Barnful

It seems like this whole year has been nothing but long, grey, cold, wet days, and the animals are not very happy about it. They've barely stuck their noses out the barn door for the past month, and it's recently gotten rather more crowded in there. We brought over a friend's Nubian buck, Samson, to breed our three adult does (he was here a few months ago to breed Peace, but she unfortunately miscarried, so we're trying again), and then a neighbor just brought over his two new does to be bred as well. Samson thinks he's died and gone to heaven!

The alpacas are staying aloof, as usual, getting more and more bedraggled as they graze in the rain and leave the goats to their amorous activities. Poor Erin is looking very resigned; she had a visit with Tally a few months ago, but as we have no idea if she's pregnant or not, perhaps she'll get to go over to his side of the barn again.

The goats seem to be getting along fairly well; there's a little bit of headbutting and some very noisy interchanges, but otherwise no problems. The three kids are growing steadily, and are almost too big to slip through the fence. Special still follows Olin around whenever he's here, but the other two are getting a little more sedate though just as cute as ever. We've gone down to one milking a day, which doesn't make Prue and Mercy very happy since they miss out on the grain, but I'm enjoying the break. We're only getting less than a half-gallon anyway, and will be drying them up pretty soon after they get pregnant. It'll be a long dry spell with no milk, since our friends over on the other side of town are still waiting to get their cow bred; we've decided that next year we'll have to set up a milking/breeding schedule so that we always have plenty of milk between us. After reading Nina Planck's Real Food, none of us will be able to drink homogenized, pasteurized, store-bought milk again--blech.