Beulah Land Gardens

January 26, 2010 by Debbie.

 

This sunset was so beautiful I had to run out and snap a picture of it.  And as always, the picture doesn’t do it credit. Spring lettuce, arugula and a stray garlic are growing well in this cold frame. When the temps get too low I add the old sheet seen at the bottom edges.

I held up the big cold frame while John crawled in and planted the onion sets between the cole crop rows. No picture of that adventure.

Rudy-Tuddy, Too and his harem are enjoying the above average warm weather we had last week.

 

The lettuce bags are sprouting! I’m not sure how the soil cracking is going to work out but at least the sprouted seeds are not falling down in the crevices …. yet!

Since the lettuce bags seem to be working out, I planted the two potato grow bags as well. The grow bags are called Smart Pots. I made a bed of chicken made compost then some potting soil, adding small seed potatoes in the soft soil bed. I covered the seed potatoes with more potting soil, only filling the grow bags up about 1/2 of the way. As the potatoes grow I’ll add more soil, hilling up the potato plants.

Here’s the pictures of the Topsy Turvey tomato plant. After setting the tomato seedling in the bottom of the planter, John filled the planter 1/3 of the way full with an extra light potting soil.

Next a foam disc is added and soil added to the top of the planter.

Last, the planter is hung on the hook John set in a stud the night before.

 

Ta-da, a Topsy Turvey Tomato that pees all over the floor when I water it!

This weekend, or next at the latest, I need to put in the English peas, Swiss Chard, Spinache, more Kale (I have about 6 seedlings the guinea didn’t eat), more onions and another bed of lettuce.  I’m finally getting excited about gardening again!

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A Warm Spell - Wild Things

January 18, 2010 by Debbie.

One of my favorite things about Texas is the unexpected warm spells that break up the cold spells. Actually, the cold spells are the most uncommon but this year it feels like we’ve had more cool/cold and rainy weather than usual. I could go back to my years of gardening calendars where I’ve written the daily weather down but it’s not worth that effort. I noticed the rainy days this fall and thought to myself how like Ohio weather it was. (OK, I LIKE overcast rainy days sometimes! It’s not always a negative.) I’ve come to conclusion that’s why things have not grown the way they normally have in the past. The same cold frame, sitting in the same place (with enriched soil) and planted with the same variety and brand of seed did not produce any where near the same amount of lettuce and greens as prior years. The seedlings I set out at the same time as last year (again, same situation and seeds) are growing so slowly I’ve wondered if  they’re growing at all. I find this comforting as we sure didn’t go all out planting this year - at least we didn’t waste the effort and time.

Today is suppose to almost hit 70 but it will have to turn up the toaster to make it today. The cloud cover and winds blowing over wet, cold ground have kept my laundry wet for hours on the line. It’s 3:30 and the sun is just now peeking out. Still, it’s not hard to pretend spring is just around the corner! A huge flock of  robins visited our side yard last week and John and I thought the same thing, “Wow, that’s early” before we realized we were thinking Ohioan again. Robins equal spring time up there! I guess they were just passing through down here and enjoyed the corn the guinea missed.

All the animal and fowl have spring on their minds, too.  I see guinea pairs running through the yard, the male chasing the female who is running as fast as she can, either teasing or seriously running away, I’m not sure.  I had to move Chase (herd sire) from the does’ fence as he WILL push it down to ‘visit’ with them. Even the two baby bucklings are feeling their oats and driving the 4 doelings crazy. As I milk I hear the doelings holler and jump up on the play toys to get away from the bucklings nibbles. They can be together for another month and then it’s separation time - just in case. I remembered to get a picture of Mercy’s udder before I milked her today. She gave 1# 14 1/4 oz. this morning. I forgot the picture with SugaBaby but she gave 2# 1/8 oz.

The babies are weaned now that they’re 2 months old - it gets crowded gathering around the feed bowl .

As I mentioned in my last post, it was only the mercy of God that our cold frame veggies survived. You would laugh if you could see how we covered it - that’s why I cropped the pictures! Recognize the chicken tractor here???

Inside more seedlings await outside planting. The two tomatoes are a Siberian variety as I planned on putting them in the covered grow house …. improvision is the art of homesteading. One of the tomatoes will go in the Tops Turvey planter FaithFull Friend gave me.

I told my FaithFul Friend I’m starting to do some ‘wild’ things. I bought some grow bags from Gardener’s Supply - that’s wild for me.  Today I planted them with arugula, Black seeded Simpson Lettuce and a lettuce mix. I put them on an old retired dolly that I’d converted to a plant mover. I’m going to pull it in and out of the garage/house as needed during cold spells so I don’t have to mess with opening or closing an other cold frame. Behind the grow bags you can see the seedling tray where I started some spring/summer Brandywine tomatoes and cabbages. I also bought two potato grow bags but I’m waiting on seed potatoes to plant those.

Here’s the finished ‘cat protected’ grow bags.

Another glimpse of my wild side - I’m going to plant that Siberian tomato in the Topsy Turvey planter and hang it in the living room. John’s going to set the hook for it tonight. Maybe I’ll get pictures as we plant the seedling and post those later.

You may ask why are these such ‘wild’ things for me? Cause they’re very out of the ordinary - out of my normal living box - for me. I don’t usually buy things to plant in when I could plant in the ground here. I mean, 55 acres and using a grow bag instead of planting in the ground??? I also bought the soil to go in the planters - ouch! That was wild for me. I did use our own chicken made compost for the bottom of the grow bags but the Topsy Turvey planter needed super light soil so I splurged and bought it. It wasn’t even on sale. But I did get free shipping for it.

I guess you could say the warm spell just went to my head.

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Pick Up Day

January 14, 2010 by Debbie.

This was typed out Monday 1/11 - It was a balmy 49 degrees here today. Tonight should be close to freezing but not down to 7.3 that we had yesterday morning.

Today was what I’d call a ‘pick up day.’ No, no one came to the door and tried to … oh, well, never mind on that. It was a day to pick up everything that was disrupted by the cold snap. I was so glad to push the couch, chair and table back into place. We had pulled them up close to the wood stove over the weekend. Our living room is quite large so being up close to the wood stove kept us much warmer. I’m wondering why most Americans keep ‘moving up’ to bigger and bigger homes so they can work more to pay more utility bills. I’m embarrassed to  post this picture as you see all our ‘living’ clutter - quilts, books and sewing things laying out within easy reach.  We even brought the dogs’ food bowls out for them to eat while laying on their Christmas beds. I did hold my sanity with the blind and curtain darkened room, but barely.

The north windows don’t have blinds as I usually only use blinds to keep the sun out in the summer time. Strong, constant North winds convinced me it was worthwhile to cover these windows, even temporarily with quilts and an insulated batting.

The sunlight coming through the windows made the quilts look like stain glassed windows in the afternoon! I’m so glad for this special effect encouraging me to keep the window coverings in place. I liked it so much I’m investigating making either fitted window quilts or Roman shades. Instructions for making Roman shades can be found at joann.com. The insulated batting (on the door above) really worked well. It’s actually batting to use in ironing board covers. 

All the quilts had to come off the windows and then folded up and put away.  All the extra waters - both in pitchers on the counter for drinking/cooking and buckets for flushing and dogs’ waters - had to be used up and containers stored away til next time.

Same in the barn, plastic walls had to be pulled aside to let the babies out to romp in the sunlight. The two bucklings continued to knock the lights loose so everyone lost the lights now that the weather is warmer.  The cold frame covers came off for the day as soon as the sun was strong enough. We only lost one bed, which I was lazy about covering. There’s a couple of questionable seedlings in the big cold frame - not sure if they will come back or not but a good chance of it.  Laundry had to be done but the drain hose had to be thawed out first - I spent the first washer load hanging over the washer back watching the water to make sure it freely flowed out. After several false starts and quick stops I got the hose thawed out. It goes out to a gray water hose that sits on top the ground, not buried  like the ones going to the septic tank so laundry in the winter time truly depends on the weather.

It took all day to get life back to normal and I’m glad it’s done.

BTW, I finally put up my design wall in the sewing room.  Here’s the Monterrey Star Medallion quilt I’m working on. The benefit of the design wall is evident in this quilt - the blue points on the  center star are too dark for the rest of the quilt so I’ll have to tear those out and replace the points with a better matching blue. Fortunately, most of the blocks are not sewn together up here on the wall - just sticking on the flannel background.

Now that life is calm again, maybe I can get a little more quilting done …. but while baking John’s lunch cookies I noticed how dirty the kitchen cabinets are so maybe not. Spring cleaning is just around the corner.

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Cold Snap

January 8, 2010 by Debbie.

My house is all closed up to keep the cold and winds out and the heat in. I have quilts on the north windows, hanging over the curtain rods, and when the sunlight shines through them they look like stained glass windows. From that I decided I’m going to make window quilts for those windows to use in the wintertime. I have all the blinds in all the other rooms down and shut and the curtains drawn over them. It’s warm in here with just the wood stove, but it feels like a cave. Thank goodness the sun is shining or it would look like a cave and I’d really be going nuts. I’ll post pictures of the window quilts later.

I don’t do well being cooped up; I even feel uncomfortable in an elevator. But the 72 hours of predicted below freezing weather makes me resort to drastic measures like these. And to staple plastic over all the openings in the barn and completely envelop the goat babies’ stall so they won’t freeze. There’s still good ventilation for all the animals, just no straight line winds from the North like outside the barn walls.  It makes for an adventure getting into and out of the babies’ stall. I have to tunnel in between two sheets of plastic til I reach the gate, then scoot in before the babies escape. I do that every couple of of hours so I can make sure they’re warm enough and break the ice on their water bucket if necessary, and to check on the lights because the two bucklings have decided it’s neat to lick the lights. Twice I’ve found the group of babies huddled together under the play slide trying to hold in body heat because the boys had knocked the lights out again.  So I trek in and out of the house to the barn. I do feel like a pioneer.  Tired.

Today was busy making cheese so I could use the warm whey to give the chickens a warm meal. I wanted to save some whey to homemake some bread to go with the pot of chili in the crock pot but I didn’t want to add another draw on the electric. We only use the furnace as a back up. Since it’s set on 61, it only comes on when the wood stove dies down overnight. I’m very grateful for my husband’s wisdom in insisting buying more wood this past weekend when all I wanted to do was go home and take a nap. Last night we slept in the living room with the couch and recliner pulled up close to the wood stove so we’d be warmer and so we could more easily feed the fire. During this cold spell I’m not as much worried about our electric cost as everyone using so much electric the company may burp it’s output and we’d all be hurting then. So I skip the homemade bread but my taste buds still crave it - served warm and slathered in butter and dipped in the hot chili, it would be a real treat.

A friend brightened my day today and brought by Christmas/New Year’s  gifts so I’m gratefully munching on homegrown, native pecans as I type and feeling so blessed. The friend’s little 1+ year old boy came with her and he is so delightful - light red hair and pure country. First thing he does is sit on the floor and pulls off his cowboy boots and socks!! See, he can’t stand to be cooped up either. Before he left I snuck a hug - a warm gift on such a cold day.

My friend apologized for getting the Christmas/New Year’s gifts to me late but to be honest, I’d forgotten Christmas had just passed. Time has such a light effect on my life (’til I look in the mirror) that I forget what ’season’ it is based in normal society. My mind knows the seasons I live with - winter gardening, spring planting, fall rest, etc. and my year is almost switched mentally to the school year so that New Year’s isn’t really the beginning of a new year. After 10+ years of not wearing a watch exact time isn’t really a big part of my life unless I’m going away from  the homestead for subbing or an appointment or church - where our pastor can tell the time based on us - 10 minutes late. I just recently started wearing a watch to school and John laughs at me because the watch doesn’t keep time. I have to keep adjusting it throughout the day. He asked me why I don’t just buy a new watch but it’s hard to explain that I don’t want to be that tied to time. I can and do verify the time by the classroom clock so I  have a backup plan but I used to live my life by such time restrictions that I even slept with a watch on. All my watches had to have glow in the dark hands and faces so I could see the time at any given moment I woke up. When watches with timers came along I thought they were fantastic - I could not only keep track of every minute, but time life as well.

No, I don’t want a new watch. I like my life the way it is now.  I usually wake up between 4:30 and 5:30 even without an alarm . About 10:30-11:00 my stomach tells me it’s lunch time. About 11:30-12:00 my mind tells me it’s reading and nap time. About 2-3:00 my mind and body wakes back up and it’s time to fix supper. John comes home about 6:00 and we eat. When we’re tired we go to bed.

Maybe the reason I don’t like being cooped up is it’s hard to connect with nature - sun rise, sun set, the daily ’seasons’.  Like the chickens, I like seeing the sun set and darkness easily fall to know it’s time to roost and rest my body for another day. These window quilts aren’t going to be up long!

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A Fresh Start

December 30, 2009 by Debbie.

For over 20 years I’ve either read or said aloud Psalm 103 almost every day. I always thought of it as a song of praise from me to God. Today I realize it is not just a song of praise from me to God, but a song FROM God to me.

I’m reading Dr. Kevin Leman’s book, Sheet Music - highly recommend it. In one of the first chapters, Dr. Leman says that we all have an internal ‘rule book.’ Basically, it’s made up of the impressions we learned before third grade.  Some of the things in my ‘rule book’ are not to waste, don’t clutter, don’t leave a mess, DO something and get it DONE, start things early and finish before it’s needed. These rules are part of me and will stay part of me unless I conscientiously decide they are harmful and need to be replaced with one that isn’t harmful. My humanity leaves room for less than ideal  rules as I wasn’t raised by perfect parents, nor had a perfect life up to 3rd grade, therefore my rule book wasn’t formed from perfect impressions. Problems come when my rule book clashes with John’s internal rule book. Dr. Leman says that’s the time to stop, talk about the whys behind the problem and find out what rules are clashing, examine those rules and see if one or both need to be revised.

So God sings to me from his rule book in Psalm 103 - rules he will ALWAYS live by - he will  forgive me, he will  heal me, he will redeem my life from destruction, he will be tender towards me, he will satisfy me with good things, he will renew my youth, he will not hold my sins against me nor reward me by my sins - past, present or future sins - he will show me his ways, he will show me his acts, he will always have mercy towards me, he will remember my children, he will direct the angels for me, he will rule the kingdoms I live in. And the best thing is that God’s rule book is perfect.

So when my rule book clashes with God’s rule book, we sit down and talk about why and look over both rules and see which one is true and good, which one to keep and which one to readjust.  Isaiah 1:18 says it this way, “Come let us reason together,” says the Lord, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they should be red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

You may wonder why this makes more of an impression on me than saying Psalm 103 lists God’s promises to me. Because I learned early and have a ‘rule’ that promises are made to be broken and 95% of the time are. I like rules and automatically distrust promises. When I hear someone make a promise my first thought is what’s the loop hole? But a rule is set in my mind - such as the rule of gravity; I throw the cat up in the air and down she comes (OK, I don’t go around throwing cats up in the air, but a little levity here helps.)  I can understand the (internal) rule book because I live it without even thinking about it. A promise has to be thought about and ‘kept,’  - something you do, not something you ARE. Is my ‘rule’ correct? No, but now that it’s mentally out in the open I can deal with it. I can ‘reason together’ with God. We can talk about how to overlay his true rule (God doesn’t lie, what he has spoken he will accomplish) over my incorrect rule.

Do you have some rules in your internal rule book that might conflict with God’s true rules? I didn’t think I did but obviously I do. Maybe this New Year’s is a good time to sit down with God and say to him, “Come let us reason together, show me how my rule book matches up to yours.” Maybe it’s time for a fresh start, regardless of how big or small.

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An Early Christmas

December 23, 2009 by Debbie.

Since we had an early Thanksgiving, an early Christmas feels just right. Actually, John and I haven’t opened our gifts but we have splurged a little. John has been patiently waiting for us to reach several financal goals and, thanks to God, we have reached the goals we set four or five years ago. Long term goals are not always fun but such a relief to accomplish.

John was able to shop for a treadmill. He decided on a NordiTrack, based on price, construction and warranty.  I’m proud of how he’s kept up his workouts at the gym but having the treadmill at home will allow him to work out 5 days a week instead of just the 3 at the gym. 

I’ve used the treadmill two or three times and plan to use it routinely …… soon. Right after we got the HUGE thing set up in the bedroom, Heide walked over and climbed on the running track like “So what’s the big deal about this???” The treadmill size cramps the dogs’ style as it takes up one of their nighttime sleeping spots.

But our dogs are adaptable - Bud likes his breakfast in bed by the fireplace as long the fireplace is roaring and the hot air blower is on.

This is the other part of the ‘early Christmas’ - the dogs got new beds this year. Poor Pudge, who died a month ago, used to chew up all the beds and quilts I made for them so we quit buying replacement beds. I wonder if Pudge is chewing a gold lined bed up in heaven???

We had our family Christmas last Sat. at John, Jr. and Tiffany’s (dil) home. They do such a fantastic job hosting the meal - house is always decorated and the table is overflowing. I was proud to watch John, Jr. fix a plate for a elderly single neighbor lady and to hear daughter Debbie plan a shopping trip with all 3 teenage girls (her two and John, Jr’s daughter) to spend their Christmas gift cards. Both familes give from their hearts - best early Christmas present.

Today is suppose to be beautiful, close to 70 with rain coming in later. Then a cold front is due in to bring us down to the 40’s tomorrow. Texas roller coaster weather. We’ve got fire wood stacked in the living room firebox, a turkey ready to roast, a cheesecake in the fridge, a stack of new books from the library and Scrooge video from the library. What’s that Christmas song, “The weather outside is frightful, but …. something, something, something, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” Just not here. But the cold frame is shut up tight so maybe a tad of snow would be alright.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night!

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A Day in the Kitchen

December 18, 2009 by Debbie.

I love listening to Live365, old time radio via the internet. The Fiber & Molly show is my favorite and it runs alternately with The Great Gildersleeve. These shows are the source of 99% of the commercials I hear and it’s amazing how different the commercials are from then to now. The ‘then’ commercials make me want to spend time in my kitchen. The ‘now’ commercials try to convince me I deserve to be out of the kitchen. I like my kitchen.

Here’s a few of the recipes I’ve fixed recently. Bear in mind, to me a recipe is a suggestion, not instructions written in stone. You’ve got to have leeway to change ingredients to use up anything that needs used up.

One-Pan Granola

Heat in a large shallow pan-

1/2 to 1 cup oil or 2 sticks of butter (or half and half)

1/2  to 1 cup honey, molasses or maple syrup (time to use it up after 3 years anyway!)

1/c cup water

2 teaspoons vanilla

Heat til butter is melted or all the ingreds are warm and thinned out.

The stir in

5 or 6 old fashioned rolled oats

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Up to 6 cups of  a mixture of

wheat flour

dry milk powder

wheat germ

soy flour

coconut

unsalted nuts

sunflower, pumpkin, sesame seeds

Bake in a 250 oven for up to 2 hours, stirring every 20 minutes, til done.

After completely cool, add dried fruits and/or raisins. Don’t add before baking or you’ll have REALLY dried fruit. Don’t ask how I know but the first batch was very crunchy.

The real recipe is from the 1981 Whole Foods for the Whole Family

 

Ham and Spinach Soup

1 T olive oil

2 med onions, chopped

garlic

Saute onions and garlic in the oil for about 10 minutes, then add

8 cups chopped spinach

2 T sugar

Italian spices - Penzey spice company has the best Italian spice mix (guess where I got the receipe???)

Cook for about 10 minutes until spinach shrinks down. Stir as needed.

Add to cooked spinach-

8 cups chicken stock

and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and add

1 cup mini bow tie pasta

2 cups chopped ham

2 cups navy bean soup (how buys navy bean soup?? use soup left over from a prior meal)

Black pepper

Simmer for 20 minutes.

The ‘real’ recipe is at www.penzeys.com

Freezes well and goes great with homemade bread, such as …….

Five Herb Bread

1 3/4 cup water

3/4 cup undiluted evap milk (goat milk works great)

2 packages of yeast (2 1/2 t. loose yeast for EACH package)

1/2 cup Paramesan cheese

5 teaspoon of mixed herbs (I use the same Italian spices  as for the Spinach Ham soup above) - such as chives, parsley, oregano, basil, sage - almost any of the ‘green’ herbs.

garlic - use as much as you’d like. I don’t count it in the 5 teaspoons of herbs above cause I really like garlic

1/4 -1/2 cup sugar

2 T. oil

2 t. salt

5 to 6 cup flour

Dissolve yeast and sugar in lukewarm liquids with the Paramesan cheese. spices and oil. Add in the flour until a stiff dough is formed. Knead for about 8 minutes, working the salt in as you knead the dough. After  the dough feels as soft as a ‘baby’s bottom.” Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place (pilot light in the oven) til doubled. Punch down and form into 2 loaves. Place in buttered loaf pans. Cover and rise til doubled again. Carefully brush with melted butter and sprinkle a little more Parmesan cheese on top. Bake in a slow oven (325 degrees) for 30 - 35 minutes. Bread is done when the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack if you can wait that long. I recommend slicing off the heels and slather on some homemade butter! Add some homemade mozzarella cheese sliced thin, sprinkle with Italian herbs and lightly broil.

This recipe  came from a magazine that has since lost it’s cover …… not sure, maybe a Texas Travel magazine. The manager at Williams Buick in McKinney said I could take it. I found the recipe while waiting for a car repair many, many years ago.

That bread recipe makes good bread sticks or smaller loaves to pull apart at the table, dunking them in a garlic/herb oil.

It must have been a soup week as I also made Tortilla soup. I got that recipe from First Place cookbook but if you don’t already have a favorite, just google for a recipe and ad lib. BTW, true to form, I didn’t follow my recipe religiously and did not add the tortilla strips. Instead I buttered a couple of warm tortillas and we dipped them in the soup as we ate it. I knew we’d have left overs and didn’t want excessively soggy tortilla strips left in the soup. This soup does freeze well if you don’t want to mess with leftovers right away.

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Borrowed Rant

December 16, 2009 by Debbie.

Today has been hectic so forgive me for posting this borrowed ‘rant.’  I saved it from an old email. Sorry I can’t give credit to who wrote it as I don’t know. Wish I had. Next best thing is sharing it so I can take time today grocery shop, make homemade granola, chop and freeze all the large size veggies & meats from Sam’s. BTW, $200 worth of groceries should not ALL fit in my little red wagon at one time. And a big thank you to all who prayed for our two ‘orphan’ goats. Everyone is doing fine and the two orphans are thriving once more.

Enjoy!

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn’t seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can’t remember getting e.coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked’s (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can’t recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option, even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can’t recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah … and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played ‘king of the hill’ on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn’t sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it’s a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn’t act up at the neighbor’s house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front step, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn’t even notice that the entire country wasn’t taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

 

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Nap Time at Beulah Land

December 2, 2009 by Debbie.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. John was on vacation (figuratively speaking) the week of Thanksgiving. By Monday he’d received over 15 phone calls from work so you can see why I’m skeptical of calling the week a vacation. We did go out to lunch twice and he turned his phone off while we were out eating. The end of the week was calmer than the beginning and almost all of us found a place and time to rest.

The babies all crowded in a small dog carrier to cuddle and keep warm.

The mommas napped in the sunshine while they could … producing milk takes a lot of energy so they have to conserve when they can!

The ‘house people’ were giving the goats a run for their money, starting with John! I tried to ignore the open computer and phone right beside him but I had a baseball bat at the ready in case either beeped!

I found Heide and Bud sleeping in this very unusual position. I’ve never seen them lay this close to each other in such a small area. Usually Bud likes to have a way of escape as Heide can tend to be a grouch at times. She has pms, too, you know!

We didn’t think the baby goats sleeping together would be a problem but it has become one. That and since each doe had triplets there are times when two babies are nursing when a cousin will slip in between them and take over the rightful baby’s teat.  A momma goat recognizes her babies by smelling their tail end, which should smell like her milk. The nursing thief’s tail end no longer smelled like their momma’s milk and their momma rejected them. AND the other momma also rejected them. We’ve had to go out and hold the correct mommas and force them to nurse their correct babies. We’ve also had to supplement the milk supply as the mommas don’t seem to be able to produce enough milk for triplets yet, which will add an additional milk smell confusion to the mix.

Good thing we got our naps in early - won’t be any more for awhile!

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Thanksgiving

November 24, 2009 by Debbie.

We had an early Thanksgiving this year - SugaBaby and Mercy kidded within 24 hours of each other with SugaBaby starting the show Sunday morning. Both had two doeling and a buckling each - yeah! more does than bucks this year. Both kidded all by themselves with absolutely no help needed from us - another yeah! for sure. All babies nursed on their own - how many more yeahs! are needed? Seems like there were/are plenty! So much to be thankful for.

One of my biggest yeahs! was that John was home and could enjoy the experience. He’s a great baby-warmer-upper. Temps were 60+ degrees less in the barn than in the womb and we can’t watch those first little babies shiver while momma Suga cleans the last one out. I don’t have the patience to sit and warm the babies - thank goodness John does!

Napping is essential, where ever you can find a place.

Curiosity never ends.

 

The little buckskin walking towards me (”hey, you! whachadoin’???”) was the last one Mercy kidded and I found her wet and shivering waiting her turn to momma’s cleaning job. She’s the most adaptable of Mercy’s three. She goes over and sleeps under the light with Suga’s babies and knows no fear. The world is her oyster … for now!

We rigged up a light heated area for the babies. Little shivering one from above really likes this cuddly place!

I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving, even if all can’t be blessed with 6 kids almost overnight. John says the best thing about our kids is if they don’t behave, we can always eat them.  Look at that warming (first) picture and tell me that man would eat one of those goats!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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