FarmerDenise's journal - full on harvest time = busy, busy, busy

[FarmerDenise]

Your meals always sound so delightful -fresh, simple, and full of flavor!

Can you believe Blossom is so close? Remember when you first got your goats and this seemed so far off?

We were looking at baby goat pictures the other day. It is hard to believe that we are going to have babies so soon. I am sooo excited. I do my best to spoil Blossom. I feel well prepared and am no longer nervous about the birthing. I have a bucket with all the just in case goodies in it. I have watched lots of you tube videos and read a lot. I have 3 different goat books and they each say something different.
Every morning SO comes in and tells me: "No babies yet". I keep telling him that there are ways to tell when birth is imminent, but he doesn't belive me He thought she would have the baby on the 4th. I told him it is about 150 days or so and that makes it the 16th. The 4th was highly unlikely!! He is figuring out that I know what I am talking about

for tonight's dinner I took out 2 bags of frozen whole tomatoes (from last year). I am thinking of cooking the leftover baked chicken with the tomatoes. Removing the meat from the chicken carcass adding it back to the tomatoes, adding zucchini and basil and serving that over leftover spaghetti., Kind of like last night, but with lots more tomatoes..
I froze the left over stewed venison sausage balls. Those will be nice on a day neither of us feels like cooking.

I sat with the goats for a while. I had also picked them some corn stalks and weeds to munch on. Then I raked a bit in their pasture. The red broilers that live there liked that. Then I filled two bins with bedding and old feed (the weeds etc, that I feed them) and put them on my potato bed.
Now I am hanging out, sipping on a lemonade I made using our own lemons. It is almost wine time

 

[abifae]

How cute Is he more of a nervous mama than you are?

 

[FarmerDenise]

Oh yes Abi, he is. He asks me all the time, shouldn't we do this or that. He is very nurturing with the animals and little kids. He would be devastated, if something happened to Blossom or her babies.
Yesterday he reinforced the little stall we left in the goat pasture. It is the one we put together when the goats were little. Even though they now have a nice big shelter, Blossom has been choosing to lay in the little wooden box stall. So we think she will probably have her babies in there. SO wants to line it with hay, but I noticed that she brushes any hay away and lies on the bare ground. I think I just want to have hay nearby, to put down just as she is birthing to soften that babies fall. She can just about stand up in the box, but it tends to be cooler in there. Even more so that now it has 3 layers of wood on top. It is also under a tall pine tree, that helps keep the sun out most of the day, as is their shelter.

 

[FarmerDenise]

Blossom chewing her cud in "the box".

 

[abifae]

That's cute

 

[freemotion]

Blossom is all growed up? Sniffle..... seems like just yesterday you were saying she was the same size as a chicken!

 

[Farmfresh]

Now I have to make some ice cubes.

Oh PLEASE post that recipe!! Right now at 9:00 PM it is 91 F and we have a heat index of 110!! I could sure use a bit of ice my way.

 

[FarmerDenise]

 

[FarmerDenise]

I've been outside pulling weeds and feeding them to the goats and the chickens. Well not all of them. We have a few weeds that no-one will eat, so I just pull those and leave them on the ground to dry out and become mulch. Then I fed everyone their grains, expect I forgot to feed the big hens theirs bad me. I spent I don't know how much time in the goat pasture raking up the dead grasses. The ref broilers love it when I do that. It gives them a chance to look for bugs and dropped seeds. The girls like having me in there too. They are very helpfull trying to chew on the rake and standing in the way or nudging me. Sometimes they taste the bits I rake up. Blossom went and trampled down a "haystack" I had made. The chicks love those too. They climb into them and some try to climb up on them. It was pretty funny to watch them all have fun with my haystacks. I plan on gathering them up eventually and use them as mulch.
I have been watering sections of the pasture to make the grasses and weeds grow. The girls keep them down pretty well though. In the next few days I will move a section of the pasture fence, so I can start some new rows for them. I am not sure yet just what I will plant, it will probably include corn and sunflowers though, since I have lots of seeds for those.

I am hungry and I never did make dinner. I have a feeling we are going to have sandwhiches tonight. But we can have peaches for desert!!!

I also didn't walk Blossom today. She did give me a dirty look, when I looked up the pasture. Now I better run out there and feed the big chickens, before they tuck themselves in for the night.

 

[FarmerDenise]

I have been feeling woozy all day and spent most of the day on the couch and babysitting my grandson. I did n't spend any significant time with the animals.

Just now I made myself get up to do evening feedings and Blossom was acting funny. She is making odd sounds and won't eat. She also has stuff stuck to her ....you know. I felt for her tendons and she would barely let me touch her, but I could see hollows on both sides of the tail. I am so excited. I think I am grabbing the sleeping bag and sleeping with the goats. I gotta go now and put some clean hay down and boil some water....