Castle Rock Farm

First Kids of 2012

2012-01-09T15:58:00.000-08:00

Compliments of CRF Castle Rock Lunar Eclipse

Just a week ago- looking like she might be carrying a single

We have a set of triplets on the ground

Adorable doe baby came out first

Baby bucks came out almost this closely together

Luna was very good at letting us know that she was close- talking non-stop all morning, and not scooting away indignantly when we checked to see if her ligaments were loose. Within a half hour of her starting to enthusiastically lick our hands, arms, and faces, she was in active labor.


Um, a little help here? I think I'm stuck...


The light buck's gold spots are quite visible when he's not wearing his brother

We'll have a break of about a month before the next kids are due, which is good, because I'm not quite ready to be in the full swing of kidding season just yet. In fact, I'm still milking does that freshened over 11 months ago- I'm impressed that several of the girls are such persistent milkers, even while I'm actively trying to dry them off, but would also like a decent break from milking before all of the kidding season chores start up again.

I have a feeling that these kids are going to be quite spoiled for the next month or so- especially that little doe kid, who is quite outgoing already.

Out & About

2011-12-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, after finishing morning chores, I was sitting on the couch watching a random movie from 1940, when Andy asked me what I hoped to accomplish for the day. I told him I had pretty much accomplished it already and wasn't planing on doing much beyond watching classic movies and eating tasty fudge made and given to us by our lovely neighbors.

With the exception of getting Bert and Ernie out for a walk with their packs. Gotta work on getting those boys in shape!

I've added the pack bags to their saddles, so they get used to the "extra" weight, and the feel of the material against their sides. We don't have many trails in the immediate area, so we end up on what country roads we can find, which usually have more traffic than either I or the boys would like, since passing cars tend to freak them out a bit. Fortunately, we have friends who live at the end of one of the longer and steeper country roads within walking distance, which makes for a decent training walk where we can let go of the leads. The boys do better at keeping up when allowed off lead, but are unpredictable enough when cars pass us that I can only let them off when we've gotten off the main road.

We do gain several hundred feet of elevation on this walk- these pictures were taken at the highest part, and our turning around point.


What's that in your hands? Can I eat it?

Notice how Ernie is in the lead (usually the case), and how Bert's tongue is sticking out. Bert is still getting tired faster than I would like, but at least there isn't any (extremely) pitiful bleating like the last time we walked up this road. That was two years ago, the boys didn't have any weight on them and it was around 90 degrees. So I suppose this is an improvement.


Bert sees many hills in the distance and contemplates laying down right there should we decide to go any further.

I was hoping to get a nice picture of the Valley, or possibly the Sierra Mountains, which you can see on a clear day from this location, but it was so hazy, we couldn't even see Sacramento.


Pssssst! Bert! Snacking opportunity this way!

Nomnomnomnom!

You may have noticed that Bert has matching accessories, where Ernie's red halter clashes rather loudly with his purple packs. Apparently, really bright colors and pastels are all the rage for goat halters these days as I've only been able to find a pinkish purple (meh), and the dark green halter was a special order because granny-smith-apple-green just wasn't going to do and Bert needed something. Ernie is actually wearing a llama halter, which I think fits him much better than the large goat halters do, so I'm waiting to get some motivation to shop for llama halters in dark purple before Ernie gets to be all matchy.

The boys don't seem to mind the addition of the packs to their saddles, and while the horses, llamas, and alpacas we pass on our walks seem to find them fascinating, Bert and Ernie pay them little attention. The one thing Bert couldn't seem to tear himself away from on our walk was the half blind teacup poodle with all of three teeth who was barking and tugging at the end of his leash as though he was fixing to tear Bert to shreds. I had to drag Bert away from the little monster because he had stopped walking and just wouldn't stop staring at it.

We did get asked if we were walking alpacas (it's the big ears and all the wool that fools 'em every time), and another person slowed her car down to ask if we let children ride our animals, and by the way, what were they? When I told her they were goats, she wanted to know how much I'd charge, since her daughter wanted to ride a pony, but she though that would be too dangerous.

Somehow, a goat seems safer?

Good to know. And now I'm tempted to see if the great Google will find me some goat saddles, as there is apparently an area of the goat-related economy I've been ignoring all this time.

Russian Beehives

2011-12-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

Make my bee hives look boring.

I saw these little gems in Yaroslavl, Russia, and they supposedly are reproductions of buildings found in the town of Uglich along the Volga River. They are fully functional bee hives set in a large garden within an old monastery that also served as a fort (or as they call it- kremlin).

My mom and I went to Russia for about a week in early September, which is just enough time to see the very highlights of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a few towns in between. We traveled by boat along an extensive canal and lock system, which is very heavily traveled by both tourist boats and small oil tankers. Our first port of call after leaving Moscow was supposed to be Uglich, however, heavy fog kept us in one of the river locks for five hours, putting us far enough behind schedule that we had to skip that stop.

At least this gave us some small taste of what Uglich was like. And an idea of what beekeepers with a short active season do with some of their downtime.

Refreshingly not goat related

2011-12-19T01:12:00.000-08:00

Looks like someone is under the impression that she's found some fresh hay before anyone else did.


It's all mine! Mine I tell you!

Every so often, someone will leave the man-door to the barn open, and some of our free ranging hens will take the opportunity to go where few hens have gone before. The discovery of one (or more) of these hens manages to surprise me since I'm really not expecting to see a chicken in this particular part of our barn.

You look puny from up here!

It took a little while to convince her that she was not, in fact, a fifteenth century explorer who could lay claim to something just because she "discovered" it.

Ha! I told you we weren't allowed in there!

A bit later I found the same hen trying to lay claim to a new piece of real estate, which did not please the hen who had already made herself comfortable in that space.

It's too bad I wasn't able to capture sound with this picture- our explorer friend next tried to move into this nest box (also known as a corner feeder), and the Maran fluffed up and let out a steady growl in an attempt to intimidate the red hen.

Have you ever heard a chicken growl? It's kind of a funny sound, unless you hear it while you are trying to remove eggs from under a hen. Then it is a sound that means your hand is about to be attacked. And can I just say- for those of you who want broody hens so you can hatch out your own chicks- please contact me. I seem to specialize in getting broody hens, and while they are fantastic for hatching out your own eggs, if you don't want to hatch eggs yet find yourself with a hard-core months-on-end broody hen, it makes daily egg gathering very unpleasant. Unless you are in to collecting new beak scars on your hands every day. And if you are, man, do I have an opportunity for you!

Seriously? You're talking about chickens?

Yes, well, perhaps if you didn't usually close your eyes when we pull out the camera...

I'd have more pictures of you I felt like posting.

At least someone kept their eyes open while the camera was out...

Weighing in at almost 100 pounds, Mini is looking much more like an adult. She and Stella get along very well, and for quite a while, they were enthusiastically playing together during chore time. Now though, Mini has gotten more serious about her job and play holds less of her interest, which seems to be sort of confusing to Stella who had gotten quite used to play time.

She's transferred that play energy into following me from room to room while I try to do work. Sometimes she just stands and stares. Which isn't at all unnerving. There's nothing I love more than having my own entourage of one. All the time.

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My plan to have the blog updated more regularly with a guest writer has, for now, fallen by the wayside. Katie had some family matters that needed immediate attending to, so her stay with us was unfortunately cut short. I hope to have other guest writers in the future, and will let them introduce themselves as they accept the invitation to blog. I am still hoping to get a few more posts up in the near future about native plants, and the benefits of finding space for them both on and off farms. I am hoping this partly because more time for writing means I'm probably finally getting a break from milking. I just need to get one more milk test done, and then I'll be able to start drying off more of the girls.

But, that is a subject for another post...

California Native Plants: Coyote Bush

2011-11-15T11:36:00.001-08:00

Hello and konnichiwa! Katie here, writing my first blog post for the farm. I was introduced by Sarah a couple posts back, with Bert and Ernie, the pack goats. Among other things, I will be posting regular introductions to California native plants that can be found here on Castle Rock farm. Here is the first...

As the nights get colder and the first frosts come, there is still busy activity all around the farm. A couple weeks ago, the Coyote Bush started to bloom. Coyote Bush, or Baccharis pilularis, is one of the only California native plants blooming this time of year and therefore it attracts a lot of attention and is a valuable food source for many insects. Watching for just a couple minutes, you can spot different varieties of bees, wasps, ladybugs, may flies, flies, ants and more crawling and buzzing around the plant. You can also smell the sweet honey-like fragrance of the flowers if you get up close.

Coyote Bush is a hardy plant and can survive even in very dry and nutrient poor soil. It has a large complex root system that is perfect for holding soil in place to help prevent erosion. On the farm there are many Coyote Bush plants planted along the creek bed bordering the property, in order to hold the soil. Coyote Bush can survive harsh weather conditions and even low to moderate levels of salinity, so it is often used as erosion control in nutrient poor coastal areas and is found growing there naturally as well. Coyote Bush is also considered fire retardant and is not eaten by deer. Dwarf coyote bush is more commonly grown for native gardens in California as it makes a nice ground cover or more easily controlled small shrub.

The larger coyote bushes tend to be rangier and less 'pretty.'

There are both larger coyote bushes and smaller dwarf coyote bush here on Castle Rock Farm. Both have small oval leaves that range from dark to bright green. Coyote Bush is an evergreen, so it adds color to the landscape year round. The flowers are very small and are white, cream, or yellow and can bloom from early summer through mid-winter.

I have been having fun learning more about native plants here on the farm and watching all the activity on the Coyote Bush lately. Consider planting Coyote Bush in your garden and you can see what all the buzz is about!

(Note: All pictures from here on the farm except the second photo, of the dwarf coyote bush ground cover, which was taken from the Native Sons website.)

Honey Bees

2011-11-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas, I asked Santa for honey bees, as I wanted to have my own source of beeswax for the lip balms and salves that I make. Santa thought we were just getting one bee hive, but after talking with several bee keepers, two hives worth of bees were procured from a local source.

As with just about every type of critter one can keep, the critters themselves end up being the least of your expenses. There's also the hive boxes- eight frame vs. ten frame, deciding what type of frame you want to use in those boxes, lids, inner covers, entrance reducers, hive stands, and hive bottoms. Then there's the beekeeper tools- most importantly- what type of protective clothing you're going to wear, and the smoker you'll use. Then there's the hive tool, bee brush, feeders, capping scrapers, and a few other things you may or may not eventually need. The bee keeper I got my frames of bees from recommended, after a long day of working his hives, that I get eight frame boxes as full boxes of bees and honey can get quite heavy.

While putting the frames of bees into the hives, we noticed several queen cups in the first hive, which the bee keeper scraped off of the frames. We didn't see either of the queens, but we did see several drones, which are bigger than the workers and look somewhat husky. Drones are the only male bees in the hive, and they serve just one purpose- to go out and mate with virgin queens. They can't even feed themselves, and have to beg the workers to feed them, and once they mate with a queen, they die.

Drone hanging out on the hive porch

I went back a week later and found that queen cups (where the hive grows new queens) had shown up again in the hive that had contained them the previous week. Before scraping the queen cups off this time, I decided to look and see if I could find the queen. I was unable to find her, so I left the queen cups alone, and checked the other hive, in which I did find the queen. Two weeks later, the cups had hatched out, and a new queen had established herself.

In the month after getting the original two hives, we captured three swarms that showed up at our farm. Luckily, all of the swarms decided to beard on low hanging branches of plants, so they were relatively easy to capture.

A beard of bees

The first swarm was pretty large, and is now my strongest hive. The second two swarms were small, and when checking one of them, I found that they had no queen, so I combined the two. We now have four hives in our "bee garden".

We selected a location where the bees would have morning sun and afternoon shade, and where they would be out of the way of farm visitors. I'm glad we started with two hives as the hive that hatched out a new queen has never really recovered and is currently my weakest hive, and should be requeened in the spring- if I hadn't had another hive to compare with, I'd probably be pretty discouraged with my first experience in beekeeping.

I love to take a few minutes to go sit near the hives and watch the workers flying in and out on their daily chores of gathering pollen and nectar. The guards check all who enter, while other workers either fan at the entrance to help with ventilation and temperature control, or scurry about filling in cracks and crannies with propolis. The workers typically pay me no heed even though I sit within a few feet of their homes, going about their daily chores since I am not threatening their hives in any way. There's a faint scent of honey in the air and a contented buzzing which has made this one of my favorite spots on the farm.

Introducing Katie, Bert, and Ernie

2011-11-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

And now, for something a little different (besides one post every wow-has-it-really-been-that-many months)...introductions of a few farm residents.

We'll start with Katie- she's the person on the right in the picture. She's staying with us at the farm for several months after spending the last couple of years in Japan teaching English, and has an interest in international agriculture. She'll also be putting up some blog posts about the farm and a topic I have long planned to write more about- California native plants. So, when you see her name on the blog, that's who it is, and I'm excited that the blog will be a bit more up to date. I know, I know, more than two posts isn't that high of a bar- our goal is for at least one post a week.

As for the four legged beings in the picture, you may have noticed that they look different than the goats you usually see on the web site. Much longer legs, and much shorter ears. These guys are La Mancha-Saanen cross wethers I obtained when they were a mere one week old and bottle raised with the goal of making them into pack goats. I love backpacking, but I also know that my knees most likely aren't going to last forever. I considered donkeys, llamas, mules, and goats when deciding on a pack animal.

Llamas have the advantage of being relatively low maintenance, quiet, and efficient eaters who are light on the land. However, I have owned three llamas (we currently have just one) and they are too aloof for me- if I'm going to get another animal or two to take into the back country, I want a species that does more than just tolerates me, I want them to like me. Growing the llama collection didn't really excite me all that much.

Donkeys seemed like a good option- they appear to be awfully strong for their size, smart, and my friends who have them seem to really enjoy them. When you have a donkey, you still have to do all of the shots and ferrier work that a mule requires, only a mule could carry you out of the back country while still having enough smarts to take care of themselves. If I'm going to feed a mule, I might as well feed a horse, which I've wanted since I can remember. But, I don't really have enough time for a horse right now, which meant I was back to looking at pack goats.

So, back to goats. Their advantages: I already know how to take care of them, they can carry 20 to 25 percent of their body weight, and I don't have to put them in a trailer to transport them. Bert (the lighter one) and Ernie are about three and a half now and I'm starting their packing training by getting them out and about just with the saddles on. I will add paniers soon with a little weight at first and then slowly build up from there. I have to say, it is a good thing that most backpacking happens at elevations where it doesn't get as hot as it does here cause these boys are a bit more heat sensitive than I expected them to be.

I hadn't realized just how much bigger Ernie is than Bert until we took these pictures! These guys are littermate brothers, but obviously Ernie is going to be the one who will end up with the heavier packs. Ernie is a bit of a momma's boy when we're out and about- he gets pretty worried if I am more than 30 feet from him and will call to me in a clearly worried voice. Bert is quite attached to his brother, and gets worried if Ernie is more than about 30 feet from him. This should work out fairly well on the trail- I'll lead, Ernie will go where ever I go, and Bert will go wherever Ernie goes. At least, I hope it works that way out on the trail. So far, we've just gone for walks on the roads where we live, which is not all that much like being on a trail, especially with all of the cars going by.

Handling goats that are much bigger than I'm used to can be challenging, and makes me appreciate that the majority of our goats are small. I suppose that if we had more of the bigger goats, we'd be better set up for handling them and taking care of routine maintenance, but the way we are currently set up, hoof trimming turns into a two person-one-goat wrestling match. I am pretty fond of these big guys though- they are pretty affectionate, and with the bucks being in the midst of breeding season (which means lots of wether molesting by the bucks), they are pretty eager to go out for hikes these days.

2011 Kidding Season

2011-08-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Now that kidding season is a few months in the rear view mirror, I finally have some time to write about it. This is the biggest kidding season we have ever had- 41 does kidded with a total of 106 kids.

Whew! I get a little tired just thinking about it.

When I bred all of these does last fall, Andy's recovery from his back injury was going well- he was progressing along well enough that we weren't sure that he would need surgery. Then he suffered a set back while at a physical therapy session, and it quickly became clear that he would need surgery to fix the problem. Surgery, which should have been performed much earlier, happened right before New Year's, and kids started hitting the ground about a month later. I was a little panicked about going into this kidding season so shortly after the surgery, but it was too late to do anything to change the inevitable.

The first eleven days of kidding were fast and furious, with 67 kids hitting the ground, with two sets of quintuplets back to back. The fortunate thing was that these kids came during a very mild two week period of February. The unfortunate thing is that mild weather in early February usually means that we are not even close to being done with winter.

And we weren't.

It didn't stop raining until sometime in June. The farm was totally squishy and muddy, with dry does, milking does, and bottle babies couped up in the barn. When it did stop raining, the temperature would briefly go up into the low 80's, which was great for the fly population, then drop back down into the 40's, which is not so great for kids. As I've mentioned before, our barn is at the bottom of a whole lot of hill, so even when it did stop raining, the barn and barn yard stayed pretty damp. The back corner of our barn had quite a puddle- and right by the milk room door, which the does just loved to walk through. While the rain was great for growing the pastures, the constant rain made it impossible to get the goats out to graze it, and meant that we went through a greater amount of hay than I had expected to go through.

As a side note, weather that doesn't allow goats to go out and graze is the same sort of weather that doesn't allow hay growers to bale hay. So even though I had put up around 20 tons of hay in the barn during the summer of 2010, I still ran out of alfalfa for the milkers. There was a gap of over 60 days between the first cutting of alfalfa and the second, which is almost unheard of around here.

We had four more does kid in February, and the balance of the kidding season was spread out between the first and third weeks of March, and the first week or so of April. After last year's weird kidding season, which seemed to affect many farms, I'm happy to say that everyone pulled through just fine. I only had to reposition a few kids, and once I got their noses in the right direction, they popped right out, saving me from having to pull them. We had a pretty even ratio of bucks to does, and I retained about a baker's dozen doe kids and four buck kids for the year. It was difficult to narrow down who I wanted to keep kids out of since these days, every doe kid kept means a senior doe will probably have to go. As my "core herd" continues to grow- those would be my finished champions- the number of does I would consider letting go shrinks, and yet I still try to keep room for those slower to mature does, which can mean waiting until a doe is four years old to see if that's when she finally "blooms".

I doubt that I will try to freshen that many does again any time in the near future. All kids are put on bottles and individually fed- at one point I had 65 kids on bottles, and we didn't use a lamb bar, so that meant picking up each of those kids three times a day and feeding them, plus twice a day milking (which is the subject of another post). Usually we bring in the kids we are going to keep for some tv/couch time, but this year, there wasn't any time for that. Near the end of kidding season, my left wrist was shot and required wearing a stiff brace at night and a soft brace during the day. Fortunately, it has recovered, but I'm definitely thinking of getting several lamb-bar type set ups to make kid feeding, especially of wethers, take less time and less lifting. I had originally figured that if I had everyone kid at once, then all bottle feeding and kidding chores would be really heavy for a relatively short period of time. By the time all of the kids from the first wave of kiddings were ready to be weaned, I was ready to be done, but we still had quite a few more weeks of kid work to do. The spring was so busy with kids in fact, that by the time I got back to my more regular chore/activity load, I felt like it should be around April, and yet it was already June.

So that was kidding season. I hope to also write soon about our special session of linear appraisal, show season, and a few additions to what we're producing on the farm.

2010 Show Season (cont)

2011-01-05T12:02:00.000-08:00

I really did try to get to this update before the calendar changed to 2011. It was another late night blog beginning, and about two paragraphs in, my computer told me that someone had removed my wireless device, so I was no longer connected to the internet. This was weird because my hands were on the keyboard the whole time, nowhere near the wireless device, and as far as I could tell everyone else in the house was asleep. Including, apparently, Blogger, because none of my work was saved.   Usually, it takes many tries to convince my computer to find the wireless device after it has been allegedly "removed" (even though it looks to me like it is still in the exact same place), so I gave up and went to bed.

This morning there is a very heavy frost on the ground and the heater has been working furiously to keep the house a balmy 64 degrees, so instead of rushing out to start on the yard work required of dry winter days, I'm finally going to finish the summary of the show season.

We return to July, which had the first shows after our Linear Appraisal session. It was sort of nice to have a bit of a break after all of that clipping and preparation, as there were quite a few other things going on that needed my attention as well.   Usually, the first weekend in July finds me at the Watsonville show, but it had moved to the same weekend as the Placerville show, which is half the driving distance but twice the show rings. I was very torn about which show to go to because both have been very supportive of Nigerian Dwarf goats, and had hoped earlier in the year that I might be able to send Andy to one and myself to the other. However, Andy had injured his back at work in early June and couldn't drive to the grocery store, much less a goat show, so I was forced to choose. My decision was helped when friends Tamara and Kalee let me know that they were coming down from Oregon to attend the Placerville show.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, I got the goats and all of the necessary equipment loaded in the truck and was off to the show which was dual sanctioned for ADGA and AGS. I took five senior does and three juniors, and my junior doe pen turned out to be the most work since Siren Song decided that Oh-No had no right to be in the same pen, and made her thoughts on the matter crystal clear. At least Oh-No got some quality one on one people time in our efforts to save her from being mashed by Siren. After a long day of showing the senior does, milking them, then showing the squirmy junior does, I still had to head back to Vacaville to milk all of the goats I had left at home, then get up early to milk them again, then the drive back to Placerville where I arrived just in time to take my does into the first ring of the day. The whole morning felt very rushed, especially when the second ring started judging it's first class while we were still doing Champion Challenge in the first ring! The whole weekend was exhausting, but worth it!

Alum Root went GCH to finish her ADGA permanent championship, and then once more to finish her AGS permanent championship. Bayberry finally made her 2010 show debut and went Reserve Grand Champion in three of the four rings. The junior does did well enough with Magpie and Oh-No exhibiting very good behavior for their first time in a show ring.

The next week, we headed to the State Fair which had moved from August to July this year. We did not show at the fair, but we did go to dairy week to see our dairy goat friends. We got to see several breeds of dairy cow, including the Brown Swiss with withers higher than my head! I had no idea that they got that tall.   The move to July did result in the State Fair having much better attendance numbers than last year, which is encouraging- I'd hate to see the State Fair go by the wayside.

At the urging of Tamara and Kalee, I decided to take a trip one week late, up to Oregon for the Jacksonville Fair- a one day, two ring, Sunday show. I had gone to this show once, four years ago, and a one day show sounded good, especially knowing that the Rousso family would provide a comfy place to stay. As soon as I finished the farmer's market on Saturday, I got the truck packed and headed north with just four milkers and Stella.

Stella has not been on many trips since she tends to get car sick. I have noticed that she seems much more nervous in the car than in our truck- I think when she was abandoned, she was taken out to "the country" in a car, which is why they make her uneasy. She was much more relaxed on this road trip than the last one- she even looked out of the windows and spent most of the trip not curled up in a tiny little ball. And, there was no barfing! Progress! She just might turn into a dog that enjoys riding in the car after all.

I got the milkers all tucked into a stall in the Rousso barn, where they were provided with lots of hay and water, and turned my attention to enjoying a tasty dinner served in the back yard where we could enjoy the weather and watch the dogs play with each other. This is where I discovered a new quirk of Stella's- Border Collies are notorious for their quirks, and so far this seems to be only the second one she has. She is much more concerned with heading off a dog that is going after a stick or a ball than she is with getting the stick or ball herself. When she is alone, she loves fetching sticks or balls, but all Saturday evening, she was just obsessed with heading off Jedi, the English Shepherd. Jessi, the English Shepherd/Lab cross was thrilled because this meant that Jedi was distracted long enough for Jessi to actually have a chance at the stick/ball/pine cone. She has now continued to show this behavior with several other dogs- I guess that instinct to head off animals that are running somewhere is just too strong to turn off, even around non-herding-appropriate animals.

Sunday morning found Kalee and I down at the barn early to get the milkers loaded and down to the fairgrounds in time for the show which started at 8am. I was not very happy with my girls when I discovered that they'd gone on some sort of hunger/thirst strike, practically not touching their filtered water or their hay overnight. Sigh. Once we were at the fairgrounds, I remembered why I hadn't gone back to this show for four years. For one thing, not being able to drop the goats off the night before the show, when the show starts at 8am is a pain for anyone traveling to the show from any amount of distance. For another, the barn footing is all superfine and dusty decomposed granite- the goats get filthy and the dust gets in everything. And, once you are there, there's no leaving until after 5pm. This makes for a very long day, and there were lots of fair attendees who wanted to touch every animal in the barn- a great way to spread disease. We set up our chairs around the pens in such a way that someone would have to stand on us if they wanted to touch the goats The competition in the show ring was pretty strong, and we brought home a Reserve Grand Champion win with Irish Cream. Since I didn't take any juniors, this meant that I was pretty much done at 10am, so ended up talking shop with some of the other goat breeders there and trying to stay cool in the hot summer temperatures until we were allowed to leave.

We didn't have much in the way of shows in August, and before I knew it, September had arrived and it was time to head back up to Placerville for the Fuzzy Goat Show. A two ring dual sanctioned (ADGA and AGS) show held on one day. Irish Cream won GCH in the first ring, which was the final leg she needed for her ADGA permanent champion, and made her the fourth doe I've finished in ADGA this year. In the next ring Bayberry went Reserve Grand Champion- the doe who went Champion was already finished in AGS, so the Reserve should count as a restricted leg. I took a couple of juniors as well, and Magpie came in second in her very large dry yearling class. A stunning daughter out of CRF Castle Rock Jamaica Bay (a Sara x Montego daughter) went Junior Champion in one of the rings- I'm always happy to see the quality continue in that doe line.

We wrapped up the 2010 show season in early October with our second attendance at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair, which was very nice. The Harvest Fair seemed a bit smaller overall than the previous year- with the exception of the llama show, which was a Southwest Regional show. There were no premiums this year, which I'm sure had some impact on how many entries there were- it's much harder to justify spending money for two nights hotel room (we had a Friday night check-in) without the chance to recoup any of it. Not that we get premiums at many shows around here, but the budget cuts that many, many fairs have had has an impact on more and more small farmers.

We took five does in milk and Mr. Lincoln, but left the junior does at home this time, since all of those that I had registered with AGS had already gotten plenty of "ring time" earlier in the year. Bayberry took Grand Champion and Best Udder in the first ring, and Blizzard went Grand Champion in the second ring. Irish Cream went Reserve Grand Champion in both rings, and Best Udder in the second ring. Not a bad way to end the show season!

The Dogs of Castle Rock Farm

2010-12-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

So, the last couple of posts have been pretty text heavy. Mainly because I stink at taking pictures of events, like Linear Appraisal, or of shows-- heck, there are still goats that have been hanging out in my barn yard for years(!) that I haven't managed to get a single picture of.

But, I digress. Here, to mix it up a little, are a few pictures of the current canines living at the farm.

First, a picture of Minion from the day I picked her up. She's on the right, drinking, and the dog on the left that looks like a Border Collie on steroids, is her grandfather. I am hoping that she does not get nearly as big as he is.

Second, a picture of Stella, with her backpacking packs. She has not yet gone backpacking- she's just two and a half and not really ready to start carrying much weight. Plus, I haven't been backpacking since August of 2009. But, I want to start getting her used to the packs in hopes that we will get to go packing, plus she carried a couple of light weight items that I ended up using a bit and it was easier to grab them from her packs than from my pack. I think she looks quite fetching.

This is the first time she's seemed alright with the packs and not under the impression that they are going to suck out her life force. This is also the first time I've been able to take her out on a trail as opposed to the country roads around our house, so I think she was less concerned with the pack and more focused on ADVENTURE!

And finally, a picture of Stella with her new BFF, Bear. Bear is a handsome, blue-eyed husky-shepherd-golden mix who is staying on the farm for a few months along with his person.

I forgot to ask his person's permission to talk about them on the blog before I started writing, so will stick to talking about Bear for now. It took a little while for the two to warm up to each other, but now they do enjoy going on walks together and playing. Playing mainly involves wrestling and Stella leaping up and grabbing Bear's neck with her mouth, in an effort to get him to chase her. His nature is quite dignified, while Stella is very playful and energetic- they do make a very cute couple. Stella does like to keep an eye on him and while she had warmed up to playing with Minion before Bear's arrival, she's pretty much dropped Minion like yesterday's fashion and exclusively plays with Bear.

Linear Appraisal 2010

2010-12-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

So, before I got distracted with telling y'all about the PUPPY, I had given a summary of how show season was going up to the first weekend in June. The weekend after that, I had Linear Appraisal, which is sort of a big deal, as it is a really good source of information.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Linear Appraisal, a short explanation:

When we go to a show, our goats are judged against the other goats who are also at that show. If lots of really good goats show up and we win, then that's great. If not so nice goats show up and we win, well, that doesn't tell you all that much about the quality of our goats- but the win counts just as much as it did over the goats that were really good. During Linear Appraisal, goats are measured against a score card by a very experienced judge who has also gone through extensive appraiser training. There are several linear traits that are scored on a scale of 1 to 50 with 1 generally being way too little of the trait and 50 being way too much. Depending on what your breeding goals are, generally scores in the 25 to 35 range are the the target you are aiming for.

In theory, Linear Appraisal (LA) is an objective measurement which can give you an accurate picture of how a given animal looks based on the scores. In theory, all appraisers are the same in their scoring. We've noticed that there is more of a difference between appraisers than we thought there would be, and unfortunately, some appraisers consider themselves to be "tougher" than others, which sort of goes against that whole "objective evaluation" that is supposed to be the point of LA. In spite of this, during the two appraisal sessions I've participated in, I've learned a tremendous amount. Both times, appraisers have pointed out some trait I had not really been paying attention to. It's very nice to have a fresh set of eyes look over the herd since I can get a bit of tunnel vision- I either get so fixated on one great trait that a doe has that I ignore some other issue that she has, or I have a soft squishy spot for a doe and am more forgiving than perhaps I should be about her structure. It doesn't happen all that often, but it is good to have another evaluation of the herd from someone who is not emotionally attached.

An Appraisal session is somewhat different from a show. We still wash and clip all of the does so they will be looking their best, and we try to time things so that the does will have 12 hours to bag up. The appraiser comes to our farm instead of us going to them, and unlike a show, where we set the does up, the does are just supposed to walk naturally on a lead. The appraiser is able to spend several minutes with each goat that is being appraised, which is more time than judges get at most shows.

All does who have freshened are to be presented for appraisal and it is up to the appraiser whether they will excuse any given animal if they are not feeling well, or if the doe is dry. A couple of our does were excused- Mouzza had come down with a high fever just a few days before appraisal and was still recovering. Raven took all of 2010 off, having not freshened this year, Honey Child had just freshened, and Tuscan Sun was still two weeks from freshening, so those does were not appraised.

So, how did we do?

Overall, I was fairly pleased.

*Ahem*

I should amend that. After letting everything percolate for a few days, I was pleased.

At first, the two scores of 82, earned by SkyRocketGilia (Lia) and Penny Wise stood out since 82 was lower than I was expecting from those two. I think in the back of my mind I had thought, going into the session, that I would be getting rid of any animals that had scored that low. But then I also realized that no one was going to force me to sell those girls if I didn't want to, and I believe that another freshening will do them some good. In Lia's case, the appraiser said that her udder held a lot of promise and would only get better with subsequent freshenings.

Once i got over being hung up on those two, I was able to focus on some of the brighter spots. Our second freshener, CH Algedi Farm H Purple Rain, had our high score of VVEE 90. CH-MCH Castle Rock Alum Root once again scored an 89- VVEV, and the appraiser said that she missed getting an E for mammary because her medial suspensory ligament was too strong and starting to affect capacity. I was surprised by this since our last appraiser indicated that he thought Nigerians as a breed really needed stronger MSLs and had said Alum Root was almost perfect in that category. CH CRF Castle Rock Blizzard scored a VVEV 88 and CRF Castle Rock Bay Berry earned our second E for mammary with a VVEE 88.

To get an overview of does in the herd, I made a few lists of the traits that I want to continue to focus on, and the does who had the strongest scores in those areas. A second list was made of the does who were weakest in those areas to help focus on who needs help and where. Traits where the herd is fairly strong, such as foreudder and MSL were not included since we're doing just fine there and don't need to focus much on improvement. I did include rump angle, rump width, rear udder arch, teat placement, and general appearance. Three does consistently floated to the top of these lists- Purple Rain, ARMCH Lost Valley TB Infinity 4*D, and Blizzard. The two bucks that I retained from my herd this year are out of Infinity (Bentley), and Purple Rain (Tanzanite), so I was happy to see that. I've also decided to retain a buck out of Blizzard next year- something I might have done this year if that had been an option, but we got twin does instead.

Our appraiser kindly allowed us to milk out most of our does before giving a score for udder texture. Just about all of the does we milked out earned 'E's for udder texture. It's nice to see the work we've done on udders show up in the scores.

We were very lucky to have several helping hands on deck who were able to help with bringing does out of the barn for me to handle and then to put them back when they were done. Rebecca, Jenn, Justin, and Sarah (who milked the girls by hand for me!) were so very helpful- I do recommend participating in LA, but I do not recommend doing it alone!

To sum up: if you can- participate in LA- I see something new in my herd every time I do. If you really listen to your appraiser, and ask good questions, you'll definitely learn something. I am already looking forward to next year and seeing how the herd does-- especially when so many of my first fresheners from this year will have another freshening on them!

Dog Update: New Addition

2010-10-24T00:39:00.000-07:00

I have two blog posts drafted- one about the rest of show season, and one about Linear Appraisal. They are fabulous! But, they will be typed up later because:
1) They are in the other room. It is late and I don't feel like looking for them now, and

2) NEW PUPPY!!!!!!

I know, you want pictures. But first, I must do an update on Stella since I haven't done one in *forever*. I meant to do one after the first year of having her here, but I realize that it has been almost two years since she joined us. It must feel a bit like an anniversary of some sort though, because lately my mother-in-law has been commenting on how much Stella has changed since we first got her.

And she is right!

To meet her today, you would really never know that she had any sort of issues, much less with fear aggression, much less with women. She is still not quite sure what to do with children- they are the size of the livestock she works, and yet, they look like people for whom she works. Dog is confused! But, she is much more comfortable meeting new people, and is generally a much more confident dog.

After three herding lessons, Stella reached her equivalent of adolescence, and going to class was not all that helpful since she mostly didn't think that she needed to listen to me. Besides, I did not want to take the chance of overwhelming her at such a young age, as is easy and tempting with so many Border Collies so I backed off on her herding training. She still has the basics down, and I'm letting her have time to mature more before trying to do anything more advanced. Some days she shows me glimmers of brilliance- a gorgeous outrun, just enough pressure to get the goats to move to where I need them, and a perfect response to "that'll do".

Other days, she is a bowling ball, my goats are the pins, some chaos ensues. Also, the neighbors are probably aware that Stella is not doing as asked.

But! Even on the days she doesn't listen as well as I would like, she is quite helpful. A couple of weeks ago, five of us could not catch one of the bucks, but with Stella's help, the buck was captured. She brings in the milkers, helps move the dry does, and keeps the goats from even thinking of doing some of the things they used to try.

She is a delightful companion, with an incredibly expressive face, and has learned enough "parlor tricks" that we sometimes forget a few when showing off. She listens in the morning for my alarm to go off and then comes in the bedroom to make sure I am awake by licking my nose. If I tell her to get, she'll go sit by the window for about ten minutes, then come back to see if I want to get up now. Who knew a dog could have a snooze button?

So, there was mention of a PUPPY, right?

Yes!

Just under two weeks ago, I picked up a five and a half month old Armenian Gampr.

I know- you've never heard of the breed. I had not either until friends of ours got one, and she seems to be working well for them. The Gampr is one of the lesser known livestock guardian dog (LGD) breeds used in this country. They don't bark unless there is a good reason to, they don't like being away from home (so not a lot of wandering off the property), and our friends were so happy with their Gampr that I thought the breed would be worth a try.

Introducing Minion!

With Stella- who is clearly trying to pretend that puppy doesn't exist.

I now have two very purpose-bred dogs, though bred for very different purposes. Stella is very biddable- she reads my face and will react to changes in my expression. Minion, on the other hand, is happy to see either Andy or me, happy to say hi, and then will move on to what she would like to be doing. She has very little recall, and for that reason, she is not yet roaming with the goats. I've been getting the goats used to seeing her on the other side of the fence for the last week and a half, as I figure it will take a while for them to get used to her and not automatically figure dog = move somewhere now. Minion has spent time with sheep and goats, and has not shown much interest in chasing the goats in enclosed spaces, but I don't want to take a chance until I have more of a relationship with her and trust that she will listen to me should she start showing more interest in the goats than I think is healthy for all parties involved.

She's already about 20% larger than Stella, and if she stands on her back legs, can put her paws almost on my shoulders. Her front legs are about the size of my arms.

Did I mention that she is not yet six months old?

2010 Show Season

2010-07-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

The 2010 show season started off with a trip up to Plymouth, in gold country. And, just like 2009, we did not bring home any ribbons for our herd. It probably did not help that the night before the show, I milked pretty late, so the does did not even have 12 hours of milk before we walked in the ring. It's a nice show though for some reason the Nubians were exceptionally loud this year and both Andy and I ended up with headaches, though on the plus side we got to see lots of our goat-owning friends.

The next show we had planned on attending was in Red Bluff, and it was a new-to-us show with a bonus of getting to see the new place our friends Sierra and Shane had purchased just about half an hour from the show grounds. However, due to the exceptionally long, wet spring we'd had, several of our does came down with a skin infection that I was pretty sure had been picked up at a show. We went to UC Davis for a diagnosis and about $550 and a couple of skin cultures later had treatment in hand. However, the treatment wasn't available until after the show, so we decided not to take our goats and expose others to whatever we had been exposed to. Turns out that the skin condition was a staph infection, and is commonly seen in dairy goats during wet springs and is easy to treat. So, no big deal, just not very attractive. I still wanted to get a break from the farm though, so we ended up going to the show, which was well attended, with more Nigerians there than any other breed. We also got to see our friend Shelley Young dual finish her gorgeous doe Sly Farms GN Catalina, a daughter of our buck Guy Noir. His other daughter there, Little Dipper GN Flash Dance was consistently second to her half sister Catalina, in their large two year old class.

That's Catalina in front, with Flashdance close behind.

The weekend was surprisingly tiring for going up without any goats!

Finally, Memorial Day weekend brought us to one of our favorite shows, which is the Redwood Empire Dairy Goat Association show (REDGA). Four rings of senior does, four rings of junior does, a costume contest, goat calling contest, the fantastic buffet with goat cheeses, fantastic food, doeling auction, delicious desserts, and lots of strong competition. This year it also hosted a Nigerian Dwarf Specialty, which is only the second one I've been able to get to since we started showing with ADGA.

We did well at REDGA, with CRF Castle Rock Irish Cream winning GCH in two rings (including the Specialty), CRF Castle Rock Blizzard winning GCH in one ring and RGCH in another, CRF Castle Rock Alum Root winning GCH in one ring and RGCH in another, and CRF Castle Rock Roxanne going RGCH in one ring and winning Best Udder in the specialty show. In the specialty show, we also won best dam and daughter with Roxanne and her dam, Castle Rock Annabelle, Senior get of Sire with three Guy Noir daughters, and best three does with Blizzard, Roxanne, and Irish Cream. Three of our junior does, Siren Song, Moon River, and Sun Sapphire went RGCH.

Because several of the shows that we have gone to in the past have had to move for various reasons, and because we skipped the Red Bluff show, I decided to try heading up to a show the weekend between REDGA and Linear Appraisal. Due to various factors, I also had to go alone, leaving Andy at home to hold down the fort, but that also meant a good deal more work for me, doing most of the loading and unloading myself. Andy is also the one who makes sure that I remember to eat and get enough to drink, since show weekends find me hovering over the girls, doing way more hand milking than at home, talking with people who come by to see the goats or ask questions, and taking care of paper work. It is not uncommon for me to see that it is almost dinner time and I may have only finished half of breakfast by then. Oh, and did I mention that I can be really absent minded? I think about 25% of my time at shows is spent looking for something I know I just had a minute ago.

So, even though it was kind of crazy, I packed up five milkers and six junior does and drove the 5+ hours up to Ferndale. What a gorgeous drive! Route 20 takes you through beautiful oak-studded hills, around Clear Lake, ending at 101, where you then head up to redwood country. The does weren't overly happy with the winding roads-- Moon River spent most of the drive facing backwards in her crate with her head literally buried in straw-- but I enjoyed it. The Humbolt Dairy Goat Club is made up of some of the nicest people! I don't know if I've ever gotten a warmer welcome at a show than these people gave me. The show and pens are all in one very large enclosed building at the fairgrounds and the facility was pretty nice.

The weather was consistent the whole weekend, whether the sun was up or not- mid-50s and cloudy. I didn't see the sun for 48 hours! But, the girls didn't seem to mind too much, and settled in very well. The first day, I finished Algedi Farm H Purple Rain, with Blizzard going Best Udder and RGCH in the first ring, and GCH & Best Udder in the second. Irish Cream went reserve to Blizzard in the second ring of the day. Junior does Moon River and Sugar Bush earned their junior champion legs, and because I was so busy trying to wrangle people into showing my juniors, I forgot to write down which of my juniors went reserve (but two of them did!). I also got a surprise visit from my friend Melanie who lives a few hours away but showed up at the show anyway! What a great day!

I camped at the fairgrounds, and would you believe, the people in a tent about 40 feet from mine snored SO loudly that it woke me up. Three times!

Sunday brought another two senior doe rings, and in the first one, Blizzard went GCH and Best Udder, giving her that third leg she needed to finish. Alum Root went reserve to Blizzard, and in the next ring went GCH and Best Udder, while Irish Cream went reserve. When the judge was looking at all of the Best Udder of Breed does to give Best Udder in Show, she noted that she was surprised to see that the doe who milked out the best was the Nigerian- Alum Root. :) Sun Sapphire and Moon River won GCH junior doe, and then it was finally time to go home.

Finishing two does in one weekend was definitely worth the long drive!

Kidding Season

2010-04-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

So many blog posts rolling around in my head, so little time to actually write them down...

And that would be due to kidding season! Last year, we had 51 kids born between February and the first week of June. Because kidding went late, I was still bottle feeding in August (not terribly happy with that). So, I decided to try something different- for 2010, I wanted to have the majority of my kids in February and March. I figured that I could just sacrifice the month of February to kidding, then catch the rest of the does who didn't settle for March kids, and hopefully be done with bottle feeding by the time show season rolls around. Instead of having most of the does kid in February, it was more of a 50-50 split between the two months. I will have to see how I feel once everyone is weaned before I will really know if I like this system better than spreading it out more. For one thing, we only have so much room, and having all our kids so close together means that we're a bit tight for space. It also means that I am talking with more goat customers in a shorter amount of time, which limits how much time I have for other things (i.e. making products for my business, sleep, blog updates, dog training, etc.). But, that is for another post- on to the results of kidding season!

Between February 4 and March 30th, 65 baby goats have made their way into the world here at Castle Rock Farm. We've had 33 doe kids and 32 buck kids, with lots and lots of broken buckskins. I'm very happy with the structure of many of the kids, especially the improvement in rump width, flatness, and height of thurls I've been aiming for since our 2008 Linear Appraisal. So far, I think we're retaining about a dozen doe kids and at least one buck kid- good thing I got the herd down to just over 40 members before kidding season started!

I've heard from several other breeders that the 2010 kidding season has been a difficult one, and we've not escaped that. Just a few days before she was due to kid, we lost our dear MCH-PGCH Castle Rock Once Ina Blue Moon 2*D to pregnancy toxemia, which was ultimately caused by undetected tooth problems. Two weeks later, I was devastated by the loss of ARMCH-PGCH-CH Esperanza WS Sara *D due to complications from kidding. Both does were not only exceptional show animals, but had wonderful (in very different ways) personalities. I still notice their absence in the barnyard and in the milk room every day. I am fortunate to have five Sara daughters, and many more granddaughters in my herd, but I always have felt incredibly lucky to have Sara and it will take an exceptional doe to fill the hole she has left.

Last year, I only freshened one 2008 doe kid, so it has been a while since I've seen first freshening udders on the farm. I have to remind myself not to judge capacity or teat size for the first few weeks on these girls! It's been interesting to see all these little first fresheners and to finally get to see what Barnaby, Guy Noir, and Sky Walker put on the ground. I have to say, I'm happy with all three guys so far! Barnaby seems to have put some nice rear udder height and MSL on his daughters, Guy Noir has improved MSL, lateral attachments, teat placement, and overall structure on his daughters, and Sky Walker has improved udder height and placement on his daughters.

My milking string is currently 21 does strong, which means I really need to get a new stanchon so I can milk more than one doe at a time. I also need to start milk test again now that I have a milk tester on hand. If I'm going to be milking these girls through till Christmas, I should get some milking stars too!

This June, we'll also be participating in Linear Appraisal, a great program we did in 2008 where goats are judged against the score card on many different traits. I found this to be a great source of information when we did it previously, and I am looking forward to seeing how it goes this year.

This morning, I disbudded the last sets of kids born...for now at least. It looks like we'll have at least a couple more sets of kids born in May and possibly a couple of 2009 kids freshening then as well. Those 2009 kids I didn't really mean to breed- mainly because I didn't want to milk more than 20 or so does, but if they did settle (I think I can see little udders forming on them), I'll be totally okay with the resulting babies.

Technical Difficulties

2010-01-06T11:23:00.000-08:00

Can you all do me a favor?

Hum to yourself your favorite muzak tune while reading the following:

Your readership of our blog and web site are very important to us. Please stand by while we work to improve our level of service. We will be with you shortly.

You can stop humming now. Unless you are my mom, in which case you will continue to hum for the rest of the day, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Anyway, my point in this little exercise is to say to the two or three of you who are still checking on our blog and/or web site that we have been experiencing some significant technical difficulties over the past several months. For example: the hard drive of the computer that I used for the majority of record keeping, web site maintenance, etc fried a few months ago. I thought it was a virus, and if it had been, well I could have retrieved most of the data. Since the hard drive fried, there was nothing to retrieve. And this was the year I had actually been keeping records of everything as I went along. To make it all worse, I thought I had done a major data back up in August (turns out it was April), and I had missed backing up most of the new product labels I had made. This may not sound like a big deal, but it did represent hours and hours of work. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Add in some major problems with one of my web host companies, and a health issue that rendered me useless for the first half of November, plus the passing of my grandma just a week and a half before I was supposed to visit her, and the last quarter of 2009 was a bit complicated.

Now that the end of year craziness is over, I am hoping to tackle several of the technical difficulties that have popped up lately one by one. So please, bear with us. I have six weeks or so until kidding season starts, and I am planning on spending most of that time in front of the computer, getting the web site back up to date, and hopefully getting a few posts up as well.

Happy New Year!

Ancient Border Collie Secret Revealed!

2009-09-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how Border Collies are able to move masses of animals just by looking at them? I mean, people talk about them having a "good eye" or a "strong eye", but have you wondered how that really works? Think about it- we can stare at the goats for hours and all that happens is we find ourselves coverd in goat kids wanting attention. There has to be something more the dogs are doing than just staring at the livestock.

Last night, I discovered what it is they do! Wanna know what it is?

Apparently, they shoot laser beams from their eyes.

Don't believe me?

But I have proof! I managed to capture a picture of Stella demonstrating her technique- she's still young, which is probably why she slipped up and had her laser beams on both a)while in the house and b)not around sheep.

Amazing, right? I had no idea either.

California State Fair

2009-09-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of going to county fairs, possibly because I grew up going to the opening day of the Alameda County Fair every year. This is (or was) one of the best county fairs in the state, and we went despite living in a different county (which had one of the lamest county fairs and therefore will remain unnamed).

As much as I like county fairs, nothing can quite compete with going to the California State Fair at the end of the summer. My first memories of the place are from showing dogs there when I was in 4-H, and the "pet-friendly" motels we stayed in the night before the show (the cigarette burns in the mattress, the algae in the shower). I am still trying to figure out exactly where on the fair grounds we showed the year my friend Leanne's dog went jumping into one of the water features during off-leash obedience. Did I mention the dog didn't know how to swim? And you know that 4-H kids have to show in all white? Good times, good times.

My parents entered several of their miniatures and various hand crafts that my mom made, and they won a Golden Bear trophy one year. But over the years, especially since we moved to Vacaville, we have gotten to know the Cal Expo grounds as though we lived there, and I suppose when you add up the days we've spent on the grounds, we probably have spent at least a couple of months wandering the grounds.

Nigerian Dwarf goats have been showing at the State Fair for the last seven years, and unfortunately the show has been getting smaller and smaller- as has fair attendance. Part of the drop in attendance has to do with school starting earlier and earlier in the year, making it harder for families to get to the fair. But we enjoy going and even when we haven't been able to show, we have been able to drop by for a visit with our friends who are showing. After the Saturday to Saturday stay at the Cal-Expo grounds required by the ADGA national show, we looked forward to a relatively short four day stay for the State Fair.

So, the first day we get to drive onto the grounds with our animals, the UCD vet students check the animals for obvious disease, then we unload gear, animals, check in with the fair staff, they check tattoos on the animals, and then we get our credentials (so we can get back onto the grounds if we leave), then park, then return to actually set up our pens and get the animals settled in.

When we get to the livestock barn, the pens look like this:

Add one signifigant other, put up a few decorations, win a few ribbons, and the place starts looking like this:

There, much better.

One of the interesting things about being at the fair is getting to see the other livestock, and talking with the people who have other types of livestock. The cattle people don't really talk to non-cattle people...and they're too busy constantly washing off and blowing out their cattle to talk. The angora goat people were pretty friendly, the pygmy people are starting to recognize faces and warming up to us a little (it's only taken five years, but let's not rush into anything, m'kay), and the Boer goat people mostly stayed outside.

We met some new faces

Oh Hai! Have we met?

Colored Angora

White Angora-

Pygmy Buck

This is the time of year when all of the bucks start to get a little oderific, but with the pygmy bucks keeping all of their hair on, man howdy! Do they ever stink!

Just for a little size comparison, here's a 2 1/2 year old Boer buck (Boers are a meat breed) and our Mr. Lincoln (1 1/2 years) checking each other out. Mr. Lincoln's back barely comes up to the Boer's belly.

The third and fourth day of the fair (the show days), we picked up some ribbons. Raven did well:

Once Ina Blue Moon did even better:

Full results, first day:

Grand Champion Doe in Milk and Best Udder: Castle Rock Once Ina Blue Moon

Reserve Grand Champion Doe in Milk: Cloverdale YJ Blue Raven

Reserve Grand Champion Dry Doe: CRF Castle Rock Rella

Grand Champion Doe of the day: Castle Rock Once Ina Blue Moon

Reserve Grand Champion Doe of the day: Cloverdale YJ Blue Raven

Mr. Lincoln got second in his class, which was fine with me considering I only entered him in the fair because I knew that was the only way we would get an updated, shaved picture of him on the web site. I don't usually show bucks these days, but figured what the heck. He started getting really stressed after the first show, which was completely my fault. I realized at the fair that I had never taken Mr. Lincoln off the farm, and making his first experience a four-day, away from home show, was not a very good move on my part. Probiotics, electrolites, fresh hay, and a sign explaining to visitors that he didn't feel like visiting helped a little, and I pulled him from the next day's show.

Second Day's results:

Grand Champion Doe in Milk: Cloverdale YJ Blue Raven

Best Udder: Castle Rock Once Ina Blue Moon

Grand Champion Doe of the Day: Cloverdale YJ Blue Raven

All in all, pretty good considering we only took two does in milk, two dry does, and one buck. One of the things we were much more watchful about than in years past was making sure that the general public generally did not touch our goats. This sounds awful, I know, but we really did not want to bring home any exotic diseases, and people who go along touching various animals are unknowingly passing around all sorts of bugs. We were surprised that quite a few groups of animal science students came through the barns and every one of the students were touching every one of the animals. I would hope that the teachers would have explained at least some basic bio-security information to the students, but we were not so lucky.

Oh, and I finally tried a deep fried Twinkie. I've been saying I would do it for years, and then kept backing out, because really- $4!! for a Twinkie!! seemed a little expensive, even by fair-food standards. This year, curiosity finally got the better of me. It was good- probably the best way to eat a Twinkie if you have to, but not something I will be seaking out again.

We had plenty of time to check out "The Farm", the displays of beneficial and harmful insects (I tried to memorize them ALL), and the Nursery- where little baby farm animals are born and on display, and spent lots of time in the County Building to cool off since end of August + Sacramento = HOT.

There are rumors that the fair will be moving to July to accomodate school schedules next year, but there are all sorts of other activities that have to be taken into account- horse racing, vendor schedules, other big fairs, etc. Whenever it is, I'm looking forward to the next one!

Finally- an update!

2009-09-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

I saw a rainbow in July. A real one. From the farm. In this part of California, that is super rare. I'm sure part of the reason we had enough sprinkles to make a rainbow is that I had two stacks of hay delivered the previous day. Actually, I hadn't picked the day for the hay to be delivered. The way our local hay barn works is that you go in, pay for your hay, and they tell you an approximate date that the hay will arrive. In fact, this is not at all when the hay will arrive. It may be sooner than you planned, it may be weeks after you were expecting it. There is no way to really plan around the hay arriving because the Hay Farie will bless you with your hay stacks when she darn well feels like it, and not a moment sooner. And for this, you will be thankful.

July rainbows are about as rare as updates to this blog recently. It doesn't help that in February I had written a very long post, only to have my computer crash and eat it. I re-wrote the entry, complete with lots of pictures, and my computer froze up, forcing me to turn it off and again lose everything.

This was discouraging.

Then, the kids starting arriving, life went a bit haywire, general craziness ensued, and updating the blog went to the back of the line to hang out with the goat paperwork I owe people and intended to get done before show season started.

The February post with pictures was about our little trip up to Oregon. We went for a week, got to see some friends, sampled cheese, saw new places. I would tell you more, but it appears that talking about Oregon makes my computer very angry and I'd rather not lose a post again. I may try to upload pictures later, but I am not promising anything.

February also brought us our first kids of the year, and our very first kid was a gold, polled, blue-eyed doe! I only bred 17 does this year in hopes of bringing down the total number of kids from the high of 76 last year. I still ended up with 51 kids this year: no singles, mostly triplets, two sets of quads, and one set of quintuplets. The last kids were born June 2, and even though I keep trying to compress my kidding season, it lasted too long this year, with the last bottle babies being weaned in early August.

I did get a third lesson on herding in with Stella before she started going through her equivalent of teenagehood, and for a few months put her brain in storage. More training was done on a long line, and having a small herd of wethers to work her on really helped. But, I figured that she needed to get her brain back before I would get any benefit out of taking her to classes again. And, now that she has calmed down a bit and is listening better, I am too busy to go to class regularly.

Stella has managed to train the milkers quite well now- as soon as we go out to the barn to bring them in for milking, the girls get themselves into their stall before they even see Stella. This is good and bad-- good in that it makes that part of chores go quickly, bad in that Stella doesn't have as much to do work-wise, but still plenty of drive and energy.

Show season started in April, and I am hoping to do a seperate post on how the shows have gone for us. In general, we haven't been able to get to as many shows because of either Market committments, or due to conflicts between shows.

In May, I finally got to do the Whole Earth Festival with my English Hills Soap Co. booth. The festival is held for two and a half days in May at UC Davis, and they are pretty picky about who they let in (I had to write an essay!), so I was pretty excited about being there. Walking around and seeing the level of crafts from the other vendors was pretty amazing, and I came home with some unexpected purchases. The booth did well- definitely worth the effort, and I am hoping to be there again next year.

The garden has been doing alright this summer, although the beans were hit so hard by the local deer that we didn't even get enough for one dinner's side dish. The garden is mostly fenced, but determined deer can jump quite high. The tomato plants are huge, and our garlic, onions and basil all did quite well. We are mystified as to why cucumbers do not do well here. My plans to expand the garden area were put off until next spring due to the limiting factor of only having a 24 hour day and general there's-always-something-else-more-urgent-needing-my-attention-right-now-ness. In the mean time, we are making good use of the "goat tractor" to keep the weeds somewhat down in the area that used to be lawn, which also keeps me from resenting the wethers that are still hanging around these parts.

September looks like it will be a very busy month, but I really hope to get some posts up in the near future regarding: show wins, backpacking, state fair, and maybe even baby farm animal pictures.

Second Herding Lesson

2009-02-02T00:07:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this last week since I've already had my third lesson, but better late than never...

This Friday dawned clear and still, which made working the dogs and conversation much easier.

Robin got to work her dog, Rusty, in a different pen with much lighter sheep than last week's group (that's Robin and Rusty in the picture). Some penning of sheep was attempted and almost accomplished, although Rusty seemed to tire more easily than usual. Robin recently changed his dog food and was wondering if this could have something to do with the lack of energy. I was hoping to get some good pictures of Robin and Rusty, but the sun was in just the wrong spot, and Rusty was working too wide to get everyone in the same shot, so I've got this sort of bled-out picture of them working.

Stella's manners improved while watching the other dogs work- most of her vocalizations were quieter, and she only did about three really loud outbursts. I've been working on "watch me" to get her attention off of whatever is causing her to get all wound up and it seems to help a bit. I did need to do a bit of basic heeling up and down the lane a few times to get her attention to refocus once she had seen Rusty do some work.

We went in with a long line to do some work with a different set of sheep than last week- only three, and they were lighter than last week's group. The first time Stella went out, she of course cut one ewe out and would not drop as I asked, but when I yelled "enough!", she did leave the ewe and came happily running to me. The trainer was pleased to see that Stella doesn't fold when given a correction and that we seem to have a good rapport. Several times, the trainer and I both gave Stella the same command at the same time, and the only real issue I had with Stella during this session is that she would not stay down as long as she needed, often times just touching her belly to the ground and instantly standing back up to keep moving up on the sheep.

By the end of the lesson, Stella had gone from being "a nice farm dog" to being "an awesome little dog!" according to the trainer. That's more like it!

After this week's lesson, it became clear that I needed a light long line to do some work with Stella. While picking up pepper spray (some of the dogs on our walks seem only sort of contained in their yards) at a sporting goods store, we found several diameters of rock-climbing rope. It's perfect- lightweight and strong, exactly what I need. My first session with it worked well, and now I don't get bothered by the big lead rope I had been using getting drug through the dirt.

This morning while feeding the boys, I noticed that the sheep next door were out, so I offered to help our neighbors get them back into their pasture. It was convenient to have a long line to use on Stella- and she was more than happy to help round up the sheep and drive them to their pasture. The only problem we ran into was that the guard llamas kept trying to drive Stella off. Stella kept her eye on the llamas, while working the sheep at the same time. These sheep have never been worked by a dog before, so they were pretty darn light.

The neighbors were VERY impressed, and I let them know that we'd be happy to help them move sheep around anytime. No sense in having them run after the sheep when clearly Stella would be more than happy to help out.

So between working on the boys, bringing in the sheep, helping me to gather up the wethers a couple of times, greeting all of the people who came to the farm today, and evening chores, I actually have a tuckered out dog laying at my feet.

Our First Herding Lesson

2009-01-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

On Friday, Stella and I went to our first training session for herding.

The day started out cold, and got colder. When I got over to the training facility, the wind had picked up and continued to get stronger and colder the entire time we were there. Fortunately, my friend Robin was there with her Border Collie, so I had someone I could chat with and who would tell me some of what was going on.

Having trained dogs in agility, conformation, and obedience before, I am not a newcomer to the dog training thing, but herding is much different because you aren't just getting your dog to do what you want it to do, you are trying to get the dog to get the stock to do something, and not knowing exactly how the stock is going to react to the pressure from your dog makes the whole task that much more interesting. I've been working on some basics with Stella, but also worry about unintentionally letting her get into a bad habbit or two since she does chores with me every day, and there are only so many animals I can keep my eye on at any given moment. I was looking forward to also hearing an independent assessment of what the potential talent of Stella might be, as well as (hopefully) reassurance that I am not trying to stuff too much learning into the brain of a nine month old puppy.

Robin's dog went in with the trainer to do some pen work and to do some preliminary herding with the very dog-broke sheep used for beginners. Then the trainer worked with some of the not-currently-working-on-a-farm dogs. These are dogs that are a part of the "herding group" in AKC shows who could better be described as doing a sort of "dog dressage" than herding. Most of these breeds have been selected to conform more to the breed standards for appearance and have lost a tremendous amount of the instinct and brains they were originally bred for. The trainer I am working with is one of the few who will work with these (usually) retired show ring veterans, but she feels that there is value to giving these dogs something to keep their minds active. The most interesting to watch were the Briards since they have a very unique way of working with the sheep. The short of it is that Border Collies, Aussies, and Cattle Dogs basically keep their livestock in a ball. Briards were meant to bring livestock to market down one side of country lanes, which meant keeping the livestock in a somewhat narrow line. So, they run up to the front of the livestock, then circle back to run to the end of the group, keeping everyone moving and to one side of the road. They tended to work hundreds of head at a time, and are fairly large energetic dogs. The two we watched appear to have retained the instinct to spin, which looks kind of funny when applied to just three sheep at a time.

I took Stella into the 100 x 100 sheep arena and let her off leash with the trainer to see what she would do. Off she ran to the sheep, racing around, splitting a couple of them off, then dashing after them to get them back with the flock. She gathered them around the trainer and responded very well to the trainer's pressure cues and commands. Fortunately, Stella does not try to grip the sheep, so there were no mishaps there, and I think Stella was thrilled to have stock in front of her that would readily respond to her pressure. After several minutes in with the sheep, I was asked to call Stella, and back to me she flew. Good session, now for a bit of a break while others are working their dogs, and then another session in a bit.

You know that high pitched yip a dog makes when you accidentally step on it? Stella makes that noise continuously when she is excitedly watching other dogs working sheep. It is not pleasant to listen to, or easy to stop.

Finally, it was our turn to go back in with the sheep, and I was to try to get Stella to work on keeping the sheep around me, making a bigger or smaller circle, going faster or slower, and changing direction, using just body language and pressure, like you do with a horse you are working in the round pen. However, the sheep were more interested in following the trainer than in being around me, so we switched to just driving the sheep up and back along one fence.

The trainer also gave me a new command to use with Stella, as well as replacing a command I had been using (easy) with a softer (steady) one. Of course, when I needed to use "steady", all I could think was "easy-- no wait, that's not right, what the heck am I supposed to say?!", and that would be right when I could see that Stella was about to explode with a burst of energy and go running after the sheep. Border Collies are very fast, and stopping a young one can be tough once they get their feet under them. One time when she made the sheep split into a group of two and three, she was thinking of going after the three, caught my eye, I pointed her towards the two, said "gather 'em" and she took the direction perfectly. I was keeping my voice low and calm, but that didn't always keep her calm. Still, lots of errors made on my part, especially with giving commands just a second too late, and not being able to read the sheep as well as my goats. We did get the sheep into one corner, and partially back before calling it a day, so there was some measure of success.

The trainer did say that she was impressed with how obedient Stella was, and that she should be a good farm dog. The little competative voice in the back of my mind said "What? You don't think this is the next international champion trial dog?!?", but I had to remind that voice that we already have enough to do with all of the goat showing.
Besides, Stella is here because I need the help with moving goats. Robin also said she thought Stella was doing very well for her first lesson and for being so young.

So our homework is to work on our downs being faster, letting the break away member of the herd back into the group once their head is pointed in the right direction (Stella does like to go after the errant runaway, but then tries to continually head it off from joining the group- I need to stop her from trying to head so much in that situation), and slowing down her "walk up". I wasn't sure that I got a difinitive answer about how much training I should be trying to put on a dog this young, but Stella does not seem to be getting frustrated, and appears to want to keep going (and going and going).

I have to say, I LOVE having a smart dog.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

Happy 2009 everyone! May your year be filled with blessings and lots of doe kids.

At left is a picture of part of the garden taken on one of the few sunny days we've had recently. Near the top, what looks like lawn is actually a large patch of "good bug blend", a seed mixture Andy plants to encourage good bugs to set up shop in our garden. These bugs eat bad bugs, and as a result, make it possible for us to have a good garden harvest without using any pesticides. You can also see our garlic, cabbage, swiss chard, and the multi-hued lettuce we've been using for tasty winter salads.

As has probably been well established, I do not like cold weather. We have been experiencing quite a few cold, dreary days, full of wet heavy fog that blocks out the sun. I have a hard time telling how much time has passed due to the lack of change in the light outside on days like this. It seems as though 10am looks the same as 3pm. It is too cold and damp to have a very good day of soap making, and every time I work the dog she gets covered in cold wet mud. Bleah.

However, even during the depths of our winter, signs of spring are around, if one looks for them. A few of our native bulbs are sprouting, the ceanothus (aka California Lilac) are already forming their flower buds, tree branches growing, and the resident Red Tailed Hawk pair have driven off their last fledgling and are working on their nest. Last year I saw them taking small branches from some of our trees for this purpose, and it seemed as though they were flying further away- this is the first time we have seen the actual nest, so I am not sure if they have changed trees for 2009, or if the hawk we previously saw was part of a different pair. I am pretty sure the abundance of jack rabbits and gray squirrels has something to do with why they like this area.

In addition to the usual finches and birds of prey we have year round, we've also had some small woodpeckers and what looks like a warbler species we haven't seen before. They look somewhat similar to the Western Goldfinches we have here year-round, but with smaller beaks, a slightly different body shape, and patches of yellow on their backs. Friendly little buggers- they land on branches very close to us in the barnyard, and they have been coming right up to the house as well. I'll try to get a picture of them soon.

Random Thoughts, Random Advice

2008-12-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

A post in which I make a very public display of my passive-aggressive-ness. Aggressive in that I am annoyed and making a point of offering advice, passive in that I am not telling anyone this directly, hoping only that stumbling across this information on an obscure farm blog will change behavior.

To Charity Groups:
We all know that the economy is not doing well. We know that the need for your services is higher than usual. My piece of advice is this: return ALL phone calls to your general voice mail, especially from someone who wants to a)Give you about half of the items on your wish list, and/or b) wants to give care packages to the people in your shelter, but needs to know how many to put together. If the person who handles this is on vacation, a short call telling the interested party this fact will make the interested caller feel better about trying to help you out. And will keep her from becoming bitter. And annoyed.

To clerks who stalk pet owners in pet stores:
-There is a fine line between helpful and annoying. If I have a newly adopted pet and you have heard that a)I have been training dogs since I was 10 and b)the dog had some unfortunate social "issues", instead of trying to (repeatedly, continually) make suggestions (use a Gentle Leader!) that are not going to help with the dog's behavior, why don't you try to talk the woman with the four pound lap dog into using something more appropriate than the huge pinch collar she has on her dog. Seriously, that would be time better spent. Did I really feel the need to use a choke collar on my dog? Yes. You can tell because I am cheap and don't like to spend money I don't absolutely have to. While clicker training is great and there are definitely advantages to it, sometimes the dog does need a correction. That's life. Again, please listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. I know how to train dogs.

-Also, when I tell you I have trained dogs for years, do not try to get me to sign up for your beginning obedience class. It will only serve to irritate me and to convince me that you are incapable of listening. The dog that I just told you I got earlier in the day is not indicative of my training skills- she has not even spent one night at my house.

-If you try to get me to buy a Gentle Leader one more time, I will write your corporate head quarters and complain to them about the fact that you will not let me alone when I am in your store. Seriously, do you get some sort of commission just on this one item?

To Petco Specifically
It is very nice that you give a coupon book for money off of supplies to people who adopt animals from a breed rescue or the local animal shelter. However, it would be nice if you went through them occasionally to make sure the coupons haven't all expired six months or so before you handed it to the people in your store.

Also, when the people bring the book back, hoping to get one that has coupons which expire sometime in the future, make sure that your clerk can at least read at a high enough level to comprehend that just because "dog" and "cat" both have three letters, they are not, in fact, the same thing. You can give me all the coupons you want for kitty litter, but that is not going to bring me into your store.

To Farmers Market Shoppers:
In general, I love the market shoppers. There are some things about some shoppers that I would be happy to do without:

-I think it is great that people see people they haven't seen in a very long time at the market and get to catch up. However, if you decide to catch up, please do not use my table as a place to set all of your belongings, and as a place for your toddler to amuse themselves. That is not why I am at the market. I am there to sell things so I can feed my animals and pay my mortgage. You blocking my table does not do either. Please move to an unoccupied spot, or over to one of the many picnic tables provided for you.

- If you cannot use the sort of thing I am selling, do not feel compelled to come over and tell me why you cannot use soap. If you don't use soap, you are not going to be one of my customers, and there's not much I can do about it. I wonder if these same people go into ice cream stores and explain that they can't eat cold food or they will double over in pain. Uh, thanks for sharing, I guess.

-Similarly, if you have a friend who makes soap and gives you all you can use and more, there is really no need to tell me that either.

-If you are thinking of making soap, find a soap supply store that will happily give you recipes on how to make this product. Do not expect someone who is selling soap to give you their recipe- lots of research and time went into their product.

-Also, if you have children who are big fans of really ripe strawberries, please, please keep track of where they are putting their hands. Strawberry stains are very hard to remove from the fabric covering my table, and having to re-wrap soaps with stained wrappers is not fun, nor is it free.

-If you ask me if I will be here next Saturday, I (and all of the other vendors at the market) know you have no intention of actually coming back next week. There's really no need to ask us this, just because you have asked a million questions and have no intention of buying anything but feel awkward about just walking away from the booth without at least making an attempt to sound like you may be back next week to get something. We're on to you.

-If you don't think that a soap smells exactly like what you were thinking it would smell like based on the label, do feel free to let me know, and suggest what it smells like to you. After the first mention though, if you go on and on and on about the scent not matching what you were expecting, I may get somewhat annoyed. Especially if you are emphatic about it.

That is all for now on the advice front.

Random thoughts:

I seem to be unable to post comments to 98% of blogger blogs, even though I clearly have a blogger account. Many times, the letters you are supposed to type in to make sure you aren't some sort of auto-comment spider don't even show up. When they do show up, I usually have to type them in several times before the blog will post it.

Yesterday was the National Bird Count day, and I am pretty sure some memo went out to the birds. I awoke yesterday morning to find the back yard positively alive with birds, including a couple of western blue bird pairs checking out the new bird box Andy put on the post in the "lawn". Lots of finches, a woodpecker, the blue birds, ravens, gold finches, purple finches, etc all there for the counting. Last night the Great Horned owls sounded as though they were having an animated conversation about where their next nest should go, or possibly how many owlets they should aim for in 2009.

This morning, nothing. Not a single bird in view.

In flipping through a book titled "1001 Reasons to Think Positive", I was quite surprised to see that about 30% of the one sentence "reasons" started with "don't". That seems sort of negative for a book on being positive. Also, they weren't reasons to think positive, they were more how-to oriented. I would have assumed from the title that it was a book convincing you why you should be positive (i.e. lower your blood pressure, you'll be more enjoyable to be around, friends will return your phone calls, etc.), but that turns out not to be the case. I suppose this is one of the reasons you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

I would have more random thoughts, but Stella is doing the dog equivalent of hovering behind my shoulder and asking me how much longer I need before we can leave. She's been promised a nice long walk once we have a break in the weather, and since we are having a somewhat sunny day, I must get her some exercise while I can.

Winter Solstice

2008-12-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Winter Solstice Everyone!

Not only is today the shortest day of the year, it is also the official beginning of winter.That’s right- all the cold weather you thought was winter was actually autumn giving you a little seasonal appetizer. Nice, eh?

I hate cold weather, so for me the upside of this day is the knowledge that each day will bring with it a little more daylight (yay!). The downside is that I know my patience for crappy cold temperatures will run out long before the crappy cold weather does. I know, we need the cold so we’ll get a good apple crop (yes, apples need several hundred hours of very cold weather in order to be happy), and because it kills off the flies, or at least makes them slow enough to be easy targets. Rain means that soon we’ll hear the frogs in our seasonal creek every night, and the fields certainly need lots of moisture right about now. But it also means wearing 20 pounds or so of clothing every time I leave the house, taking about seven minutes to get dressed just to go out to the barn, and a very strong urge to stay under the covers where it is nice and warm for as long as I can get away with, happy to raise a white flag in the battle against gravity. These urges do not make for productive winter days.

I’m also learning that rainy days make Stella rather restless. It doesn’t seem to me that I am spending that much more time in the house when it rains, but judging from the number and volume level of the sighs emanating from the dog, I apparently am *quite* boring to hang out with when the weather is bad.

We now break for a public service announcement:

Should you, at this time of year, bring mistletoe into the house for the holidays, please keep in mind that mistletoe is in fact a parasite. It lives by sucking the life out of the trees in which you find it. Therefore, when you go to dispose of it, please place it in the trash, and do not put it in the “green” trash with the rest of the vegetative waste from your house, and do not put it in your compost pile.

If you find mistletoe growing in any of your trees, do the tree a favor, and remove it. This usually means removing the entire branch containing the mistletoe back to the main trunk of the tree as the mistletoe has set up a network of roots in the branch- if you just knock off the green part that you can see, the mistletoe will come back very easily next year. For some reason, our area, and Vacaville in general seems to have quite a mistletoe infestation afflicting our trees. One of our black walnut trees had six very large clumps of mistletoe growing in it (each one pretty much filled an entire trash can), and in the two years since I’ve gotten rid of the last of it, the black walnut has flourished with a much thicker canopy than the first few years we lived here.

Also, poinsettias are not poisonous. If you ate the leaves off of 10 plants, you might have a bit of a tummy ache, and your family might wonder about your general state of mind, but you would not die from doing so.

I know, now you will sleep easier at night. I do what I can.

2008-12-14T23:00:00.000-08:00

Today, I was out in my workshop area, making a few batches of soap, and listening to "Car Talk" on the radio, and one of the callers was asking a question about his daughter's car. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that his daughter lives in California, so "of course, the car never gets all that cold". I have to assume from this comment that they were talking about a car that lives somewhere south of Santa Barbara. Say, Los Angeles, or possibly San Diego.

California is not just the greater Los Angeles-San Diego metropolitan region. It is in fact, a very large state with a huge range of climates, from Death Valley in the south east to the Lost Coast (with over 100 inches of rain annually) in the north west to the Sierra Mountains lining our eastern border. When I have lived out of state, or even gone to other countries, mentioning that I am from California is almost always invites whomever I am talking with to ask if I surf. Just in case you were wondering- no. It is way too cold, Northern California beaches are about five feet wide at low tide, and sharks like to hang out just off the coast since seals and sea lions are also fond of our shores, and are quite tasty to sharks. But again, my point is, mention California to anyone who is not from 'round here, and immediately people think of LA. Since LA is one of my least favorite areas of the state, I find this rather irksome.

Anyway, I would challenge anyone who doesn't think that it gets cold in California to spend a day with me in December or January at the Davis Farmer's Market. Yesterday (and it isn't even officially winter yet- we're still in autumn until the 21st) at the market I was wearing:

-silk long underwear (this is supposed to keep you warm in the Alps, much less at sea level)
-polyester long sleeved hiking shirt
-turtle neck
-fleece shirt
-wind breaker
-thick barn jacket with Thinsulate liner
-scarf
-hat
-gloves
-two layers of pants
-super thick insulating socks
-hiking boots

And I was still freaking cold. I do not know if I could put on enough clothes to stay warm in the winter. Still, we have had frost for the last week every morning, and we expect early morning temperatures in the 20s in January and February.

There are some good things about winter- for one thing, the flies in the barn get slow and easier to kill, and I've dried off the girls so I spend a little less time doing chores in the morning, and quite a bit less time in the evening. Farm life is good in that it keeps you looking forward- I am always thinking about several months from now... when kids hit the ground, when show season starts, when we need to plant our next set of trees that we'll struggle to keep alive during the harsh heat spikes of the summer, etc. At least it keeps my mind off of how cold it is, and how long it takes me to get ready to go out to the barn because of the layering that is needed. I know it would look weird, but it would be sort of nice to just grow a layer of cashmere in the fall like the goats do so I didn't have to put on 20 lbs. of clothing every time I need to spend more than five minutes out side.

Oh and one more thing- as you are doing your Christmas shopping, strongly consider buying locally, from small businesses and from those of us who hand make useful gifts. Unlike shopping at a corporate store, the vast majority of the money you give local crafters stays in the local economy and doesn't go to some far away headquarters. Also, take some time to visit your local farmer's market where, even with the cold, there is still plenty of produce in season, such as: squash, persimmons, parsnips, turnips, lettuce, mandarins, oranges, lemons, boc choi, apples (near the end of the apple season, but still quite a few varieties available), peas, green beans, chestnuts, and of course, almonds. We have had several very good salads recently with the lettuce from our garden, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the pea plants produce soon.

Stella

2008-12-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

See? I told you she was cute.

I decided years ago that if/when we added a canine to the farm that a Border Collie would be perfect, and that a perfect name for that dog would be Stella. I have no idea why- just sounded like a name I would like using for many years.

Also, there was already cinematic evidence that Stella sounds good when being yelled. After listening to the neighbors yell various dog names over the years, this seemed to be an important element of the dog's name.

Anyway, the rescue people asked me if I had thought about a name for our soon to be addition, I said I had been thinking of Stella-- at that moment Stella's head jerked up and she looked right at me as if to say, how did you know? So, that name stuck.

We of course cannot know for sure what Stella's life was like before she was found wandering around Calusa, with what the shelter people figured was her sister. My guess, based on her behavior, is that she and her sister were owned by a young man who lived with an older woman (this is based on the way she reacts especially positively to men of a certain age, and how much more negatively she reacts to women of a certain age). She gets very playful around 6pm, which I would guess means that said young man would play with the dogs when he got home from his job. With the way she fears brushes, and the be-socked feet of my mother-in-law, I would guess these were used against Stella.

Anyway, we started on clicker training today and it seems to be going pretty well, although she does get so excited about getting her reward when she is retrieving that she tends to drop whatever is in her mouth in anticipation of getting her reward when she is only half way to me.

Stella

2008-12-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

So, I thought I would next post about summer, the AGS National show and our first Linear Appraisal. This is the time of year when I am extra busy with the business and with trying to get the does bred for spring and have composed many posts in my head, but have not gotten them up on the blog.

But, I am pretty excited about the newest addition to the farm. Thanks to the good folks at Northern California Border Collie Rescue, we have our very own eight-month old(ish) puppy now learning the ropes on the farm. For some reason, Blogger won't let me upload her picture, but trust me, she is cute. She is a smooth coated, black and white girl, on the smaller side of the size spectrum at only 32 pounds as of yesterday.

She likes:
Coffee
Beer
Persimmons
Green lamb toy
Penut Butter
Chickens (a little too much)
Alfalfa stems

She Dislikes:
Brushes
Most women (unless they *really* like dogs)
Retrieving citrus fruit

In the last three weeks she has learned:
Sit
Wait
Leave It
Hugs!
Not for Dogs
Come (about 90% reliable)
Go potty
Take it
That'll do (about 70% reliable)
Off
Give
Easy

I have to say, I was quite surprised by the fear of women thing. She even barks at the television when a woman is on giving the news of the day. We are working to socialize her so she will be better about this "issue", but the vet told us that the more into live stock border collies tend to be, the less social they are. The first ten days or so that she was here, it was like I had adopted a Secret Service agent instead of a dog. I could not even go from one side of the kitchen to the other with out her following me the few steps. She is starting to figure out that she doesn't have to keep her eye on me quite so closely, but definitely likes to stay in the same room.

As she is getting more comfortable here, her herding instincts are bubbling to the surface. She has started exhibiting some of the "eye" that border collies are known for, and is dropping to the ground on her own at least once a session when we are up with the bucks. She is really eager to work every day when we go out to do chores, she is very eager to get out and try to get the animals to move. The mature does have given her a few good hits, and Stella is a bit intimidated by them. Last night, Sky Lupine decided to turn the tables on Stella, running her out of the feeding area of the barn and confining her to about a five foot wide space. Forget Babe- the pig who could herd sheep-- I apparently have a goat who can herd dogs! In a way, I actually find the doe aggression towards dogs somewhat of a relief- if one of our llamas falls asleep on the job, at least I know I have a few does who will take a stand against the coyotes or stray dogs that may get into our pasture.

It is really neat to see Stella working- just how strong her instincts are, and that any time we go for a walk and she sees sheep (more common than goats along the roads we walk on), her whole attitude changes, she's focused, and ready to round those critters up. We haven't seen any evidence of her wanting to herd anything other than small ruminents, but she is still young.

Spring Summary

2008-09-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

Now that summer is just a few days from being over, it seems like a good time to summarize how our spring went.

Our 2008 kidding season ended in the first half of May, with a grand total of 76 kids on the ground. This is the biggest kidding season so far, and honestly, I hope the biggest one ever. Too many bottle babies! Too many kids to disbud at a time! In previous years, there have always been some fall kids, but Andy wisely suggested that I refrain from any spring breedings because he could see even better than I could that I really needed a break.

Shortly after my last spring post, we checked on the titmouse family, and found six fat and happy fluff balls in the birdhouse, and as far as we could tell, they all successfully left home at the appropriate time. The kestrels fledged out four young kestrels from their birdhouse over the heat pump. A few pairs of tree swallows showed quite a bit of interest in the unoccupied bird house on what in wetter years would be our back lawn, but still no takers.

In more domestic bird news, a couple of our hens decided to hatch out some chicks, although it is becoming quite obvious that Blackbeard, our fairly laid-back Red Jungle Fowl-Auracana cross rooster is way too related to many of our hens, because quite a few of the chicks had "issues". I'd like to find him a new home, and he really isn't human-aggressive, so if anyone is interested, do let me know. We also added just under a dozen New Hampshire hens to the flock- a welcome infusion of youth since many of our hens are now in the 5+ year range (not to mention that the majority of our hens were done in by raccoons last summer). New Hampshires are in the background of Rhode Island Reds, but tend to run a bit bigger, and these hens seem to be more on the copper side of the color scale. They are a bit of a sentimental favorite- this is the type of chicken that I got from UC Davis when I was in fourth grade, and the last of those hens died when I was in college. They are considered somewhat of a rare breed these days, and I'm finding that these are quite a bit friendlier than most of the other breeds of chickens we currently have. I think the only chickens that may be bolder are our Speckeled Sussex hens, and those girls love to roam.

This is the fifth year that our property has had a break from the copious herbicides (and we suspect insecticides) that the previous owners used here. We've seen quite a bit of plant life come back to areas that were suspiciously bare, and the beneficial insects have come as well. You can sort of see a few of the lady bugs that we found all over the place in spring on the yarrow (picture at left)- there were about thirty on this plant alone. We've also seen quite a few mantis, and more butterflies later in the season than in previous years. We typically see Monarchs, Swallowtails, Buckeyes, and occasionally a small blue butterfly a biologist once told me was an "Echo Blue", but I haven't been able to find a butterfly by that name in any butterfly-identifying book. I also saw quite a few types of spiders I haven't ever seen before, as well as the wolf spiders I am (unfortunately) used to seeing in the barn.

We again got a fly predator subscription, and those little buggers work really well. What they don't get, the lizards that have moved into the barn seem to get. I think there are four western fence lizards living in the barn full-time right now- the one that hangs out in the area where I make soap has become so habituated to my presence that if I don't look out for it, it won't always scurry out of my path. I've recently seen some teeny lizards around the barn area, so apparently the lizards are happy enough to expand their population around here.

In my next post, I plan on doing a summer update, which will include the AGS National show, our first Linear Appraisal Session, and milk test.

Sisyphus had a rock. I have young cottonwoods.

2008-08-31T16:20:00.000-07:00

In the Greek myth, Sisyphus rolls a rock up a hill, gets it almost to the top, and then it rolls back down and he must start all over all while being in Tartarus (a version of the underworld) for eternity. This was a punishment for general misbehavior (to put it mildly) while he was alive.

While I am not being punished for general misbehavior (that I know of), I do have a sense of why this was quite a punishment. For the last four years, as part of restoring our farm to a more natural state, (and because we have an itty-bitty amount of shade), I have planted young, native cottonwood trees near the seasonal stream that runs along one side of our property. I probably would have given up if it weren't for the fact that there is a huge cottonwood tree on another fork of this stream that I can easily see from our property. There are many other cottonwood trees which look self-planted within short walking distance of our farm as well. So, I know they can live in this area given the right conditions. They grow quickly, which is a big plus for our shade-starved pastures, and they helpfully distribute water to the plants around them, which seems rather helpful, especially since the long-term plan is to bring more shrubs and slower growing trees to that part of the property.

The first attempt was made after we had lived here for about a year. After reading a native plant site that said you can plant and walk away from most California natives, we went to the local Conservation District plant sale and got (amongst other items) three or four cottonwoods. The watering system was turned on once or so a month, and everything was humming along, and then we had a heat spike of several days above 107 and the cottonwoods fried. This was also when we figured out that most native plants need at least a couple of waterings a month in order to get established.

The second attempt was made the following planting season. At some point, part of the irrigation system split open, which meant that even though we were turning on the water regularly, the area with the trees was not getting any water, but we were creating an out-of-season wetland in a part of the property we weren't visiting often.

The third attempt was last year after fixing the irrigation rupture. Due to many activities on our plates, many things were neglected, including turning on certain water systems. Again, fried trees.

So, last October, I got three new victims, um, I mean cottonwoods. This time, we were going to do it right. We waited until we got rain, and planted the trees in January. Two of the trees got companion shrubs that were to grow quickly to partially shade the trees during hot summer afternoons. Instead of having a few months of rain to get established as they would have in a normal year, they only got rain until February 29, when someone apparently turned off the rain for California. That's fine though, we checked the whole irrigation system, and replaced any non-functioning drippers. Every month, I checked every dripper to make sure that they were dripping and not clogged. Progress was made! The trees tripled in height, putting on a little under a foot of growth per month.

Then came the AGS Nationals, and we were away for a week of 106+ temperatures and no supplemental water for the cottonwoods. When we got home, a good deal of our plants were showing evidence of extreme heat stress, including all three cottonwoods. I saw a tinge of green on each tree though and gave them extra water in addition to what the regular system was giving them. New leaves started to appear and I went back to the regular watering schedule. In July, during my dripper check I was crushed to see that all three cottonwoods had again died back, but this time there was no green. Somehow, out of all of the drippers on the system, JUST the three for the cottonwoods had become clogged. The companion shrubs had their water. The buckeyes, sycamore, live oak, and black walnut seedlings had functioning drippers. But somehow, the cottonwoods had gotten cut off from the water supply, and in the heat of July had perished.

Gah!

Not that I'm deterred.

For Sisyphus, the task was a punishment. For me, it's a challenge.

Spring is in the Air (and with it, lots of pollen)

2008-04-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

I've drafted many posts for this much neglected blog over the past few months, but then wasn't able to get around to publishing them while they were still relevant. Finally, at 1am, I have some time!

We started kidding season on January 27 with a beautiful set of triplets out of Sky Lupine, and we're now up to 69 kids on the ground, with more on the way. We've had four sets of quadruplets so far, plus our first ever quintuplets (and from a first freshener no less), and our first ever sextuplets. Watching Bambi have her six kids was sort of like watching a clown car empty- the kids just kept coming and coming. I've never had this many kids in one year, let alone compressed into about two and a half months and I'm not sure that I'll ever have so many does kid at once again. It is nice to get to evaluate all of the does around the same time, but with the large number of first fresheners, getting all of those girls trained to the milking routine (and keeping it straight in my own mind) is making chore time extra-long. This year I have been letting pretty much all buck kids stay on their moms so I have less bottle feeding to do.

Andy and I have enjoyed watching spring unfold and the warmer longer days which allow us to be more comfortable working outside. As many visitors to our farm know, we are big fans of California native plants, and we've worked to incorporate many more of them onto the property while removing non-native invasive species. We managed to get quite a few new natives into the ground last fall and have spent the last month or so diligently checking on the plants (the spice bush is alive!) and updating each other on their progress (the black oak is leafing out!). We've been exceptionally pleased with the various California lilacs (aka ceanothus) blooming enthusiastically in their new homes. It seems to be a good year for brodea- a very pretty native bulb with purple flowers- in some areas around us, it fills entire meadows. I hope to have some pictures up soon of some of our natives in bloom.

The birdhouse we put up on our own house in an effort to appease the flickers so they wouldn't go after our eves with so much vigor has attracted a very different resident. For the second year in a row, a pair of kestrels is raising a family in that birdhouse, which is somewhat surprising because it is above our heat pump/air conditioner- not exactly the quietest location on the property. We see them often in the largest of our black walnut trees over by the garden and take a certain amount of pride in their return to the farm.

Another birdhouse, which is located on one corner of the garden, has a titmouse family in it. They're quite cute little birds and they swoop in and out of the house with an amazing amount of speed. In fact, we didn't even realize that anything had taken up residence in the birdhouse until Andy heard the peeping of the little ones. A third birdhouse does apparently remain empty, although we have seen western bluebirds checking it out for the last few years. We keep crossing our fingers that they'll move in, but apparently it hasn't quite passed inspection yet. I've also seen a pair of red tailed hawks gathering branches from some of our trees, so they must also be setting up house close by. We can hear ring-necked pheasants near us, and it sounds like wild turkeys are expanding their territory towards us as well.

Andy's been working to get the garden in for the spring- he planted seeds in the greenhouse quite a few weeks ago, and now that we've passed the last frost date, he's able to get some of the seedlings into the ground. Broccoli is in and will soon be joined by peppers, beans, tomato plants, and I believe zucchini will be joining them. We're also going to plant paddy pan squash (the ones that look like alien ships) and pumpkins around the stone fruits- the squash I've requested because the goats enjoy them so much when the squash get way beyond the size that any person would want to eat them. Andy is also planting some flowers for a cutting garden so I can enjoy some fresh flowers in the house. He has also discovered that in addition to the large western fence lizards who live in the greenhouse and keep the place virtually bug free, we now have some sort of frog amongst the seedlings. Between those critters and the ladybugs, we have a full range of natural pest control at our fingertips.

While I'm thinking of it, this month is also perfect for a few goat related items: check the tattoos in your goats' ears and/or tails as they may have faded over the winter. I've lost several legs on one doe in particular because her ears keep absorbing her tattoos. This is also a good time to order fly parasites. We had a subscription for them last year and they work so well. I would recommend them to absolutely anyone- they take the fly population down to about mid-winter levels, which is especially nice when it comes time to clip the girls since I have yet to find a fly spray that actually works.

A Fine Whine

2007-12-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

This isn't really an update on farm happenings so much as a whine about how the last couple of months of the year have gone. Just when I was getting caught up on things in November, my lap top (which I use for everything) was hit by a malicious spy-ware attack. For several weeks I was without a computer and it seemed as though every time I thought things were fixed, another problem would pop up or something wouldn't work the way it was supposed to. It's much more complicated than I'd like to explain, but for a couple of weeks, I was just frustrated with everything due to the computer problems. Several hundred dollars later, I have my computer back up and working, along with a better back up system, but I'm still having trouble every now and then just getting on my e-mail.

I finally added DHIA test results to the senior does and first freshener pages for tests done in 2005 and 2006. They only look right on Internet Explorer, and I've only gotten one to look right on Firefox. I've also noticed that lately when I look at pages on Firefox 2.0, there is significant image quality degradation. If any readers of this have figured out tables within tables for Firefox, please drop me a line.

And, since it is December, of course some major appliance has had trouble. Previous Decembers have brought us problems with our septic system, a ceramic stove top that shattered (we must have been out of the house when that one happened), a heat pump that no longer worked, and this December brought us a broken water heater. At the rate things are going, we figure we should start saving up for next December when either the fridge or the oven goes, since those are the only appliances we haven't yet replaced since we moved in.

And to end on a high note- kidding season is just around the corner! Sky should be our first doe to kid, and then we've got nine more scheduled to kid in February.

Hope everyone has a great whatever you celebrate and that 2008 is the best year yet for you and yours.

Fall Update

2007-10-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

Whew! It's been a while since either of us had a moment to post, but I think our schedules are getting closer to "back to normal" now.

To recap our summer: we didn't get to make it to nearly as many shows as we had planned to this year, due to a certain event swallowing up most of our time (and energy!). We're looking forward to attending more shows next year, especially since we should have more does in milk this next summer than we did this past year. I had decided at the beginning of the spring that I would not be doing 305 day milk test this summer in hopes of being able to get out and hike and camp more, and may return to testing next year. I was able to manage one weekend of backpacking in the Sierra mountains and may get to squeeze in a few more hikes.

A couple of weeks ago we finished up kiddings for the year, ending much the way we started with the arrival of a couple of buck kids. A grand total of 42 kids were born on the farm this year, and out of that we only got 15 doe kids. It was a rather disappointing year that way- last year we started off with lots of buck kids, but as the kidding season went on, we started getting more doe kids which helped get us closer to a 50-50 ratio. Unfortunately this year, we didn't ever get to more doe kids. We're in the midst of breeding for spring kiddings right now, and I am really hoping that we get better averages next year.

Angora Fire

2007-07-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

I meant to publish this earlier, but wasn't able to in between shows. I took the girls to Yerington, Nevada for a fun weekend show- two AGS and two NDGA rings. On the way back, right before I started into the Sierra's, I saw a huge plume of smoke, which was from the newly started Angora fire. I took this picture of it once I had gotten through a good part of the Sierras- the view is from the Mormon Emmigrant Trail. The fire was only a couple of hours old, but this is how big the smoke plume was already. It took the better part of a week and a half to get the fire put out, and I won't be suprised to see more of these fires since we've had such a dry hot year already.

See us on California Country

2007-06-25T09:13:00.001-07:00

A couple of months ago, we spent several hours over two weekends with a crew from California Country, a television magazine program of the Farm Bureau. They were filming a segment about how I make soap from goat milk, and how it is packaged and sold at the farmer's market in Davis. The segment finally started running this weekend and can apparently be seen on various affiliate stations and on RFD TV. I've heard from people around California and even Michigan that they've seen it over the last few days. Check your local listings- we're on during the second segment of the show, after a long piece about growing blue berries.

Like what you see?

2007-06-10T13:46:00.001-07:00

We would like you to participate in the blog! It's hard to know who is reading it and what you like or what you want to see more of. So please leave a little message, greeting or just put your name down just so we know that people are reading the blog.

Madera show goes well for Sarah

2007-06-10T13:38:00.001-07:00

We had a nice trip down to Madera, CA. for the CCDGA goat show. Our own little TX Twincreeks WDF Sunprite won Grand Champion Sr. doe in milk and Reserve in the second ring. In addition some congratulations go to Debbie Toomey for her Jr. Grand Champion doe CRF Castle Rock Snowflower winning in the second show. Yay!!!

Garden Photos

2007-06-07T13:36:00.001-07:00

I told you I would post them. From top to bottom - Early Girl tomato leaf measures 18 inches, a look between a row of tomatoes (the cages are 5 feet tall), a broccoli head measuring 9 inches across and Polish garlic with Lapines cherrys. The tomato plants were started in the greenhouse the third week in March and planted the first week in May. Plants that started 6-8 inches tall are now 3-41/2 feet tall in just 37 days. Yes, we are going to have a great tomato year. If you are at the farm in the next couples of months, you may go home with some.

Happy June!

2007-06-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that it is June already! Where is the year going?

We're in the midst of show season right now and it has been great seeing our goat friends, although I think the does are a little unhappy with how many shows they've gone to where the weather is quite a bit cooler than what they are used to at home.

All of our bottle babies are weaned as of this week. Yay! Bottle feeding a couple of kids is quite fun- when you get over four of them on the bottle at a time, and when they near two months old, they can get pretty pushy. I think next year we may invest in a lamb-bar/bucket feeder to shorten the amount of time it takes to feed all of the kids. We have two more does due at the end of the month, and then we're done until the fall.

We did a count the other evening of how many goats we had on the property and came up with a grand total of 51. Looks like the "For Sale" page may need some updating soon. This morning, we were looking out at the pasture where the does were up visiting the bucks (on opposite sides of the fence), and with about 40 of the goats in one place at the same time, it did indeed look like we had quite a herd. Since the goats are so small, it doesn't usually look like we have that many of them, but this morning it did.

Interested in goat shows?

2007-05-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

Show season has started so trying to get a hold of us on any given weekend will be tough at best. If you are interested in goats, want to know more about showing them, milking them or just want to hang out with us, check out the website for the most up to date information on goat shows in Northern California. The weekend of May 19-20 we will be in Placerville and Memorial Day weekend at the REDGA show in Santa Rosa. http://www.castlerockfarm.net

Early Spring good for garden

2007-05-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

With the longer days we are enjoying it's been really nice to see the garden and the trees around the property looking good. The almond trees have a bumper crop of nuts, biggest we have seen yet, the apple trees are happy with no pests or infestations to deal with, and the vegi-garden has really come around. We planted 140 strawberry plants Feb. of last year and we had a small crop of fruit. This year with the runner plants filling in the open spots the strawberries are coming out of our ears! The garlic plants are looking really good and the tomotoes received new 5 foot tall cages to stretch into. Pics will be posted this week.

New kids on the farm

2007-05-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week for the stork making deliveries to the barn. "Mootza" had twins mid-last week with a boy and girl. Then yesterday, "Sunsprite" decided to kid early with triplets, 1 boy and 2 girls. Yeaaaa! Of course not to be out done by her sister "Mootza", "Rella" kidded today with twin boys. Yes, you are not seeing things they are named MootzaRella like the cheese. All mommies are doing fine, kidding was pretty easy and we won't have more new kids for another 3 weeks.

First goat show of the year!!!!

2007-05-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

We just came back from Plymouth, CA. after enjoying 2 goat shows put on by the local goat club. We only took four girls but the results couldn't have been better. Sarah showed (Lost Valley Infinity) in both of the shows and won Grand Champion Sr. Doe both times! So now she is a pending ARMCH (Advanced Registry Master Champion) making our herd just that much better. Also of note, Shelly Young of Sly Farms Nigerians took one of our girls she bought last year, Castle Rock MB Lullaby, into the ring and won Jr. Grand Champion Doe. All and all not a bad weekend for Castle Rock Farm.

Post from Andy

2007-04-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

We're still trying to figure out this blog thing a little, so I'm publishing a post for Andy....

Welcome to our first blog. If you don't know about us, we are a little farm in rural Vacaville, California. We have Nigerian dwarf goats, the smallest of all the dairy goats, a couple of llamas, chickens, a "victory" garden, a small orchard and full time jobs too. We aren't quite sure how this blog is going to go. Will it be political, goat talk, farm talk or just the occasional rant? Tune in to see.

Welcome to the Blog!

2007-04-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

Andy and I were talking the other day about setting up a blog for the farm, and here I've gone and done it. Here we'll update you all about things that are happening around the farm, along with occasional random musings about farm life in general and pet issues of interest to us (and hopefully you as well).

I am a big fan of blogs and read a handful just about every day. This won't be updated nearly as often as my favorite blogs, but the plan is to have at least a few posts a month. Andy and I will both be writing on the blog, and we'll look forward to seeing your comments back to us.