Monday, September 26, 2016

For the Love of Goats

Our Boer goats arrived last night and we are already in love with these gals! They are a doe and her year old doeling and they are very bonded. They are sweet as can be and I am head over heels in love with them already. They were a bit shy coming out of the barn this morning because they had never walked down a ramp before. They also did not venture around the paddock much today, hanging instead more towards the upper part where we had interacted with them. 



















Sunday, September 25, 2016

The Goats Have Arrived!

Well it was pretty late when our Boer goats arrived tonight so the photos and video I took are poor quality but we were excited so I wanted to recorded the event. :-) Below is a video of the girls arriving.



 The doe and doeling settled in very nicely and they really seemed to like their new digs!

 Mama's name is Three (We may change that to Thia) and her daughters name is Scarlet. They are so sweet!!!

 Don taking a break, sitting on the ramp to the goat barn, earlier today. He has worked so hard all summer to get things ready for the chickens and goats. Took on a little too much at one time but now things should settle down bit as we head into fall.

 The house across from us is for sale and has resulted in some faster than normal traffic on our road. Today we posted this sign to get them to slow down a bit ;-)



Saturday, September 24, 2016

Woolly Bear Eating Grass

 Today I had the awesome pleasure of watching a Woolly Bear caterpillar dine on a blade of grass. I even got to video it! I was really enjoying watching this tiny creature devoting his blade of grass. It looked as though he was really enjoying himself. Below are two photos and a video:



Below is a video of the Woolly Bear dinning on the blade of grass. It is mesmerizing. 

Friday, September 23, 2016

Sunday is Goat Day!!!!

Well we are quite literally down to the wire! The goats are arriving on Sunday and Don has been rushing around trying to get all the lose ends tied up before they get here. The electric fence is up and running, the goat ramp is finished, the gates are installed and we are ready to receive our Boer doe and doeling on Sunday. 


 The electric fence is up and running!

 Don installing a latch on the door that leads to the goat ramp into the paddock 

 The goat ramp leading out of the barn

 The chickens have started investigating the nest boxes


The roosters are becoming quite the professional vocalists as you can tell by this short video clip ;-)

 Just as the sky began to darken and the clouds threatened rain we ran down and grabbed a couple of bales of hay from our neighbor to get us through until we can get a full load. 


 Grabbing a couple of bales of hay ahead of the rain. Look at those clouds!

I'm still in this fatigue slump that I've been in the last few months but I have been getting glutathione I.V's and I think they are helping a little. After my I.V. on Thursday I managed to have enough energy to start a new journal spread. It's still a work in progress but it's a good start. 

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

New Paintings and Journal Spreads

Here are some of my art journal spreads and a couple of paintings from September. I still have not managed to get my energy levels up enough to get in the studio every day. I am working on some new diet changes, again, and adding some new supplements etc.. so I'm hoping to spend more time in the studio soon. 
(click on images to enlarge) 







Saturday, September 17, 2016

Training Chickens to Electric Fence

Today we let the chickens out into part of the goat pen to introduce them to the electric fence. A few of them got zapped by the fence but it actually went much better than I thought it would lol.
Here are 3 short videos from when we first let them out. Pretty funny :-)










Friday, September 16, 2016

Blue Heron, Bald Eagle and Crows

I had a lovely Heron pose for me the other day and then today a Bald Eagle was flying in circles over my deck. I really wish that my longer lens had been on my camera but it was the first Bald Eagle I have ever seen in person so I wasn't about to run inside and miss a moment of his visitation to change my lens. Lastly a pair of Crows were causing quite a ruckus when I went for a walk yesterday. 










Thursday, September 15, 2016

Goat Fencing on Ledge Requires Yankee Ingenuity

The goat fence is finally finished!!!! Installing goat-proof fencing on ledge proved to be very challenging. Don used a wide assortment of hardware and good old Yankee ingenuity to get the job done. In earlier posts you saw how he used rebar drilled into the ledge and cement to support the posts. We used trees where possible, especially for the corner posts. The photos below are not exactly in order but it will give you an idea of the challenges he faced and how creative he got. Next we need to find a way to install the grounding rods with the ledge and hook up the power and fence charger.