Life on the Farm Known as Critterhaven

Today is one of those lazy days.  They type of day when I suddenly realize I haven’t blogged in months.  Since May I think.  But the thing is I have been updating.  Just via mini blogs via my facebook and twitter pages.  But this is so much more fun, just so much more time consuming!

So to play catch up, here is what has happened here on the farm.

Finally after 3 years our barn is going up.  We tore it down over 3 years ago on a local farm.  It was a very nice three stall horse barn that for a mere $300 we got it all.  But we had to tear it down.  No problem.  Hubby and my brother in law are both strong guys.  And seeing I was 7 months pregnant with our son I was no help at all.  Then I went into labor at 8 months and had to go to the hospital.  Our son was delivered by c-section a month early, but did fine.  We were only in the hospital a week with him, and then came home.  The next day my hubby was rushed to the ER suffering from a heart attack.  So needless to say the barn got put on hold for awhile.  But after I recovered and he recovered we started at it again, got the barn torn down, and moved to here on the farm.  Or should I say stored here on the farm.  Yes, for the past 3 years the barn has leaned against trees, fences, anything we had to prop it up.

But three weeks ago, we started putting it up.  I actually told hubby if he wanted to start working on finally restoring his 1962 SS Impala he would need to build the barn so we could stop using the garage as a storage for the hay and feed, and the occasional goat that needed isolating.  We even used it as a kidding building and kid pen at different times.  Concrete floor = easy cleanup.

It looks so good now! From the planning to the actual nails going in…I love it.  We had a barn growing up, and even tho it was for cows and a lot larger than this one (ours is now 30’x30’) this one will do nicely, and the kids are already enjoying running down the hall. It’s fun to plan and see in your head the future kiddings that will go on here. And to plan my milk stall!  I have 2 platforms – one which needs restoring but one is from a good friend down the road who sold her milk goats and gave me her stand.  Then I have 3 Surgers which I need to restore, and of course I need to find a vaccuum pump to run the system.  But it will be so nice to be able to milk in half the time all the does.  And not by hand too.

Speaking of kiddings, the boys sure are bucky right now.  They are close to the girls, and the smell is to die for. If you’ve never smelled bucks in rut, you haven’t lived.  I hope you know I’m kidding.  The girls are in heat, but I do not want December babies this year, so we are waiting until after the Goat Festival in October to breed, aiming for March/April babies.  Much nicer time to kid.

Here are our 4 herdsires we’ll be using this year.  I think they posed for this.

We are enjoying the fruits of the garden.  Okra is really coming along well, and the corn is starting to tassle out.  The squash has about played out, and so did the cucumbers.  But the tomatoes are just now turning and if I can keep the guineas and chickens away from them we will have them coming out of our ears.  We got 2 watermelons already this week, and have a few more to ripen in the next few days.

Check out my chicken coop!  Built it myself, hubby just helped hang the door and the nesting boxes.  Right now it holds 4 Silver Laced Wyandottes, our old Americauna, a gold laced wyondotte, and 6 young light Brahma pullets.

And how can I forget to mention, the pot bellied piglets!  Born 7-20-09, they are full of themselves!  Cheetah got loose and found her a great spot to have the piglets.  4 boys and 1 girl.  The little runt kept getting pushed out of the way due to his bum foot.  And his size.  His brothers and sister are double in size compared to him.  So we are raising him in the house.  My daughter named him Barbaro, after the movie she just watched on the wonderful thoroughbred with the same name.  She said he had problems with his foot just like the piggy…so hence the name.  I said it was such a big name for a little pig, so we nicknamed him BB for short.  He is just now getting brave enough to leave the comfort of his home in the bathroom and come looking for me when he is hungry.  Since Cheetah has gotten so large to take to the schools and such for the petting zoos now, we are raising little BB to take her place.  He will be trained to climb in the car by himself and walk on a lead so he can get around much better than hauling Cheetah in the dog crate and then wrangling her in and out of it.

It’s nearly back to school time around here.  My daughter will be starting Kindergarten.  It just seems like yesterday when we were bringing her home on Christmas Eve from the hospital.  Time sure flies.  Enjoy them while they are little!

So much has happened since I last blogged, but I guess that’s it for now.  Hopefully since the summer is ending I will have time to get caught up on everything around here.  Finally was able to ebay this week, as well as get stuff ready to go to my booth at the antique mall.  I told myself that when I yard sale I would only be buying stuff to resale, however I have found so much that we can use.  Like the new Holland grill that I got for a steal at the annual Verona Caney Yard Sale.  I also got a brand new doghouse for the new baby goats, and lots of potting planters to do my herb gardening in.  I’ve had to split up plants, which is good and gets me ready for the Middle TN Plant Swap in the fall at Henry Horton Park.

And FINALLY after three years I got my front flower beds cleaned out!  Now to decide what to plant so that I can make the front of the house look as inviting as I’d like it to.

Before and during..I’ll post after when it gets done:

Oh, I also started up a Twitter page and Fan of GMMF on Facebook for the Goat Festival. Details and a link on my farm website.

Til next time, which I promise will be shorter than this time.  I’m going to try to let the twitter and facebook flow over to this page and let me do all of it.  I have to find the happy medium for all, since everyone surfs, but not everyone facebooks or tweets.  So I’ll try all 3, and see what the response is to all for now.

Thanks for all the uplifting emails you send me and our venture here on the farm.  I’m so glad you enjoy it as much as we do.  And I’ve met so many great friends along the way.  Thanks again to Gail Deal and her family in AL, without whom my chicken coop and my barn would not have gotten the great start they did with her donations of wood, lumber, tin and even the door and nesting box to my chicken coop!

Susan

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What a week!! I have been swamped with getting ready for the yard sale we had Saturday, and despite the rain it went fairly well.  Not as good as some in the past have, but overall we had a good day.  It didn’t start raining until after lunch, but we got everything back up without getting anything ruined.

Yesterday we headed to Flanary Keepsake Farm in Symsonia KY to pick up what I am calling my grand baby goat.  Her mother was born on our farm to our beloved Auralia and the late Zorro, and I told LaNita I would buy Brandy back if she ever decided to sell her.  So we picked up her first daughter from Brandy, our grand baby we have named Keepsake Farm’s Breaking Dawn, continuing the movie and more so the Twilight theme we have going with this seasons kiddings.  With 2 registered does left to kid I should be able to work a New Moon and Eclipse in with the Twlight and Bella we already have.

I just LOVE LaNita’s place.  Just a beautiful farm!  She is a veterinarian and loves her critters and it shows.  I took hubby to show him her chicken and duck pens and maybe give him some ideas

This will do it for the newbies coming to the farm.  Two of our previous does are returning from Teresa at Little Wishes Farm.  We have Susie’s daughter here, whom my daughter has officially named Little Wishes Hannah Montana (again with the movie theme).  Her mom will be joining us again as soon as she weans Hannah’s two brothers.  And we will pick up Storm before Teresa moves to her new farm in mid June.  I’m so happy she is moving closer to us!  Between our farm, Teresa’s new farm, and Kay Allen’s farm at Blessed Assurance Farm, we now have 3 Nigerian Dwarf herds here in southern middle TN within a 15 mile radius of one another!  I just love goat neighbors!

We should have kittens in the next few weeks.  Not that we planned for it.  Witchipoo became pregnant before I realized it or had a chance to get her spayed, so looks like we’ll be looking forward to the blessed event I would say before the end of the month.

And I hope Cheetah our pot bellied pig is pregnant.  We took her to the neighbors who had purchased an unrelated male and his mother from us a couple of years ago, and so that we would not have to have a male on the property Cheetah resided there for a couple of weeks.  Now she is back and looks to be in the motherly way.  She absolutely loves being a mom, and although I say I won’t do it, we may end up keeping a baby girl from this litter to keep Cheetah company.  Cheetah is just so good with the goats and especially the babies I hope we can have as much luck with another pig and the goats as we have with her.

Back to Little Wishes Hannah Montana, my husband accuses me of wanting another baby to dress up.  Yes, I have to admit I love dressing up the baby goats.  But only the ones that live with us for a while in the house and are bottle babies!  And thank goodness there is only one at a time that does that.  Miss Ella has been turned back out in the field as a real goat.  She still gets her one bottle a day at 8 weeks old, but she will still follow you around like a puppy when she is out loose.  She was going to go with us yesterday, but she now smells so much like a true goat she spent the day in the garage while we headed to KY.  But Hannah was in the carrier in the back seat with her collar and dress on.

I often wonder how other goat owners manage with the babies that need a lot of TLC.  We are so used to ours coming in the bathroom it is nothing new.  I was talking to a friend of mine this weekend and she said it is not normal when there is not a baby goat in her house.  I think what I would like to do is one day when we add a den out the back of the house to put a covered carport to the side of it with a utility room of sorts off the back for the babies.  Maybe install a heated tile floor where we could do away with the heaters or heat lamp or heating pads.  As hubby says….”One of these days”.  I always say when we win the lottery and he reminds me you have to play to win.  Oh yeah, I forgot.J

Things are falling into place where we can FINALLY get started on the barn!  I know what I want, it is just getting it out of my head and down on paper.  And then mapped out on the ground, and then started. That shouldn’t be hard.  But at least we are closer now than we were.  My goal is to have it up, at least the majority of it, by this winter.  And the good thing is we shouldn’t have many babies due this fall, so no babies to worry about the cold weather.  I plan on having nearly all the girls bred this fall for spring babies.  It was so much easier this year on me and on the moms and kids.  And by fall the October 2008 doelings will be old enough to be bred as well as my senior girls will have had a year to rest, so I plan on breeding all of them except for of course this springs girls.   BIG spring 2010 season, and unless a doe is just spectacular I will be selling all the kids from that kidding season. 

I am SET for the garden season this year!  Got my heirloom tomato and watermelon plants out, and we also have cucumbers, onions, okra, and cantaloupe out.  I have to plant corn and beans this week, and maybe a few other things, but for the most part that will be it.  We moved the refrigerator from the garage in the house in the utility room, so I am ready for those veggies to start rolling in!

And my beautiful and smart girl Ella Claire graduated from preK on Friday.  She is growing into a wonderful and gorgeous little lady.  Next year…Kindergarten!  She actually cries when they do NOT have school!  Here she is with her PreK teacher Mrs. Moorehead.  She learned SO much as Mrs. Moorehead is a wonderful teacher and loves her students very much!  

 I’ll update more tomorrow night on how the new girls are doing.  I’m really loving Twitter and update it a little more frequently than the blog, however I’m enjoying so much reading the emails I get from those of you who enjoy my blogs! Life is NEVER dull here at Critterhaven!

Susan

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Wow…another month has passed and I’ve not blogged.  It’s not that I haven’t meant to.  I really do.  But life happens so quickly I just never get the chance.  I think I started about three separate entries, but by the time I got around to almost posting them the moments had passed and I felt the urge to hit the delete button.

So here is a catch up synopsis of my last month.  And boy has it been busy and wet.  I think it has rained every day except one in the past week.

All but 3 of the does have kidded.  Poor Nana, our eight-year-old Nubian mix, had twins at the neighbors’ house.  I got over there about 5am and she had a cold deceased baby boy at her side, and had been pushing for hours to get the doeling out.  After 15 minutes of convincing her not to push, I got the baby’s neck turned around where she could come out, and she too was deceased.  It will be the last time Nana is bred, because now she gets to live out her life with another senior gal at my friend Kathy’s just down the road.  If only all of our old gals could get such a chance at retirement.

We have 3 little boys and one girl left out of the kiddings so far left for sale.  I have decided to sell two does and that will be it for our older stock for a while to come.  Probably will have some kids out of the three remaining does who will kid in May and June, but no more adult stock for a while.  Sold my big buck tonight along with one of the junior bucks, and the other 4 will be our herdsires.   Nine babies on the ground now, and it is so much fun watching them play on the Little Tykes outdoor toys!

Funny, this kidding isn’t even over with and I’m already planning the next.  Life on the farm never ends!

Little Ella, our bottle baby goat came down with diarrhea last week.  About the same time I realized I had not dewormed nor coccidia treated the babies.  She is better now, and all of them have been treated.  That is what happens when you get busy with life.  You always forget something.  Or at least I do!

I think the sheep have finally adapted to their new life here at the farm.  All I have to do now is shake a feed bucket and Bubba follows anywhere.  And then the girls follow right behind him.  I moved them to the backfield and now they can graze and run to their hearts content.  The next project is moving the does to the front field.  I let them out to graze there daily, but they are not confined in any way.  It is hard with the rain to get the fences up, although the ground is now very easy to put in the fence posts!

We hatched out eight baby Midget White turkeys, but only 6 have survived.  Hopefully we’ll get at least a few girls out of the bunch and will keep one or two toms by which to raise and maintain our flock.  And baby quail are hatching out by the handful.  I think we have about 15 now and 2 more just hatched out tonight.  They are no bigger than your thumb when they hatch, and then grow to about the size of an adult quail, maybe the size of a large fist.  We plan on stocking the freezer with the adult males we have now, and then raising the females for more eggs and offspring.  Hubby wants me to pickle the eggs, which I have never done before, but I’m open to anything now I guess.  Waste not; want not, our new motto.

We received three new Sebastopol goslings in the mail the other day from a friend in Paris TN.  They are so sweet!  They were raised around people so they love to follow us around.  Of course our girls won’t have anything to do with them.  Hopefully they will merge with them when they get a little bigger.  They are about a month old now.  We think we have two males and one female in the new babies.  The little girl was not eating for a couple of days, but took her to the vet and he recommended yogurt.  So 10cc later of vanilla yogurt and she is now eating today.  Yay!  She is smaller than her brothers, but loves to be with them.  When she was away from them she cried and gooty gooty’d at me until she was back with them.

My little girl graduates from PreK next Friday.  Seems like the other day we were at the hospital and holding her in my arms.  She was a week late and has always impressed me with how smart and perceptive she is.  Although when I reminded her that graduation was next Friday she promptly said YES…then asked what was graduation.  Ah children….J

Well our yard sale got postponed from tomorrow until next Saturday because of rain.  Will it ever stop!!! I finally got the garden planted…well most of it.  About 25 tomato plants put out, along with broccoli, okra, peppers, watermelon, and strawberries.  But it is so wet I have not had the chance to put out any seeds, like beans or corn.  They probably would have been washed away anyhow with all the rain.  I think last weekend up until Thursday we got over 8 inches.  And probably with this weekends storms it will be another 1-2 inches.  The ground is just saturated.  Makes up for the drought last year for sure.  At least the pond is holding water now.  After the drought it cracked and hasn’t held water since, but it keeps coming down so steadily now that it doesn’t have time to empty.

Cheetah our pot-bellied pig should be giving birth in the next few weeks.  We took her to our neighbor up the road who has an unrelated male and we’re pretty sure she is expecting now.  I have people asking me for babies so now I should be able to oblige.   She has had two litters in the past.  Eight babies one time and three the next, and we’ve never had enough to fill the orders.  These should be black and white spotted and should arrive before the middle of June.

If I don’t get time to update by blogging, you can follow me now on Facebook or Twitter.  I know.  I’m one of those who always say I won’t get snarled in the new internet fads.  But it makes it so easy to communicate and keep in touch with what is going on.  And I have to admit; following people such as Ben Stiller on Twitter is a hoot!  He just got his kids’ new pets.  Sea Monkeys.  Now I have to say we have never tried Sea Monkeys here at Critterhaven and probably never will.  Life is never dull.

It is much easier to write snippets on Twitter, so I will probably update it more frequently than my blog, but I promise to blog as often as possible too.

We just got a pair of Egyptian geese.  Now these guys are TRULY unusual looking.  They have a hissing noise rather than your usual honking like a goose does.  We should be able to breed them next year.

I am looking for new homes for my Australian Shepherd and Papillion.  We love them dearly, but they really need more attention than we are able to give them, and I think either one or both would be great at agility. 

I’d like to say a WONDERFUL thank you to Gail and her family, our friends in Alabama. We were sitting here one Sat. evening in the front yard enjoying the spring evening and lo and behold a car turned in pulling a trailer, and I just knew it was Gail.  They brought us a huge four paneled dog kennel, a lot of barn wood, tin, fence posts, even a chicken nesting box, one of those big two decker ones.   And did I mention the HUGE shade tarp? I can never thank Gail enough for the kindness she has shown my family.  And our little wether Phil went home with her to join her other little pet goats.  I know he’ll have a wonderful home.  She fosters children so they are well loved by her entire family.

And thank you for all the wonderful emails I receive weekly from friends and fans of Critterhaven.  I have met some wonderful people such as Gail and others whom I have been able to help and they have returned the favor.  During these times it helps to have folks who are going through the same things you are to bounce ideas off of and share our experiences with to help to make it easier on us all.

Until next time…hope you are enjoying spring as much as we are here at Critterhaven.

Susan

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• I remember hiking across the field to the creek and fishing with my brother and his buddies, and the day the snake went over my foot while I was fishing on the bank
• I remember pulling potatoes off the roots while dad hoed them up in the garden
• I remember my brother curling up in the baby doll bed with my mommy doll (he denies it now)
• I remember the neighbors’ dog catching my brother’s blue Easter chick and running across the field with it while my brother ran behind screaming “Bluey, Bluey, Bluey!” . The neighbor later took care of the dog..said he had been looking for a reason to anyway.
• I remember climbing in the barn rafters
• I remember riding my horse out in the field, even though he would buck me off half of the time
• I remember dad riding said horse one time and getting bucked off, and never riding him again
• I remember having slumber parties in our old living room
• I remember Old Pat, the big cow that we kept to raise calves off of.  David, Susan, and Brian went to the freezer
• I remember being in the backfield with my dad and Papa, and the bull trying to run me down.  As I ran up the tree he slipped and fell, giving them a chance to get hold of him.
• I remember picking honeysuckle off the back fence and sucking the ‘honey’ out of the stems.
• I remember picking peaches in the orchard and eating them right off the trees
• I remember going to all the high school football games my senior year, and we won the State Championship that year
• I remember burying every one of the critters we ever had growing up under the big cedar tree in the side yard.  We always said some archaeologist in the future would think it was a ritualistic burial ground
• I remember when the momma dog had puppies, and we ended up taking them to the animal shelter, but keeping the odd one named “Gopher”
• I remember losing Gopher in the snow storm a week later
• I remember ever time we would try to see what Santa brought us the floor board in the hall giving us away with the creaking, and mom telling us to go back to bed
• I remember my room…I loved my room…and I loved decorating it and keeping it clean
• I remember sneaking out of my room through the window when my mom would lock us in there for something we did bad, and climbing into my brother’s room to play instead
• I remember the baby rabbit I kept for a summer in a bird cage, and then releasing him after a couple of month’s back out into the field
• I remember when they tore down the concrete front porch, and the copperhead snakes came out from under it, and jumping on the car while dad and the other guys killed them
• I remember at Christmas going and chopping down cedars for our trees, and then going to Grandma’s to let her pick out one…
• I remember the time Grandma got mad at me, and chased me under her bed from one side to the other…still can’t remember what about
• I remember my brother chasing my mom and aunt Kathy and I with the hose pipe around the back yard.  He got it when mom caught up with him.
• I remember making homemade ice cream with the old hand crank ice cream maker in the wooden bucket
• I remember my brother throwing a rock at the back of my head and having to go to the hospital.  He got it for that too.
• I remember eating at Grandma’s for every occasion…the family getting together. And my job was to go get the rolls.  And I absolutely hated sitting at the ‘side table’ with my cousin
• I remember fighting with my 3-year younger brother. But we would always wait until mom and dad were in the garden. Thinking they couldn’t hear us. But they always did
• I remember when we were robbed.  Mom walked in the door and said so calmly “We’ve been robbed”.  My brother yelled “My Star Wars stuff!” and I yelled “My Breyers!” Neither of which were stolen.  Dad’s rifle was sitting on the bar stool and the pistols that were his grandfather’s were gone.  The police said the robbers were probably scared off.
• I remember coming home after going to the hospital when my aunt had my cousin, and the tornado had hit our barn while the storms came while we were gone.
• I remember coming back from Nashville or Columbia at night after going out to eat, and WSM Grand Ole’ Opry on the radio.

All of these memories above are like flashes of memory.  I can remember them in detail if I stop and think about it, but they are like images on a video camera, cataloged in time in my mind.

But I remember more than anything one constant. Watching Dan Miller on the Scene at Six and Ten on WSMV Channel 4.  I remember Miller and Company.  And I remember Pat Sajak, Charlie Mac Alexander, Lonnie Lardner, Bill Hall, and all of the past cohorts of his that I grew up watching on the nightly news. 

Dan Miller passed away unexpectedly last Wed. of a heart attack.  He was in his hometown of Augusta Georgia covering the Masters tournament with his long time friends and co-workers Rudy Kalis and Terry Bulger.  He passed away doing what he loved and spending his last few hours and minutes with people who loved him.

Dolly Parton sent flowers to the church where his services are being held tomorrow with the message on the card reading "I Will Always Love You….Dolly Parton".  So did the Grand Ole Opry.  He was loved by all.

He will be missed, not only by myself who enjoyed reading his blog at Dan’s Notebook, but by thousands of viewers across the Middle Tennessee area who invited him into their homes night after night for nearly 40 years I guess.  I’m 42.

Rest in peace Dan Miller…you were trusted by all of us to bring us the news in an honest and non-biased manner, and you will always be thought of often and with warm thanks. 

There will never be another one like you…not in my lifetime.

Dan Miller

1941-2009

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