Nannies and Kids?

Since we last left off, there have been some nasty flues and colds going around the island and though we've been eating our fruits and veggies, trying to stay healthy, I have been out of it for the last few weeks, and Tim is fighting off the pathogens. Speaking of pathogens, around the time Alice returned to Alaska and we fell ill, I started EMT training, learning to be an emergency medic as seen on ambulances and as friendly citizens teaching CPR to high schoolers and such. The training has been going well with a good cohort of fellow soon-to-be EMTs.

The medical experience I'd really like to have right now is delivering my first kid - goat kid that is. After being doubtful Petunia was pregnant for the last 4 1/2 months, she started showing swelling in all the right places, looking uncomfortable, showing all the vague and goat-y signs of maybe being pregnant! So I sprang into action. Not wanting to get my hopes up only for disappointment, I hadn't finished the milking parlor of the barn - mostly I hadn't built a milking stand. But with kids looking possibly imminent, suggesting a future of goat milking this spring.

With the large, borrowed milking stand out of the way and food cans stacked, there is now a nice space for kidding. I made a shelf to fit on top of the hay holder, the sink is cleaned out, fresh hay on the floor and we're ready to go.

With much help from the curious goats, I replaced the over-sized miking stand with a minimally sized built in milking shelf complete with a feed holder perfectly fitted to their food scoop.

Petunia and Esther have been practicing the milking routine every morning since we made the changes, getting ready for that lucky day sometime in the next week or month or year or two when my goats start making milk.

Just in case that birth really is soon, I assembled the Goat Birth Bag: filled with all the goodness necessary for any vetting and midwifing emergency! Going through the bag, we can talk a little about what I expect from a birth. First of all, the signs leading up to birth are super vague and unreliable and generally goat-y; things like "she may seem agitated, or more friendly. She may seem more or less active. The tendons by her tail may relax, or not. She may start producing milk and filling her utter... or not." Signs and symptoms of impending delivery can begin a month before the birth or, you know, as a pair of tiny feel stick out and give it away. Goats really aren't very obvious.

"Iodine and shot glass for sterilizing

Dental floss and scissors for  cutting cords

Suction bulb and scissors for after birth

Exam gloves and lube for intervention

Feeding syringe and bottle for baby

Molasses (1/4c:2gal warm water) for mom"

In my imagination, we will notice these signs of impending birth and notice some gooey slimy discharge, suggestive of birth, and bring Petunia into our clean and well-prepared birthing room. Once there, we will check on her every half hour, or just hang out in the barn with her, though being too close can sometimes slow labor, so checking in until things start to pick up is probably good. Eventually, her agitation should develop into the rhythmic pushing of labor and we will watch for little white hooves protruding through the amniotic sac and out of Petunia. The baby should be in the "dive" position, with feet forward and down, ancles bending down and towards mom. Alternately, baby can be in the reverse dive position, with little back feet sticking out soles up and bending up and towards mom. If any other body part but a foot starts coming out first, it should be returned and replaced (gently push that head back in a bit and see if you can persuade a little foot to come out instead). Gently pulling one foot and then the other slightly down towards mom as she pushes can help get the legs straight and streamline the process. Also making sure the feet match the head and no one is trying to cut in line is important. That would be another return and replace situation. We want one baby at a time coming out with a matching pair of either front or back feet but not one of each. If I need to manually assist, that would be the first use of the antibacterial soap, warm water, and iodine as I scrub up and coat my arms in orange for health and safety.

Once the baby is out, we try to catch her (always hope for girl babies. They make milk or eggs or more babies and don't need to be put in the freezer or altered like those boys. I think girl goats are easier to sell and sell for more too) on a nice clean towel, wipe the goop off her breathing parts, possibly give a little suction to those breathing parts, then present the still sticky and wet baby to Petunia so she can bond through cleaning. Eventually, find the time to steal the baby back, tie off and cut the umbilical cord at about an inch or two and dip in a shot glass of iodine until thoroughly coated, then stick the baby back up under Petunia, aiming for latching on to her teats and getting some breakfast.

When all the babies and placentas (never pull on a placenta!) have made their way out, Petunia gets some warm molasses water and whatever else she wants to eat while the babies nurse and everyone rests.

Maybe today will be the day! We will keep hoping.

In the other half of the barn, we have a much easier to read perspective mom. The first night I see a hen sleeping in the nest box, I mark it on the calendar and three weeks later the eggs hatch and we have new chicks. These ones are due Monday the 23rd.

I've been able to start selling eggs and am up to two every-other-weekly customers plus an occasional dozen here and there. We're getting about 5 or 6 eggs a day which is... a quarter of the way to my goal but a good start.

My friend, Alisha, is still visiting as she waits to find her next Nannying position and has been continuing to photograph, bake, love the animals, and help out around the farm. We also worked on a sewing project and finished a 1950's dress for her.

Forging aluminium

I felt this deserved it's own post, away from all the pictures of our animals, though chronologically it should be in the middle of all that. For years, Tim and I have talked about building a forge. We can work metal and wood in so many ways, but molding molten metals had escaped our abilities - until now.

After watching a few YouTube videos, Tim was inspired. Mixing 50/50 sand and plaster, Tim filled our steel bucket with a center mold holding open the space for the fire and the crucible: container of molten aluminium. At the bottom of the center opening is a steel pipe leading through the plaster-sand mix for air to come in through the bottom and feed the flames.

Once the mix set up, Tim carefully pried out the center mold and started testing his new creation. Filling the center with charcoal briquettes and forcing air into the bottom by duct taping a hair drier to the tube, the fire was soon going strong.

Tim fed our pop-can recycling into the steel bowl in the furnace one at a time and stirred with a piece of rebar.

The pop-cans turned into molten aluminium, glowing red with heat.

The first few crucibles we tried failed in the intense heat of the kiln. Finally Tim settled on placing a steel bowl over the flames, though it was cooler and slower melting than idea. In the future we hope to have a little narrower of a container for less heat-loss and hotter melting temperatures.

Once our entire bag of recycling was melted down, Tim poured the molten aluminium carefully into an empty soup can.

With a little work on the lathe, the finished product came out as a beautiful tea-light holder, with the irregularities catching the light at the top and smooth polished aluminum at the bottom. Very impressive!

Catch up. Eggs and Chicks, Goats and Compost, Visitors and Travels, Beaches and Baking

It has been a busy two weeks! Isn't it always busy? For living the simple life, we sure do keep things  busy around here. To start off the new year, I finally started delivering eggs to our neighbors! The idea is for Tilly (or a goat) to eventually do the delivering by carrying cartons of eggs in the snazzy new backpack we got for the four-legged girls.

The littlest roosters and hens are at their awkward teen stage, with feathers sticking out and colors changing. Unfortunately, the little gold chick seems set on being a rooster, though I am still hopeful it will be another of those extra-large-combed hens and we will somehow have 8 more heavy-laying hens. Mama and her five chicks (plus the three big tag-alongs from the last clutch) are spending more and more time out in the sun scratching for bugs with the rest of the flock.

Our flock is filling out the yard pretty well now with 12 hens, 2 roosters, 3 big chicks and 5 smaller chicks. Some day I hope to have 24 hens laying nearly two-dozen eggs a day to deliver to the neighbors plus my two roosters whom will need to be replaced soon for genetic diversity. Right now, we're only getting about 6 eggs a day, and the eggs are suspiciously consistent in color and shape, alluding to only 6 hens participating in the laying. I have nearly identified all the layers and it looks like the other 6 may be joining the 3 or 4 new little roosters in the freezer this spring.

Mom, Dad, Daniel, and Amanda all returned back to their homes after New Years, I took a brief trip with Daniel and Amanda down to Eugene, Oregon for a night on a special bunny mission, my friend Ray visited for a short night on her way through, Tim spent a few nights in Portland to visit friends and take a train trip, then I picked up my friend Alisha from the airport and Tim from the train station in one go and came home for a day or two before Tim's mom, Alice, joined us on the island. In the brief turn around between visitors, travels, and more visitors, I managed to finally get the barn clean! 

Petunia was her usual helpful self, insisting on riding in the wheelbarrow even when it was stacked to the max with hay. The barn, I'm afraid to say, was long over-due for cleaning. I cleaned the chicken part half-halfheartedly just before the chicks were born, in late November, but for the goats I had been using more of an "add more hay" approach for the floors. After many trips to the compost pile, both halves were thoroughly freshened and a small bit of the excessive stash of "winter hay" for the goats was put to good use as everybody's clean bedding. 

Unfortunately (for Alisha), I dumped all the hay next to the large pile of leaves next to the large pile of compost waiting to be turned. Fortunately (for me), Alisha is eager to be such a helpful guest and offered to lend a hand on the farm. Wanting to give her the full farm experience, I thought turning the compost would be a great help. Alisha imagined it would be fun, sort of romantic. Alisha talked about someday having her own garden and compost bins. Then Alisha talked about how really there was probably enough compost in those bins and they were looking plenty full. There's a reason I dread turning the compost - it is a huge job and takes forever, with much more to go by the time you are exhausted and ready for tea--er, I mean, it's a delight! I hope you will be the next visitor so I can share the majestic transformation of waist to productive soil with you too! The chore that is always ready for someone to do.

Esther stepped up to help with our compost-turning and piling activity by packing down those leaves and that hay to make room for more. Eventually most of the waist made it, more or less, into the compost bins and we declared the work "good enough!"

I didn't only force Alisha to provide me with labor, we also got to snuggle the goats in their nice clean barn.

We taught Alisha the proper way to hold a chicken, or in this case our most beautiful and tame rooster.

Tim demonstrated the goat teeter-totter and other goaty tricks (really that's about the extent of it).

And we took the goats for a nice stroll on the beach to our favorite climbing tree. Alisha is a photographer and graced us with mountains of wonderful pictures - another reason this is taking a little longer to put together! Too much of a good thing. 

After beach walking, there was just a little more to do with catching up on trimming hooves. Ideally, I should be checking their hooves every month about, or even giving them a quick look once a week when I feed them their herbal de-wormer, but I let it go a little long and petunia missed my great hoof-trimming day, so now I'll have to keep a better eye on them and make sure those hooves are back in good shape.

Alisha also gave me a hand adding 380-pounds of food to the barn. The feed store is having a sale and it's always good to have enough food! I am trying to keep better track of how much food everyone is going through. I think the chickens go through about 25-pounds of feed a weeks, the goats go through about 100-pounds a month and Tilly (not included in the 380-pounds of feed) goes through about 20 pounds a month. These may be optimistic guesses, and winter makes for more feed going through the barn. 

Tilly is continuing to work on her Canine Good Citizen skills and practiced her patience at the store while we bought all the feed. With so many visitors, Tilly has been struggling to stay focused and calm but is improving as always.

 After the store, it only seemed fair to take the little dog to the off-leash beach near town to burn up some of her abundant energy. Alice and Alisha and I braved the wind and high tide and let the wild one run. Tilly was promoted to an "available" sheriff dog, ready to search for the lost at a moments notice, which means any time we are called, she gets to come with me - even if it is only to sit in the car and wait while I help other teams with the search. This week we got one of those middle-of-the-night calls and drove through the fog to join the team in the dark. Tilly waited in the car and we called off the search before it reached her turn, but it was nice for me to have some comforting company in the car.

The beautiful and delicious bread I baked for Tim's lunches which I have no way of working into this post but which are so wonderful and which I am so proud of I had to include. Alisha laughed at how excited I was. They lived up to my hopes and more.

After staying up nearly all night with Search and Rescue, I was exhausted, in the mood for laying around watching movies and feeling like a bit of a zombie. Alisha and Alice lept on the opportunity of my weakened state and helped out with cleaning up the house and taking care of the animals. When Tim came home from work he was in worse shape then me, having caught some awful virus that has been making its way around the island. He stumbled in the door, had a bite to eat, and joined me in a very early bed time. He's still feeling terrible and keeping to the dark and warmth of bed. 

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

What was the highlight of your last year and what are you looking forward to in the coming year?

So many highlights for us! Tim's hand healed and he was able to fish this summer and start working in a perfect job on the island. We got chickens this year, had chicks hatch under their mom, got goats, planted and harvested a garden, and Tilly went from a new trainee for Search and Rescue to an active K9 search team member, ready to save real lost people and a commissioned officer with the county, ready to help lead the training for becoming a state-wide search team. Grandpa has made good friends on the island, has been playing and even teaching bridge after a 20-year hiatus, and has great health, mastering those stairs and doing a large part of the gardening. I got to spend my first summer commercial fishing in Bristol Bay, we had many visitors, and got to do some visiting of our own. We spent time with family, and met new family. It has been a wonderful year, and it is hard to imagine how next year might top this one, but we have a few things we're looking forward to. 

The fish prediction for Bristol Bay this coming summer is twice what it was last year, making for a potentially record breaking year. Our goat, Petunia, seems to be showing signs of pregnancy, so we are still hoping their will be kids on the ground in February, Tilly and I look forward to helicopter trips to remote wilderness for days of camping and saving lives, and we look forward to more of all the joys we have had this past year. 

I am still blown away by the beauty of our island and our farm so often. Even coming from the beautiful land of Alaska, we have a stunning view.  This week, the temperature dove to below freezing yet again, but Whidbey has enough clouds for epic sunrises and sets without having so many as to create a permanent grey over the land.

Enough about the weather! It's Christmas! Tilly got to meet 'Santa' as the fire department made a stop at our Search and Rescue Canine Good Citizen training before continuing on the holiday tour through town. Knowing a big part of the fire department has some unexpected perks!

At home, our family congregated as Mom and Dad and Brother Daniel and Amanda and Uncle Dan and Uncle Joel and Alex joined Grandpa and Tim and I. Whew! A lot of family in this house! Also a lot of baked goods! Amanda and Daniel's gift to the family was an obscene amount of baked goods, starting with a pumpkin pie, pecan nutella pie, and lemon meringue pie, then dividing a mountain of sweets among the rest of the family: snowball cookies, ginger snaps, almond cupcakes with white chocolate and raspberry, fudge, 7-layer bars, pumpkin bars, no-bake cookies, and zucchini bread.

We celebrated Christmas Eve by going to the candlelight carol service at Grandpa's church while Tim and Amanda guarded the house, cared for the puppy, and watched their traditional Christmas-themed cartoons. After the service, we came home to play the White Elephant gift exchange before bed.   

Christmas morning, Santa Puppy made her debut, helping deliver all the present-madness and flopping delighted and belly-up on the floor with her new orange squeaky toy. Amanda and Daniel had the best-dressed gift with a snow-bunny shaped present. Tim and I worked on hand-made presents for most of the family, including a song book for Mom of all the lullabies from my childhood.

As soon as presents were opened, Daniel, Amanda, Tim and I headed out the door and for the airport as Cousin Min Min headed for the house for another Christmas celebration. Tim and I hopped on the afternoon flight to Sacramento where his dad, Joe, and step-mom, Roni, picked us up in time for a laid-back Christmas dinner with Roni's daughter, Tierney. The next morning we headed out of town and into the mountains to meet Tim's birth mom, Dawn.

Joe and Roni

Meeting Dawn went as well as we could possibly imagine. Her and her family are clearly loving, intelligent, interesting, and welcoming family, just as we hoped they would be. Dawn's aunt, Sandy, and uncle, Troy, who's house we all stayed at are big fans of Alaska after several trips to Alaska and their home was decorated in a way that made us feel more at home than we've been since leaving our home state. Even the Christmas tree had little Yupik dolls in kuspuks as ornaments. We had a delicious Christmas dinner of fresh garden vegetables picked that day, well grilled meat (or so I hear), and the salmon Tim and I brought to contribute. Every one of the many, many dishes Aunt Sandy prepared was so well prepared and delicious. Cousins and other aunts and uncles joined in the feast, and among new faces we were family.

Tim last year from our annual photo album on the left, his birth-grandfather on the right.

In case there was still any doubt that Tim and Dawn were kin, Dawn brought out some pictures of her and her dad. At first, it was hard to see the resemblance she remembered in his face, looking at old pictures of a man with a mustache, then Dawn handed me a picture of her dad riding the lawn tractor and I paused to pull out our photo album from last year and lined up her picture with a matching picture of Tim in the same pose. Tim and Dawn both had blonde hair through their childhood only to turn dark as they grew up, dark eyes, and little ears. In Uncle Troy's 'man cave', we looked at pictures of him and his brother, Tim's birth-grandfather. There we saw the only picture of Dawn's dad as a young man and mustache-free. In his senior school picture, the resemblance to my handsome husband is so striking I forget I'm not looking at a picture of Tim.

Dawn's dad as a high school senior

In the morning after a long and happy night of laughter and talking and hugs, Uncle Troy and Aunt Sandy took us to see the rural community mining museum they run in town. Exploring mining ruins was one of Tim's favorite hobbies in Juneau and something we've been rediscovering in Washington, but not something we expected to find on our trip to California.

California was full of surprises, the biggest being how comfortable we were and the lack of awkwardness at our first time meeting Dawn after only a few weeks of knowing of each other. We were surprised by how familiar and welcoming the family was. We were surprised by the beautiful wilderness and forest, reminding us of home. 

Getting out of the big city, away from the coast, opened up beautiful views down the American River Canyon. In the bright sunshine, we explored the small town of Foresthill and enjoyed the special time together.

Too soon, it was time for us to head down the hill and continue our adventure with Joe and Roni while Dawn headed home to southern California. Back in Sacramento, we got to spend nights relaxing and chatting with Joe and Roni about past and future. The next day we had Christmas #4 with Roni's sister and family, including three grand-babies and a fourth on the way. 

On our last day in California, Roni took us to some of her favorite places. We went on a hike through Muir Woods and found the quieter trails through big trees and over wild rivers. The park had a huge number of visitors from all over the world, making parking a 30-minute walk from the front gait of the park. It is great to see so many people interested in visiting nature.

After our nature outing, Roni took us to her favorite Italian restaurant in San Francisco for a tiny cup of coffee and some delicious dinner.

While waiting for rush-hour traffic to let up, we went walking through China Town, admiring the many strange and wonderful things. Tim found some ironed-flat dried octopus in a window and Roni got us some salted plumbs, ginseng and ginger candies.

Tim and I said goodbye Joe and Roni after a great visit and flew back to Seattle where Brother Daniel and Amanda picked us up and took us to meet Mom and Dad and Grandpa and his friend Dee at the Space Needle. We found out lunch at the top is only $5 more than a ticket in the elevator and the food was delicious. From our tour of the Space Needle, we moved on to a tour of the Bowing "Future of Flight". After flying in the morning, seeing the inner workings of our airplane and the process of developing and creating these planes had an extra impact.

After a busy, busy week, and an exciting and delightful year, we reached the end of 2014! Dad and Tim went shopping for some special fireworks and Daniel and Tim put on a great show. Tilly hung out indoors and seemed to think we were strange for standing outside while lights exploded over our heads in the middle of the night when it was clearly time for bed.

All for a shower

Woops, forgot we left our tree in the middle of the road! You can see the power lines coming off the pole on the right side of the frame and running along the ground. Large tree hung up in the wires.

At the crack of dawn this Saturday morning, Tim was up and getting our house running. The order of the day: to take a shower. The first step of course was to get Grandpa's freezer connected to the generator so we could leave guilt free for the day for more parts. After letting the animals out, getting the generator going and running extension cords to Grandpa's tv, the internet, his heater and freezer and lights, we were free for our outing. Only a 40 minute drive each way, we headed north to Oak Harbor, also providing the perfect opportunity for some reconnaissance work.

This does explain why our power is out! And knowing that it is like this and worse all over our island! Evidently, the fire department chop up the wood and leave it stacked on the side of the road - at least when there are cold winds that knock out all the power, free firewood is in surplus.

Our power allegedly comes from the north, from Classic Road, so we went to see what was holding up the flow of power and make our own estimate for when we might be back on. To the south, we had already seen a large tree pinning down the power lines and are confused how anyone that direction can have power. If that was the not-so-bad side, we wondered what might be in store for us ahead. As we drove towards Classic Road, power lines alternated between running along the ground and trying to hang on to crooked power poles. More large trees lay on our lines, and the down power lines wrapped around our street sign; and then we got to the 'Road Closed' sign. I guess this was the okay stuff! We parked and took Tilly for a walk to scope out what could be worse. Are power poles supposed to be slanted like that? A power line and tree lay across the road, solving the mystery of why no through traffic was allowed. As we surveyed the scene, the power company drove by, looking to be taking pictures and surveying the damage themselves. Though there were a few orange cones by the hazards, no work crews were anywhere near the three large breaks we identified, or anywhere else on our road. We took Resort Road and continued north around the closed Classic. The residents of Resort Road had the advantage of some sections with underground power lines, but where the lines came above ground, both their power and phone were severed. We have been very lucky to still have our phone when homes all over the island are without even the ability to call for help.

I would say those three roads are all out of luck!

With the damage surveyed we confirmed, 'yes, our power will be out a while longer and it is worth taking action to resolve on our own now.' We passed at least 5 large line-fixing trucks heading south as we neared Coupeville - a good sign for us and our south-end neighbors! Though of course we are not high on the priority list and they were not heading for us. At Home Depot, everyone else had beat us to the good supplies for generators and extension cords. The Saturday afternoon after the wind blows out most of the power in the county is probably a little late to stock up on supplies, but we were able to find most of what we needed and got the last plug end from Ace before heading home.

This road is closed. All the roads were covered in branches like this - I don't think the city truck with the snow plow came down this road...

Through amazing skills and talents Tim was able to get our generator hooked up to the well pumps to re-fill and pressurize the water tanks, then connected the generator to the house for light and tv and all the other luxuries and amenities that power provides. Grandpa asked about the hot water heater, so we fired it up and the generator made no complaints. While the water heated, I made use of the propane oven to make some pizzas and got roaring fires going in both the upstairs and downstairs fire places to thaw our fingers and warm the house again. The upstairs fireplace is amazing and blew 500f air into the room soon after getting started, quickly turning a few logs into heat for the whole high-ceilinged, large-windowed open space of the house. The downstairs fireplace isn't nearly as productive, but after removing 10 gallons of ashes, there is a huge improvement in the heat output. With warm houses, warm water, lights, and full water tanks, by after dinner we were finally able to have a hot shower! Delightful what we can do in a power outage.

..Probably because of that. Power lines running across the road, large branches and trees down... And up there at the top of the pole something doesn't seem quite right. Many of the poles have crooked cross arms or the whole pole is leaning significantly. Just a little wind caused a lot of trouble here on Whidbey!

All was dark and quiet

Yesterday, was that only yesterday? we feared we would have to cancel our helicopter flight due to high winds, but fog ended up doing us in first. As darkness came, so did the winds. Gusts up to 69 knots knocked whole trees onto the power lines all over the island and Washington. Three large branches came crashing down, narrowly missing my car and landing right where Daniel and Amanda's fancy new car had been parked only days earlier. Our power flickered and by 8pm, we were in darkness. An early bed time with stories by flashlight made for a fine evening, but when the lights weren't back on by morning, I started worrying about our freezer and the well, both very power dependent. I dropped Tim off at work and borrowed a very nice generator from Tim's kind boss to get the freezer cold again. Driving to and from his work, streets were impassable as firefighters with chainsaws worked to clear paths through the fallen branches. Most of the stop lights were out down the length of the island and spots of power were sporadic and small. In early afternoon, the city truck fitted with a snowplow finally reached our road to push debris to the sides. At quitting time, lights still off, I picked up Tim and headed to the mainland Costco for a new, super-duper, score-of-a-deal generator picked out by Dad and Grandpa headed to his friend's house to kick back with TV, light, heat, microwave, water... all the luxuries power brings.

Convening back at the house, Tim and I moved our little borrowed generator from the freezer to off the edge of Grandpa's porch to get his heat and lights back on in his room first thing so he could settle in for the night, then got to work hooking up our new generator. Eventually it will have a connector straight into the power box to directly power the house, and probably a second cord for powering the pump house intermittently, but for now we have it set up on the patio with some extension cords running to the freezers, our room, and Grandpa's room. Oh yeah, then there's the internet. The internet and the booster for our cell signal also require power, but Tim had a clever plan. Surely I must have a picture? No, maybe tomorrow. Tim has built a box of very high quality, large batteries for such occasions as this, so for as long as the batteries hold out, we have the wonders of internet!

-This message sponsored by Batteries: keeping you lit up when the wind blows it up.