Baby Goats

Yes, we have baby goats.  Two little girls came to us when they were 6 days old.  They came from my friend Leslie's amazing farm in Bodega Salmon Creek Ranch.  She has free range New Zealand Kiko goats and Muscovy ducks, and I mean FREE RANGE.  The goats roam the entire ranch with the protection of Anatolian shepherds that protect the goats from coyotes and mountain lions and the ducks from hawks, owls and coyotes.   Guard dogs are so important on a functioning ranch with free range animals.

Spring is baby goat season and Leslie is overwhelmed.  When the mother goats do the work it is managable, but when the mama's refuge their babies, than the humans have to take over and do all of the work.  So Leslie asked if we would like to bottle feed some babies for 7 weeks, and return them to the ranch after they are off the bottle.  In return for this work and effort, she will pay us with goat meat.  


For those of you that may need to bottle feed some goats in the future here is the recipe for goat formula:

1 gallon whole milk

1 12 ounce can evaporated milk

1 cup whole milk buttermilk

Little Imogen turns out to be a goat whisperer :)

Both children are enjoying the babies and Gage likes to feed them.  The goats, now named Marc and Mazy (yes we know they are both girls), follow us around and bring a lot of energy and happiness to our days.

Even Seamus is enjoying the babies.  He is a blue healer/lab mix and the blue healer is coming out.  He tries to herd the baby goats, but also would love to play with them.  They both try to nurse on Seamus's belly and penis, which doesn't seem to bother him a bit.  :)

For the next 6 weeks we truly have an urban homestead.  We now have 1 dog, 1 cat, 4 chickens and 2 baby goats and we are all loving it.  :)

Kisses for Imogen

Mazy

Marc

More soon on these wonderful, crazy, precocious baby goats.

The Girls

We have had the girls for 4 weeks now, it is time for introductions.

Here they are . . .

What a pretty backside they have :)

We (I mean Gage) named them Yoko, Minnow, Boulder and Cookie.  Cookie was actually named by the neighbor Ryan when she flew into their yard.  He specifically asked if we would name her Cookie and after his help in capturing her safely, how could I refuse?  To read more about the escape and rescue of our Cookie take a look at this post What the Bleep!


Cookie:

Minnow:

Boulder:

Yoko:

The girls are about 6 months old and still scrawny teenagers.  They will plump up in the next couple of months into big, round chickens.  As well as excellent layers!


Other members of the family enjoy watching the girls.

Some find maybe a little too much enjoyment out of watching them :)


So now I am thinking maybe 4 isn't enough.  Hmmmm. .   maybe we'll get a couple of chicks to add to our flock.  Time to lock up the girls for the night.   Good night.

Thick, chewy, yummy granola bars

I am in trouble.  I made these wonderful, thick, chewy and healthy granola bars.  A wonderful snack for the kids, made without preservatives or additives in my own kitchen.  The problem is, I can't stop eating them!  It doesn't matter how healthy something is, it becomes unhealthy when you don't stop.  So try these, they are wonderful.  But do so with a warning, they are irresistible.

It has been raining and raining and raining.  We have been making forts and obstacle courses.  Coming up with as many interesting, active, indoor activities as possible in a home without a basement, playroom or padded room with straight jackets.  All of these activities are fun and they can be quite stimulating.  However, when I look outside and see dark skies at noon and rain coming down what I really want to do, my truly favorite indoor activity is baking.  There is always bread to be made.  But my no-knead method (bread, bread, bread post) has made bread making a truly efficient project, taking up very little rainy day, indoor time.  As well I can only make so many cookies, cakes and other sweets - so I have sought out healthy and interesting snacks we can all enjoy.  My new favorite granola bars, sweetened with honey and dried fruit.

Here is the granola bar recipe.  I found this recipe at http://smittenkitchen.com, I made a few alterations and added a few suggestions.  Please feel free to play with the recipe and make whatever changes seem tasty to you.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 2/3 cups quick rolled oats (if gluten-free, be sure to use gluten-free oats)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar (I found you don't need any sugar the bars are sweet enough with the honey,  if you do however choose to add some sugar feel free to use any kind you'd like.  I found the dark brown sugar adds good flavor)
1/3 cup oat flour (or 1/3 cup oats, processed till finely ground in a food processor or blender, or any kind of flour you'd like if you are not concerned about the bars being gluten free.  I also enjoy halving the flour and adding half wheat germ/half flour)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 to 3 cups dried fruits and nuts (total of 10 to 15 ounces)*(mix it up, add whatever you have in your cupboard, I added peanuts and cranberries delicious, if you have nut allergies you can add all fruit, it will be sweeter so reduce your sugar)
1/3 cup peanut butter or another nut butter (I used almond butter) (you can also add tahini or sunflower butter for the families with nut allergies)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
6 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup honey, maple syrup or agave syrup 
2 tablespoons barley malt syrup or brown rice syrup (the recipe called for corn syrup, I never use it, but it can be used as well)
1 tablespoon water

Line an 8″ x 8″ x 2″ pan in one direction with parchment paper, allowing it to go up the opposing sides. Lightly grease the parchment paper and the exposed pan, or coat with a non-stick spray.

Stir together all the dry ingredients, including the fruit and nuts. In a separate bowl, whisk together the vanilla, melted butter or oil, liquid sweeteners and water. Toss the wet ingredients with the dry (and peanut butter, if you’re using it) until the mixture is evenly crumbly. Spread in the prepared pan, pressing them in firmly to ensure they are molded to the shape of the pan. (A piece of plastic wrap can help with this, as you press down on the back of it.)

Bake the bars for 30 to 40 minutes, until they’re brown around the edges — don’t be afraid to get a little color on the tops too. They’ll still seem soft and almost under baked when you press into the center of the pan but do not worry, they’ll set completely once completely cool.

Cool the bars in their pan completely on a cooling rack. (Alternately, after about 20 minutes you can use your parchment “sling” to lift and remove the bars, and place them in their paper on the rack to cool the rest of the way. This can speed the process up.)

Once cool, a serrated knife (or bench knife) to cut the bars into squares. [Updating to note, as many had crumbling issues:] If bars seem crumbly, chill the pan of them further in the fridge for 30 minutes which will fully set the “glue”, then cut them cold. To store, wrap the bars individually in plastic or stack them in an airtight container. In humid weather, it’s best to store bars in the refrigerator. They also freeze well.

*Suggestions: Dried cranberries, apricots, pecans, sunflower seeds, coconut, walnuts, sesame seeds, pepitas, dried apples or even chocolate chips. My mix: 1/2 cup wheat germ, 1 cup dried cherries, 1 cup walnuts, 1/2 cup pecans and 1/2 cup dried unsweetened coconut flakes. Because my pieces were all pretty coarse, I pulsed them in the food processor a few times to break it up a little, though this isn’t necessary if you don’t mind yours chunkier.

Enjoy and try, just try eating only one!

The Solution

I simply can not have my chickens going over the fence ever again.  As well I don't want to be anxious about chickens going over the fence, so I "fixed" the problem.  I eliminated, or at least highly reduced the  possibility of chickens going over the fence.

Here are the numerous steps of my solution:

Step 1:  Lock the girls up about an hour before dusk.  It appears that they search out the perfect roost rather than quietly roaming into their coop.  So I eliminated the options - coop it is.

Step 2:  Clip their wings.  Clipping their wings was relatively easy.  Catching them was the hardest part - after that they relaxed and submitted easily to the clipping.  I don't have any pictures, but check out this link to give you an idea what they look like before and after.

Step 3:  Raise the bar, or at least the fence.  I added additional fencing to their run, increasing the height by about 2 feet.  The addition is flexible so if the girls somehow make it up there I hope they become extremely disoriented by the shifting surface and flap back over to their side of the fence.

It has been a little over a week and no more chickens over the fence, or even trying.  It seems a few natural steps have taken place as well.  The first one is time.  Let the girls get used to their home and they don't want to leave.  Second, they have found the roosting perch in their coop.  So no more searching for a place to roost for the girls, it appears they have found it.  :)

What the bleep!

So we got our chickens on Monday and I was hoping to blog this evening about how wonderful and excited this new venture is, but than today happened.   Or I should say this evening happened, right around dusk.  Gage and I had opened the chicken coop door this morning for the chickens to have their first  romp outside.  They were petrified, none of them stepped outside for hours.  They talked to each other and pecked around their coop happily with the door wide open.  

So, many hours later I decided to make those girls go outside.  I pushed them out of the coop into the wide, wide world.  They looked around, shook out their wings and ran back into their coop.  Silly girls, back outside you go!  Eventually they stayed outside and seemed to start enjoying themselves.  I was so happy with myself.

They spent their day going inside and out - being chickens.  I felt so happy that we had gotten the girls and brought them to this wonderful home.  The girls are here & we are happy.

But than, holy bleep.  Gage and I go out around dusk 5pm-ish, to lock the chickens into their coop.  I was told and expected that they would just go back into their coop around dusk.  They loved their coop, spent two full days in their coop and when they were let outside continued to run back into their coop.  So we were going out to lock them into their beloved new coop for night time safety.

When I walked into the back yard, one of my black girls was up on top of her coop.  A hop, skip and a jump from the 6 foot fence that surrounds our yard.  The 6 foot fence that separates our beloved chickens from the neighbors yard.  The neighbors yard that houses the dog that eats chickens - well certainly kills chickens.  Gage and I stop in our tracks and I tell him not to move.  I race out of our yard, around our house to the neighbors house, where I calmly (as calmly as I can) knock on the door, while my new little baby chicken roosts on the fence between our yards.   I quietly tell the neighbor, who is in the middle of making dinner, that my new chicken (that she didn't know about) is roosting on her fence.  She winces that lets me know that isn't good - Dakota kills things.  "I know" I say "I know".

So she sends her son Ryan into the back yard to chase the chicken back into our yard.  Well, that doesn't work.  The lovely, silly, uncoordinated, scardey-cat chicken jumps into their yard.  Uh-oh!

Luckily they had brought their dog inside.  Their dog that lives outside, sleeps outside is an out-side dog was inside at that moment.  Huh.  Well I say "let me in, I'll catch her".  I like my neighbor, she is a single mother and a nice person - but definitely not interested in dealing with chickens in her yard, or probably in our yard.  I run after this crazy chicken and try to catch it, but chicken are hard to catch!  I keep seeing my neighbor in the corner of my eye as I chase the chicken and she is trying to keep a semblance of calm.  But this situation is clearly not OK for her.  Her son Ryan is having a ball and I am finding it a little hard to figure out whether I should have fun with Ryan or stay serious and adult about this situation.  So I get an old towel and finally lasso this a-hole, rambunctious chicken, who is clearly not grateful enough of her current situation.   Gather her up, let Ryan pet her a bit and start heading home.

I leave with my neighbor asking if it is even legal to keep chickens.  Um . . . . well, no not really - but it is currently being negotiated in the city council and many of our neighbors have them.  Um, Um, Um . . . . .     Well thank you for letting me catch the chicken and this will never happen again I promise.  I hope that I can keep that promise for the neighbors sake, for the chickens sake, for my sanity.  I stuck her back in with her sisters into their beloved coop.

WEW, the first 24 hours with the chickens, the girls - did I make a mistake?

Well let me get another glass of wine and ponder that.  Hmmmmm.

Updates and bios on the girls coming soon.  Even if they are a-holes.  :)

Chicken Coop

The coop is done!!!  The girls will be here soon.

Here is our finished product.  With steps going up to their door.  We thought about building a ramp, but decided the steps would be more interesting.

Adding decorations and a personal touch.

The fence is up, now we just need the chickens.  Can't wait.

The Slingshot

The most important thing when building a slingshot is to find the perfect stick.  That was the first thing we did.  Although the perfect shape it started out a little big, but we can deal with that.

Try to ignore how dirty my child is and take a look at that perfect slingshot stick!   We found it attached to a bush and lopped it off.  After accomplishing step one we needed to cut the stick down to Gage size and add the additional parts.  As we weren't up to trekking to the hardware store to complete our impromptu project we began to search house and shop to find the finishing parts.

We found one rubber band that was kind of small and some blue twine.  So, we became creative.  Cutting the rubber band and affixing it to the twine, which we than attached to the perfect slingshot stick, now the appropriate size.  And bingo - we have made the perfect shooting machine!  With just enough stretch from the small, single rubber band to make it effective, but limited in its shooting strength.

The perfect slingshot for a 4 year old.  It shoots rocks about 3 or 4 feet and folded pieces of paper about 12 feet.  A relatively safe toy that we made together with creativity and lots of fun.  :)