Don't forget....

I do have that naming contest for the goat-lets going on. The winner will get a 6oz bottle of my hand-made, goat milk lotion... scent of their choice.

I'm new to contests... I don't know if I have enough readers to have a contest.... the deadline is April 19. Post to comments anywhere along the way in this blog and I'll keep a tally of the names and the participants!

My Product Revealed!

It's Friday - hard to be grumpy on a Friday.

I stopped in The Fig Leaf, a local quilt shop, yesterday and signed up for their quilt club. It costs $5 for the year and I figured it would help my motivation for the quilt I'm doing with my Mom-In-Law, I might meet a new friend and it might be fun.

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The quilt shop ladies did look at me a bit funny when I told them I was hand piecing, they were a little disapproving and a bit shocked. I guess they all have sewing machines! To me, isn't there something romantic and old timey about piecing by hand? It's what women did before sewing machines when there were quilting circles and quilting was about women coming together to teach, learn and share with each other. Hand piecing is from another time.

If I lived closer to Furry Husband's mom, I would meet her weekly for quilting. It's really not so much fun on my own, but if there was a quilting circle? I would go and learn and relish the feminine energy.

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed a little 2oz bottle of lotion for sale... $5.99! Makes me feel much more comfortable about the wholesale price I want to ask for my 6oz bottle of lotion. I'm pretty sure retailers mark up 100%. I know that my frugal, cheap ass self probably wouldn't pay a lot for a bottle of lotion regularly at the grocery store ... but I might pay it if I was in a boutique or a specialty store where I tended to "splurge".

The last order I filled for my lotion, I ran out of bottles. My order was for two of my scents, not all four and since I was running low on bottles, I only made the two, but I think you'll get the idea.

I should have my re-order of bottles today or tomorrow and I'll make some of each scent to begin peddling my wares. I have many, many scents but opted to begin with four:

Frutti Pa-tootie --a fun, fresh, fruity scent with a smidge of topical, it makes me think of the 1940's musicals where women wore tall fruit head decor while bearing their belly buttons.

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Tea for Two ----a unisex scent that is earthy and cozy reminiscent of dry black tea leaves.

Porch Swing --a green scent reminding me of summer, sitting on the porch, smelling fresh cut lawns.

Plain Jane ---- my lotion without the fragrance

Figure I could add a new sent every once and a while and rotate one of my labels with a new fragrance ... each label has a different color associated with the title. Frutti is yellow, Tea is hot pink, Porch is green and Plain is black with white lettering.

My 6oz bottles, and the four-pack which will contain each of the four scents in 2oz bottles.

And because everyone loves a story... we include our story on each bottle. The four-pack has a landscape card insert in the back that looks just like this - only ya know - horizontal-like. Whattya think? I think my friend B did a brilliant job with the design and my lotions look so professional and fun! Definitely ready for retail....

Grumpy

I'm grumpy.

I'm really hating spring... damn fickle. Spring is a tease. I hate her. Sunny and 70 one day and the next it's cold, cloudy, windy and there is rain or snow. (curse, curse, grumble, grumble, curse)

Yesterday was the first day it was dry enough to ride and get horses exercised but I had that water meeting to attend and chores to do. Furry Husband was gone again at a wine tasting event... I'm feeling very grumpy about being a wine widow right now.

The dogs are all wound up because we haven't had time to really tire them out and play with them or take them on long walks, our place is in dire need of clean up both inside and out before our "Goat Fest Party" next Saturday...

Furry Husband will be gone Fri and Sat this weekend.

There is a lot to do for ONE person at our place - enough that when you are feeding and caring for everything on your own, it's hard to accomplish much else during the week. I'm seeing everything piling up... I really hope it's nice this weekend so I can catch up a little. That will help me not be so grumpy.

I'm beginning to think of the yard - the stress of missing the window of opportunity is beginning to tickle my brain. We live where the soil is heavy and clay. The sun is HOT and bakes everything to red concrete. We don't have grass - we have kocia weed and bind weed and incredibly hard concrete-like clay.

I want grass.

I don't want a little green postage stamp lawn, but I want grass.

I researched grass, visited the Denver Botanic Gardens Xeriscape/Native areas, Googled and read and looked for a good grass to grow in our area... I decided on Blue Grama grass... it is best germinated from seed, it thrives in bad soil so your soil doesn't need to be amended... it is native... it is low growing.... it is xeric and doesn't mind drought conditions. I could toss in a few native wild flowers and we have this cool, native, "lawn" that doesn't need a ton of maintenance, reduces the mud around our place, increases property value/curb appeal and our place doesn't look so much like a set from Deliverance.

I'm also looking at Buffalo grass... but turns out it doesn't germinate very well from seed. Works best by planting plugs... I'm trying to find some place local that sells Buffalo grass plugs...

We tried last year to grow grass... the old farmer that was helping us out by tilling up the area we wanted to plant with his tractor and seeding with his drill seeder decided he knew best and he planted rye grass from another job he had for rich people near a golf course. Not my Blue Grama. Not even Buffalo.

He was proud that he saved us money and used the last of this left over rye grass seed from this other job... didn't matter about all the research I did... didn't matter that his previous job probably had a sprinkler system and a way to water constantly. I have a hose and a damn sprinkler.

Some grass grew... not much.

This year I'll scale back to a smaller area (suprise, suprise that I often bite off more than I can chew). I think we can keep a smaller area more evenly moist with a hose and sprinkler and decrease my frantic-ness. I'll rent a rototiller, buy the seed, and plant it myself so it will be done the way I want it done dammit.

I need a NON-windy, sun-shiny day to spray for weeds. Then I rototill. I water to trick any weeds that are still lurking to sprout and show themselves... I spray again. And FINALLY I'll be ready to plant my Blue Grama grass... I need to get started. My window of opportunity is appearing... can't plant seed too late or it fries in the hot sun...

I guess all these projects, this window, the weather and the absence of Furry Husband are making Shanster a pissy, pissy girl.

Burn Heads....

Oh, the goat-lets are being disbudded today. We will be calling them "little burn heads" for a while.

Most dairy goats are disbudded because if they had horns they would use them - on people, on each other... not like they'd come running after me to savagely attack, but they play and they head butt and if they had horns... it'd be painful.

And they do really get after each other - there is a pecking order in our little goatie kingdom. They can be pretty mean to each other if one of them steps out of line! I don't want anyone hurt.

Also - they stick their heads through the fence and if they had horns, they'd get stuck. We had a buck with big horn scurs... (unfortunately, the bucks have so much testosterone that they will grow partial horns or pieces of horn after disbudding). This buck would stick his head through the fence and get stuck. He'd be stuck all day which is bad because they are stressed, can't get to food or water and it's SUPER hard to get a goat's head out of the fence.

Goats are all about opposites. If you push on them, they push right back twice as hard. If you try to pull their head, they pull right back twice as hard! Our does probably weigh around 160 - 180 lbs. The bucks are bigger - at least 200lbs.

I had to get our favorite neighbors to come over - it took THREE of us to angle this buck's head and push it back through the fence. In the pouring rain by the way....

So yeah - it's really just good animal management for the goat kids to be disbudded.

Most farms have A LOT of babies... 50+. They will heat the disbudding iron - an electric appliance with an iron end that gets red hot. The babies are held down and the iron goes on top of the horn bud, burning the hair and skin all the way down to the skull. It kills the horn growth and for does and wethers (castrated males) the horns never grow back.

It's NOT at all pleasant. The babies are screaming bloody murder, the smell of burning skin and hair is all around and once it's over, the kids stand around shaking and pissing themselves.

Furry Husband and I did it this way one year. Back in college I did this to a steer. I didn't like it either time.... it felt truly awful to inflict this much pain on an animal. Even understanding why I was doing it and it was for the best, I still felt sick to my stomach causing the pain.

Because we have so few kids, we take them to a veterinarian in Loveland, CO who puts the kids out, disbuds them, gives them pain killers and straps frozen bags of peas or corn on their little heads. She charges $10/kid. It's completely and totally worth it to us.

I understand it wouldn't be a possibility if we had 50+ kids a year. No way could we afford it and the logistics of getting that many kids to and from the vet would be a nightmare. I don't think the livestock owners who disbud the "normal" way are sadistic or mean. The goats really do recover quickly; they go on to bounce and spring all over the place.

It's just not how we decide to do it. shrug. I know other livestock producers would think we are nuts to do it that way and that is the beauty of things. We all have our own ways in this world and everyone is unique. Doesn't have to be wrong - it's simply different.

Bounce and Spring....

Heeeyyy - those could be good goatie names couldn't they?

It is a beautiful day - I think we hit 70 and we had a ton of meltage, most of the snow has disappeared. Only remnants of the biggest drifts are still visible. It's still muddy but much more like spring!

Tomorrow is our annual LADCO water meeting! All the neighbors who share the community well we use for pasture irrigation get together to discuss irrigation schedules, discuss any issues like drought or repairs etc. and when we will meet for ditch day - (a day we gather to clean up the irrigation ditches by burning weed/grass build up in them and we run new irrigation pipe if needed).

It's usually pretty boring and there are a lot of grumpy old men - "why. back in MY day, we worked those ditches for 3 hrs before we went home... you people don't know the meaning of a true ditch day!"

Our favorite neighbors are coming over with beer (which makes the LADCO water meeting much more bearable), Subway sammiches and chips before the meeting. Furry Husband has a wine tasting he has to host so he may not make it to the meeting.... *gasp*

....leaving me to fend for myself with grumpy George and grumpy Dillman. Boy does he owe me one!

Furry Husband Came Home!

He got home about 6pm last night! So nice to have him back and to have someone that talks BACK to me. I talk all day long to the dogs and cats, but they are a bit lacking when it comes to conversation reciprocation.

Remember the pictures I posted? Where I dug the 12' gate out at least one way before my shovel broke?

yeah.

well.

The wind kicked back up THE REST OF THE DAY and covered all my efforts. Looked like I never did a damn thing. Drifts all filled back in up to your knees.

Have I told you lately how much I HATE, HATE, HATE the flippin' wind?

The wine rack was looking pretty tempting at 11am... I mean what else did I have? Animal hair, quilt pieces, howling wind driving me insane... and there is all this wine in the next room to take the tension of drifts, snow, wind and ice away.

I waited til 4pm before I had a glass o' wine and I say KUDOS to me for my restraint.

I finished my last quilt squares and spread them all out in a way I wanted them to be... the way I found them most visually appealing. Moving and exchanging squares... standing back.... evaluating..... moving them some more.

Not at all easy in a house full of animals... especially when Itty Bitty Opal Kitty would pounce on a square, bunch it up with her paws, roll ninja style over the rest dislodging their order and dropping the bunched up square in another spot. I guess she was trying to rearrange them more to her tastes.

Then a dog would walk thru the squares. Stop, sit down, lift a leg for a sniff and lay down fully stretched out.... oh, this looks like a nice place to lay down, drop some of my shedding fur and lick myself.

Do you see why I could be driven to drink at 11am?

If you can't.... why don't you come on over? I'll lock YOU in with 3 dogs and 6 cats. YOU can be prisoner of the gale force winds we experience here during Spring and only 20 miles from the windy, friggin' Wyoming border.

When Furry Husband got home, he had to throw his bag over our front gate and climb it to get in. He thought I was pulling some huge practical joke because Denver didn't get any snow and even as he hit Ft. Collins - there wasn't any measurable snow.

Oh-ho Furry Husband. I would never joke about wind and drifting snow!

They had everything from our neck of the woods onward was closed. I-25 was closed. I-80 was closed. There were a ga-zillion big rigs parked in our tiny Wellington town to the East of us....

I'm glad he's home and I'm glad I'm OUT of the house and at work today. Did I mention there is no wind today? None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. No wind. Glorious of all glorious days!

I WAS digging out....

The sun is shining this morning and the wind is down to 15mph. I was trying to clear a path to our front gate so I could get in and out of our place without having to climb the damn thing when my snow shovel broke. Each time I would toss a shovel full of snow, the scoop part went right along with it.

I can open the gate IN wide enough for me to squeeze through but I can't open it the other direction because of the knee deep drift on the other side. At least they are hard and packed from all the wind so I can walk on top without sinking too far....

I was going to start digging at it with my broken shovel but maybe in my old age I'm beginning to recognize futility?

I went out looking for the Sunday paper and the exposed drive-way, free of drifts is a sheet of ice. I went sliding, our little dog, Bequia, went sliding..... nope. Think I'm home bound again today! Good thing I have that quilt to work on.

Furry Husband is supposed to be home around 6 tonight. I hope he makes it AND brings home a new snow shovel!