Our New Family Member

We have added a kitten to our family! Springtime (summertime?) is also Kitten Season, when there are many, many kittens looking to be adopted and brought into new homes. Older cats are also always to be considered, but for our household with a young boisterous dog and a grumpy old-man dog, a kitten that would be adaptable seemed the best choice.

So, now we have Sebastian. It has taken him a few weeks to acclimate, but he seems to have decided on a course of action.

The first week we kept him restricted to the bathroom until he and the dogs became acquainted (which made for very interesting shower time, as he is a super talkative kitty and seems to think he owns all towels). Week 2 he was allowed to a few more rooms in the house, and enjoyed seeing how high he could jump. The answer: about as high as a corgi. He quickly found hiding spots under beds and couches, but was rather unpleasantly surprised to learn that Mia (the younger corgi) could  wriggle into those places as well. The area under our couch became very thumpy in the mornings. I'm not sure if I want to know what they were up to or not. Sebastian started to take the dogs toys out of the toy box and hide them under the couch, trying to stir things up with the dogs. The joke was on him though, because that is the same thing that Mia does with them. I guess she thought he was helping her?

Eventually Sebastian figured out how to climb his way up to our bed, where Mia sleeps next to me. He also wanted to sleep next to me (seriously, my husband also sleeps up there, does he emit some kind of odor repugnant to animals or what?). Mia and Sebastian spent an entire week fighting over the sleeping-next-to-Mommy space, each of them trying to creep closer and closer to my face. It was great fun waking up in the middle of the night to have a corgi sharing my pillow. Eventually Sebastian gave up, settling for sleeping on Mia's butt. But not before peeing on the bed next to my face. At 5 am in the morning.

Sebastian has also discovered a love of computers (is this normal? I have never had a cat that is so into prancing across keyboards before). Whenever I am on the computer, he has to come "help" me type by dancing across the keyboard and somehow always pressing the keys that make the touchpad stop working. Every. Single. Time.

For the most part though, Sebastian and Mia are partners in play. They play chase and hide-and-seek and other games that they have made up together. This morning, Mia was laying down and Sebastian crawled onto her back and bit her ear to let her know that he was ready to play. Bailey joins in sometimes, but is happy to have more time to sleep. It's always interesting to watch Mia and Sebastian interact (especially now that they have worked out the whole bedtime thing and I have my pillow to myself again).

First Day of Spring

As we move from winter into spring today, the sky celebrates with us by dropping the first snowflakes of spring on the ground. The corgis are quite excited by this, as they love snow.

Bailey thinking deep thoughts as he watches the snowflakes

Yesterday was almost sixty degrees, much closer to our normal spring weather. The goat kids were quite excited to be outside and zoomed around, showing off for their moms. The mothers were rather unimpressed, having seen the antics of their kids before, and rather more interested in finding any greens that were sprouting. Below are some of my favorite pictures from yesterday's fun in the sun:

Springs for feet

Zooming around mom

Karate kid

How high can I jump?

And now for the adorable pictures:

Voltron - he's a sweetheart

Quinn and Graupel - snowstorm babies

Our angora girls

Spring Preview

Based on a True Story...

Voice-over Guy: After surviving the week of below-freezing temperatures and single-digit wind chills, the weather has finally taken a turn towards a temporary thaw.  With it has come rain and mud.  Lots and lots of mud.

This is a paraphrasing of a conversation that happened in our home last night. 

Hubby: What is this brown stuff all over our kitchen floor?

Me: Dirt.

Hubby: Why is there dirt all over the floor?

Me: (Really, really wanting to be snarky and say that someone came in and dropped dirt all over the floor.) *Sigh* It's muddy outside. Everyone is bringing in mud on their feet. When it dries, it becomes dirt. 

Hubby: Oh. 

After-note: We have lived in this house for eight years now. We have mud season EVERY YEAR. I did not think this was a big surprise to anyone, but hey, I was wrong. 

Also, my daughter is currently obsessed with life hack videos on You Tube. After an article I read a few years ago, I stopped reading/watching any of those, because as far as I could tell they were just common sense. Among other things, the article had to do with.... cleaning up mud off the kitchen floor. Their recommendation: wait until it dried so you could sweep it up rather than trying to mop up the wet stuff. Um, thanks?

If I could also get the humans in my family to leave their shoes in the shoe area (which is before the kitchen), it would also help this problem. Hence the whole "mud room" thing. I don't think there is much hope as far as the corgis are concerned. Their low rider status just attracts mud like a magnet. Every other year I get the bright idea to towel them off as they come in and then run out of clean towels as the stack of dirty towels piles up by the door. Eventually I give up and they make nice little mud patterns with their stomachs on the kitchen floor. Maybe I should have told my husband that the brown stuff was corgi art. 

Basic Tutorial: Upcycled Dog Toys!

Today's post is going to cover some basics for using leftover fabric and rags to make upcycled dog toys.  If you are like me, always saving all those leftover bits from your sewing projects for that "later" that never comes, then this project may be one for you! If you don't have a dog, you probably know someone who does, and chances are they will be super excited to have a Christmas gift for their favorite pooch.

For this project, you will need:

• Basic sewing skills
• A sewing machine (you can hand-sew, but it will take longer)
• Thread, scissors
• A rag bag of assorted fabrics, or a bag of scrap fabrics (or both!)

Depending on how much fabric and what kind you have, there are several ways you can go. Get creative! I have made two toy animals to get you started with ideas: a snake and a frog. 

THE SNAKE

• It's best to use a strong fabric for the outside shell of the animals (old jeans, khakis, etc.).  I used part of an old pant leg for this one, simply cutting it to the length that I wanted and then making it square up into a rectangle. 

• At that point I cut out bits of fleece for exterior decoration: eyes, tongue, spots, and spikes. If you decide to do spikes, just make sure that they are facing towards the inside for when you sew the sides together. I like fleece for this part because you do not have to worry about it fraying at the edges. 

• After finishing the decorations, fold the snake in half, right sides together, and pin. Sew the long end together.

• After sewing the long end together, open the end up, and fold so that the tongue is centered (still with right sides together). Sew that end shut.

• Note: I double-stitched since this is going to be a dog toy.
• Turn the snake inside out and stuff with scrap fabric or rags. You can use stuffing if you want, but my dogs actually eat stuffing. Or, leave it empty.

• Once the snake is stuffed, sew the opening shut. You can use the machine or hand-stitch.
• Your toy is done!

THE FROG

• Again, use a strong fabric for the outside shell of the animal (old jeans, khakis, etc.).  I used old khakis leftover from another project for this one, cutting it into oval shapes.
• I used fleece to make a stomach and eyes for my frog. Cut out similar designs, or your own. Pin them into place on the front of the frog and stitch. 
• The arms and legs will also be made from old fabric.  Find long, thin strips of fabric, about 8" long. You will need 3 per arm/leg (12 total). They do not need to match.

• Put 3 strips together and tie a knot at the end. Braid until you get to the other end, and tie another knot. Do this for the remaining strips until you have 4 arms/legs.
• Pin the arms and legs to the front of the frog, facing the inside. To make sewing easier, the outer knot can be outside the stitching area. Baste into place. 
• Place the backside of the frog onto the front, right sides together. Pin into place. 

• Stitch both sides together, leaving about 4" for turning the frog right side out. Turn right side out.
• Stuff the frog with scrap fabric or stuffing, or leave empty. Stitch the opening shut. 
• Your toy is done!

Cherries!

Last weekend we made cherry jam. We had several pounds of cherries to work with. I am not exactly sure how many. We had originally picked sixteen pounds of cherries (to give you an idea of quantity - this completely filled our fruit drawer), but several pounds were eaten before we got to the jam-making stage. We like our cherries!

This year I finally broke down and purchased a food mill. So many people kept telling me that I should get one. We had borrowed one before, and it was great and saved lots of time, but I never really thought I needed one until I was staring down pounds and pounds of cherries and blueberries (we had also picked 11 pounds of blueberries on our outing - those I made into freezer jam for convenience).

My daughter, who has had a keen interest in cooking shows for several years, jumped all over the food mill. I think the only thing that I was allowed to do with it was clean it.

Our new food mill.

Unfortunately, I did not realize that it didn't pit the cherries, so that was A PROBLEM. Do you know how few stores in rural areas sell cherry pitters? We do. That was several hours on a Saturday morning. We eventually found a swiss-army kitchen tool thing (below) that pits cherries, cores apples, does something to strawberries and also zests things and I don't even know what else. It actually worked quite well.

The swiss army kitchen tool.

Colleen and I had quite the system going - she would use the food mill to process the cherries after I cleaned and pitted them. Then we got them cooking and canned. So blueberries and cherries are done, now we get to move on to the raspberries and blackberries.

Jars of cherry jam.

Spring (and every other season) is here!

Weather in the mid-atlantic east coast area has been strange lately. Today feels like spring, last week was very very summer, and the week before we had the heat running! Our poor animals have no idea whether to shed or what, and the trees think they are supposed to bloom... And the pollen!

We are working on making some changes to our farm as well. Due to my increasing allergies to the goats (and the lack of any kind of allergy serum for goats), we are down-sizing our goat herd. Since my daughter and I are both riding horses now, we are bringing my horse to the farm to make the horse care easier (pictures to come!). There will be goats posted for sale on our sale page, although most of them will be for sale after August when the summer shows are over.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures:

This is the female of the angora triplets, picture taken a few months ago. She ended up being the bottle baby.

Here is one of her brothers. They are so soft!

Bubba. At 5 months old, he is almost as big as his mother.

Corgis counting goats. 

Our puppy, Mia. She is much more interested in chasing balls than goats.

Mason Dixon Fair 2016

We have finished up our part of the Mason Dixon Fair this year, although the fair runs through this Saturday. There was no angora goat show this year (very sad news), so we took three of our boer-cross goats to show. Colleen and I each entered a jam. Colleen's jam placed first for her category, mine placed second. She was really excited about that (this was the first year she entered a jam).

For some reason, our goats were put in the "Sheep" tent, even though there was a "Goat" tent (as well as a "Cow" area and a "Swine" area). It was very strange. Having never been in the Sheep tent before, I cannot say if it was just this year, or if this happens all the time, but the sheep seem to enjoy escaping their pens. Then someone yells, "Sheep!" and all available bodies assemble to corner the sheep into an area where they can be caught and put back into their pen.  By the end of our three days there, the word "sheep!" seemed to be synonymous with a four-letter-word.

The cow area was behind us. I always find them interesting to watch. Many of these animals (not just the cows) are 4H and FFA projects, and you can tell the love and care that the owners put into their animals. Since we are there during all hours of the day, we see the morning, afternoon, evening, and late shifts. We get to watch the cleaning, bathing, fluffing, primping, and cuddling that occurs. The cows directly behind us (pictured below), were definitely quite tame. The lighter colored one was regularly used as a couch by her young owner, with her sprawling across the cow's back, and the two of them taking a quick nap together.

The very tame cows that were behind us for the week.

Is she picking her nose?

Below are pictures of Colleen showing the three different goats:

Colleen showing Gracie. I did tell her to smile before she went in the show ring. 

Colleen showing Luna Belle.

Colleen and Little Red.

If you have never had your goats in a fair situation, just know that they will want what the other animals are eating, no matter what it is. That's just how it is. In previous years, we have seen some interesting ways in which the goats try to go about sampling their neighbors food. Some of the sheep, like our goats, had constant hay access through hay nets and bags, while others were on a feeding schedule. The sheep diagonal to us were on a feeding schedule, and they were not happy with this arrangement; to the extent that they were eating hay that our goats had dropped on the ground by sticking their faces through the bars into our goat pen to get to it. Luna Belle (the red goat with horns) took offense to this and dealt with it in a very goat way: by head butting them. The sheep dealt with it very differently, however, and grabbed her horns in their mouth and pulled very hard. Luna Belle did not like that at all. She twisted until she was finally free, and then ran to the other corner of the pen, glaring angrily at the sheep. Unconcerned, the sheep continued eating the hay off the ground. This became too much for Luna Belle, who then had to head butt the sheep again, thus starting the whole cycle all over. At some point they either ran out of hay to eat or got tired of fighting each other, because it stopped.

Then we get to the end of our time there, and stall cleaning. It is impossible to clean a stall with three goats inside of it. The stalls next to us were empty, though, so we put the goats in there temporarily. I didn't realize that we had just put them directly across from the sheep that Luna Belle had been fighting with earlier, or that she still had a grudge against them. In very little time, she had managed to squeeze herself through the bars into their pen, and was tossing her head around in a blatant show of aggression. Enough to impress the sheep into submission. Once that was over, Luna Belle realized that there was nothing good to eat over there, so she settled for taking a drink from the water bucket, with one eye on the sheep, to make sure that they were watching. By that time I had managed to walk around the set of pens to get to the front of that one so I could open it. But Luna Belle was ready to leave then anyway. She had done what she had come to do.

Colleen and Gracie snuggling in the goat pen.

The Mill of Bel Air had a tent set up not too far from where we were. They had some free things that they were giving away.  Colleen made sure to go get one - she got a dog toy. Toby has already been enjoying it, especially when the center has peanut butter inside!

Toby enjoying his new toy.