Goats in May Pasture

Icy and Sadie with her babies Jane and Annie

Sadie with Jane and Annie

Moon and Annie playing "King of the Mountain" while Pirate and Ellie look on

Star chewing on a stick while Annie and Jane come and investigate!

Angel relaxing under the fir trees.

Elsie's Chickies

Elsie loves chickens. She's been begging for some for the past couple years. This year she was finally allowed to get some. These are the 6 half grown pullets that arrived home yesterday. They were shipped as tiny chicks a couple weeks ago but since mum and Elsie were in Canada I didn't feel like taking care of them as its pretty intensive when they're small. So they stayed with a friend until Elsie came home.

Um, yes they are in our bath tub!

They are "Barred Plymouth Rock" chicks

Elsie very carefully taking them out to the "chicken tractor"

Happy Girl!

MayBees (Bad Pun)

On the way to the hives

Some of the hives, I couldn't get too close because they kept "zinging" me to chase me away. They don't like their photo taken. :)

Across the pond. The black locust trees are blooming and the bees are working them furiously.

Black Locust blossoms

The hives under a black locust tree. I LOVE black locust honey - its light and so delicately flavored. Usually the trees bloom at the end of April but with all the cool weather we've had they're only just now in bloom. These are one of the bees favorite trees and studies have shown that the bees can make 16,000 pounds of honey from an acre of the mature black locust.

So now, hopefully, we shall have a honey flow!

Gardens in Bloom

Update

Market started two weeks ago - yay! I didn't attend last week but plan on going this next Saturday unless it rains. It was *so* nice to be there again, looks like it will be a great Farmer's Market this year! I'm working on candles, though I don't know how many I will have ready by Saturday. Life's kinda been throwing me curve balls recently so I haven't got as much completed as I had hoped.

Goats are doing really well. Since the babies were all born within a week of eachother they all are virtually the same size. They play together constantly, forming a "goat gang" racing around the pasture, trying to butt eachother off of tree stumps and high places. The recent rains have made everything a little muddy but it will probably all dry out soon and it brings the grass along really well so I'm not complaining.

I noticed the Black Locust blossoms are almost ready to open so we should have our first honey flow soon! Yay! The hives are doing very well considering how cool it's been and they are behind where they'd normally be this time of year.

Happy Pasture

Here are some pictures from last night. The goats are out on pasture and very happy. Yay for new grass!

Annie

Jane

Waiting to be brought up to the shed for supper.
L-R Sadie, babies, Icy, Ellie and Angel

Ellie's newborns are just so sleepy. They were curled up in the shelter.

Ellie's baby pix

As I posted earlier Ellie kidded, I've added a couple pictures.

Aren't they lovely? Such wild markings too!
On a side note, I'm still using my sister's camera which has a strange smear on the bottom of the pictures. I haven't got my camera back.

Ellie had Kids

The last of the goat kids for this season were born last night. Ellie is a proud mother of twins - a buckling and a doeling.

My little sister Elsie and I were home by ourselves and I knew Ellie was in labor. Elsie is almost 7 and loves the goats like they are her best friends. She spends hours each day playing with them and is heartbroken whenever one is sold, so you can imagine how tremendously excited she was about this birth. Kid number 1 was born relatively easily, I had to assist a little as he was a huge buck kid and got a bit stuck. Elsie has dubbed him "Pirate". First she wanted to call him "Patches" but now it's "Pirate". No idea how that evolved. The second kid was born 10 minutes later. There weren't any problems but I allowed Elsie to assist. As you can imagine she was estatic.

Both kids are large, very healthy, strong and WILD colored. Oh my, I will post pictures tonight so you can see for yourself, but they are black with all sorts of white patches and stripes.

This concludes the goat births for this year. All four of my does have had twins, 3 males and 5 females total. I'm not complaining at all. Everyone has been born healthy and the does didn't have any major problems giving birth - I'm happy!