Grandpa's Visit and The Tale of Billy Whiskers

As many of you know, we had the extreme honor of hosting Sweetbreads’ 100 yr old Grandpa George a couple weeks ago. He flew from Florida by himself and was accompanied at the farm by my Mother In-Law, who it wouldn't have been possible without. She made the visit seamless.

It was an amazing experience to be able to sit down and chat with someone who had been through so much and was still lucid about each aspect of history. George was a chicken farmer back in the 30's, a jazz musician, and always an active member of his communities. He is quite a remarkable man, and who knows, maybe he’ll be back!

I wanted to share with you one of the highlights of the trip for all of us. Once the sun went down out came the book "Billy Whiskers, The Autobiography of a Goat". Since we don't have TV, and listening to the radio gets a little old after a while, I read a few chapters out of Billy Whiskers each evening. 

You'll have to read the story for yourself, but as you can imagine, it's the tale of a mischevious and adventuresome goat. It was written in 1903! Quite a wonderful and hilarious tale (although parents these days would probably throw a fit over some of the descriptions of the incidents...).

Below is the link where I found to the story. Maybe one day I'll come across a hardcopy. 

Best enjoyed on a cool winter evening with a warm glass of mulled wine.

http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/Billy_Whiskers/pages/001_Billy_Whiskers.htm


The $500 Hoop House for Hay Storage

We're remodeling an old red barn that was used for milking cows in the 1970's and 80's. It's been abandoned since then and was infested with termites, brown recluse spiders, and who knows what else (actually, I know everything else that was in there, but the list is way too long).

The old milking barn was our hay and lumber storage. We recently decided to transform the barn into a small creamery/classroom space/milking parlor. Over the next few months I'm working with Sweetbreads' step-father to fix up the old building. Good thing he knows what he's doing...

With all that going on we needed somewhere to put all of our hay. We couldn't afford to put up a nice, big hay barn, so we sought out an economical solution. What we found was a $500 hoop house. All of our materials were bought new (except for some screws and a few 2x4's). If you have access to free PVC or plastic covering you could build this thing for next to nothing. 

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First Breeding Season - Triumphs and Travails

We are just wrapping up our first attempt at breeding the dairy goats naturally. We are not using AI this season. But I won’t bore you with the specifics of all that. This is a time for stories. Stories that are a daily experience of farming.

Gozer, hollerin' at the ladies

In an effort to synchronize the girls’ heat cycles we put them in a paddock near the bucks. They were about 2 feet apart. The boys inside their fortified pen and the girls inside the electro-netting.

Immediately the two boys started going bonkers. Making strange noises and butting the fence repeatedly. Neither tried to jump out or climb the fence. Just a lot of running straight at the fence, trying to plow it down. They know where the gate is, so they focused on that area the most. It also happens to be the weakest part of the fence, so I had to reinforce it twice within the week.

When we noticed a specific doe in heat we would take the rest of the girls away to the milk barn and leave the girl in heat in the pen. She would be wagging her tail, making a strange sound we’d never heard before and have a noticeably moist tail.

Next I would go into the buck pen and let one loose to run in with the girl, meanwhile holding back the other buck until Sweetbreads locked the gate.

Everything went surprisingly smoothly until the last few “dates”. George, the Alpine, had proven himself to be the casanova of the two. He had style and finesse. Upon entering the girl’s pen, George would immediately mount and seal the deal, usually two or three times in the first few minutes. You knew it was a good one because George would end with a big thrust and then fall over backward on the ground! Talk about hilarious.

Then he would go back to the doe and she would pee on his face. To which he would stare up at the sky and snarl his upper lip. At this point it’s impossible not to laugh. This is what he’s been waiting for all year. A doe to pee on his face.

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