Farm Chores

Boy it’s cold out there, but I’m feeling better and almost over my cold so I tried to get done a few things that needed to be done. I put straw down in the goat stall and the chicken coop. It’s one bale each for them to cover up the old nasty stuff as it gets soiled and matted down. Come spring I’ll clean out both those stalls and put the old straw in the compost bin where it’ll do some good. Right now it’s just nasty so it gets covered up. The straw provides insulation from the cold ground and soaks up the nasty. I’m down to one bale of hay, so I’ve got to round some more up soon. I can feed the goats approximately four more days on what we have.

Hay is going to be short this year, so I need to stock up. I’d like to have a barn full of about 50 bales if I can. And another 30 bales of straw. Not sure where I’m going to get these.

My truck is broken down. It refuses to go into any of the forward gears, but reverse still works. At least it waited until I got home to break down, instead of giving up the ghost out on the highway somewhere. Good ol’ truck. Now it’s decision time … pay to get it fixed or just dump it.

What a mess we live in

Benazir Bhutto has been killed. I first became aware of Pakistani politics a few months ago through NPR. I don't know whether she was a corrupt former official as her opposition always claimed, or whether she was the staunch supporter of democracy that her supporters claim. However, I do know that she's dead now and that General Pervez Musharraf has gotten all he could ever want out of the situation. The supreme court which could have interferred in his plans to keep power have been replaced. The military has been packed with his loyalists. His minor opponents have been jailed, the media has been silenced, and now his major opponent, the only one who actually stood a chance against him in an election, has been killed. That's rather coincidental, don't you think?

At first glance, the political machinations of a dictator on the other side of the world do not really affect me. My sun still rises. I still need to earn a living, and my goats and chickens still need to eat ... as do my children. However if you take the long view, it does have an impact on my life. You see, many of these dictatorships are allies of America and we give them our tax dollars. In the case of Pakistan, we gave them over $250 million dollars for "military aid" in this month alone. If we were to play "follow the money", would those dollars have bought the bombs and bullets that killed Benazir Bhutto?

When these dictatorships around the world whom we call allies are prospering, it sets a bad tone. It is our tax dollars which helps them to prosper. It is our corporate "outsourcing" and global free trade agreements which help them to prosper. And each time Americans look at one of these dictatorships and see a prosperous people, it numbs us a little bit more to the true horrors of living in a land without freedom. Every dictatorship out there that isn't a festering Hell of a sinkhole with corpses laying in the streets is something that your complacent American can point to and say, "They don't have it so bad, so it's ok to give up a little of our freedom."

In the grand sweep of things, we've taken a huge step down the road towards global tyranny.

Chicken Thief Captured

In a trap I had baited with a dead chicken (one of the frozen ones that died a week or so ago) there was a raccoon. A big male weighing an estimated forty-odd pounds. He was so big he couldn't even turn around inside the trap. He was stuffed in there tight like a foot in a sock.

The handle is missing from the trap and there was no way to get him out, so I shot him in the back of the head with a pistol. Doing so bothered me more than I thought it would, but if you're going to be a chicken farmer than you can't get too sentimental about not harming the things that come to kill your chickens. And if truth be told, it was a more humane method of execution than any of my chickens ever received. I steeled myself by remembering picking up all my dead chickens back in May, and then remembering having to kill those poor maimed ones whose legs had been cruelly ripped off. True, the raccoon was just being a raccoon, but they can go be raccoons somewhere else besides my farm. I'm perfectly happy to know they exist out in the wilderness. This is one less raccoon who knows where to find chicken and isn't afraid of humans.

He was enormously fat. Like a great big butterball turkey. I had intended to skin him, but I'm still sick and summoning up that much energy was just beyond me, plus I needed to use what good weather we were having (sunny and above freezing) to do some other farm chores. So Rocky Raccoon got a bullet to the back of the head and was summarily dumped in the back pasture where he'll feed the crows (who DO provide a service to the farm in keeping away hawks).

Tony Soprano would have been proud.

Chickens Dying

So far we've lost 4 chickens due to unexplained coop deaths. They're healthy and fine the night before and then when you open the door in the morning, there will be a dead, frozen bird. I can't figure it out. We've upped their food and water ration now and Winter Solstice is only a short time away so winter is half over, but I'm sure hoping it's not some sort of disease in my flock.

I am still stuck downtown. In a hostage crisis. They are never going to let me go, finding it instead simply too comfortable to have me sitting here in a cube telling them what to do.

Instead of posting any more negativity today, I'm going to post something uplifting, inspirational, and funny. Here's a friggin' cute puppy.

Don't Eat That

In Union Station tonight, because I’m trapped downtown yet again without any sustenance, I went to this little Cajun eatery they have there. This Asian lady was pushing bourbon chicken on everyone passing by, so it looked good to me and I ordered some. While I’m paying for my order, a homeless guy staggers by. The Asian lady offers him a piece of bourbon chicken and he refuses.

Now I tell you, faithful readers. I should have realized that eating a half pound of something that a homeless guy turned his nose up at would be a bad idea. It would have been better to follow him and eat out of whatever trash can he’s going to.

Coming Downtown

I’m in downtown Chicago tonight and I’m freezing my bum off. It’s way colder down here than it is up on the farm. Having exhausted my bottled water a long time ago, me and the guy I’m working with had to go across the street to Union Station in order to pick up something. On the way in, a girl told me she was headed to a domestic abuse shelter (and she gave a location) and that she was pregnant but she needed $4 to get there. I don’t know why that this night all the panhandlers lined up to bug me. I must have been wearing my “I’m a sucker” shirt. She was the third one. I told her to get lost too.

However after I bought myself a soda and a candy bar I gave her the money she needed when I walked back by. It just kept preying on my mind. She’s most likely just suckered me out of $4. BUT … if I’m wrong … shouldn’t I do everything I can to help her?

I hate coming downtown. It’s plagued with moral dilemmas and it’s just so far from the farm. Too much concrete. Too many people. Too many strange people living their grasshopper dreams.

Half-Wit

The Half-Wit
A man owned a small farm in Indiana. The Indiana State Wage & Hour Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to interview him.

"I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them," said the agent.

"Well," said the farmer, "there's my farm hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board. The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $150 per week plus free room and board."
 
The agent nodded and scribbled in his notebook.

The farmer continued, "Then there's the half-wit who works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally."

"That's the guy I want to talk to --- the half-wit," said the agent.

"That would be me," replied the farmer.

Darwin Takes One for the Team

Last night Darwin and one of the hens didn’t show up to be put into the coop. They decided, instead, to hide in the barn for the night. It was really cold and starting to rain, and I didn’t go push the issue by playing catch-the-chicken and putting them in their proper place.

This morning we find a big pile of blood and feathers scattered around the barnyard maybe 30 yards from the barn. Either he got chased out of their last night, or he wandered out on his own either in the dark or at sunrise and got taken. Poor guy. Three separate piles of feathers so it looks like he put up a good fight. The snow was thick and crusted over with ice, so I couldn’t find any tracks as to what the villain may have been.

I should have eaten him when I had the chance. Now something else did.

Walk With Me Wednesday - Bring Warm Clothes

You know something we haven't done ALL YEAR? A Walk With Me Wednesday post. I guess being here on the farm and constantly being in nature has made me somewhat neglectful of it. No more. We're going to get back to it. Winter Solstice is about a week or so away, and after that, the days start getting longer again. Now, here at the peak of winter, let's see some sights.

Within walking distance of the farm is a large conservation area. It's more secluded and remote than the preserve where we used to live, and that brings out the wilderness man in me. From our front yard, the road leads ever onward into the woods. At the far left of the picture, you can see one of the apple trees I planted last year in its wire cage. They're winter hardy, but I hope they're doing ok.



The entrance to the park is about 1 mile from the house, while the actual park is about half a mile. We can hop the fence here. This photo looks back down the road we've just come down.



After we get on the trail it's a short climb up a hill and then a really spectacular view. Well, maybe not by some standards ... but for Illinois? ANY view from a hill is a good one.



We'll be down in those woods in a minute. While the open terrain is nice, my heart lives in the forest. First, check out this ice. We lost power for about 20 minutes this morning. That's all. Illinois electric company has their act together, I guess.



They close the conservation area on weekends this time of year to give access to the deer hunters. It's been a half-dozen weekends so far into deer season, and this one is still alive. We're not alone in the woods. It's a living world.



Along the trail through the snowy woods you can see an old barn. I don't know how old it is, or what its original purpose was. Nearby to this spot is a historic site ... an old coach house on a stagecoach line from Minneapolis to Chicago. The coach house is inhabited and the people who live there take great pride in keeping the place up. Perhaps the barn and the stone walled ruins were some of the outbuildings for that original site.





This old oak is still alive. How many winters has it endured, guardian of this path? It stands right at the edge of a creek, its hoary roots drinking deep. I feel like I gain energy from being here. I'm part of an endless parade of living things that have passed beneath its boughs. It's humbling to stand in the presence of ancient trees.



This creek doesn't seem to freeze solid. It's too fast flowing. A thin sheet of ice forms where it deepens and slows, but water comes out beneath the ice. Shadows dart there, seen through the crust. Fish perhaps? Or just floating creek debris?



When I came here in the spring, this place was an impenetrable maze of green, briars and thorns. There are blackberries everywhere along this creek, but I never made it down here when they were ripe in order to fill a basket. I'll try again this spring. Here in the winter, it's a lot more open and you can be wary of the thorns.



At last we come to my secret happy place. I sit down on a fallen log with my back up against an ancient tree and watch the creek flowing. I filled up my pipe and smoked and just listened to the sound of water. From here you can't hear the highway, airplanes, or any sounds of civilization. It makes me long for the deeper places and forests that have seldom seen man. Sometimes I think I'm ready to chuck it all in and walk away from civilization. 'Cept I have kids to feed and raise and educate. That's a joy in itself. Everything has its season though. Now it's time to be a parent and maybe in the future it'll be the season to be a wild forest creature. We should enjoy all the seasons as they come to us, because once they're gone ... they're gone forever.

Selected quotes from Bastiat's Wiki ...

Bastiat is my new favorite economist. You don't have a favorite economist? Get one!

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?" — from The Law
"Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." — from The Law
"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." — from Government
"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." — from The Law
"If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the state should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it." — from Journal des Economistes
"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain." — from The Law
"[The socialists declare] that the state owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.
Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ...But is it possible? ...Whence does [the state] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitical and voracious intermediary?
...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the state. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success." — from Journal des Economistes
"Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just; in vain would it would try to force them to be self-sacrificing." — from Journal des Economistes
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating." — from The Law
"It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion — whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government — at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty." — from The Law
"Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice." — from The Law

From a forum post today ...

So I spent some time drafting this up and wanted to share it with you as well ...

Let's go back to the beginning for a minute ...

Initially there were only small community groups of primitive peoples. There was no trade or barter within them. This is still seen in primitive tribes today (ref. - Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins). You simply did not need to trade because if your cousin Joe caught a deer, you would eat too. And when Joe wasn't successful hunting, you would be and Joe would eat. If neither you or Joe had any luck, you'd better hope your wife's brother Moe did or NOBODY would eat. And so life continued for several thousand years.

But then primitive groups started coming into contact with other groups with whom they had no relation and no shared goals of survival. If you, Joe, and Moe hadn't caught a deer but had some boar tusks and you came across a neighboring tribe who had lots of deer but no boar tusks ... you could work out a deal that was often more favorable and less effort and risk than trying to kill them and take their deer. (After all, they were superior hunters and might just take YOUR boar tusks.)

As the teeming mass of humanity spread, settlements became larger and larger until you find thousands of people living in Bronze Age cities with no shared goals for survival like the primitive tribes. The guy on the other side of town had no interest whatsoever in whether or not you, Joe, and Moe had a deer to eat. Trade was essentially on the barter system. You took a ball of beeswax to the market and might wander for days looking for someone who both needed the wax AND had something you might find useful, say for instance, a copper axe. Often you would need to trade the wax for a deer which you could then trade for a beaver pelt and then for an axe. Transactions were lengthy and complicated and from that point it didn't take JP Morgan to create a better system. You simply created markers with a fixed value (and since the king or emperor or grand poobah was the final arbiter in all disputes he got his face on it) and traded those. WHen you, Joe, and Moe went to the market, you traded your beeswax for 10 coins and could then buy whatever you wanted with them. The guy selling the copper axe wasn't concerned with his need for your product because he knew that the coins could be traded for something he needed either now or later.

This brings me to an interesting consequence of coinage. Before currency, when everything was barter, a man would look at the forest in one way and act accordingly. He couldn't cut down all the trees or kill all the deer because he couldn't store massive amounts of timber or meat and hide with any hopes of trading it all before it rotted away to unusability. However, with the invention of coins, he now could concievably do so. If he cut down all the trees and found enough people to buy the timber, he could convert the resource of timber to a compact, easy-to-store, and NON-PERISHABLE currency marker. Before currency there was no need to despoil and pillage the environment. After currency, it became a viable marketing option.

So coins were always based on something with a fixed quantity. Something rare. It might be silver, gold, wampum, or stone tablets with the royal treasurers chisel marks. (Interesting side note ... when Egyptian Pharaohs conquered neighboring nations, they would often demand tribute in HONEY, not gold or silver.) Currency couldn't be based on something as easy to obtain as, say for instance, tree leaves. You could just go out and pick as many as you wanted and then trade them for that copper axe with significantly less effort than crafting said axe. The axe maker knew this, and if he wanted he could go get his own tree leaves, so he'd set the price accordingly ... say 15 million tree leaves for a copper axe.

Any currency not based on an item of limited and fixed quantity universally decided upon is considered 'fiat currency' and only has worth guaranteed to it by mutually agreed upon authorities. For instance, our currency is no longer backed by gold and therefore the mutually agreed upon authority of the Federal Government is forced to guarantee its worth. (Another side note ... read Claude Frédéric Bastiat's ideas on governmental authority ceded to it by the populace and its dubious authority to issue currency).

However, many of us believe that some prolonged crisis will undermine the mutually agreed upon authority of the Federal Government. If the only people who will accept the dollar are at the bank, and the bank doesn't have food, then to Heck with using the dollar. We're going back to beeswax and copper axes. When that happens, items of necessity will become more valuable than dollars, assuming they can be had for any price. So many people keep gold on hand, assuming that even if fiat currency collapses, gold will always be in demand because it always has. I don't keep gold because it's a pain in the butt to deal with whereas food will always be accepted as universal currency, or I can trade it for whatever currency is in vogue at the time.

Based on the history of currency, depending upon the duration of a disruption of services we will fall farther and farther back in this history, perhaps going all the way back to deer and boar tusks.

I'll leave you with two quotes, the first my own, the second a Cree Indian prophecy.

"Capitalism is the shared mythology of the modern world." - Moi

"Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

A Work Day

So I've got until the end of the week to complete about 6 hours of corporate training. It's on stuff such as competitive analysis, software development processes, and basic values and ethics. That's the part that burns me up ... ETHICS training. Why are they wasting my time with this?

The short answer is so that the corporate bigwigs can say, "all of our employees are trained in ethics, so we're an ethical company." The fact that they think this, underscores the point that we're not very ethical to begin with. The fact that they mix scenarios with how to gain market share with how to ethically deal with customers is even more telling.

All in all, I come away from these sessions depressed and find it ever more important to leave the corporate jungle as soon as possible.

Tired of the White

Snow has been on the ground for over two weeks now. Temperature hasn’t been above freezing in all that time. It’s a mess. Chickens won’t come out of the coop, goats won’t come out of the barn. I miss spring already.

Cold December Day

It's really cold out there, and cold in the house as well. It's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and 70 degrees inside, but I swear it's the coldest 70 degrees I've ever felt. We absolutely need a wood stove.

The animals aren't moving around much. It's odd to look out into the pasture and not see a chicken or a goat. Most everyone is huddled in the barn. Here are the goats in the entrance, wondering if I'm going to go into the storeroom and bring them some of those big grass cubes they like so much.

The chickens like to lurk in the stalls, looking for food and tearing up the straw. They make little pockmarked nests everywhere.

Some have decided that they aren't coming out at all. Well, this looks like most of them actually. They've called in a snow day and would like to order in.

Which is too bad because they're missing a somewhat beautiful day. I know the snow is deeper than they are tall, and the wind is frigid, but it's really beautiful out there. Or so it looks from in here, drinking my hot coffee.

That's the one-half of a tree that came down in the backyard. I'm in no hurry to get out there and saw it up. It can sit there till spring as far as I'm concerned. Makes a great place to sit too, when you're watching stuff.

I should go up the hill here and check on my beehives, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe later today, or maybe tomorrow. I don't know what I'm checking for. If the front entrance is covered I'll open it up a little, but other than that they're just sitting there until spring when I can open it up and see if everyone survived. Plus it looks cold up on that hill.

When the snow first fell a few days ago, this poor little hen just sat there out on the snow shivering. I gave her a good inspection, but there's nothing wrong with her feet. She just doesn't like the snow. I haven't lost any of the birds due to cold yet, and I don't want to lose any, but they've got to be a little hardier. Even if she is a little princess who just likes being held.

Stay warm, y'all!

A "WOW" Moment

This morning I’m out at dawn with 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. I’m standing in the entryway to the barn, looking east out over the hill and the top of the forest as a glorious sunrise is cresting over the trees. It’s warm enough in the barn with the goats and straw and I can hear our rooster crowing. It strikes me, not for the first time, that THIS is our farm.

Broken Digital Camera

Our digital camera is on the fritz. It’s only two years old … is this how long these things last? Cause this one was expensive and I’m not buying another one, if so. Anyway, I regret not being able to take more digital photos lately … but I really regret the one I just missed.

Sleeping cat on the back porch. Within six feet of it is a small black mouse, standing on its hind legs looking at the cat.

Cold!

Jared has had a hard time figuring out his farm chores. He does them without complaining, even when there’s snow and ice on the ground and it’s 10 degrees below freezing, but the poor lad has a very poor grasp of order. First he goes out to the far coop to find a bucket, then he can’t, so he returns to the garage, then he realizes the bucket might be in the barn so he goes out to look there. Finding the bucket he then returns to the garage to get food, even though there’s food in the barn. And so forth and so on. I’ve shown him  how to do this the most efficiently, but he fails to grasp it still. Every morning it’s something different and he’s following a different track. It takes him forever. The barnyard is arranged in a large circle. Starting counterclockwise at 3 o’clock you will find the old red coop. Start there and open the door to let them out. Then move on to 12 o’clock and open the door to the winter coop. Open the door, prop it open, and let out all the other chickens. At this point all the chickens are out. Then continue counterclockwise to 9 o’clock and open the barn stall to let the goats out. Upon returning to the house you should find the bucket full of feed from where you fed them the night before … just dump it out on the ground for the chickens and then put it back in its place inside the garage when you’re done. The morning chores shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, though if the water is frozen it takes longer because we have no working outside faucets in the winter. You’ve got to go get the buckets and go back to the house to fill them up, then take water out to the chickens. I don’t find this that difficult, but his little noodle arms can only carry about a half a bucket of water at a time.

The snow on the ground is about 2 inches thick and it’s been thawing in the day and refreezing every night. So this morning, when it’s 24f outside, everything has turned into one big glazed sheet of ice. The cats and dog share one water bowl which is a round stainless steel affair. I set it down on the ground and it goes skating away like a big steel hockey puck. There’s an old concrete dog run out by the fenceline at the far reach of the backyard and I feed the chickens there. It keeps them from churning the ground up into mud as they peck all the snow away looking for more food. Plus it’s easy enough to take a bucket of water out and dowse it down, thus washing the poop away.

This morning I sat and watched as the chickens ate their ration. The latecomers who didn’t see me going out there with a bucket come running from all points when they see the others start to eat. Chickens seem to keep one eye on the ground looking for food, one eye on the rest of the flock to see if anyone ELSE has found food, and one eye out for predators. That’s three eyes and chickens only have two, so you can see why they get snatched so often. The latecomers come running in to get their share of grain … can’t stop on the ice and then slide in the last 10 feet or so, wings flapping as they collide with the mass of earlier-arriving chickens. This sends feathers flying, disrupts the order, and then there’s lots of angry squawking for a little while as they all resume their eating. Just in time for the next latecomer to come sliding in.

News update: Paris the Chicken is still alive

We’ve been missing a chicken for a few days. She’s dumb as dirt but beautiful and so she earned the name “Paris” after Paris Hilton. Not that I think that cock-eyed wench is beautiful, but anyway.

So we noticed that we hadn’t noticed her for a few days, but I finally located her. She has barely left the coop since it snowed. Maybe she’s not so dumb after all.

Peter Piper picked a peck of ... um ....

Normally Kathy lets me grow whatever I want in the garden, but this year as I'm hunting for seeds ... she put her foot down. She doesn't want these fine peppers in our garden, nor does she want me selling them or pickling them. I don't see what the fuss is about.

Leslie's Goat Questions - Answered Finally

“Speaking of your goats, are they milk goats? How often do you have to milk them? Do they come around by themselves to be milked, or do they stay penned up, or how does that work? We're thinking we need milk animals next. I'd love to see anything you care to post about the logistics of a milk animal, if you milk yours.”

Leslie asked these questions in a comment sometime back and I’ve frittered around and not taken the time to answer them. Sorry, Leslie. I should be better about that.

We have four goats, two of which are female and can be milked. The females are named Primavera and Halley. Both are Nubian mixes, but Primavera looks very much like a La Mancha. Halley looks exactly as a Nubian ought to. When we bought them, Primavera and Halley had given birth about a month prior. Halley had two male bucks as offspring, and Primavera’s infant died at birth, possibly from inhalation of birth fluid. I’m not sure of the details on that. I bought all four goats from a neighboring farm project. It’s a charity organization that teaches people, especially impoverished urban people, how to raise crops and livestock.

A girl who volunteers her time there came out and showed us how to milk them. It wasn’t hard to pick up. For various reasons, we didn’t actually start milking Halley until much later, once I’d built a milking stand. You’re going to need one to milk a goat. They’re too short and feisty otherwise and it just isn’t comfortable. Milking stands sell for a lot of money ($1000+!!) but you can build one in about an hour with $20 worth of lumber. Mine works just as good as those metal thousand dollar jobs they sell in the catalogs.

So having the two nursing males (both neutered) helped us to not need to milk the goat twice a day. When we would milk I would put the two boys in a pen by themselves overnight, and then milk Halley the following morning. Around 9am or so, assuming I got around to it on time. If I was away on work, the two males just had the milk to themselves. That irregular milking will cost you somewhat in production but since we were giving it a try we didn’t worry about that too much. By keeping the offspring, you don’t need to milk twice a day.

The goats didn’t come around to be milked, and they didn’t stay penned up. Goats are pretty friendly anyway and of a morning I’d just go out and grab Halley, lead her to the milking station on the back porch, and direct her up on the stand. By putting food in the little trough I built onto it, it enticed her to just jump up there by herself. I’d then get her harnessed up and start milking. By the time you’re ready to put the goat on the station, it’s best if you have your pails and what-not all ready to go. I had to watch Halley close while milking because she liked to be ornery and stick her dirty, manure-covered foot into a full pail of milk … which effectively ruins it for human consumption. I guess you could pasteurize it and it’d be fine, and I know that manure finds its way into milk in the big commercial cow dairies all the time, but I still find it gross.

It would take me about 15-20 minutes to milk Halley. An expert can strip a goat in under 5 minutes. I did not do it enough to become an expert, but I found that my hand muscles toughened up and her production increased. I milked for a couple of weeks and then, feeling overwhelmed with all that was going on around the farm, I stopped. She was up to about 20 ounces of milk per day. That’s not a lot, but it’s not negligible either. With more consistent milking I could have expected more. I’d essentially milk her until my hands were too tired and the milk was difficult to get out of her udder, then I’d stop. She had to have food in the trough or she didn’t put up with being milked. So it was a race to see who finished first … me with her udder or her with the food. Whenever one of us finished, the other one was effectively finished (unless I was in a mood to give her more food, but I usually took that as a good stopping point).

So now we’re looking to breed at least one of our goats (probably Primavera) and give it another try this coming year. I think I’ll be more diligent about it this time, and we’re also going to work on Jared doing more of the milking as well. A goat is quite suitable for an 11 year old boy to handle the milking.

Any more questions I can answer?

Farm Journal

Went and picked up some hay from my buddy today, who bought extra and has been storing it for me. 25 bales he’s been holding, but I’m thinking now that it was a bad idea. He had asked me awhile back to just ‘take the bales from the back’, which I went to do today … yet he’s been storing this hay directly on the ground. The bottom of some of the bales (the ones on the bottom) have rotted. I guess this is another lesson (at least one per day!) about farming. Don’t depend on other people to do things to your satisfaction … and if you want it done right then do it yourself. I didn’t think it was appropriate to sort through the rotted and non-rotted and leave him with all the rotted ones, so I just took a couple of the rotted ones too and deposited one of the worst in the compost bin. Ah well.

My half-ass solution for winterizing the second coop is not working out well. I took some tarps and nailed them up over the windows to keep out the snow and cold. Well, the wind and ice pretty much ripped them all loose. Hey, another lesson … do it right the first time and you won’t need to do it again.

Something I heard on the radio ...

I can’t remember where I was going yesterday or what I was listening to on NPR, but this is from some guy who was talking about some subject. To paraphrase, what he said was that a politician is a man walking around in Washington with his wet finger in the air to tell which way the wind is blowing. You can’t change the world by changing one wet-fingered politician with another wet-fingered politician. You want to change the world? You change the wind.

Now my own thoughts begin … Take for example Monsanto. It’s a public corporation which embodies everything I hate about Big Ag. Monsanto currently has 546+ million shares outstanding valued at around 100 points each. You want to make Monsanto stop doing bad things? You want to put Monsanto out of the chemical business and turn them into something good?

If every one of us who was concerned about this spent $500 and bought Monsanto stock, then coalesced into a voting block … we’d own the company. We could fire the current board of directors and bring in ones who were sympathetic to our cause. We could release all the patents and fire the lobbyists. If we so choose, we could close the doors, sell off all the resources, and shut the company down forever.

We have that power. We are the wind.

No More Cowering

I’m determined not to cower inside and waste precious time any more this winter. The cold weather has provided a convenient excuse but no longer. First off, there are plenty of inside chores to be done. Painting, fixing, or just general household tasks that can always stand to be done by someone.

The yeoman farmers of old didn’t stop when the weather got cold. They bundled up and did their work. I must do the same.

If a tree falls in the middle of the night and everyone is asleep ...

... does it still make noise? Oh yeah, baby. It does.

Last night one of the three ancient maple trees decided that the weight of the ice was too much. Half of it split and came down with a crash right there in the yard. Missed the porch, missed the house, but now I've got 80' of wood laying in the backyard. I guess I'm going to need to go out today and get some tree salve and a chainsaw. Yeesh.