A Day at the Coast

Note: I wrote this last year, and it would seem that I never actually published it.  Since it is once more January, this seems like a good time to go ahead and get it on the blog.
 
My birthday is sometime during January, and the only good thing about a January birthday is that kidding has not yet started, and it is a good time to visit the coast.

For my birthday, I decided to take myself for a ten mile hike on one of my favorite trails.  One of the best parts was seeing a stream that actually had running water in it.  This should be our rainy season, but we are in the grip of an epic drought in California, and the thirteen months prior to this hike are the driest since records have been kept.  This drought is in fact, the worst drought the state has seen in over 1,200 years. I stood on a bridge over this creek and absorbed all the babbling creek sound I could.

It didn't have as much water as it should at this point in the year, but it was still refreshing to see any kind of flow.

I love the quiet of the forest, and of course, bird watching along the way.

This view is what my mind's eye sees every time I think of this trail.  It is such a great mix of tall trees, native shrubs, and annuals.

Our native blackberries, which have much, much smaller thorns than the invasive non native species, also have bright pink flowers when in bloom:

California blackberry flower

The area that I hiked in was off limits to dogs, but the day was mild and since Stella has been doing so much better in the car, I took her with me on the drive with plans for a post hike, dog-inclusive adventure. My idea was to take her to Stinson Beach and blow her little mind by introducing her to the ocean, which I know she's never seen before.

To make sure she treated the ocean with respect, I told her a story of a creature...

Me, as I whisper the Legend of The Kraken in Stella's ear.

Apparently, I was a pretty convincing story teller, because she seemed to believe me...

It's right behind us, isn't it? I can feel it watching us...

OH! OH! I THINK I CAN SEE IT!

Stella, what would you do if the Kraken got close to you?

I'd make this menacing face and scare it. Grrrrr!

I'm sure that would work splendidly.  Hey, I need to tell you something.

Watching for emerging Krakens! Can't be distracted!

Look at me when I am talking to you, please.

Okay! I'm all ears.

The Kraken isn't real, it's just a story.

I knew the whole time! I was just playing along to make you feel better.

Sure you did.

Somehow, once I told her it wasn't real, she was much better about posing for a nice picture with the ocean.

We wrapped up the day by enjoying the view of the Pacific and the setting sun.

 

Some people were flying fighting kites on the beach, which was the most fascinating thing in the world to Stella.  Way more interesting even than the ocean with it's waves that chase dogs up the beach.

Staring at fighting kites, then staring some more.

Could. Barely. Pull. Her. Away.

What an all-around wonderful day, and one of the best parts was how well Stella did in the car.  She's always had a combination of anxiety and motion sickness that has made it difficult to take her with us on car trips.  For our coastal sojourn, she spent at least four hours in a moving car, and didn't throw up or anxiously drool at all, and actually sat and looked out of the window for most of it! Life's little victories, still happening every day!

Happy "It's No Longer 2012!"

This is not going to be one of those posts with critters and humorous captions.  The next post probably will be, but not this one.  Feel free to skip it- I've wrestled with writing it, but I sort of feel the need to explain why I have needed a bit of a mental break from the farm (because it is nearly impossible to take a break where we really get away from the farm), why my web site is as out of date as it is, and why my e-mail replies have been slow in coming.

For me, 2012 was a bit of a suckfest, with the last three months being the worst of it.  I'm not trying to win the Pity Olympics, as I know there are people out there for whom the last year was even worse, or equally crappy.  I suppose I feel the need to explain as a way to ask for patience from the people I know for withdrawing and not wanting to talk as much about the farm as usual.  This is also a bit of a rebuttal to those who think that because I live and work on a farm that my life is all sunshine and lollipops, because that notion dismisses the heart break and hard work that goes in to having a farm for any amount of time, as well as the uncertainty that underlies all kinds of farms.

I'll put the rest after a break, so you can choose whether you want to read it or not.

The Placebo Effect

On a hot day (we're still hitting the mid-90s and higher half way through October), what could possibly sound more refreshing than spending some time in the pool?

That there is no water in the pool is of no matter to Ms. Heartburn.  She's heard this is the best place to stay cool on a hot day, she's claimed it, and won't let anyone else in the pool, lest they take some of the refreshing-ness away.

Play Time

Several months ago, Mini showed a marked change in her attitude towards play, as in, not interested in it at all.  She'd sort of humor Stella for about 30 seconds, and then get an attitude of "I'm a serious working dog here and must intently stare into the distance now.  Please show yourself out." I figured it was due to her maturing, since this change in attitude happened right around her second birthday.

That phase seems to have passed now.  I mean, Mini is still serious about her job, but for the past couple of weeks, she and Stella have been playing every morning while I feed the non-milking goats.  I find them rather amusing to watch.

First, Stella puts on her best "Let's PLAY!" face:

Which Mini cannot resist

Chasing ensues

Catch me if you can!

Then the wrestling starts

And while it may look like Stella is taking Mini down, I can assure you that Mini takes more dives on the field than a professional soccer player.  It's almost like having my own dog version of the WWE out there.

Back to chasing:

Click to fully enjoy Mini's facial expression

Let's zoom in on what is happening up in the buck pasture in that last picture, shall we?

They are very good at avoiding the goats while cavorting, and the goats generally ignore the dogs when they are running around with each other.  Sometimes though, one of the older does will start looking a little judgey at the dogs' shenanigans:

I love those happy dog faces! 

Moar Fluffeh Behbehs

It's been a couple of years since we've had chicks, so kids aren't the only baby critters here

What? I thought we had a monopoly on this place!

Last year, I was up to my eyeballs in baby goats, and around the time I'd normally order chicks, I just couldn't do any more baby animals.  The year before that, I had gotten a mere half dozen chickens as replacements for the previous year's hen chicks that turned out to be roosters.  Since I let my hens live out their natural lives, I now find myself with quite a few old biddies (the majority of my flock is over four years old- which is old for egg production hens) who don't do all that much in the way of egg laying, and it is time to get some new hens to keep egg production up.

One of the many items on the list o'projects is a mobile chicken house with electric netting that we can move around the property so the hens can eat weeds and fertilize the soil.  Most of the designs I've seen are for a handful of hens, and when you have the amount of weeds we'd like eaten, that just  seems too small.  And we keep getting hung up on finding wheels that can handle the weight load, but that can also swivel and conquer our bumpy terrain- we know if it isn't easy enough to move, we just won't end up moving it much.  Since that isn't yet built, I limited myself to ordering 25 chicks...for now.

It's a new place-- everyone, stick together!

I ordered gold sex-links, which means that the females and males hatch out looking completely different colors.  This comes in handy because otherwise, chicks can only be sexed the day they hatch out, and after that, there is no way to know if you have males or females until the chicks are a couple of months old.  This means feeding and caring for quite a few chickens that may turn out to be a gender you can't use, and that may decide that even though he weighs a mere fraction of what you weigh, he is going to attack you every time you go out into the barnyard or hen house.

The last time I bought 24 "hen" chicks, six of them turned out to be roosters.  Hen chicks cost more than rooster chicks or "straight run" (where you just get a certain number of chicks that haven't been sexed, so you have no idea what ratio of hens to roosters you'll end up with, though somehow everyone I know winds up with like 90% roosters this way), so I was not happy with the 25% fail rate of the hatchery.  Instead of taking my chances with some of the heritage breeds I've gotten in the past, I decided to go for a sure thing- chicks who are unmistakably hens.

Someone brave ventures over to check out the food

Chicks are shipped when they are a day old since they still have a built in food supply-- what is left of the yolk from the egg they developed in is in their abdomen when they hatch, so they don't need an outside food source for a couple of days.

There are at least 20 openings for food, but clearly that one opening has the best food in the whole tray

The peeping that came from their shipping box was incredibly loud for such small bodies.  As we took the chicks out of the box, we dipped each one into water, just in case they were thirsty after their journey.  Most of them didn't seem all that interested in the water, but once Andy scattered some food from their feeders, they excitedly chowed down.

Just like baby goats- the higher, the better

They've got a good start with chick starter, alfalfa leaves, grit, oyster shell, and soon some fresh weeds.

So, you, uh, come here often?

These chickens are wild little things who scatter when I check on them a couple of times a day, but I'm sure they'll calm down and learn that people = food/treats by the time they are ready to join our mature chickens out in the barn yard.  It is surprising just how quickly they grow in their feathers- we already saw little tiny wing feathers starting, and too soon most of the cute chick fuzz will be gone.

Hold still, you have a little something right...there...

But we'll certainly enjoy the fluffehness while it lasts.

Finally- an update!

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

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

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.

Winter Solstice

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.

Fall Update

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.