December 11, 2011

The crazy fall of 2011

This fall has been a crazy one. Between school, work, actually feeding and breeding the goats I'm afraid blogging has taking a back burner. Perhaps as winter starts I will be able to pick back up.
November as a whole was a good month. The most interesting thing we have seen this November is more and more people coming and using our bucks. This is only the third fall we have even had bucks around, but this is really the first year I have every had people come and use them. Before that I have always been on the other end - driving to people's house to use their bucks.
Personally I have decided I really like being the one who doesn't have to drive a lot better. Sure you end up smelly and covered in the oder of buck but at least you don't have to get in the car after that. Plus you get to meet lots of cool people you would never have seen before. Yep, this buck service thing is actually pretty cool.
In other news.... WE HAVE BABIES!!!! Yep our July bred does kidded this last week. Antimony kidded with twin bucks by Arabica and Katie gave us a single doe kid from Kastdemur's Vigilante News. A beautiful white kids who being born Lamancha (which equals location name) and born in B year at Christmas time can only be rightfully given 1 name = Bethlehem. Probably as time goes on this will be shortened to Beth.
She lives in the house and is making the puppy and kitten jealous of all the attention. Oh? I didn't mentioned that I have a puppy and kitten now? I told you it had been a busy fall...

Beth and the Kitten - Quiz. He wants to play with Beth soooo badly


We picked up a poor bedraggled kitten when we went back the Sunday after our Delta DGA show to finish cleaning up the fairgrounds. Jenn stopped the car and he ran right into her arms. We knew that he would never survive and he was amazingly good natured. He wanted to be held and cuddled and to top it all off he had a broken leg. So he got to stay. We named him Quiz after a cat in one of my favorite books, fed the remanats of the goat milk and he grew and grew. He is the least of our troublemakers and has really integrated himself into the household. He loves to play with the puppy and just the other day I found him curled with Hannah (the 9 year old dog who lives with the goats) while they were sleeping in the garage.

He was so small and helpless

Not so tiny anymore - but still just as sweet

Puppy too you ask? Yep. When we went up to breed goats we stopped my our friend's house to visit since we were in the area. He breeds Australian Kelpies - a type of herding dog from the land down under. True working dogs who will go and go and go until they drop. He had mentioned a puppy last spring but when his favorite female whelped in August I assumed they would be snapped up. When we were there he said he had one puppy left that we could have if we were interested. Were we interested? Well I had had no plans to get a puppy yet...but I have wanted one for a really long time. I said yes and we brought her home. We called her Mac or MacKenzie after a character from a TV show Jenn and I love. She is much more of a handfull than Quiz, but she is smart and trying. She loves playing with Hannah, playing with Quiz, herding the chickens, and will hike all day if we ask her too. We have taken her everywhere - and she has taken it all in stride.


How could you pass up that face?

She has already grown so much
So I did not lie - it has truely been a crazy fall. Fun but crazy. And just think, more kids in a only a few weeks.