Odin & Vada

Remember those cute babies that I posted about earlier in April?  It is now time for a formal introduction.  I don't go to church anymore but that doesn't make me a less spiritual person.  In fact, (because I know everyone is just DYING for me to go into my own spirituality.  Enjoy this.  This is for you.) I have always felt more spiritually alive in the fields of my family farm, overgrown back roads forests, and scrambling blackberry thickets than any church I've had the opportunity to attend.  That said, it's no surprise that I've ended up with hobbies that require me to constantly be outside and in the brush.  I do hold to some habits that would be perceived as superstitions and introduction is one of them.

Many cultures have ceremonies and rituals that include a waiting period for giving a baby a name.  The Jewish ceremony of naming a baby occurs 8 days after or at the first Sabbath (for girls).  Ghana culture also dictates waiting for 8 days until naming a child.  Hmong have a ceremony called "Hu Plig" or soul calling which takes place 3 days after birth in which the name of the child is officially conferred.  Until then, "a baby was not considered to be fully a member of the human race," (Anne Fadiman, "The Spirit catches you and you fall down"1997)  All of these stem from the practical aspect that you "don't count chickens until they hatch" and even then some.  Infant mortalities these days in humans are not what they used to be, at least in this country.  Animal husbandry is still a tricky business so I am superstitious and usually keep quiet on any new venture until I'm satisfied that things have settled into a normal rhythm of existence.

Meet Odin!  He's the little brown boy who is going to knock around with Legend when we aren't there.  I wanted to keep his horns and they are growing at a much faster rate than his sister's.  At first, I chose his name because we had just seen the movie Thor and found Norse mythology that I know nothing about to be exotic and interesting.  I can't wait to start painting 8 legged horses.  Anyway, Odin is living up to his name sake because his cry is piercing and people in Waynesboro could probably identify Odin by now.  I think he will be known as "Odin Broketail" because his little tail is turned to the side.  It was probably broken at birth because the photos of him when he was a day old show his tail cocked to the side like that and I can feel a knot in the bones.  It doesn't seem to bother him and he'll wag it all the same. Though we left his horns intact other things were not to be . . .

Here's a picture of us hanging out on the porch swing after he got neutered.  He's a 20 lb. chunk and was still groggy when we got back from the vet.  I didn't have the heart to toss him back in the pasture while he was stumbling around so we sat on the porch for a while to sleep off the anesthesia.

The staff at the vet's office were intrigued by his little "horn-staches" as I call them.  He still has little tufts of hair growing from the tips of his horns.  They will fall off eventually but the staff said they've never seen that before.

Odin was so knocked out that he drooled on my arm on the way home.  After a while, he was back to his old springy self and was bouncing around in the pen with his sister.

His ears still turn up like little tacos and we call him "taco ear" sometimes.  He's growing fast and I'm sure soon we'll have trouble picking him up like this.  He never would drink the bottle after we got him.  His sister started off well but he didn't want to have a thing to do with the bottle.  It was frustrating and one of the reasons I didn't want to post about my new goats because if one wasn't eating there would be trouble fast.  He's gotten fat and growing tall and fighting with Legend over the grain bucket.  The vet said he was doing well too so my fears have subsided.

Meet Vada!  She looks very similar to her mama.  I chose my grandmother's middle name for her.  It is germanic for "ruler" in the feminine.  She is not as boisterous as her brother and not as big but she's proven to be more of a climber and jumper.  If I'm trying to keep Odin out of Legend's grain and vice versa, she'll try to hop up on my back or shoulders for attention.  It's really a goat rodeo.  Maybe it's the Kirin in her.

We initially started out with plastic soda bottles.  Because they were young we were starting out with Pritchard Nipples.  These had threads that you screw on to a plastic soda bottle.  I don't really like to use plastic anything very much but we wanted to give it a try.  Needless to say, we got milk everywhere but in the goats.  It was a mess.  I had gotten some black rubber nipples just in case and thank goodness for that.  Pat got some beer bottles down from out beer making kit and I laughed because they were Kirin beers.  They work great and heat up nicely in a water bath.  

Vada all but mows you down for her bottle now.  We usually have a towel around because she gets a milk foam around her mouth that she'll shake everywhere and wipe onto you.

She's gotten into the bad habit of running through the electric fence wires because she is small enough to fit through the gaps.  That is the only time she will try to get out of the fence.  If she sees the bright color striped bag we carry her bottle in coming down the path, all bets are off and out she'll pop through the fence.  Bad baby, Vada!

We will probably have to widen their area soon because the little (and big) munch machines have cleared their area out pretty well.  By next year it probably will be a pasture instead of an overgrown brush.  I thought we would end this story with a shot of everyone together but when everyone got lined up, of course, they were all facing me with the tail end.  Typical goat.

Accumulation of Wealth

One of my favorite hobbies is in season right now.  Here's a shot of the first black raspberries of the season along with the last strawberries of the season.  They rest in my little basket under the bleeding heart.

The strawberries are beautiful and I'm surprised that I've harvested as much as I have from my small 3'X4' strawberry bed.  We don't spray or have a bird net but we seem to do okay with the harvest.  I couldn't believe how delicious and easy peach jam was to make so I'm trying to save enough strawberries for some jam.  So far I've saved about a quart and a half (2.5 lbs.) from my little bed but the recipe calls for 5 lbs. so I'll probably grab some more strawberries from the farm up the road.  By the way, I'm all excited because I've been published in a canning article in June's edition of Mother Earth News!  Check it out at this link: 

Mother Earth News Canning

 

Here's a shot of my sunny happy strawberry plants in their small area of the yard.  I was especially happy to find this gem peeking out from under the leaves.

I knew what was coming ever since I saw the flower.  I've seen it happen with my mortgage lifter tomatoes.  The flower itself looks as if two or three flowers were vying for the same stem like Siamese twins.  When this occurs, you can bank on a rather large and tasty fruit if you can get it to ripen before the bugs or animals get to it. 

This lovely specimen rests in my husband's palm.  Pretty impressive for no spray, no net, organic backyard gardening!

Lastly, my black raspberries!  These have been resting in my freezer since last season.  I've been dreaming of making more black raspberry wine and now I'm finally getting around to it.  It's funny how these types of activities give me a sense of normalcy and comfort.  I guess they seem like a continuation of life since my mother and grandmothers performed these sorts of tasks and I have fond memories.

The more I thought about this concept the more I realize this lifestyle has hidden benefits.  The strawberries I gathered this year were from the plants that I had saved from last year and their babies.  I had twice as much as I had previously.  The black raspberries that I've gotten over the last few years came from wild plants I discovered when I moved in with my husband and have cultivated them and saved them from the lawn mower over the years.  Berries are tedious.  They don't all become ripe at the same time and most of the time you have to visit the plants every other day to collect what has ripened and wait for what hasn't.  As I tip toed over fox grape vines and through spider webs that exist along with my raspberries, my thoughts began to inevitably wander to my own personal life goals. Sometimes I feel down about where I thought I would be and where I would like to be in life.  Sometimes I feel down about my anemic savings account that I work hard to grow.  Taking those berries out of the freezer to prepare for wine answers the dim questions of doubt that nag the back of  my mind.  As quart after quart of frozen berries tumble out to pile in a treasure trove in my large metal bowl, I feel a smile spread over my face.  If I just continue to steadily contribute to my stock pile and keep my eye on the prize, my efforts will pay off and one day I will have a big bowl of riches.

My own mushrooms

I had forgotten all about the fact that I owned a mushroom log.  Pat and I scored one at the Garlic Festival last October.  I bought one that already had fruiting bodies on it so I knew it had produced before.  The ones that were on it were about the size of a silver dollar.  The ladies who sold it to us said we could force it to produce if we wanted to by soaking the log in our bath tub overnight.  You know me, I just tossed it near the path in our woods amongst the bamboo and let nature take her course.

I was snapping photos of my garden and our hops vines when I decided to go visit the creek.  Everything was speckled with fallen choke cherry petals and something caught the corner of my eye.  My brain went from oh, yeah to Holy $h!# in roughly two seconds.  Not only had my mushroom log begun to produce again, it had popped out the mother of all shiitake mushrooms.  It was the size of a saucer and, as you can see, pretty much matches the diameter of its mother log.  I guess what my brain really exclaimed was Holy $h!!#ake.  Heh, okay.  No more stupid jokes.

I wasn't the first one to find the bounty.  I knocked two tiny slugs off the underside.  The photo shows the holes they had already eaten into it.  

:-(  Also, all of those tiny black flecks in the gills are insects.  I was not giving up my mushroom, though.  I popped it right off the log and headed back to the house to claim my reward.

I had been wanting to buy some fresh mushrooms to put on pizza and now I know why I waited.  

Now, I know what you're thinking: Eeeeww!! That nasty hippy is eating all those bugs and slug spit!!  Look, I'm all about nature but I gots my limits.  Even though convention says you should not wash mushrooms, I rinsed this bad boy under the faucet and washed all the nasty little buggies away.

See? No buggies. And he's resting next to his new best friend, Garlic.  Too bad his arch nemesis, Carving Knife, is lurking in the background.

Holy cow, did this turn into yummy!  I think I'll call it the Marco Polo.  I made a white pizza but I didn't have any spinach.  Instead, I had some chinese broccoli or gailan. That complimented the shiitakes sauteed in garlic.  I had a garlic and herb cheese spread from Integral Yoga along with some kalamata olives, fresh mozarella, and fresh basil from said fine establishment.  Add some onions and parmesan and OMG!

I love you, mushroom log!

Spring Goats!

Spring has arrived and with it new friends!  Some friends of mine have dairy goats and I want some friends for Legend so here they are, newly born just yesterday!  Scottie is a good mom but she's also very tolerant of us handling her babies.  She gave birth to a little girl and a little boy.  Twins! Whew!

Here is cute little soft white girl!  She's got the prettiest little black stripes down the front of her face.  Her little ears are speckled with pepper.  Her whole body is white.  Only her head and some of her neck has splashes of black.  She's got virgated hooves as well.

She stuck close to mom and nursed most of the time I was there.  I couldn't blame her.  She's notably smaller than her brother.

Here is her brother, cute little soft brown boy!  He's solid brown except for a streak of white across his belly and his speckled ears and face.  He's got a black dorsal stripe with black guard hairs that remind me of a rabbit or squirrel.

He was very full of himself and came right up to greet me.  Granted, I'm hard to miss in my fuchsia rain coat.  He was as soft as a little rabbit.  Both of them were very downy!  The tips of his little ears were still folded.

He decided my fingers made for very good nibbling.

Legend will be in for a surprise.  "Huh? Babies? Who said anything about babies? I didn't say anything about babies."

Glittering Encasement

As promised, I'm posting the other pictures I took when we had an ice storm.  Outside was a glittering landscape that lasted one day.  The next day everything had melted and gotten slushy.  In my last post, the bamboo had all leaned down to a right angle.  I was afraid they would all be permanently bent but by the next day they had all shaken away their burdens and stood upright and ready for another day.  Always a lesson to be learned from bamboo.

Above is the lovely pattern the ice encased on the undergrowth in our woods.  It almost looks like spun sugar.

The cedar saplings in the woods got a good coating.  The ice enhanced the green and pink colors in the branches.  I take a lot of pictures mainly to record things that I wouldn't have the time to capture with plein air painting.  Plein Air seems idealistic this day and age to me anyway.  Yes, it would be great to go into the wild with one's sketchbook/canvas/what-have-you but reality for most artists is taking images like these to reference later because they have to go to work or feed the goat or whatever.  Besides, mosquitoes like the way I taste.

The ice weighs everything down and pine trees have this beautiful cascading effect.  It's dangerous because the weight often equals falling tree but the spilling and tumbling visual of these frosted needles is hard not to admire.

I'm not quite sure how this red maple got its stripes of water running down the trunk.  It's amazing to see the difference in color between the wet bark and the dry bark.  I'm trying to be aware of these things more often as I make compositions in my work.  Little nuances like these are a real treat for the viewer.

This is the creek that runs through my back yard.  It definitely attained a ghostly quality from all the ice.  I'm working on a concept for an "Appalachian Dragon" and I think this would make a great reference photo to create its habitat from.  Wouldn't you want an Appalachian Dragon in your back yard?  

Here is a shot under the russian olive near the creek.  It weeps over and I love the pattern the weeping twigs create.

This concludes my showcase of ice for now.  Who knows what lies ahead!

Frosty Bamboo Goat

I went to bed last night after driving home in a slick mess but woke up this morning to a beautiful ice forest.  I knew what I had to do.  I set the kettle on the stove for tea, told Pat to find some batteries for the camera, and fished around in the refrigerator for a soft apple.  While the water was boiling for tea, I heard a hollow splitting sound and quietly thanked myself for parking the car far up the driveway.  The large pitch pine that had been leaning since the blustery winds a few days ago finally fell under the weight of the ice.  I watched it tumble down from the kitchen and heard the ice cover needles go crunch against the driveway.

After I made some tea I put more water on the stove for "goat soup" and popped chunks of cut up apple in the microwave with some dry oatmeal to warm up.  I filled a bucket up with the steaming warm water and trudged down to the back yard with that and the warm apples and oats.  Goat was very happy to have some apples and "goat soup."

In years past when we've had ice, some of the bamboo would lean down and touch the ground.  I was stunned to see that almost all the bamboo was touching the ground.  The electric fence was rendered pretty much useless with the bamboo leaning on it.  Legend didn't seem in any hurry to leave his nice house with steamy "goat soup" and oats.  

In fact, he seemed amused that one of his favorite delicacies was within easy reach.  The only problem was that now it was a frozen vegetable.  

I wanted to assess how bad the leaning was because sometimes the bamboo doesn't stand back up again after been weighed down.  I don't think we'll lose all of our bamboo but I'm guessing a good portion of it will suffer.  Bamboo is one of the "three friends of winter" so it will take a beating but will recover.  The only reason I worry is that for the bamboo to sprout this spring it will rely on the sugars stored in the older canes from the previous year.  Damaged and removed canes from last year = not as much bamboo in the spring. We'll see.

On a more pensive note, seeing my bamboo green and limber in the ice is an omen.  It reminds me that even if conditions around me may not be sympathetic to my ideal, if I remain flexible enough to continue traversing to my goal, sooner or later I will get there and even live to see another day.  If not, I might suffer the fate of the broken pitch pine that now lays in my driveway.

Legend says, "Yeah, okay crack head lady.  I'm going to munch the leaves now."  He nibbled some of the icy bamboo before heading back for more "goat soup" instead.  

One of the first things I noticed when I stepped outside was the lack of traffic noise.  Even though we are out in the country, there is usually some kind of noise pollution.  If you can't hear the traffic from 64, you hear the neighbor's tractor.  If you don't hear the neighbor's tractor, it's the other neighbor's lawn mower. If it's not the other neighbor's lawn mower, it's the other neighbor's four wheeler.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't blow a head gasket over these things but I do get excited when all you can hear outside is the "click, click" of ice falling and the chirp and flitter of birds.

I noticed a dead log under the overhang of bamboo and how it made an inviting little grotto.  I decided to crawl in and take my camera with me.

It was nice and quiet and every once and again some ice would cascade down among the leaves as a bird would hop to and from the canes.  It looked like a large green glass sculpture all around.

After a while, Legend came down to stare at me and assess whether or not I had lost my marbles.  Sometimes there is nothing wrong with sitting in the quiet and enjoying it for as long as it will last.

I took tons of other pictures but that will have to wait for another post.  Going to go enjoy the day now!

A Legendary Experience

Well, it has been a very LONG time since I've posted.  Here is one of the main reasons for my lack of communication.  Meet Legend.  He's a 6 year old Nubian wether.  Friends of mine were moving to a new house in a neighborhood that could not accommodate goats.  I was more than happy to take Legend off their hands!  Legend is actually kind of special in that I know his lineage.  My friends got him from a mutual friend who has ties to a local dairy.  Legend was so named because his mother was named Myth and his sister's name was Fable.  Anyway, I was coming to the realization that I was in need of more fertilizer than I could produce with my compost tumbler and my worm bin.

This whole process came about pretty quick.  I have to admit I wasn't prepared.  Thankfully my friend helped me set up the electric fence because the "duh" expression on my face pretty much summed up my experience with setting that kind of stuff up.  I failed that part of my country upbringing.  We fenced him into my garden and I turned my cucumber trellis into a goat house.  My husband had a roll of Tyvec that we used.  Though handy, that turned out to be a huge pain.  When the wind blew or it rained, Legend would freak out at the noise.  When it rained the water would pool in between the trellis rungs and the supports broke a couple of times.  I didn't have a manger either and the hay I subsidized his diet with ended up being pulled around and peed on.  Not a good situation for anyone.  But, through this whole time my husband and I were planning and constructing a goat house on skids.  I made a naive plan and we borrowed a truck and took a trip to Home Depot.  I wished we had took some in-process photos but the goal was finishing the project not documenting it.  A borrowed circular saw helped us out a TON!  I gotta get one of those.  As we built the shed, I was becoming worried because I didn't realize how damn heavy it was going to be.  Gone were the dreams of Pat and I tugging it down the hill.  We had a neighbor with a tractor that I was going to ask to help us out but no, we own Subarus.  Pat insisted that he pull it down with his Baja and position it with my Forester.  This is the part where I take a seat and pop a few more anti-hypertension meds.

Pat learned quick to proceed with all this when I was at work so I wouldn't have a cow or blow a head gasket.  We constructed the shed in the driveway because that was level and we hadn't dug the pad for it to rest on yet.  In hind site, next time I EVER have to do this, I will build things on site because this was a pain.  Pat had fun.  I just chewed my nails and lost my hair.

Here's another shot of our Baja "agricultural all terrain special" tugging the shed along.

The real treat for Legend was that with this new shed his fence would be expanded to the entire back yard.  I took a shot of the back yard and highlighted it in red.  The plus side is that in the spring all that becomes my garden!  Yay!  At first he was hesitant to come to the new end of the yard because originally there was electric fence there and he was afraid of getting shocked.  Eventually, he explored all of it and now we like to race back and forth with him on the "Legend Speedway."  He especially likes to race around if he thinks he's going to get some grain.

Here's a shot of the finished goat house.  As you can see, it's resting on a steep grade.  We got in with some shovels and leveled out a pad.  The roof faces the prevailing wind so that he has respite from that.  I found some awesome feed bins that hook over 2X4's.  We installed a manger that makes feeding SO much better.  He likes to chew the bark off that log and balance on it from time to time.

He loves to pin me in after I've given him grain.  Maybe he'll hold me ransom for more grain.

Okay, so I'm really proud of our manger because at this point I had returned the circular saw we had borrowed.  Pat bought the 2x2's for this project but the other wood was scrap we had left over.  We didn't have anything to cut the plywood with but a miter saw, a hack saw, or a pruning saw.  Pat wanted us to use the pruning saw but I said that was stupid.  I ended up using the pruning saw.  I'm beginning to discover that crow isn't half bad with a little salt.  Anyway, I'm proud of our ghetto construction manger. It's stout and makes feeding so EASY.  Just chuck the hay in there.  Before we were tying it in bundles and stringing up.  It was a huge pain.

Yeah, for anyone that cares, I'm proud of the drainage ditches we dug so that the run off wouldn't pool under the house.  That clay tends to do that.  So, when I was editing this goat glamor shot I happened to notice that his tongue was out.  What better way to end this post than with a goat raspberry!

Goat Raspberries!