So bloomin' busy!

I'm trying to keep up, myself. We went with Girl Scouts out West this June (troop1156@blogspot.com) and I've been trying to make up those two weeks ever since we got back. There was a lot of rain in June, which is great for the garden, pastures and bees, but July's been pretty dry. Our animals are doing all right, but only because we have plenty of pasture and woods for them to forage around. One farmer said today that if it doesn't rain soon, they will have to start feeding hay to their cattle.

With heat indexes over 100°F just about every day for the past month, doing anything is hot, sweaty work. But we are making slow progress. Charles and Joe Kramer started clearing for new fencing the first week in July and we finally finished it and put animals on the correct side of the fence two weeks ago. So far, four of my eight males are where they're supposed to me (although that could change at any minute). I'm still working on that. Of the four "Good Goats" one of them is a replacement ram. We brought "Lurch" home last Wednesday and he seems quite happy with Belt, Spot and Flint. Lurch is a Jacobs/Dorper cross, and comes to us from the same farm that we got Cousin It from a couple years ago. For those of you who don't remember, Cousin It starred in Christmas Eve dinner, because he couldn't keep his horns to himself.

The house is also moving slowly along. The crawl space is now framed out, and we have to put down a moisture barrier before we can put on the metal siding. I can't wait until my house turns red. Along with the completed siding, we will also install the soffit and woodburning stove chimney, while we have the big manlift on site. My fingers are crossed that the metal will start going up this weekend.

A month gone, just like that!

It's been a busy month, not only with the house, but with farm work, graduations and Girl Scouts. I doubt it will be much quieter for the next month, so I thought I really should stop for a few minutes to update everyone on our progress.

Quote from Charles: "Those people on Extreme Home Makeover really misrepresent how long it takes to build a house. I thought we'd be at this stage by about Day 12."
All the windows have been installed in the house, as well as the roof trim and ridge cap. We bought our windows at a Habitat for Humanity Rehome auction about three years ago, thanks in most part to the auctioneer, my cousin John Potts. Our windows used to be in the hospital in Henderson (KY)and only cost us $130 TOTAL, for about twice as many windows as we need. Each one was taken apart, cleaned and the corners resealed with silicon. And considering they've been in the barn all that time, they look like brand new.

May on the farm means it's time to bring in the hay and put out the garden. My vegetable garden was nearly doubled this year to get ready for ramped up production. The new part will take a couple of years to condition, but it's nice to look at. The weather really heated up this spring, with days already in the 80s and 90sF. Seedlings really struggle to get started, but we're getting there. I still have to put in some tomatoes, peppers, egg plant and basil. And I'd really like to be done by today! We're also receiving three new beehives from some good friends that are moving to Malaysia soon.

We did a deal with a neighbor and he cut and baled hay for us. About 5 acres of hay gives us 185 bales of about 70 pounds each (or nearly 13,000 lbs total). In return, he gets to cut a further 20 acres for his own use. It may sound a little unfair, but considering the time and fuel it takes us to cut those 5 acres, we came out winners! The only problem was his timing was off - he started baling hay at about 3pm on Saturday. So we had about 3 hours to haul in those 185 bales, get cleaned up and at Graduation by 6pm. We made it, but it was hard work!

I attended both Union County Middle and High School graduations last week. Three of my Girl Scouts - Ashley, Gretchen and Katelyn - will move up to the high school next fall, and Ashley's older sister Kristen graduated high school. I don't think I've been to a high school graduation since I graduated, and it was nice to see so many people attending.

In and out

On Saturday (May 1) my mother, Peggy, and step-father, Scott, came up to Kentucky to help out on our house. The last time they visited (and worked) was in November when we were putting board up on the outside of the downstairs. Since then, we've framed and clad the upstairs and put on the whole roof.

The main aim we had for Saturday was to install our front door. It's a big, heavy French door set, and having extra people to heft it around was a definite bonus. It rained Friday night, so everything was a little soggy, but it didn't rain all morning on Saturday...until three of us were standing outside the front door putting it into place, that is! With only one small injury (Ma got a blood blister when the skin of her waist got pinched between the door and the front steps) and a small mess of Liquid Nails smeared everywhere, we got the door installed, plumb and level.

Aunt Bev and Uncle Steve brought lunch out to us, which gave us strength to do one more little chore. Our woodburning stove was being stored in the barn, and we brought it down to the house, so we can start siting it in place. When we come to install metal siding, we need to also install the special collar that takes the chimney outside the house. The stove only weighs about 400 lbs. so it was a piece of cake. It was a relatively short workday, but it was work we definitely needed two extra people to complete. Then, of course, we had to get cleaned up so we could drink mint juleps and watch the Kentucky Derby!

Kids are growing

This week I noticed about 10 goats all on top of their largest shelter. Is it any wonder it's falling over on one corner? I snapped a couple of photos of this year's kids all playing on top of their house, being babysat by two year olds, Belt and Spot, lazing on the next nearest shelter. The babies are so cute when they're learning to jump and climb, but they're also getting a little too big for their britches. They are still small enough to fit through the gate and it drives mom crazy that her babies are on the other side of the electric fence. From an outsider's point of view it might be funny to see grown-ups running around waving their arms and shouting at the baby goats that are outside the fence, but for us, it's just every-day stuff.

Roof metal is finished

This side of the roof only took us 2 days to complete, compared to 3 1/2 days for the western side of the roof. Part of our improved speed was improved skill, but it was also a little cooler, and we were motivated by predictions of storms over the weekend. It was exhausting work, and hot as anything as soon as the sun came out. All we now have left to do on the roof is: trim work on the gable edges (that's the super-tall peak), ridge cap along the center of the roof from front to back, and touch up all the paint that I scratched during installation.

After we finished the roof on Thursday afternoon, we mowed a lot of grass. Charles did the most part with the ride-on mower and I did around the septic tank with the push mower. I love seeing my lawn freshly mowed.

But it did rain a lot this weekend, a little over 2 inches, and I can confidently report that the rain no longer stays mainly in my living room. A little rain blew in through the hole where the front door will be, but not much, and definitely no rain from the direction of the roof. Yipee! Despite the rain, we did manage to do some work in the vegetable garden, planting seeds for beans, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins.

Half-way there

When you're roofing, you never use the phrase, "It's all downhill from here," but we completed the west half of our roof yesterday evening. Now with every sheet of metal we install we're closer to the end than the beginning. To say the least, the last 9 pieces that filled in the last 7-feet of width, were difficult. Before these, we could sit on the slightly slip-proof roof wrap and use our right hands to screw the metal down. For the last 9 sheets (2 at the full 3-foot width and one piece about 1-foot wide), we had to sit on the sheet metal and use left hands a lot more.
Now, the sheet metal is very slick - all the better to shed water, snow and ice. In addition, the metal is covered with dusty, yellow tree pollen. Thank goodness I teach a yoga class. My five sticky rubber yoga mats were pressed into service, with the added benefit of padding between our bums and the hot sheet metal covered in bolt-head screws. Sorry I don't have a picture of that - I was up on the roof and needed all my hands to hold on!

What I don't want to be when I grow up

The list is long, but the most recent addition is a roofer. Charles and I spent Saturday and Sunday putting metal on our roof and we are very proud to say that one-third is complete. That's 27 sheets of ribbed metal, 36-inches wide, 12 feet long, 30 screws in every sheet. The west side of the roof has about 4 hours of work to go until it's completed.
I'm sunburned, sore, chapped and exhausted, but it does look good.

Now on Facebook

Heather Kirton and Charles Kirton are now on Facebook. We resisted for a long time, but one of our favorite families is about to spend 2 years in Malaysia at a fabulous private school in Penang, and they're all on Facebook. So that will be the easiest way to keep up with them.
And it just goes to show that maybe I should have joined earlier. Everyone's there, so I'm hoping to make new connections with old Girl Guides, friends from England, and Girl Scouts who went to Poacher 2008 with us. Okay, so I'm texting now, I'm blogging and I'm on Facebook. I might have to go to MySpace, too, but I'm never going to Twitter.

Finally Maisie has her babies

We were getting worried that Maisie the goat was going to have a whole litter of baby goats. She looked huge, but yesterday afternoon, about 3:00, she gave birth to twin bucklings. We've named them Antonio and Sebastian. It's a complete coincidence that those are the names of friends in both The Tempest and Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, because Ashley named them and says she hasn't ever heard of either of the plays!

Flint goes into the field in the afternoons, when we can trick him into staying there. He's still small enough to fit in between the bars on the gate to the field, so I guess if we want him to stay there we need to do something about that. He trained himself on the electric fence, so that's not a problem, but he would just prefer not to be in the field with the big goats. Maybe these two new bucklings will give him some-goat to play with!

Also, I'm going to take older photos off the main blog page and put them onto Shutterfly. You can find them here: http://hartkirtonfarms.shutterfly.com/. All of the house photos and older photos are there, too.

Another ram lamb

Mabel is a yearling ewe (Cathy Gale's daughter from last year), and she had a ram lamb on Saturday, April 3. I generally only check on my sheep once a day, when I feed them in the morning. I can see them from the driveway, but from there, they are about 300 yards away. So on Easter morning I was surprised to see an extra lamb in the field. I wasn't expecting Mabel to have a baby so soon, because she didn't look very big. Just goes to show what I know!

We had a very nice Easter lunch with my stepmother, Brenda's family yesterday. Then we sat out on the back patio rolling hanks of yarn into balls for her mother, Marty. The weather was so pretty, warm with a pleasant breeze. We had to leave pretty early because I had to go home to feed my bottle babies, but it was nice catching up with everyone.

After feeding, Charles and I spent an hour or so in our vegetable garden, sowing seeds for spinach, lettuce, chard, and leafy herbs - dill, cilantro, parsley, par-cel, fennel and chives. Last year I missed lettuce season because it was too wet to till the garden. This year, we've already tilled twice, so I have high hopes. Seedlings are also coming along well, with okra, tomatoes and peppers already making leaves. Broccoli is slower than I expected, but I hope to get enough to put some in the freezer for the summer.

Just when it's all going smoothly

With animals, it's always hard to tell what they're thinking. One of our ewes, Cathy Gale, gave birth to twins on Tuesday (March 30), one ram lamb and one ewe lamb. At first she didn't want anything to do with either one of them, but eventually she allowed the ram lamb to eat. Cathy has completely, violently rejected her ewe lamb, so now I have two babies to bottle feed. Cathy and her ram lamb are living in the barn so I can milk her twice a day to feed the ewe lamb. Now that the lambs are four days old, I can start cutting the sheep milk with lamb milk replacement formula, but I will probably keep milking Cathy for another week to get a good supply. Then I will put Cathy and her ram lamb back out in the field with the rest of the sheep; the ewe lamb will be bottle fed for about 6 weeks, until I am sure she's eating grass and sweet feed.
Cathy had a dead lamb the first year we owned her - it weighed in at 14 lbs, and was too big to survive being born. Then last year she had a set of twins with no problems at all. So I don't know happened that this sweet little ewe lamb was abandoned by her mother. But we've had good success with our first bottle lamb, Emma Piel, who is still doing a terrific job raising triplets all on her own!

Triplets again!

Sunday morning, we received another set of triplets but this time in the sheep flock. Emma Piel, our first ewe that we raised with a bottle, produced her first set of triplets. Two ram lambs and a ewe lamb.
It was also my first time to see one born. We'd gone down to check on Emma at about 10:45 am, because she was acting strange at 8:30am. Sheep can develop pregnancy ketosis, where they lose the ability to metabolise carbohydrates, and they can die without treatment. At 10:45 am, Emma had started labor, so we left her alone to plant three boysenberry bushes up the lane. At 11:00 we went back to the sheep field because I'd left my gloves on top of their shelter.
By then Emma had one baby, and we could see the second one coming. She was completely professional, three pushes lying down and then she stood up for gravity to help. We left to pick up Ashley from town. At about 1:00pm we walked down so Ashley could see the twins, and to our surprise, Emma had three babies! The weather yesterday was really unpleasant - rainy, windy and cold - so I worried all night about those three little lambs. But this morning everyone was in really good shape.

One ram and three little ladies

On Wednesday afternoon (I assume because he was there Thursday morning) Tweed, our Lincoln Longwool ewe, gave birth to our farm's first baby of the year: a lovely little ram lamb. He has to run around a lot because Tweed is not a very trusting sheep, but it proves he's in good health. It took ten minutes to take his picture because Tweed not only kept him moving around, but she kept herself between me and the baby.

Then today, around 6pm, Eliza, our beautiful brown goat doe brought out triplets! And all three doelings! What luck to get three baby girls all at once - Grace is brown with white front boots and a white belt, Tabitha is brown with white-ish ears, and Anastasia is black with a white spot on her belly. I'm keeping a close eye on them to make sure she's taking good care of all three of them, but Eliza's a very attentive mother who makes good rich milk. The only goat that seems to be having problems is Lily, Eliza's only baby from last spring - she doesn't quite know what to do with herself now that her mother is completely occupied with the three new babies. Lily will be bred for the first time in October, so she'll find out what it's all about this time next year.

First new baby of 2010!

Our farm has its first new baby of the year, but he wasn’t born here. “Flint” comes to us from Merryl Winstein of St Louis, Missouri, and will be our new herd sire. At only four days old, it’s hard to imagine him turning into a stinky, horny, lewd billy goat, but that’s his destiny. He’ll be bottle fed for six to eight weeks, but hopefully he’ll be able to join the rest of the herd in a couple of weeks, once we have other babies on the ground, so he grows up as “one of the gang”. Then after about 8 weeks, all the males will be separated from the females to avoid any unexpected winter births.

Flint will be our only in-tact male goat on the farm, unless we get another one from Merryl in a couple of weeks. Since he is completely unrelated to any other goat on the farm, he will be bred with Eliza, Maisie, Sarah, Lily and Phoebe in October. Eliza and Maisie (the goats) are just about ready to have their own babies. I think Eliza will have her baby this week, but since it’s rainy and wet right now, I’m hoping she’ll wait until the sun shines. Maisie should be a week or two later. Up to five ewes are also expecting, but probably not until later this week at the earliest. Keep checking back for more babies!

Merryl has the most amazing set up, raising dairy goats on just half an acre in a normal St Louis neighborhood! This is her new website: http://www.cheesemakingclass.com/. In Missouri, she is allowed to sell raw milk from her farm.

Roof Stage 2 Completed

After we installed the board on the roof of our house, we thought the house would be fairly waterproof. We were wrong. It was better than before the boards went on, but we were hoping for even less water. Stage 2 was completed this week, when we put synthetic roof felt over the boards. Charles and I spent almost 4 days up on the roof rolling out, stapling and nailing. We’re both very glad we don’t have a steeper pitched roof, because it was very hard to stay in place as it is.
Our metal for the roof may arrive this week, but we don’t have a delivery date yet. In the meantime, Charles will be working on the last four interior walls and starting to figure out how to install the windows and doors. Once the windows and doors are in, we have to put some anchoring framework under the house to close in the crawlspace. Then the exterior metal goes on the walls, along with all its associated trim work – window framing, corners, soffits and the chimney for the woodburning stove. At that point the exterior work in done. Then it’s on to plumbing, electricity, wall board and flooring. “Eventually” remains my favorite word.

Finally up to date - February 5, 2010

It snowed last night - about 2 inches. That brings us up to about 1 foot of snow this year. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much - after last year's ice storm, snow is a welcome alternative. However I have shoveled snow out of my living room THREE times in the past month. I mean, it's good exercise, but it's very demoralizing.

All of the roof rafters were finished the first week of January (before the first snow), and then we worked on the plywood wall cladding for the upstairs. Last weekend we put house wrap on most of the upstairs walls, and started installing the overhangs for the roof at the front and back of the house. I suppose that if we were being filmed, it would be a comedy. It might be R-rated, though, because there's a fair amount of swearing going on. I hope we're getting the hang of it, because we're only 40% complete, and we hope to get done tomorrow. We had to take today off because it was too cold, wet, windy and icy to work upstairs on ladders and scaffolding.

We took two trips down to visit my mother in Tennessee in January. The first was the weekend of January 15 - 17, when we combined Christmas and Charles's birthday celebrations. We ate out with friends, went shopping in Birmingham, Alabama, and played on the Wii a lot! The following weekend, we stayed with Ma and Scott while we attended the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Chattanooga. It's the third time in four years that we've attended and we get something really good out of each visit. Around here, I'm known as the weird farmer - small livestock, bees, market garden, near-organic or natural practices. At the SSAWG conference, I'm way on the side of normal compared to some people!