Of Ducks, Lobbers, Frogs, and More

Well, it seems that I never can keep my word very well when it comes to blogging.  Oh well.  Sometimes life happens and preempts plans, ya know?

(FYI: I feel that I have a very many things to tell in this post, so forgive me if you find it a bit rambling.)

Did you know that moving is not just a one day or even one week process?  In my experience, it takes more like two months.  We are getting settled though.  And we are enjoying our new house so much.  It seems that every day we find new things to love about this house.  One day it's how beautiful the roses are, the next it's the maple tree in the backyard.  Other days we realize how much we like the layout of the kitchen or the awesome pantry or the massive closet and storage space.  Some days we delight in simpler things, like how good it is to feel warm carpet under our feet again, or how smaller bedrooms can actually feel more cozy, or how the sunlight coming in the windows makes the kitchen and living area feel so bright and cheery.  Can you tell how much we are enjoying this house?

Our animals are getting somewhat settled as well.  They are all in temporary pens for now, but building goat shelters and a chicken coop are high up on our priority list.  The chicken coop is especially high on our list, because we really are not getting many eggs from our chickens right now since their laying situation is very much less than ideal.  Oh well.  We're working on it.  :)  Our ducks, however, (who finally started laying eggs shortly before we moved!) have been very reliable in giving us two eggs a day--and so far, in the same exact spot!  Speaking of the ducks, I am loving them more and more every day.  Shortly after we moved, Mamma put their pond in the front yard, and now every morning they waddle up to the house for their early morning bath right outside the window.  They are so much fun to watch (and hear).

Isaac spent a very great part of our first week here mowing all our weeds.  Uncle Timmy was very kind to let us borrow his riding lawn mower.  The weeds were quite high, and we couldn't really tell what was out on the property.  After Isaac finished mowing, we were exceedingly surprised to find many water spigots and sprinklers all over our 2 1/2 acres, many of which the boys had to fix because of leaks and disrepair.  Despite all the work and trips to Home Depot to fix all the leaks, it was overall a very pleasant surprise for us, since we had previously believed there was only one water spigot on the whole property, besides the ones on the house.

Now, this little monster in the picture below is a lobber.  I introduce you to him because he is, perhaps, the worst thing about our new house. 

As you can see, he is a type of grasshopper, only he is much bigger and appears to wear some sort of heavy armor.  His worst characteristics are a tendency to jump towards you right when are walking past him, and the positive look of malice he directs your way whenever you happen to be in his proximity.  But worse than all of this, is the fact that he is not alone.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of these creepy guys everywhere on our property.  They're in the weeds, they're on the sidewalk, they're on the sides of the house and the screen doors, they're in the rosebushes, and in the gravel.  They are literally everywhere.  It sort of reminds me of a plague from Exodus.  Truly, I am not exaggerating here.  We had lobbers at our old house, but I think there are even more of them here if that can be possible.  The good news in all of this: our duckies LOVE the taste of lobbers! They certainly don't have any lack of them.

For perspective on the actual size of lobbers, I placed a nickel in the picture above.

We've had some peculiar adventures since we moved here, but there is one that was incident that was the most bizarre, and therefore warrants your attention.  The first time we used the oven here, my mom noticed a funny smell. She thought that it smelled like a dead animal, but I thought it was just her imagination.  There had been a dead cow practically in our backyard for two weeks right before we moved (it's a long story), so I though she was just paranoid because of that.  Well, it turned out I was wrong and she was right.  When we inspected the stove a couple of days later.  We found a nice little crispy treat waiting for us.

Yes people, that is a DEAD FROG in our stove!  (Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, but I couldn't resist showing you anyway.)  I'm not going to attempt to deny that that freaked me out a little.  Okay, it freaked me out a lot.

By far, my most favorite thing about living here is being so close to my Uncle Timmy, Aunt Kris, and cousin Mariah.  Their house is just one mile down the road from us, and that is such a blessing.  I can't even tell you how much I am enjoying that.  Is there anything better than being able to drive over to your best friend's house in less than two minutes in your pj's and slippers for a movie and ice cream?  Hmmm... I don't think so.

Okay, I have just two more pieces of news to tell you-- and these are not really related to our new house at all.  Firstly, I finally got my driver license on Wednesday!  Secondly, it's actually really truly the season of fall now!  Yesterday was probably our first day of sweater and coat weather, and this morning it was 28 degrees outside.  I love the change of seasons, especially fall, but I have to say that I am not looking forward to months of doing chores in below freezing temperatures.  On the other hand, I'm quite excited to start wearing sweaters and scarves and long warm socks and boots again.  Every season comes with it's good and bad I guess.

Well, I guess that's all I have to tell at the moment.  Ta ta for now!

~Kiah

And the Search Begins Once Again

Some of you may know that we are (again!) searching for a place to live.  This time it wasn't actually our choice; the owners of the place we are currently in decided they want to move back in.  Unfortunately, that means we have to move for the third time in two and a half years.  Can you tell that I'm not exactly excited?  :)  Really though, I should be excited.  It is obviously God's will that we move on to another place, so I ought to be expectant and excited to see where God is going to move us and what He is going to do in our lives.  That's what my attitude should be, but although I know it, I don't always feel that way.  You can pray for me!

We would also appreciate your prayers concerning finding a house and feeling clear direction from God.  We are trying to find a place where we can keep our farm animals, but so far it's been rough.  It is so good to know that God is in control!  For now, we are continuing to look and (trying to!) wait patiently on the Lord to provide.  Again, we would appreciate your prayers as we enter another transition time in our lives.

Sorry for the rather low-toned post.  Here, I'll leave you with some pictures that my cousin Mariah recently took on the farm.

We sure have enjoyed this house and property for the time that God allowed us to live here.  Job 1:21b "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

Yes, those are our ducks.  They grow fast.  :)

Just in case you are wondering, this picture was taken on the property.  There are a whole bunch of these lilies blooming in the backyard.  They are so beautiful that I can't help but feel glad whenever I walk by them.  Praise God for the wonder of His creation!

~Kiah

Victory

I can't imagine that anyone has ever drunk a glass of milk with as much relish as I did last Monday evening.  Just FYI: That's relish as in "enjoyment, pleasure..."  Don't worry; I don't put pickle relish in my milk. Ugh.  Just the thought of that makes me feel a little sick.  But to return.  Last Monday's glass of milk was the happiest glass of milk of my life.  Why?  Because it was our fresh, raw goat milk.  And for the very first time, it tasted wonderful.

Over the past few months we have been battling with the taste of the milk our Alpine goats have been producing.  We researched "how to make goat milk taste good" on the internet, we got advice from friends, we switched to organic feed, and tried almost everything we could think of.  Still the milk didn't taste right.  Things began to get frustrating.  We were milking two goats every day twice a day and accumulating gallons upon gallons of milk that was good for nothing.  Eventually we started dumping the milk out onto the ground every day just to get rid of it.  We began to wonder why we even had milk goats.  Then, as a last resort, we tried two different things at once.  1) We started both our does on Molly's Herbal Worm Formula (we thought that our goats might be showing some signs of worms). 2) We started feeding our does yogurt twice a day.  This was a recommendation of our good friends from Dallas Tyler Ranch.  About five days after we made these changes, I decided to taste the milk.  I tasted it.  I tasted it again.  Could it really be?  Then I took it to each member of the family and we unanimously decided that the milk did indeed taste delicious (aka, exactly like cows milk)!  We still don't know which of our changes made the milk taste better.  To be honest, I don't much care!  I was inexpressibly happy that night.  Those who have not been in our situation may find it hard to understand, but when you have poured a tremendous amount of effort into the goats and into making their milk taste good and have been utterly unsuccessful for months, victory is a very sweet thing.  And so, incidentally, is our goat milk now.  That fact makes me a very happy camper.

~Kiah

Surprise, Surprise!

The surprise was wonderful, but just a little distressing. It was exciting, but disappointing. It was expected, but unexpected. And we were unprepared. Very unprepared.

Let me explain.

I told you last week that Bess was due soon. And she was. However, we were expecting her to be overdue, because she really wasn't showing any signs of being close. We're not experts on goats yet (a fact which this whole experience so perfectly proves), and we were very foolishly expecting Bess to be a lot like Betty. Not that we thought Bess would be exactly like Betty, but we were using Betty as our standard since that was all we had ever experienced. Let's just say that Bess was very different.

Like I said, Bess had been showing pretty much zero signs of being anywhere near giving birth. Yesterday morning, Mom and I went shopping and left Isaac at home. It was around three in the afternoon, and we were almost home when we got a call from Isaac saying that he had gone out to check on the goats and found Bess with two babies! We had absolutely no idea that she would be kidding so soon, and we were all completely shocked. Oh, did I mention that she was two days earlier than her due date as well?  There's not much more of the story to tell really. She had twins, a boy and a girl. We sure were happy that everything was okay and that she delivered just fine on her own, but I was disappointed to have missed the birth. I can't emphasize enough how surprised we were. I think I'm still kind of in shock over it all.

Okay, enough jabbering; I'm sure you want to see pictures of our two newest adorable babies!

Aren't they adorable?  They look very much alike in my opinion; only their colors are different.  The white and black one is the girl, and the brown and black is the boy.

We haven't named them yet.  Isaac very kindly gave me the privilege of naming the little girl, but I haven't been able to think of one that seems fitting.  Got any suggestions?

~Kiah

The Milk Man

~Kiah

We just can't seem to get all our ducks in a row...

...and we only have four of them!

Mamma and Daddy went shopping by themselves last Saturday, and when they came back they had a very pleasant surprise for us!  Ducklings on a buy-one-get-one-free sale?  Really, who can pass that up?

These little guys are called Khaki Campbells.  From what I understand, they are one of the best layers of all duck breeds.  Apparently, and I didn't know this before, this breed of ducks lays an average of 300 eggs in a 365 day year.  That is even more than a chicken!  

I had never had ducks before Saturday, and I was naively unprepared for their behavior.  I suppose I shouldn't have been expecting them to act like chicks, but somehow I was surprised when, instead of drinking water while standing outside of the dish, the little duckling plopped right down into the dish of water and began drinking!  Silly me, ducks are ducks--not chickens!  :)

In other news...

Betty's kids are finally weaned and looking extremely fat in my opinion.  They have grown so much!

Bess is due to have her own kids in 9 days!

And I really couldn't resist posting this picture.  Doesn't S'more look just like a little puppy?

~Kiah

P.S.  I almost forgot to mention that I've finally reached my 100th post!  Don't congratulate me.  It only took me three and a half years to make it here.

Another Adventure on the Farm (In which we decide that three baby goats just wasn't enough)

Well, I'm very sorry if you are growing tired of posts about the farm; however, that seems to be our life just now.  Today I'm posting about our newest adventure--Boer goats!

We got an opportunity last week to take two baby Boer (Boer is a meat breed) goats for free. The people we got them from have over 300 Boer goats that live on thousands of acres and live off of the land.  Once in a while during kidding season, the owners have to go through the herd and make sure there are no little babies that are sickly or may not make it in the wild.  Last week they had found two of these--one buck who was the runt of triplets, and one baby girl who was abandoned.  They both were very sickly and could not walk when they found them, so they brought them to their house and began to take care of them.  We got them when they were approximately four days old. They both had several different problems and we were not sure if they would make it or not.  They are doing much better now though, and we think that they will be just fine.

This is S'more.  He had a sore on his leg which I think he had rubbed raw by crawling.  That is much better now, and out of the two, he is the healthier.  He's the one you will see running and jumping around just like a little goat kid should.  (By the way, S'more's eyes are not really blue; they were just reflecting that way in the picture.)

 
This is Bordeaux.  She is still a little frail, but adorable nonetheless.  She has a little raspy cough occasionally and one cloudy eye that it seems will simply not get better.  We are afraid she might be blind in the one eye, but we are not sure.

These little guys are simply adorable.  They are living in the house for now until they get a little stronger, and I think we've spoiled them because of it.  But we can't help it!  S'more simply loves to be held and cuddled, so much so that we call him the lap goat.  He will cuddle right into your lap and either sleep or just rest, completely content.  You can see the truth of this from the pictures below.

 Bordeaux and S'more are not related, but they've lived together since the first or second day after they were born, so they are absolutely inseparable.  If we let them out (which we do occasionally) and S'more realizes that Bordeaux has wandered off and he can't see her, he will start wailing and running around looking for her until he finds her.  It is the cutest thing to see.

Here, both Daddy and S'more fell asleep in the chair and I just couldn't pass up this shot!  Talk about spoiled, huh?

 On a side note, I want to announce that spring is here!  We are definitely having warmer weather and it would be lovely if only the wind would let us enjoy it!  Unfortunately, the wind is unrelenting--at least for now.  Hopefully it will let up enough for us to enjoy the beautiful spring time soon.

~Kiah