in the feed room and the rest of them in the barn...temporary pens everywhere! The feed room started flooding and I looked over there just in time to see one doe squat with a bag and feet hanging out of her - she couldn't lay down because water had risen and was covering the floor (I was three feet away in the main barn area delivering some other babies). That water came up in less than 5 minutes. I had to jump the divider between barn and feed room and catch that baby before it landed in standing water. (thank goodness I was younger and more agile then ) Then I had to move the two does that were in the feed room into the already over-crowded main area. That was one CRAZY day! In the end everybody was fine, but a little crowded. I musta shoveled a ton of shavings in the next couple weeks trying to keep everything and everybody dry! Really hoping I don't have a repeat performance this year. It makes sense though that I'll be having does deliver really close together if several of them were bred when the bucks were out. Ugh...

They're calling for a light freeze by Saturday morning, but my guess is that it'll stay north of us. Hope so - or I'll need to be busting my butt Friday evening getting ready for it. At least none of my does are showing any signs of getting close to delivering yet. I see the very beginnings of udder development in a couple - but that's it. I think we're still 6 weeks out from the first babies. Hopefully, the sun will come out a few times between now and then and help dry up this mess.

Happy Thursday ya'll!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

OH my goodness! Crazy, crazy wind here today - and promises to be even windier tomorrow. Gusts in the 25-30 mph range. I was outside feeding this afternoon and heard a big ol' crack. Looked up just in time to see the top of the neighbor's tree come toppling down. It was a dead tree - so no great loss and maybe a gain if he uses the wood. If not... hmmmm... I wonder if he'd miss it, lol. Goats are going through hay like crazy the last few days. Guess they know it's gonna get cold.

Speaking of crazy... I think one of my neighbors is looooosing it. He's in his 70's and he's taken to walking his dogs in the afternoon....no problem, right? But, instead of walking down his driveway to the road, he's cutting right across my front yard. I don't really have a problem with that, but he brings his two dogs and they cross about 6 feet from my front door. It drives Gracie crazy! And, in turn - she drives ME crazy!

Today when I got home from work I saw him in the neighbors yard on the other side of me. He was walking his dogs down the side of the other neighbor's house and just looking at all the stuff my neighbor has. Then he walked into the neighbor's back yard and inspected the kids swingset. Then he walked back over to my yard and walked right along my fenceline with his dogs - again driving Gracie and Maddie crazy. What the heck? I dunno what/why he's doing that. He's a decent guy (except I don't like him because he "hit" on me a few years ago - ugh!). His wife is one of my friends...what a jerk! I've never forgiven him for that. I tolerate him, and I'm polite, but that's it.

Ok, time to find food!