Busy Weekend

It has been a few days since I have had a chance to post much to this blog, but it was a very busy weekend on the farm. For starters on Friday the fence was not charging as well as it should so it had to be checked. The only way to do this is to start walking the fence line to find the problem. In the far corner of one of the pastures the goats are not in right now some post tops were missing, apparently some deer had been through and damaged the fence. The dogs keep the deer out of any pasture the goats are in, but the deer are not dumb and they know which pastures are empty to cross. It was an easy fix once the problem was finally found.

Then Saturday was spent cleaning out the old hay shed, and it was quite a mess. The old hay that was unfit for animal feed was loaded in the truck and moved to a far corner of the yard to be used in the future for compost. Loose hay bale wires in the shed had to be gathered up and will be recycled the next time a load of metal is taken to town. We only had a few bales of our prairie hay left, so some had to be bought to get us through the rest of the winter until the spring grass comes in good. It was a quick 40 mile round trip to go get more hay. We bought more prairie hay and some alfalfa for the milkers and new moms as well. The goats love their alfalfa hay and treat me like a rock star when they see me carrying it to their feeders.

Since I want to be able to use the hay shed in the Spring for other uses, the new hay was unloaded and stacked in the backyard on pallets and covered with a tarp. Our fenced backyard is in the center of the different goat pastures and behind the feed pen as well as the kidding pens so it is a handy place for the hay to be this time of year.

The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent doing some much needed farm spring cleaning on the pastures. There seemed to be a never ending amount of limbs that needed to be picked up. I was very grateful to have DH's help with this chore. We had planned on quitting at sunset, but with so much to do it is hard to keep to a timetable on a farm. There was lots of limbs to burn by the end of the day and so we started a fire, working until well after dark.

Sunset on the farm

As long as it is not too dry, burning is a good way to get rid of excess limbs and branches that are too small for firewood, so that is what we did. The creepy, glowing eyes in the background is just one of our livestock guardian dogs that came up to the goat pasture fence that is there, to see what was going on in the backyard.

The camera did some strange things with the lighting from the fire in this picture I took. I just thought it was a really cool picture and wanted to share.

My husband and I had worked right through suppertime, but watching the limbs burn we got an idea for a quick easy meal. Reason 47 why I love living in the country, you can cook hot dogs over a fire in your backyard late at night and no neighbors complain.

Not the most healthy meal to be eating at 9pm at night for sure, but it was quick, easy and we never had to turn the stove on.

Then Sunday was spent trimming the hooves on half of the goat herd, cleaning out the large goat shed and taking down the old kidding pens so they could be moved to make room for a larger garden this year. All the vegetable seeds and supplies we will need for this years garden was also bought and I got our spring goat supplies ordered online as well. Tomorrow I hope to get some of the early vegetable seeds started indoors and the kidding pens set up again in their new location. The countdown clock at the bottom of this blog reminds me that I better hurry up and not waste time getting that done!