May 9 and May 10 Journal Entries

May 9, 2012 Wednesday After feeding I wandered around the barn cleaning a bit. Petting and brushing the cats. Harrasing the goats. And taking photos of the pacs. One of the cats left a present for me in the barn. Ick. It seems to be a dead ground squirrel. Maybe one of the ferals will carry it off.

I left it with the hopes that would actually happen. The little goats were positively gleeful when I let them run around the barn today. I freed them from their paddock so I could mow it. It is a bit scary to mow on their hill. I don’t have the leaf bags on the back of the kubota to give weight to the loader on the front. I need to put some cinder block weights on the back. I just took my time as I turned on the hill. Unnerving. The middle paddock that has been partially seeded needed to be harrowed. I hooked up the harrow and quickly turned up the soil in the other half with the intention to go pick up some seed and plant it. I got the quote for my sprinkler systems in the front and middle paddock. It is a bit steep. I will have to wait on that one. But with all the rain we have had I haven’t really needed it.

May 10, 2012 Thursday Got out to the barn a bit late this morning. After feeding I used the broom to sweep off the cobwebs from the barn doors. I gathered up all the dye stuff for the demo on Saturday. I am going to use Osage Orange shavings for the natural dye demo so I poured hot water over them and let them soak overnight. Tomorrow I will dye a skein in bath to see how it will turn out. I used about 1 ½ ounces of shavings to 2 quarts of water. Tonight I checked on it and the dye bath was a orangish brown. In other events, I moved the items in the store down to the living room to be organized tomorrow. I still haven’t prepared my bags and labels! Agghhh! There is so much to do still!! I had Sean, my helper, come over and weed whack the chicken coop. Then Taima suggested that we put the goats in there since the whacker jammed and we couldn’t finish mowing the pen. I left the goats in for about 2 hours and they managed to break a hole in the chicken coop. Ugh! I’ll have to fix that tomorrow now. We moved the gates from behind the boys paddock to up by the house. The goats will have lots to munch on tomorrow. And they will be visible for the guests on shearing day! I actually drove the gates to their new location with the truck. It was faster and not as tiring. I hope the goats don’t give me problems tomorrow as we pass my blueberry and currant plants on our way to their new pen. I am almost out of goat grain and will have to find another bribe until I can get to the farm store. On the fiber side, started plying a pink combed top merino from Stonehedge farms and a multi colored alpaca from my animals. I am enjoying the colors as they meld together.