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.