Is It Spring Already?

I remember going to the pasture with the goats back on December 24th and taking the camera along to get some pictures of the late season pasture.  Even though there was snow on the mountains, the goats had been going down there each day for several hours and foraging.  On that day they looked around and went right back to the barn.  It was tough getting a picture of them down there, but I did, as they headed back up the alley.  I was all set to sit and write about the end of the pasture season but it seemed as though the time just slipped away with all the goings on.  Truth be told, I am not a big fan of sitting at the computer and writing.  The computer sits up in a spare bedroom and since we try to save energy the room is a bit cool.  And mostly, it is at the end of the day that I have the most time to spend here, but have the least amount of creative juices flowing to write something that would have any value.  Today is a bit different, it's 5 am and I am sitting here with a fresh cup of coffee while the Farmwife gets some more sleep.

Incredibly, it is also March 10th.  The Winter season has flown by.  We really didn't have much of a winter here and so the snowy days that could be spent at the computer actually turned out to be days spent cutting firewood.  We have never had so much firewood at the end of the heating season as we will have this year.  Actually, we are in a drought condition with the incredible lack of precipitation we are experiencing so far this year.  Let's just hope to get back to "normal" weather for the rest of this year.  Even though we are in a winter drought, the ground in the pastures is still saturated from last falls non-stop rain.

 We also had a relatively mild winter.  Very few days when we needed to have the heaters turned on to keep the water tubs free of ice.  That made for the most challenges for cutting wood as the ground is incredibly soft.  I also don't know how the open winter will affect the parasites that lurk in the pastures, most notably, the dreaded barberpole worm.  We will see as we move forward into the grazing season which is still over a month away.  Kidding season, however, is right around the corner and we have begun preparations for the new crop of kids we are waiting for. Right now we are refurbishing the buck lot.  The shed is getting a residing job and the fences will get a good upgrade with some new poly-twine offsets to keep the bucks from escaping to spend more time with the ladies.  As soon as the buck lot is complete they will move from the main barn and the spring barn cleaning begins and then we set up the kidding pens and before you know it the Farmwife will be taking pictures to post of new arrivals.  Wow, there is a lot to do!

We are expecting the first kids to arrive about April 3rd or 4th.  This year we will have only Kiko cross kids born here.  The Boer buck never went with the herd.  He went to the market.  His kids last year didn't grow as well as the Kiko kids.  We also have some of the Kikos that have not needed to be wormed.  Quite an accomplishment in this environment, but certainly not without precedent.  Dr. An Peischel, who raises Kikos in Tennessee has not needed to worm her goats in the past sixteen years!  That is the result of her relentless selection for parasite resistance in her goats.  This is certainly appealing to us since we don't like using all of those harsh chemical dewormers.  We believe that there are opportunities to produce high quality goat meat without having to feed them lots of grain and dose them with chemicals to keep them alive.  We want to have a sustainable operation here and the selection of the goats is the key.

I will make a greater effort to keep this blog updated more frequently now that there is more to report.  We have some new seedings to try out this year and some improvement projects planned.  We are looking down the road for the next few years to try a major upgrade of our forages here and try to get alfalfa growing again on this farm.  That would make us able to produce all of our own protein needs here at the farm instead of having to purchase soybeans to supplement the hay at the end of pregnancy and beginning of lactation until the pasture season starts.  The key seems to be to find ways to become more sustainable by using fewer outside inputs.  It will have to become a way of life to search these opportunities out and put them in practice.  At times, this can be quite a challenge, but it will pay huge dividends in the end.