Goat Tote Update

When we moved the goats to the new house we built this goat tote. We realized after a few trips that the connectors to attach the panels together weren't as strong as we would like. While shopping recently at our favorite Mennonite bulk foods store, Echo Hill, we saw their sheep fence with some new hinges. These wire panel connector hinges from Premier 1 attach two panels together and act as a hinge.  Because they go through each panel opening they hinge the two pieces along the entire length.
We ordered some and Alan wasted no time beefing up the Goat Tote.

We used the connector hinges to hold all the panels together and act as the hinge for the door.

We will feel much more confident that the tote won't fall apart while we are transporting animals!

The Catmometer

Lily is our catmometer. You can tell how warm the wood stove is by how close she is sleeping to the it.  Usually she sleeps about 2-3 feet away. Once the stove starts cooling down a little she moves up next to the stove.

As the stove gets cooler she moves a little underneath.

If we are really slacking and the stove needs attention immediately she is pretty much completely under the stove.

For these pictures we were letting the stove go out so we could clean out the ash. Lily was not happy about that!

The Orchard

Last winter with horrible weather the deer used my apple trees as a snack bar. Consequently, we harvested about five apples. The growth they put on last summer should get us a better harvest next fall, but not if the deer return to eat. Enter the three wire electric fence.

Our latest project over the past few weeks has been to fence in the area that will be the new orchard. This area encompasses the existing apples trees and heads down the south-east facing slope in a roughly 43x37 foot rectangle.  Alan hooked up the fence last night to the energizer and the meter pegged out at greater than 8,000 volts. Watch out deer!

With orchard area now defined I ordered some heirloom apple trees, a self fertile peach tree, two pear trees and a crab apple tree. Computer time has been used up reading all about organic orcharding and management.

Tagging the Lambs

Royal White Sheep all look the same at first glance. Now that we've had the sheep for a while I can tell all the ewes apart without looking at their tags, but I am sure that once all the lambs are born and growing they will be quite hard to tell apart. So for that reason, and others, we are tagging all our sheep. The ewes came with numbers. Three have tags in their left ear and one has it on the right ear. I like the idea of having ewes tagged on one ear and rams tagged on the other side.  Premier 1 has a great page on different numbering systems and other tagging FAQs. Since we won't be having a lot of sheep I am keeping it simple with just a chronological order and I decided to go with ewes having the tag in the right ear and rams in the left ear (that seems to be the common placement among people on line.)
Meet 0001 (AKA Big Boy):

And 0002 (AKA Little Boy):

They didn't make a sound when the tags were placed. A little grain for a treat afterward and they were happily jumping around as usual.

The Electric Fence

When the fence guys put in the new fence they added a wire around the top to electrify.  Alan got the charger hooked up and now the wire is hot. Our meter pegs out at 8,000 volts even at the farthest point. That should keep everyone in and predators out!
Alan also made this great little box to protect the charger. When the charger is on you can see the light blinking through the hole in the door and it makes a very audible click that is very reassuring.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Here is my obligatory "Boy is it cold outside" post.
At 2:30 PM today the temp sat at a balmy 18 degrees fahrenheit.

The lows have been in the single digits overnight and we are about as prepared as we could be.  I bought a heated bucket to keep at least one of the sheeps' water buckets unfrozen. I have another on back order. These are the greatest and I wonder why I never had one before now. Oh yeah, something about the directions saying not to use it outside. Since this is my first winter with a barn this is really the first time I could use one.  Now I can't wait for the second heated bucket to come.

The sheep are snug in their barn. Of course they are eating a ton of hay to keep their rumens working to make heat. And, thankfully, no one has lambed yet. Those lambs are a lot warmer inside their moms than they would be outside.  But we are ready for lambing as well. We have two heat lamps, extra bulbs and our lambing kit ready to go. It would be nice if they would wait until it's not so frigid outside.

Inside, our wood stove has been burning nonstop for a few days. Alan has been getting up in the middle of the night to add more wood. It's nice to wake up to a warm house. Of course our bedroom is about 50 degrees at night since we have to keep the door shut to keep the cats out and there is no insulation in the outside wall.  But that's nothing an extra quilt and burrowing under the covers won't fix.

Icy Roads

At our old house there were two car accidents nearby in the 30 years we owned the place. At our new house I have lost count of the accidents we have seen in the two and a half years we have been here. Last night we heard a lot of tire spinning going on. When we went outside we found this poor soul.

He was trying to go up the hill to the right (which is much steeper than it looks in this picture) but got stuck. As he backed down to try again his truck slid off the road and down the stream embankment. This is the second vehicle we have seen in this exact same position. The poor driver then lost his shoes in the stream trying to see, in the dark, if he could get himself out.

So here the truck sits this morning. They will try to pull out the truck with a backhoe this morning. Good Luck Guys!