Totes Ma Goats

New Kids on the Block er... Rock

I've wanted goats for as long as I can remember.  I've never actually had any so it has been a learning curve.  I wanted a doe (female) for milk and two males to train to pull a cart (more about this strange obsession below).  Dana and Mike gave me the little doeling for a birthday present!  She got some from the same place on the same day - we had like six goats on the backseat on the way home.

I got the two little boys so I would have matching working goats.  Well, one of the little boys was never quite "right" and he died.  It was pitiful knowing there was nothing I could do for him.  Just about the time I was going to put him down, he died.

I got them on March 20th.  They were born around a week before that.  So as of this writing they are still on the bottle... twice a day.  We are working to wean them off the bottle.  While Dana and Mike had milk cows producing it wasn't a problem, but they had to dry up the cows and that left me in the lurch.  I bought four gallons of goat milk from the same lady I got the goats from and decided it was time to wean them.  Because they're bottle fed, they treat me and Marc like their parents.  If anything startles them they run straight for us for protection.  It's completely adorable.

They wear collars with little bells and when they're out "playing" they prance and jump and the bell jingles.

In this pic of Snowflake below, you can see where she was "disbudded" - a nice word for having her horns seared to the point they won't grow.  I had the breeder take care of this unpleasant matter before getting any of them.  I certainly didn't want a horned goat and yet I knew I could never dehorn one.  As of today, the horn area is completely healed and the hair has grown over so you wouldn't know it was ever there.

Snowflake

I am not good at coming up with names.  Rylan named Snowflake.  The jury's still out on the boy, whom I call Boy.  I am leaning towards Casper the Friendly Goat. 

They have really grown. The pic below is Boy, quite soon after I got him.  He's just chillaxin.

 

And here he is trying to get in Marc's lap in that same chair.  He's just a BIT bigger now as you can see. He will get quite large - as tall as my waist. He'll be strong enough to pull a cart with a heavy load in it.

 

He kept leaning against Marc - it was so cute.   He definitely has a sweet personality. He has been "wethered" (neutered) so he is going to stay mild mannered.

 

Back to the goat cart obsession.  I remember my Dad had a do-it-yourself book called Children's Play Structures or some such.  He once set out to make a playhouse/fort, but it never got off the ground so to speak.  Anyway, in this book there were plans to make a Goat Cart and it showed a goat pulling kids (human ones) in a cart.  I was fascinated and still am.  I have visions of Boy pulling my grandkids in a cart in a parade.  He is becoming leash trained, so we're on the way. 

No Thank You

 

 

If you have gleaned anything at all about me reading my blog... take away this - I hate above all else, bugs of all kinds.  I even detest butterflies, except from a distance. 

 

One morning I saw this... thing... on the back screen door and got the best pic I could without actually going outside where it might come at me.  After querying my facebook peeps I learned it's a Luna Moth. 

 

After a quick google search, I found out it has a wingspan of up to 4.5 inches.  Not sure how big this one was as I wasn't getting too close.  Interestingly, according to google, the adult lives for only about one week and are rarely seen.  Frankly I  hope I never see another one.

Fish On

 

Fish On

 Late afternoon and time for a little fishing after work is done for the day.

 

We have three ponds on our place, the one pictured above being the largest.  The two pics above are taken with Marc in the same spot, I have just moved to different vantage points.  This pond is horse shoe shaped, with a peninsula in the middle. 

 

In it are bass and perch.  We've caught fish for dinner twice.  Catching them is fun but I draw the line at cleaning them.  Cleaning perch is a lot of work, but delicious eating.

Catch of the Day

Spring Brings Surprises

Narcissus

Each new season brings surprises here.  We noticed that quite literally on the first day of spring the frogs started singing.  Shortly thereafter bugs began to appear.  We decided at that point we really liked winter best of all.  In Texas you have bugs all year round so it never occurs to you that in some parts of the country winter means no critters.   We've decided we like a season with no bugs.

 

Cheery Daffodils

Spring brought other surprises too. Common yellow daffodils are everywhere here, even scattered in the woods. I can only guess that squirrels carried some bulbs into the woods and found that they didn't like them, dropped them, and they took root there.

 

First Spring Daffodils

My sisters who read this may recognize this statue.  When I was a kid, my Dad built a concrete, kidney shaped fish pond in our backyard.  I thought it was enough like a miniature swimming pool that I thought it might be fun to take a dip .... it was slimy and nasty and I never tried that again.  Anyway, he had this statute which is really a fountain in it.  There was a light switch at the back door and it activated the pump and water came out of the fish's mouth. I guess my parents pulled this fountain out of the pond when they sold the house and moved on.  They never had another fish pond so I guess this statue hung out in a flower garden for the next 20 or so years.  I have carried it around for the past 26 years and broke it once but Marc was able to fix it.  It has traveled from Texas to Arkansas and now resides by the well house, and lo and behold the first flowers of spring came up right beside it!

 

Marc built a rustic cedar fence and pergola in front (pics to come when I can figure out how to download them again off the "cloud"...) and I dug a SMALL clump of daffodils and transplanted them and turns out there were almost 50 bulbs in that little clump.  So I guess there are thousands on our place.  Next came Narcissus, or at least what I consider a Narcissus, pictured above.  They are very dainty flowers.  There weren't as many as the yellow daffodils.

 

Then came the purple and yellow bearded irises.  We didn't have as many here as some other folks do, but it was a nice surprise to have them pop up.  There are clumps of these beautiful flowers blooming along the highways.  Next spring I need to carry a bucket and shovel with me and dig some up.

 

Dana brought me a spray of roses that grow in her yard.  It's a climbing rose that's very prolific and hardy.  The flowers are small and don't have much scent, but lots of petals and lots of flowers.  I would really like to get cuttings started so I can have them growing here too. 

Back by Popular Demand

Another Christening Gown Made from Mother's Wedding Gown

Now that everyone is moving to Instagram, and away from Facebook I guess I'd better just come back to my blog.  I can't add the Instagram app to my Iphone until I upgrade to the newest operating system, and I can't do that without deleting some apps to free up memory.  I NEED all the apps I have already, and since I don't know if I NEED Instagram, I guess I will just live without it.  (Third World Problems)

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I finally finished a couple of christening gown orders that had me stressed out.  The first one was for a friend of my daughter and if she wasn't pleased it would be awkward.  She wanted a traditional gown for a boy, but wanted it to be unisex for additional children.  Her wedding gown was very pretty and completely lace.  The finished product turned out nice, but maybe a bit more frilly than what she had in mind. 

Because this gown is to be used by all babies born to the couple, I embroidered the parents' monograms and their wedding date, as well as the first baby's monogram and birthdate (which you can't see in this pic) on the slip.  They can add monograms for each additional baby.

 

Hard to tell here (with the gown hanging from a plant hanger in the window....) but the lace overlay is ruched, front and back, so it appears to be scalloped.  The bodice, sleeves and underskirt are satin.

 

The other order that I couldn't wait to get in the mail initially sounded like a really special project.  A grandmother wanted me to make outfits for her soon to be born twin granddaughters.  She was sending her wedding gown and the other grandmother was sending hers and I would use them both to make the two outfits.  The new outfits would be presented to the mom-to-be as a surprise at her baby shower.  The grandmothers' dresses were 70's era dresses that had very little usable fabric or trims, due in part because the materials used weren't the best quality to start with and because they hadn't been stored well.  One was dotted swiss and due to the discoloration the only way it would work was to use it as an overlay, over a color such as pink.  But the grandmother wanted all white.  I worked hard to clean and lighten up the trims to use them.  In the end I had to buy fabric and just embellish the gowns.  Grandmother didn't want bonnets so instead I made bibs using the dotted swiss over pink batiste (in the pic it looks peach for some reason), with the babies' monograms in pink.  They turned out pretty in the end and I was very happy to get them out in the mail.  (For the life of me I can't figure out why the pics below won't format correctly in blogger but you get the idea.)