Random Farm Catch Up

I was going to post about how to tattoo a goat today. Melody the Boer doe was supposed to be my unwilling volunteer but we got a late start and the lighting did not agree with my camera. Melody did get tattooed but most of the pictures did not turn out. Don't worry I will post tattoo instructions soon because we have quite a few more goats to get done in the near future. Hopefully our next tattoo goat model will be more cooperative. If you are looking at this picture and thinking; "that is the expression of a goat less than enthusiastic about the whole tattoo idea" then you would be right. Melody was actually kind of bratty about the whole thing, not that I blame her.

Tattooing is my least favorite chore on the farm. It is not because this is a difficult task to do, actually tattooing a goat is a rather simple and easy chore albeit a little messy. That green ink just seems to grow and spread everywhere no matter how careful you are with it. It is a necessary chore but I don't like tattooing or tagging goats because I hate to cause them pain, even for just a few seconds. Strangely castrating goats doesn't bother me a bit, a fact that makes my husband nervous for some reason. I guess I don't need to tell you what his most disliked farm chore is.

Since the how to tattoo post did not work out I thought I would just write a short, random catch up post about what has been going on at the farm.

The biggest news is probably our new addition to the farm. He is a little spotted Nubian buckling and a real sweetheart. I have always loved Nubian dairy goats and I especially find the spotted ones to be very beautiful. I have admired and wanted one for probably about six years, so when the opportunity came up to bring this little guy home I just couldn't say no. We are hoping to have a small, quality herd of Nubian dairy goats in the near future. Sorry no pictures yet but I will be posting more about him soon!

Procrastination is the bad, ugly monkey on my back. I have a problem with it and because of that I now find myself with only a week or so to move my farm website. Currently it is hosted with Yahoo Geocities because they are free and I am cheap frugal but Geocities is shutting down. I would be very thankful for advice and suggestions about where to go for web hosting! I would like one that I can eventually set up a shopping cart on.

Things are still up in the air and unsure but we may be moving my sister's horses down here to the farm at some point in the future. I am not quite sure where we will put them but I will figure something out. It is important to me to help out family and friends whenever I can.

We are going to have to find a different person to cut and bale our hay next year. We have it done on shares and the person that has done it the last three years is just not working out. The problem is we need every bale of hay we can get off of our land and he really does not seem to be worried about cutting all that he could bale on our property. This year he probably left a third of it uncut. We are going to have to buy a lot more hay this year because of it. We should have found someone else last year but what can I say we are just too nice sometimes and didn't want to find someone else unless we had too. We are going to be paying for that this winter. It seems the trick is going to be finding someone that still bales in small squares because the farmers around here all seem to be going to big round bales.

The garden is about done. I did not keep up with tracking all of our harvest in case you all didn't notice but I had good intentions. I am already looking forward to next years garden. I was so excited to get some hopi pale grey squash seeds in the mail from Linda who writes the Life on a Colorado Farm blog. Thank you so much Linda! I have never planted this type before and I can't wait to add them to the garden next year.

Hope you all did not mind my bit of random catch up today. I want to thank every person that reads my blog and takes the time to leave a comment. You are all very much appreciated.