Our little archer

 

You can make the screen bigger by clicking in the lower right hand corner of the video.

As you can see, Rachel is doing rather well. We were working on the cluster more than we were the bulls eye during the video. But as you can see, she can hit the bulls eye too! 

Drew's quilt

I made the top over a year ago and finally got around to quilting it. Winter's coming, my thoughts shift into keeping warm =).


 
 

Beautiful. Every little piece.

 

What happens when you give them an inch...

This may seem like a totally normal scene. Something is amiss however...

...Someone forgot to latch the gate back after the truck was driven out of the pen on Sunday....

...a gust of wind came along, opened it up and all of the goats got into the main back yard! - I thought it would be a very nice treat to allow them into the orchard (which is the penned area between the barnyard and the back yard (which is not fenced)-...

 

...You give them an inch and they take quite a bit more...

...and only 3 of them were greedy enough to come back for grain...

 

...the others I had to catch individually by hand! Awful creatures!

State Fair Goat Show & Such...

2012's show season is a wrap. I had considered going to the buck show in Mo. in Oct. but if you've seen - or better yet, SMELLED - my bucks here recently, I seriously doubt you'd blame me for not taking them.

Rachel talking to the judge. She answered all her anatomy questions correctly with special mention from the judge on how good of a job she did. Blue ribbon for participation! Yippee!

We brought home lots of ribbons from state fair, no blues. The main theme was that I have slow maturers. That may sound like a bad thing, it's not. It's what I am aiming for. The comments from the judge were all good. Validating, in fact! Slow maturers last longer. I just need to set them on a shelf, feed them well and wait...I can be patient...I see their potential. Aside from that, they are still productive now and will be productive for a long time to come. That's exactly what we want!

We've cut down the herd drastically. Rachel said goodbye to one of her bottle raised dry yearlings. I  didn't think that would be an easy thing and it didn't start out as one but let me tell you, this girl has matured so much in the past 6 months in regard to "farm life". We didn't hear a single thing about eating a rooster she named "Pigeon" other than to say he tasted good, and he did! And what made him taste better was the fact her was a jerk! The pigs, well, they are just something else to put on the plate too and the goats are producers, in some way shape or form and it doesn't seem to bother her one bit any more.

The amount of help I got from her at the show was tremendous! She was asking me all the time if there was something she could do, which is a far cry from other shows where I had to hunt her down to let her know her next class was coming up. She helped other people load and unload and clip and clean and primp. She filled buckets and feeders and exercised goats and more importantly she invested a lot of time before hand leash training the babies so on the big day they were all walking well...except for little miss Sugar. She decided she wanted to be a ballerina that day and walked on 2 feet instead of 4 almost the entire class she was in! In her defense though, she is just 3.5 months old!

I can't recall if I mentioned or not but my egg bread was 2nd place and Drew's cookie were 2nd place.

Every year I plan to have things made out ahead of time, part of the reason I did not have any sewing entries, I always plan to have things done well in advance if they can be, every year I kinda fail. Oh well =).

There's always next year =)...

State Fair Baking

We didn't enter any sewn items this year...too busy. We did however enter baked items!

My egg bread entry (brioche) was 2nd place! I didn't fold it right on the 2nd rise and it ended up with a small hole in the middle the whole way through the load, but it still tasted and looked delish. Apparently the judges agreed.

The kids also baked. Both kids made cookies and muffins. (Drew- chocolate chocolate chip cookies and banana strudel muffins. Rachel- ginger snaps and blueberry muffins.)

Drew won 2nd place for his chocolate chocolate chip cookies!

 

Wordless Wednesday: A cow on top of a cotton house goat on top of a chicken house

For those who appreciate "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou".

Rain, School, Goats, Farm

Rain: We've had some rain! Everything has greened up and the temps have dropped considerably. Except Sunday, it was 108! Most days are in the 90's and we expect a cool down for the 2 weeks of the fair, YAY!


Three nights ago and the night before last we had spectacular thunder and lightening. I just love thunder storms! We got 2/10th's an inch 3 nights ago and an inch night before last. That's nothing to shake a stick at! The lightening was right over top of the house and the power went out twice. The first time for about 10 minutes, the 2nd time for 2 hours or longer. We finally went to bed at that point but it was so hot and without even being able to use the fan, falling asleep was rough.

School: School is going well. The kids are in school an additional half an hour a day to make up for the shortened school year due to construction next summer. The bus driver wanted to pick them up at 6:50. Since the school is opening the doors at 7:15 now, Jeremiah has been dropping them off in the morning which allows us all more time to sleep! Getting the kids to bed early (Drew 8:00 PM and Rachel 8:30) has been key to the morning routine going well. Rachel is just like Jeremiah though, a night owl, and will often read for half an hour or an hour. Sometimes it's just very hard for her to fall asleep.

Goats: Goats are well, loving the new grazing that has come along with this rain. We had linear appraisal last Friday, and can I just say we did so much better than I expected! Actually, we did really really well!Linear appraisal scores goats against the perfect goat, in layman's terms. There actually is no perfect goat, but if there were, each goat is judged against that. Maturity often brings closer scores to what people strive for but generally anything over 85 with structural scoring of "E's" (Excellent) and "V's" (Very Good) are desirable. Only milkers are given numbered scoring. All young stock and/or does who have never freshened (given birth) is given just lettered scoring. All my milkers (except my yearling freshener) scored 87 and above including 2 home bred 2 year olds who scored 87! My bucks all scored well, and the young stock did smashingly! It was a good day.

The fair starts this weekend! I can hardly believe that's here. The dairy goat show is the 14, 15, 16th, the last weekend of the fair. Yesterday I was baking up a storm for entries in food. The children have entries due Sunday and then I am also entered into a "sandwich contest" put on by Fleischmann's Yeast, it's bake your best sandwich bread. Some of the contests are worth quite a bit of money.

The kids and I are meeting up with friends on Monday to spend the day at the fair. Dollar day is always tons of fun.

Farm: The garden is still growing great guns. The piggies are doing really well and starting to root up their entire pen now! 2 of my Feb. pullets are now laying. They both were laying in the wooden goat feeder in the barn until I caught one one day and stuck her in the nesting box on the coop. Since then I am getting one in the nesting box and one in the trough...still. I have another 5 pullets who haven't started laying yet. The Silver Laced Wyandotte breed takes a bit longer to mature and so they pretty much are right on time. I expect the others to start laying in about a month or so. We picked up 2 barred rock layers from a friend of mine about a month ago so we were getting about an egg a day out of them...not enough to sustain us but nice to have anyway! Now we're getting about 5 eggs every 2 days, not bad. As soon as these others start laying we'll be just fine.


We ended up butchering "Pigeon", in case you hadn't heard. -The piggy to the left isn't Pigeon, by the way, that's Earl (of Sandwich). Gettin' big aye?- I had had it with Pigeon chasing Rachel and she was none to sad to eat him for dinner, even if she did name him! We picked up another who's proven to be just as bad so as soon as we have a chance, he'll be going too. Then we won't have any roosters and maybe, maybe that's just the way it should be. We've yet to get a nice rooster and it's not as if we treat them badly for them to be behaving the way they do! Literally, all of our roosters save for one were eaten by that fox. Which, by the way, I did mention we caught him right? Since then, not a single loss!

So, that's all the goings on around here. Bye for now.