A Glimpse or Two of Here

Okay, this is a special post for  group of special people who are going to join us for a day.  Since it's September and things look different at different times of year I thought it'd be nice to show some of the other views of this place......and some close ups of what happens here. In this post I'll share a few photos of some of the cuteness that abound here in the spring time.  These babies are bigger now and some of them have moved to other farms.  We still have 4 half grown goatie girls that are cute.  Three of them totally love being patted by just about anyone, one is a little shy.

This is a mother and son photo.  He's trying to be just like his mommy.

This little boy had played hard and gotten tired and fell asleep on his mommy.

They do love to climb around on the rocks and push each other off.

They also like to climb on people!

Twins!!!  We still have the boy from this photo and he loves to be patted.  He's grown now and like all our adult goats comes up to about my knee in height.  Our goats are user friendly and mostly like being patted although they are not used to a bunch of people at once and are not used to people moving fast.  We tend to speak gently around them and not move in ways that would scare them.

This little girl named "Chica" was born last year and this year gave birth to her own little girl baby that we named "Bonita".

Here is a grown up Chica with her baby Bonita.

Just like with humans, goat mommies and babies like to spend a lot of time near each other. Especially when it's nap time. The babies play pretty hard and then want to have some quiet time near their mommy.  This is Chica and Bonita again having a little nap under one of the platforms that Bonita was just jumping around on a short while before.

This mother and daughter snuggle looks funny because they are both chewing.  This is Luna  (Chica's sister) and her daughter Celeste.

If mommies are busy brothers and sisters like to snuggle up together.  These are Lucia's triplets.

Here's a short video showing how much the goaties love to play.  The mother goat Luna, who jumps up on the platform halfway through pushes off the baby that isn't her baby and lets her baby "Cielo" stay on the platform.

Because there are coyotes, bear, fox, bobcat and mountain lions the goats are guarded by 2 dogs.  They are brother and sister named Fergy and Vera.  They are a special breed of dog that originated in Italy to protect livestock.  They live with the goats all the time and patrol the empty pastures at night keeping wild animals away.

This photo is from last year, showing a half grown Tao hanging out with Vera.  He was nuzzling her a little bit and they were both watching other goats.

So that's a glimpse into the goat cuteness that lives here.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Flowering Progression

I have forgotten to take photos the past 2 or 3 weeks but I meant to take a weekly photo of a certain bench against our house to show the progression of bloom seasons.  Here it is April 25th and the wood poppes (yellow), Phlox stolonifera (pink), Daffodils (white) are all in full swing with bits of Plox divaricata (lavender colored), Pulmonaria (pink aging to blue), Grape Hyacinth (blue), and Epimedium showing at the edges.

May 29th   Notice how it's all about softer colors of lavender now?  Sure, the Peonies are blooming and the yellow Baptisia in the right front is adding a nice counterpoint to the blue-ish theme and there is that splash of shell pink coral bells but really, it's a fully different view.

Here's a different view taken the same day.  The first red rose is blooming but it's the peonies and iris that reign supreme.

June 18th  Now notice how the lavender shades are gone and it's all about that red rose blooming and all those green shapes and textures.  Yes the coral bells are still blooming and the honeysuckles on the arbor are blooming as well.


Speaking of green shapes.....I am in love with green in the spring after a long white winter.  Here's the view out our front door.  It faces East into a ravine and it feels like being in a tree house.

And then there are all the other colors to fall in love with!!

Time to get back outside.........

And the title today is "Yum!"

Today I want to share how much yum is in my life.  There are amazing salads, garlic pesto, fruit over maple sweetened chevre and a multitude of other yummy greens.  There are the roses, lilies and more than 250 varieties of flowers standing in line to show their beauty.    Then there are the sweet connections with the animals that share our lives.  The sheep, goats, dogs, cats, chickens and rabbits.

The photo I've started with above is an evening's harvest that gives a sense of the diversity of yum I'm celebrating.  Dinner, dessert and roses to dry.

We started the year with fresh salads and then the strawberry harvest hit us heavy.  Many pounds of strawberries were picked to eat until our lips and fingers were stained and then freeze for smoothies.  A rare dinner out found Joseph eating a superb salad of greens with strawberries and sprouted almonds and I was impressed enough to recreate it at home for several nights running until something else caught our fancy.  Garnishing it with a mini garlic scape was fun!

Our salad season has been ever-changing in it's flavors.  Starting with a cold frame in the unheated greenhouse gave us red beet leaves, arugula, claytonia, baby kale and spinach to begin.  Then the outside crops started maturing adding 4 more kinds of beet greens, 5 kinds of kale, many colors of chards and 2 more kinds of spinach as well as herbs and fresh peas.  The health of our plants created an almost radiance at times.  This beet leaf was so beautiful I had to stop and photograph it before I could bear to eat it lest I forget it's shine and health.

The berry harvest has been fun because of it's diversity.  Red currents, honey berries, strawberries, red and golden raspberries and then a week after this photo the blueberries started coming in.

The berries have been eaten over fresh chevre sweetened with a bit of maple syrup.  Wonderful dessert!

Then it was garlic scape harvest time.  Hundreds of scapes to turn into scape pesto.

And having scapes around induced me to experiment with scape flavored goat cheese which I then used on pasta as a creamy sauce and garnished with parsley and ribbons of red Amaranth.  Adding a salad fresh out of the garden with homemade feta cheese and sprouted almonds and dinner was extremely satisfying and nourishing.

Goats for Sale!!!

Hello All!

It’s been a great year here at Sovereign Hill Farm/Fox Mountain.  I can only keep a few goats so I have some looking for homes.  I treat my goats well, they have been tested yearly for CL, CAE and Johnnes with all testing negative for all 3.  I have only bought from herds tested free from those diseases.

I have 3 cute and friendly wethers that I’m willing to let go for $50 each if anyone  is looking for pets or buck companions.  They are all people friendly.  They’ll be meat if they stay here.

I have “Sovereign Hill Stella”, a doe sired by Promised Land Porter and out of Dragonfly St. Lucia  that is a lovely doe, very correct legs, nice teats, will be an easy hand milker and her topline is just lovely.  She’d be a good addition to a herd looking for those characteristics who can add wider rear udder attachment genetics to her otherwise lovely lines.  She’s friendly, great on the milk stand, a wonderful mother, etc. Beautiful silvery brown buckskin. Stella is for sale for $400  

First photo shows her heavily pregnant with quads.

 Here's an udder photo.  Sorry she's not standing straight.  I was taking a photo fast so I could start milking.

 Here's a photo of Stella's mother's (St. Lucia) udder.  She is my favorite doe to milk.  Her teats may be small and stubby but wow does the milk come out fast and easily.  St. Lucia gave me quads this year as did Stella.

Stella’s daughter from this year (Sovereign Hill Starla) is reluctantly for sale also.  I believe she will improve upon Stella and go further.  She is sired by Cornerstone Farm Adah, a buck who brings very correct legs and nice width of body who also carries some very flashy color genetics for those who care about that.  I’m actually not sure if I can let her go but if someone really wants her I’ll probably give in.  She carries some really great genetics.  Stunning silver/black buckskin. Starla is for sale for $400

I have 2 full sisters to Stella who were born this year and 1 is for sale.  Promised Land Porter and Dragonfly St. Lucia are the parents. I expect them to both be lovely does and expect a lot from this breeding.

“Char”  is a charcoal black with brown points little doeling who is friendly and carries the genetics that I believe will make her a good hand milker.  Char is for sale for $350

I also have 2 daughters available from lovely Promised Land Zetta, sired by Cornerstone Farm Adah.  She gave me triplet does and they are quite lovely.  I’ll be be keeping one of them.  I call them the Appaloosa sisters because they have white spots.  “Azalea” is a dark buckskin with white spots (I'll be keeping her) and her sisters “Zephyr” and “Pizzaz” are black with white spots.  Zetta brings those lovely Promised Land genetics with a tall, dairy bone structure, wide and high rear udder attachments, strong lateral udder attachment, good production, great mother, has carried quads the 2 years she’s kidded here  (1 didn’t get out of it’s sack fast enough this year and died leaving me with 3, all 4 were does.  Last year she gave me 3 does and a buck) Zetta is one of my two favorite does.  I’d keep at least 2 of the 3 if I didn’t need to keep  my herd size down.  These 2 girls are $400 each

My available wethers are ready to go anytime.  I have 3 available.  All are disbudded, "wetherized" and ready to share some love.  They are all socialized to people although they have been dam raised in the herd so they can learn good herd manners.

Please email me at kathrin@foxmountain.net   or call me 413-329-3974 if you are interested in any of these lovely goats.  Of course there are discounts if you buy more than one.  Goats must have a companion so I will not sell a single goat to someone who wants to keep it alone.  I will happily help you choose a companion goat to keep it company.

I'll post more about the kidding and lambing season when the planting season is all done.  Phew!

Spring has Sprung

All the snow is gone.  The goats are sunning, the sheep are panting in their wool and the dogs are playing.


The kidding season is getting close and several goats qualify for "Wide Load" warning signs.

I'll do my best to keep posting as the babies start coming.  I'm expecting 7 sets of goat babies  (1-5 per set) and 5 or so lambs.  I'm glad the lambs are likely to all be singles since I'm a bit scared of the potential for a goat population explosion. Should be a huge amount of cuteness around here.  Time to tune up the milking machine and get everything ready.

Several garden beds are planted already.  There are greens in the greenhouse and we're now producing enough to keep us in salads.

Happy Spring, stand back at a safe distance!

Confessions

Okay, I confess.  The reason I farm is to make sure I spend enough time outside because I believe that is the most loving thing I can do for myself.  It's also the way I can give myself enough time away from modern technology and modern distractions.  Being outside in nature is an immersion in the peacefulness of current, local reality.

I confess that I am excited about learning in so many topic areas that I can easily get stuck in front of a computer or reading books for more hours than is balanced.  Between barn chores to get me outside and all the gardens that surround the house it is hard to get back inside once I leave the house.  Each morning during winter I head out and do morning chores and then I laze around with the goats and dogs in the pasture.  There's always something to explore, someone who wants to be scratched or rubbed.  I finally drag myself away because I have desk work to do and flower essence orders to pack.  During the summer  it's similar but there is the added attraction of gardens to commune with.

How would I live if I didn't have to run a business?  I'd probably rarely go back inside.  I'm pretty good at going without much food from years of farming as a young mother with not enough hours in the day.  A handful of nuts in a pocket and I'm good for the hours!  I can pretty easily fall into the herd schedule of lazing around in the sun with a few forays into different parts of the pasture.

There is at least one other reason I farm.  I really like to eat good food.  Well, let me amend that.  I actually end up spending more time growing good food than eating it but I like to make food happen!  Fruit, nuts, vegetables, herbs, edible flowers.....it's all exciting to me!  The only way I know to make sure I eat quality food is to know where it came from and how it was grown.  That's pretty hard at a supermarket.  When I was 19 and growing most of my food someone expressed that it must be difficult to do that.  My reply was that it seemed a lot easier than to have such a huge disconnect between me and the food I put into my body.  Most of the food I ate was part of my life from seed onwards at that time and in those days not much distraction from the rest of the world to dilute my relationship with my food crops.

This year I'm working on finding balance in my schedule.  I seek to create days with less information distraction from the greater world and more information from the extremely local world.  I'll keep you posted!

Here's a photo of one of my close neighbors, also focused on an extremely local world.

Photo note: I took this photo several years ago.  She/he is about the size of an almond.  I spent hours watching the 10 that hatched in one of the water lily ponds here.

February's Golden Sun

Finally remembered to take a camera up to the barn.  It was below freezing but I figured I could get a few photos before the camera shut down.

Today some notes on a few little things that have worked out well in our barn.

First of all, I love how much sun comes in.  The goat side is on the west and the light streams into their stalls and their run in area.
Here's the stall.  Notice the black rubber bumpy itching panels.  They still haven't really gotten the hang of them.  Notice Vera watching in the doorway keeping an eye on the does.  Do you think she's counting to make sure everyone is in?

Here's the other end of the same stall.

Here's the doe stall for when I separate the milkers from their kids overnight.  They can still see each other and often sleep near each other on opposite sides of the wire panel.

There's a goat and dog sized door into the run-in area.  Here's Stella peeking out.  She's due April 4 but it's her fist pregnancy and she's not big yet.  I hope she only has 1 or 2.

The run-in area is nice and large.  The does have half of it and the ewes have the other half.  I put a platform in the goat side and my brother built a dog house.

I chose the size of the doghouse to be big enough for both to fit in but small enough that they could build up some heat in there.  The opening faces the exit in case they need to leave and do livestock guardian duties quickly. The siting of the doghouse also provides a windbreak against west winds, something the goats appreciate.  They like to lounge on top of it in the afternoon sun when it's not windy.

Then there are those goat housekeeping problems....

So after a couple of years of grabbing a handful of waste hay to sweep off the goat "berries" I decided that maybe what I really needed was a windshield brush since it would do double duty; sweep off berries and the scraper could be used when they'd been stepped on and smooshed onto the surface!  It hangs nearby on a bit of framing.

Another idea I had was the piece of scrap 2X6 that I lay along the top of one of the hay mangers on the center aisle side of the stall.  It allowed me to balance feed bowls, flakes of hay and buckets of water up there so I didn't have to be holding stuff when sidling through the gates.  While that worked well the board did get in the way of filling the manger it was on so I had to move it and sometimes it would fall off into the aisle.  I decided it should be hinged so that it could be flipped up when the manger needed filling and down when I needed to balance stuff on it.  Feed pans and water bucket on it waiting to be taken away when I leave the stall.

Here it is flipped up for manger filling.

You  may notice that the goats are pretty pudgy.  (They only get 1/4 cup of grain so they are not being overfed, honest!)  Between all their fur and their full rumens they rather look like ottomans with heads and tails.  Because of this I've been considering myself to be royalty; Queen of the Ottoman Empire!

Here is the ewe stall.  They are expecting dinner.....

Chores are done and Vera is on watch duty.  Fergey is probably patrolling the perimeter already.