Closing Thoughts

On goat milking:
After trying out the milking experiment and proving the theory (manually inducing lactation), Nancy and I made the decision that the 1/4 cup a day over four milkings I had worked up to was simply not enough for it to be worth her scheduling around and attempting to maintain while I am away for the summer, especially while first learning to milk - so until next spring when we have real live baby goats, we are weaning off on the milking. We look forward to spring when (hopefully) both Petunia and Esther will be producing much more milk than that with much less effort from me. Through milking, Petunia has become more gentle and sweet, so that is a plus we can hang on to for the summer.

On the Canine Good Citizen test:
Tilly passed! We are now a fully qualified search and rescue team with Whidbey Search Dogs, with voting rights and everything. Amazingly, over only a few weeks, Tilly has gotten her bouncy paws attached to the floor even when being given attention by a stranger or stopping near another dog. Hurrah! She did great during her test, though I was fairly nervous and worked up. I would have benefited from spending our time before the test laying down and snuggling with her in the grass like normal instead of practicing the test items over and over again.

On my teacher test:
Actually the "WEST-E" which is the Washington exam for "highly qualified" teachers and to be certified as a teacher in Washington, I must first be "highly qualified" in at least one subject - and art is the subject the Department of Education instructed me to test in. Though an art exam may sound easy, in reality it is 47,000 years of history from cave paintings to the modern day across all the major cultures around the world; quite a lot to cram for a test on! In addition to all that history and culture, the test also covered printmaking terms and techniques, sculpture, glazing chemistry, and kiln firing temperatures, hazardous materials handling, weaving, carving, musical theater, digital file formats, principles of movie making and editing, art theories and principles of design... you get the idea. In Alaska, I had to take the "Praxis" version of the same test twice before barely squeaking by on passing. Today, however, the test went smoothly and I was immediately told I passed despite not a lot of studying and even less sleep.

What was I doing not sleeping before a big test if not studying you ask? The advantage of taking a big test on the way to the airport for two months commercial fishing in the Bearing Sea, leaving my puppy and farm behind, is there is little time or energy left for worrying about the test. The disadvantage is there is so much else to do!

With short breaks to run errands around town, I spent nearly the whole day from sun up to sun down out in my garden. The center garden circle in the driveway has long been a problem area. Being the first thing people see, I want it to be beautiful, and being a confined and defined area that seems possible. When we first moved in, the area had been tilled over and piled high with fresh dirt - I don't know what it looked like for the previous owners but I'm beginning to have a suspicion. After a year of trying to garden this area, planting veggies and succeeding with growing garlic, I let the area be enveloped by the pushy horse tails. Last summer Mum and I went about trying to tame the wildlands again by mowing down the weeds and covering the area in thick ground cover and many many many bags of bark chips. Even after all those efforts, the horse tails were determined to come back. In early spring, we did a little weeding and I planted five asparagus plants, two mint plants, and an old lavender plant rescued from Greenbank Farm. Other than that, I left the planting up to the wind. Beautiful flowers have begun springing up and filling in around the edges. A poppy is in full bloom on the downhill side, columbine border the rocks, and other beautiful plants form little groups around the area. After taking out another 10 wheelbarrows of weeds this week and adding a few more bags of bark, the wanted plants are well framed and its beginning to look pretty nice. When I come home in the fall I hope to plant more lavender and mint (deer deterrent) in a border starting with our neighbors side, maybe a lilac bush too, then more asparagus ferns in the middle each year. I hope when I come home the horse tails and quack grass haven't gotten too out of hand.  

Remember how just a week or so ago it seems I was showing off my nicely cleaned up compost area? Well now the mound is higher than ever with a freshly cleaned goat and chicken barn and those 10 wheelbarrows of weeds. I also cleaned out the far bin of finished-ish compost mounding up the potatoes again. I skimped on rotating the rest of the piles before heading out. Always more to do!

The potato bins are finally full to the top and have been well watered in. It is best to water deeply and thoroughly or not at all. The dirt was mounded up higher than the sides before I added the water to help the bins settle. I look forward to opening those big wooden boxes in the fall and seeing how many potatoes are inside.

While we are gone, the chicken coop is all set up for "U-Pick" eggs with a big box of recycled egg cartons and directions on the door. Hopefully our neighbors will keep picking up eggs and the system will work for the summer. I wouldn't want Nancy to get flooded with over a dozen eggs a day!

I also included some egg "safety" and handling information for those a little nervous about eating something that is so farm fresh and not from the familiar supermarket. (click below to expand and read)

The goats are all set up for while we're away with their feeder finally reattached securely to a new section of wall and a salt block to supplement their mineral needs. So far they still seem to prefer the familiar lose minerals. One thing I forgot to do is add a few new staples in the corner of the chicken run fence where the goats managed to push a hole straight through to the great outside world. I used bailing wire to lash the chicken wire fence back together around the corner post, but a few staples too would have really sealed the deal. 

The sun set around 10:30pm last night, so that's when I finally headed in to start laundry, dishes, packing, and cleaning. I know I should have been on this a lot earlier, but I got it all done! I even cleaned and organized my ever messy "farm room", cleaned off my desk, and swept all the floors! I think I am ready to go!

This morning, just as I was putting the finishing touches on cleaning and worrying how I would take care of Tilly before I left and how she would do home alone after getting all wound up watching me pack, Nancy showed up. She thought I wasn't leaving until later and was coming by to practice the morning routine before I left but it turned out to be the most perfect timing. Nancy took Tilly to the beach with her dog for a long run while I headed out the door and then brought her back to spend the day with Grandpa and her new toys after I had left. Thank goodness! Also Tilly gave me a very nice hug before I left, managing to calm her crazy wiggles long enough for a goodbye snuggle. 

I know my farm is in good hands while we dip our nets in the far North!

Recap

I've been getting out of order lately. Looking back over my recent pictures, I realize I never posted in April about the Search and Rescue helicopter that didn't come, despite our very cool gear and good positioning around the edge of the landing field. At the very last minute, the crew decided the wind was above their safety limits and had to cancel.

 April 21 Search and Rescue helicopter drill

The first weekend of May, Tim, our friend Zac, Tilly and I headed east over the Cascades to Okanogan Barter Faire. Zac stole the show with an excellent fire-spinning show. Tilly wasn't allowed in the faire, so she spent the day in the woods with her Eastern Washington foster family. Though they took great care of her, she was happy to get back to our camp site on Curlew Lake.

I also didn't say much about our most wonderful Juneau/Whidbey neighbor finally returning to the island! Nancy's son, Zac, and I spent the morning at her house clearing out piles of horsetails from the yard so she'd come home to beautiful flowers rather than a sea of green.

I had the most excellent birthday on Sunday; waking up to a delicious breakfast (after milking Petunia) of french toast made with our eggs and Amanda's pumpkin bread thanks to Tim, going to Unity together, stopping by a farmers market, (milking again), and having friends over for an evening on the beach around the campfire (between milkings).

Tim has our car almost back together again after spending the last week removing, rebuilding, and replacing the transmission.

And I have succeeded at my potato project, I moved the finished compost to the potato bins to "mound up" the plants after adding more side board, then moved the second compost into the third bin, first compost into the second bin and the giant pile of stuff into the first bin. Hurrah! 

Potato bins now half filled with dirt after adding three more levels of siding.

 The compost shuffle! Turning the compost pile and adding water as needed helps keep the composting process going by mixing together the inside and outside, mixing in air, mixing the "greens" and "browns". Also note the potato plant growing out of the middle bin? 

First harvest of the year! 

For the first time in a long time, I actually cleaned up the ground all around the bins as well, throwing everything in for composting! Now it's all ready to be piled high with fresh weeds and grass clippings and coffee grounds and - time to clean the barn? Here I am just trying to take care of my potatoes and somehow it leads to turning compost and cleaning barns!

Zac is kindly using his arm and to measure the height of the nettles around the compost bins - over 8 feet?

 Tim took a little time out from fixing the car to fix the goat playground. They had a teeter totter for a while but it was becoming increasingly sad and broken. The new and improved structure is a kennel they are loving going in and on, with a raised walkway over to a second platform. They love having something to fight over!

The milking is continuing to be increasingly productive with increasing time between milkings and decreasing milkings per day. The result is my enduring resolve to continue with the milking program. If I had to go the other way, starting with one or two milkings a day and gradually working up to 10 a day, every two hours and waking up at 3am to try (and fail) to convince myself to milk just one more time... I would not have made it a week. Below is my magnetic refrigerator calendar clock milk scheduler as of Monday. The colored magnets mark milking times during the day, with little fuzzy chick magnets starting and ending the day. The white inner magnets with lines pointing to times are my goal magnets, which I march my milking times steadily towards in 15 minute increments every day. Today my markers are on those white dots - 5 milkings a day about 4 hours apart. Tomorrow the little rainbow markers will start marching towards 4 milkings a day about 6 hours apart. It gets better!

Manual Goat Freshening: Week 1

So normally goats need to have babies to start lactating (making milk), just like people. But in this day and age with increasing infant adoptions, I know many adoptive mothers choose to breast feed and are able to accomplish this by taking supplements, hormones, or simply by being really persistent with the pumping or hand expression. This last option is what I'm on about for my goats.

Day 1 (Monday the 11th): I was going to start after Search and Rescue on Sunday, but I was so tired after our weekend away with only 4 hours of sleep so... I thought 6 am Monday would be just fine. A little after 8 am Monday, I headed out to the barn with a bowl of warm water, my softest washcloth, and some sleepy eyed determination. The warm washcloth is like the wet warm mouth of a baby and is supposed to help, plus gets their udders and teats nice and clean! So, I did that. And then the milking part is like practice - low expectations, rhythmic milking while imagining something is actually coming out. Petunia got a bit sticky! Very encouraging. Nothing from Esther. Milkings continued every 2 hours until 10pm. Tim helped for one of them by trying to entertain the goats and Nancy came by for one to watch and help keep the food supply flowing to the patient beasts. I was going to milk at 12, then 2 or 3 am and so on, but at 11:45, yes, 11:45 pm - I couldn't wait another 15 minutes, I fell asleep. And opted out of that 2 or 3 or 4 am milking. That sort of thing is for crazy people! Besides, the girls weren't very impressive with the milk production the first day, so why should I waste precious sleep and get nothing to show for it?

Day 2 (Tuesday the 12th): Starting off not feeling very motivated. There was no miraculous appearance of milk in the (8a, 10a, 12n, 2p, 4p, 6p, 8p, 10p...) 8 attempts on day 1, then I slacked off for 8 hours and let everything go back to nothing so what's the point? It's probably not going to work anyway! Regardless, I dragged myself out of bed at 6 am, and again at 8 am to repeat the process. During the day, I got multiple (small) squirts from each teat during multiple milkings from Petunia - very promising! Still absolutely no sign of hope from Esther. I decided to trip Esther's hooves instead. It didn't go well. She kicked and I held her mostly upside down and cut off a bit too much and made her bleed and and and... So then I let her eat all the peanut butter and molasses and peanuts and goat treats and sunflower seeds and oats and alfalfa pellets it took for me to stop feeling guilty and for the bleeding to stop while I gave her a vigorous brushing. More milkings mostly on every two hours, though I can't set 12 alarms at a time on my phone so a time or two I was a bit late and the 6 pm milking turned into a 7 pm milking... Every three hours is still pretty good, right?

Day 3 (Wednesday the 13th) I had a milking plan. I lazy yet effective milking plan. I was going to have my goats bred, have them kid, then after a few weeks start separating the kids at night and milking in the morning, gradually separating the kids earlier and earlier in the afternoon until they are completely weaned and I get all the milk at 8:30 every morning. Instead I am doing this. I made the midnight milking on Day 2 and was delighted with the number of small squirts of milk hitting my arm and thought for sure I was motivated enough to get up at 3 am. At the actual 3 am? Not so much. The 6 am milking produced a good number of squirts from Petunia (nothing from Esther still), but also suggested she is either tired of the grain and routine or is getting sore teats from all my squeezing. Poor thing. She will get used to it and I am trying to be gentle, but maybe she's just not a morning goat? I'm thinking it may be time to upgrade my milking stand to include a clip to hook into their collars and remind them of the importance of standing still. By the end of the day, I did get 30 squirts from one teat from one milking! Still not a measurable amount in standard terms like ounces, but serious improvement. Also I gave up entirely on Esther.

Day 4 (Thursday the 14th) Is today day 4? It's all running together! So many milking sessions! So many days without a proper night sleep! Today I sat down and made a calendar - the future milking schedule! I am counting down the days until I can sleep more than 5.5 hours a night. It looks like it may be all the way through the end of this month and into the first week or two on June before I start pushing apart the 12 midnight and 6 am milkings. I am hoping not to leave my goat-sitter, Nancy, with too terrible a task, though she did want the goats to be in milk saying she was looking forward to it! By the time I leave for fishing, I plan to be down to 4 milkings a day at 7am, 2pm, 9pm, and 12pm, working towards three milkings a day at 7am, 3pm and 11pm. From there it will be up to Nancy to get Petunia down to just the 8:30am/pm two milkings a day. Agg! Day 4 and I am dreaming of when it will be over! Really, every two hours is pretty demanding and figuring out the proper transitional schedule is tricky stuff. I made a very cool milking time gauge on my fridge today to keep track of it all and visualize with. I've given up on Esther, Petunia has largely given up on food in favor of licking me and nuzzling me. I have been rewarding with a scratchy brush after milking to supplement the not-so-appealing food. I have been counting 300 squeezes a session on Penuia's Teats - not all producing full squirts of milk but the first few are now pretty solid and in tandem.

Day 5 (Friday the 15th) Day 4 was rough. Day 4 was a lot of milking and not much milk, though more than day 3 and day 2 and day 1, which is the important thing to remember. Day 5 is going much better, feeling more optimistic, feeling hopeful. I re-evaluated by milking schedule and decided to start stepping it up a bit sooner rather than later. The most dedicated bottle-feeding schedule I could find for newborn goats in the top 3 Google results suggested every 2-3 hours for the first week, then moving on to every 4, 5, 6 etc each week after until it gets, you know, reasonable. If that's how babies eat, then that's how I'll milk! They also said to do the 6 hours of sleep a night thing the second half of the first week, then quickly start moving towards 8, long before the rest of the day is yet in 8. Today is an every-2-hours-and-45-minutes day, which is nearly 3 and so much less like two then yesterday's every 2-2:30 schedule. I am tired, but milk is coming out! I estimate between a teaspoon and a tablespoon per milking x sooo many milkings per day. I mean... 10 milkings per day? I guess I'm down to 9 today. Anyways, that comes out to be nearly a cup of milk! It looks like it's about time to start aiming for a bowl and measuring it. Maybe I'll have milk on cereal instead of licking drops off my fingers. It is beginning to all be worth it.

Day 6 (Saturday the 16th) The whole milking thing is getting to be a comfortable and normal schedule with rewarding milk production. Today I made my first attempt to collect the milk. This meant holding the jar up close to petunia's body while milking with one hand at a time and trying to aim, then giving up after the first 20 squeezes or so and closing up the jar to resume my normal milking habits. Even missing a bit of each milking, I managed to gather about 4 teaspoons over my 8 milkings, which is pretty good considering a few days ago she had no milk at all! Milk production should continue to increase and in a few more days we will be down to 4 milkings a day, 8 hours of sleep at night, and maybe a cup of milk a day - enough for me to drink. I look forward to coming home at the end of summer to (hopefully) a reasonable amount of milk production, enough to make some cheese and butter and ice cream and yogurt and drink as milk - yum!

Wide-mouth mason jar with the day's milk 

Tablespoon full of milk

Brood Breaking: part 2

"Four little hens,brooding in the nests.

One flew up and joined the rest. 

Ariel took the hens and threw them out the door.

'No more brooding, not any more!"

I know, you've been waiting with bated breath to hear the outcome of the remaining chickens and their brooding. To recap, there were 6 and they slept outside in the rain, then there were 6 and I made them perch (some of them stayed up there anyways). The next night, last night, only 4 hens were attempting to sleep on their eggs and I chucked them out into the yard where they found their own ways to the roost. In the morning I opened the door to let all the chickens in and out of the hen house and yard, mingling together, broody and non-broody, layers and non-layers. They all seem happy! One hen, the first hen to go broody, now marked with purple (left over from keeping them from pecking each other as babies), found her way back to the nest boxes. I removed her and chucked her back in the yard where she seems to have stayed. The laying hens once again have free access between the yard and the nest boxes which makes me feel much better about the health of their oviducts. Hospital Chicken, who was attacked as a wee chick and never fully recovered on the back side had a ... prolapsed vent? the other day which I cleaned and ... re-inserted? It seems to be staying though in general she looks sort of sad all the time. The white broody chicken (who started this annoying trend and is being the toughest to break it seem) also got the ends of her flight feathers on one wing trimmed this week to try to stop all that fence-hopping. 

We'll see who's in the boxes, who's in the yard, and who's on the roosts tonight! 

Brood Breaking

"Six little hens, brooding in the nests.

One flew up and joined the flock. 

Ariel took the rest and threw them out the door.

'No more hens brooding in my nests!"

6 of our hens were broody last night, meaning they sit on their nests all day and night, hardly getting up to eat and blocking the nests from other hens. We decided enough is enough! I hear letting them sit triggers other hens to give up laying for sitting and creates an epidemic, and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to break. Because they are putting all their energy into hatching eggs, they neglect taking care of themselves. Also, I must be diligent about collecting eggs so they don't start to develop and, although fine for eating, look less appealing on the inside and are not good to sell.

Our poor perspective mother hens got the boot and were locked in the cold, wet chicken run over night. The idea is to let their breasts cool down and hormones cool off while they are distracted by being uncomfortable and having no where even mildly passable to nest. This morning, I am continuing to keep them out of the hen house full of tempting nests, but set them out on the pasture grass with a bucket of grain spread around to distract them. I also felt bad for the hens locked in the house and the 6 separated from the larger flock, so I let another 4 hens and the rooster out with them, keeping the other half of the flock in the now less crowded hen house and run.

By 1pm, I was feeling hopeful that maybe, just maybe, 18 hours of being cold and foraging and doing things other than brooding on the nest might be enough to break the spell and I opened up the doors to let the flock in and out of the hen house and run (barn still off limits). Several of the quarantined hens made a b-line for the nests. I intercepted and threw them back out, locking the small door behind them - I guess no one will be trusted to go in the hen house today! Every time I went in or out of the goat barn, my normally shy chickens were pushing past me and the goats to try to get in to the room full of soft bedding. I had to hold a chicken in each arm and block Esther with my foot to get in the barn!

Around 5pm I finally relented and dropped the ban, figuring it was nearly bed time and anyone heading back to the nests would soon be evicted again to the yard for another night anyway. Interestingly enough, the remaining (30 - 4 freezer = 26 - 8 chicks = 18 - 1 rooster = 17 - 6 broody = 11 layers) 11 chickens seemed to not lay out in the yard. I assumed when the time came their eggs would have to come out regardless of where they were, though they try to make it to a safe nest. Evidently they have a significant amount of control over that timing and waited until I let them back into the hen house to lay. Hopefully there will be no long-term damage from these experiments.

Sure enough, 5 of the hens were back in their nests, but the hen who previously was brooding in the goat barn seems to happily returned to the roosts with the other chickens. The 5 remaining brooders I have locked out for another night. Tonight it is not rainy and wet and cold and miserable like it was last night, so I have decided I must implement further restrictions to break the habit - not only are they to sleep outside, but they are also required to sleep on the outdoor roost, not huddled together on the ground still pretending to mother.

"Five little hens, brooding in the nests.

One flew up and joined the flock. 

Ariel took the rest and threw them out the door.

'No more hens brooding in my nests!'"

An abundance of blessings

A quick update on our work as a hostel/WWOOF hosts:

Dad stayed an extra week, then left on Thursday, the 16th. Chaach and Nathan showed up early for our birthday camping trip and stayed an extra night after the weekend, nicely filling that time. As they headed out Monday, the 20th I got about cleaning the house and getting all the camping gear put away again until Mike and Holly called saying they were passing through on their way moving from Montana to Port Angeles and would come by for the night. As they were finishing up lunch and ready to hit the road, our friend Zac called and I sent Tim out the door at the same time as Mike and Holly to fetch our next house guest. Zac should be staying for a while, most likely until his mom, Nancy, gets back to the island on the 5th of May. Zac is also our new crew member for the f/v Whiskey Creek for this season in Bristol Bay.

Mines, Planes, and Hot Springs

Now that I'm done with my MAT program and it is not so much winter any more (April is warm!), we've decided to try to go camping every weekend we can. This weekend we decided on a shorter drive to our neighboring woods, the Olympic Peninsula. After our journey to the east in search of mining history, I thought I could do one better and try to find the things that appeal to Tim as close to home as possible. I planned a surprise camping adventure for Tim and Chaach and Nathan and unveiled where we were going as we waited for the ferry to Port Townsend. 

Though there were some doubters, we made it to the Tubal Cabin Mine trail head before it was totally dark and just down the trail from our car, we quickly came to an excellent camping area complete with fire circle, shelter structure with shelves to keep our food out of Tilly's reach, great flat tent spots and nice trees for Nathan's hammock. It was a bit chilly up there around 3,000 feet, but nothing a bunch of tough Alaskan's couldn't handle for a night! (Yes, Tilly got to sleep in the sleeping bag again. She kept me warm. :)  

In the morning, for some reason we thought camping at 5,000ft would be even more appealing and brought all our heavy gear and packs with us rather than leaving them in the conveniently close car and heading out with only day-packs. What were we thinking?! Up 2,000 feet we went, fully loaded with not-ultralight gear. After scrambling up the last few hundred feet, we found the mine adit we came here to see! Other visitors were snapping pictures at the entrance and heading back down but we were not satisfied with only that and headed in to the long, dark, wet tunnel. Instead of a trail, we were walking up a shallow creek bed into the hillside. I counted my paces for the first two hundred then gave up and kept following our fearless de facto leader. After a while we came to a place where water was showering down from above in a curtain across the adit and I figured that was as good a reason as any to beg to turn around and head back towards the light. Though it felt like eternity going into the dark, after only a minute I could see the small point of light marking the entrance again and felt relieved.

It was well into lunch time when we emerged and so we though we had better head for someplace warm, dry, sunny to set up camp for at least lunch and maybe the night. Why not head another half mile or mile back down the trail than climb up that steep hillside for a half mile or mile and see if we can get to the 1952 B-17 plane crash for lunch? That seems reasonable! So we strapped on our packs and kept on trekking. The hillside seemed to get steeper with every step, but eventually we reached the remains as day-hikers whizzed past us without packs. We found a fire circle and the remains of an old cabin to sit around and enjoy our lunches, then watched shadows getting longer and thought about the still-snow-speckled ground. Maybe not sleeping at an even higher elevation than last night? Maybe... maybe we could head down the mountain and head to the hot springs! My exhaustion melted away as new enthusiasm filled my legs with the promise of relaxing hot springs to come. Tilly didn't know what was up and, with her own heavy-ish pack, was actually looking tired and dragging at the back for once. 

We debated the hike-in campground and hot springs or drive-up? I took the extra leg of driving and we headed for the drive-up springs. When we arrived, they were closed for the night. Closed?! How can nature be closed!? So we set up our tents and tried again in the morning. Again we were too early and they wanted buckets of money, so we stuck our feet in the warm runoff and got back in the car. On we went to the hike-in springs. Two miles without packs flew by and we found ourselves stretched out in our own private pool. So nice. I felt I could float home. 

On the way home, we spent 4.5+ hours waiting to catch a ferry as all the reservations for the day were taken by early morning. At least our extra travel time was spent making sand castles on the beach and eating ice cream instead of developing blisters by gripping the steering wheel through blizzards.