Winter Solstice

From The Winter Evening by William Cowper

Oh winter, ruler of th' inverted year,

Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,

Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks

Fring'd with a beard made white with other snows

Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds,

A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,

But urg'd by storms along its slipp'ry way,

I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,

And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold'st the sun

A pris'ner in the yet undawning east,

Short'ning his journey between morn and noon,

And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,

Down to the rosy west; but kindly still

Compensating his loss with added hours

Of social converse and instructive ease,

And gath'ring, at short notice, in one group

The family dispers'd, and fixing thought,

Not less dispers'd by day-light and its cares.

I crown thee king of intimate delights,

Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,

And all the comforts that the lowly roof

Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours

Of long uninterrupted ev'ning, know.

What have I done!!!

Three more does came in to heat Sunday, so three more were bred. Then I realized that means SEVEN does kidding in an 8 day period in March. Gonna be a fun week :)

Lizzy & Louie

Goatie Courtship

These are going to be good looking F2 kids with  good milking genes behind them.
Both Louie & Lizzy have horns, so no polled kids from these two.

Schapi & Lily

Hey Dude! pay attention to me!!

Yes, play fighting is often part of the ritual.

Later in the day, Heidi decided she was in heat, too.....

Heidi certainly has her own ideas about things. Much like last year, she decided she was going to pick her own buck. I was planning to breed her to Only One Buck. She decided she was not going to wait & hopped the fence to get in with Lily & Schapi. I decided that a blue eyed kid out of Heidi would be cool, so I let her stay in there. Heidi is a GREAT milker but she is on the small side. Schapi has good milk lines behind him, but his breeder was not milking, so I am not sure about his mothers milking ability. But he is a 50:50 F1, so he should add a little size to Heidi's kids.......we shall see....

She also decided she was in LOOOOVVVE with Mr. Blue eyes.

Schapi is a little smaller than Lily & Heidi right now, but that is because he is not yet full grown.

The Happy threesome

and so it begins.....

The breeding season that is....three girls bred, and one maybe bred, so nine or ten more to go. I can't believe I have 13 does to breed.  How did THAT happen. I guess I will need to sell some more does after kidding season next year.

Rheba was bred to Only One Buck, and if she settled will be due 3.6.12

Daisy was bred to Only One Buck and if she settled will be due 3.9.12

Sweet Violet is the one who is a maybe. She was bred to Schapi, a first generation Mini Nubian buck.  He is still a rather young boy and quite a bit smaller than Violet. If she took, she will be due 3.7.12. But I will be watching to see if she comes into heat again on or around 10.29.11.

Annie was bred to Penny's brother, an as yet unnamed second generation Mini Nubian buck. I was not planning to keep him. He is a good example of when a disbudding goes WRONG......and why I really love my polled goats. He has big twisted horns & gets his head stuck in anything he can all the time.  But I am glad he is still here because Pork Chop is just not ready to be a papa yet & I already sold Chief.  If she settled she will be due 3.13.12.

the strangest thing.....

I have been stuck inside most of the day. I have a nasty head cold so I have been working on the computer. I finally made it out to the garden to enjoy the last rays of the lovely sun we had today and to assess how many more gallons of tomato sauce I can make (ok, that is a slight exaggeration, I have only made 2 gallons so far & maybe have enough ripe to make another 2. Plus several more quarts of sundried or oven roasted. yum). So I am standing there in the garden assessing the tomato situation, and I hear over head the sound of wings.

Not beating wings, gliding wings, but close enough that I can hear them. I look up expecting to see a flock of Canada geese. That is not what I see. I see three of the biggest "circles" of turkey vultures I have ever seen at one time. I am not kidding, there were at least 30 birds dancing around each other in each of three groups, the groups then circling each other.....I stood there watching them over head expecting them to move on. One group did, flew off to the south down the riparian corridor. The others hung out long enough for me to think, gee, I should take a picture..... so I went inside & grabbed my camera, but they were gone. Or so I thought.

Then I realized they were in the trees all around me. Unbelievable. I counted at least 60 birds. And no, there was nothing dead around. I can usually smell a dead deer before they find it. Nothing. It will be interesting to see if they are still around in the morning. They really like the grey pines & the ponderosa pines. Seriously, I have never seen anything like it before. Have you?

Apparently they do not like cedar trees

equinox

"As autumn returns to earth's northern hemisphere,
and day and night are briefly,
but perfectly,
balanced at the equinox,
may we remember anew how fragile life is ----
human life, surely,
but also the lives of all other creatures,
trees and plants,
waters and winds.

May we make wise choices in how and what we harvest,
may earth's weather turn kinder,
may there be enough food for all creatures,
may the diminishing light in our daytime skies
be met by an increasing compassion and tolerance
in our hearts."-   Kathleen Jenks, Autumn Lore

Tomato Envy???

I have been a little envious of my friends & coworkers who live down in sunny Sacramento. They have been bringing tomatoes in to work for over a month. As for me, I think 2011 is going to go on record as the worst tomato year ever in El Dorado county. We had lots of rain & cold weather well in to the last week of June. Not great tomato conditions. I did eventually get some planted and have some success. This last weekend I finally had enough ripe at one time to do something with them other than just eating them :)

I took the very full bowl to the sink in the milking shed for an initial washing before I brought them inside. They looked so pretty I just had to take a picture....

Sitting on the milk stand dripping.

tray one ready to go in the oven

That one bowl filled two large cookie sheets

The finished product; which were then bagged up & frozen. 

One of my favorite quick & easy dinners is pasta with roasted tomatoes & my home made feta cheese. So it is nice to have plenty of feta in the fridge & plenty of roasted tomatoes in the freezer. Hopefully there will be enough ripe tomatoes next weekend to get some sauce and/or whole tomatoes canned, too.

I must say, however, that I am not real happy with the varieties I planted this year. Next year I will go back to the ones I fell in love with last year. I did not repeat them this year because between kidding season & the  crazy weather this year, I did not get seeds planted & had to rely on the varieties available at the local nursery. Good but not great. 

Longest Day of the Year.....

I am not sure which is worse, kids born in the cold & snow or kids born in the 100 degree heat. Not the timing I had planned for Miss Heidi goat, she was supposed to be kidding back in April, but she had other plans. She also had other plans about papa....

So here is what happened.  When I thought she had been bred to Only 1 back in November, I put all the bucks back in the same pen with the girls. Everyone had been bred & I knew who was bred to whom. I put them all back together because at that point no one was in milk & just because it is easier to take care of everyone in one pen. So when Heidi went way past her due date, I knew I was going to be playing a game of "who's your daddy".....

Well Heidi finally kidded today with one big boy. What a pudge!  Clearly Chief is the papa; he looks just like his other kids from this year. The good news is it looks like he is polled. YAY! So if he looks as handsome as his papa, I will be keeping him for breeding next year....now I just have to pick a name :)

Penny's Girl

sorry for being so slow with posts but spring is busy around here :) Penny kidded 4.17.11 with one girl.

The new girls at Slate Creek

I picked up two fat & happy nucs on Monday 4.11.11. I was planning to check on them after they had been here a week, but got a little worried on Sunday because there was so much activity outside one of the hives. I was afraid they were either being robbed or (heaven forbid) swarming. So i suited up to check on them & here is what I found.

This is the one i was worried about, but I guess it was just a traffic jam at the front door. 

I popped the entrance reducer in quick when i thought they were being robbed. I removed it when I realized they were just warm & happy girls enjoying a sunny day with lots of flowers in bloom; most of them have pollen.

You can see the 5 frames that made up the nuc versus the 5 plastic frames I had. The good news is they are moving onto the new frames & drawing comb.

Newly drawn comb

Capped brood cells & right next to that pollen being packed in to empty cells.

There are some drone cells on this frame, and again you can see pollen.

Close up of the drone cells, and I do believe that is one of the boys in the lower left corner. Larger body & big eyes.

This is a frame I pulled out of the second hive. A little more disturbing because those three large cells are supersedure cells. Which means the bees were trying to replace the queen for one reason or another. Not a good sign.

Same frame flipped upside down. You can see the cells are empty which means three new queens hatched out. Hopefully one of them survived!! Also note, pretty much no capped brood on this frame :(

See the little larvae!!! Aren't they cute!!

The second hive was really "pissy". I actually got stung through my gloves (actually my Dad's gloves I inherited. I inherited his veil, too. Most girls are excited about inheriting their Mom's veil :)). I have not been stung by a bee in about 15 years, so it was probably good to be reminded its not so bad.

Because they were extra agitated, I did not pull all the frames to check for brood & signs of a happy monarch. I put the hive back together & left them alone. But having no queen can make them grumpy. 

 I think, based on the fact that this was one of the last pics i took, that this frame came out of the hive with the empty queen cells. But I am not certain. If it did, then I think there must be a queen? or maybe not....eggs take 3 days to develop in to a larva, then larva take 6 days to develop into pupa (which is when the get "capped"). When i took the pictures, it had been 6 days since i brought the nucs home....hmm...well, I am going to check both hives again this weekend to see how they are doing. But so far so good!!

ok, this picture I actually took on Friday. This bee appears to have deformed wing virus. Not totally unexpected; I think it is pretty much ubiquitous, along with the varroa mites that help spread it.  But since both have been associated with colony collapse disorder, I will be monitoring closely.