Is She or Isn't She? (in heat, that is)

Today we woke early (4:10am) to bring Phil to the airport for, perhaps, one more trip to Colorado. Back at home, the boys and I had a good day doing school work, walking the property, watching the goats. Annabelle was bleating more than usual, so I called Michelle and went over to get their Nubian buck. Michelle graciously brought Bubby back in her truck, because, she said, if Bubby peed on our nice van, it would forever smell musty, like buck.

We watched the two for about a half hour, but Annabelle was certainly not in standing heat, as they didn’t mate. So we’ll keep Bubby the Buck for a while. Here are my buck observations, for those who don’t get to be around goats regularly.

First, bucks have large scrotums. For perspective, Isaiah asked why Bubby has an udder! (It is good to be able to explain such things to curious children. In the photos below, the first shows a scrotum, the second an udder--you can see that they are about the same size.)



Second, bucks smell pretty strong. They promote that strong smell both from glands (apparently), and from peeing on their forelegs. Bubby liked his own smell so much, he puts his nose in the stream of pee. Third, Michelle called the impregnating member “lipstick,” as it emerges in pink glory about 6” to pee, then retracts.

Bubby is quite sweet. He is smaller than my girls (he was born in March of this year, not March of last year), and had a rough birth. Michelle had him, as a small kid, sleep in her bed, since they had to bottle feed him to keep him alive. Unlike my skittish girls, he comes up to me to scratch his head, and appears to enjoy any attention lavished on him.

I appreciate Bubby’s gratitude. My girls get browse (the brushy stuff goats like to eat, as opposed to pasture, which is simply grass or other green leafy growth on the ground) every day, and they turn up their noses at redbud leaves, preferring oak, tulip poplar, maple, and elder. Bubby, though, has been on pasture perhaps his entire life, so he immediately and enthusiastically went to eat the remaining browse in the pen (at that point, mostly redbud).

Annabelle and Chrystal, sufficiently chastened, soon joined him in his meal. Honestly, a picky palate was not something I expected from my goats! (Don’t goats have the reputation for eating anything?!)

Michelle was quite encouraging: she said both goats look exactly right, neither too fat nor too thin. She guesses that Annabelle will be more gentle once she has kidded, and suggested that I just manhandle Annabelle to get her used to touch. Annabelle should be less jumpy than she is (and she had been less jumpy some months ago); Chrystal is just a bossy old goat, and there isn’t much hope that she’ll become sweetness and light at this point.

For the near future, then, we have three goats, one of which smells strongly musky.

The other major event of the day was I bought a 10’x24’ metal shed still in the boxes off of craigslist. Joe even delivered it—and that’s a drive! I think the last time it was raining, and all of my burners got wet so that I couldn’t light the fire to cook our lunch, and I stood in the wet noon blowing on the burners with all my might to clear them of standing water, I thought, “This is the wet season! I cannot sustain this for the next several months! I will go insane!” So I looked for storage sheds on craigslist and found this one. It will be almost as large as another trailer; we’ll see how we choose to use the space.

The boys and I saw several interesting insects today. We watched a spider go around and around the inside of her web. We saw a very hairy caterpillar and a teeny tiny snail that crawled on Isaiah’s fingernail. Isaiah also held a wiggly nightcrawler, and a flying beetle (?) flew right by Abraham’s and my ears and promptly died on reaching the ground. That was odd.

While we walked the land today, I observed the trees. So many of them near our trailer are small, oddly formed, crooked, split, or otherwise undesirable. So to walk a little further into the woods and look around encouraged me. We have plenty more undesirable trees—40 acres of mostly neglected woodlands will do that. But we also have some beautiful, straight trees in our woods. I had forgotten.

We are thinking about what kind of house to build. Dennis suggested a straw bale house, and there are now books on how to build straw bale in a humid climate. We would probably build a wood frame, then just infill with straw bales. But it might not be cost effective in the end; there is plenty to research on that front. To build with wood, I think it would be wise to have a sawmill, so we are thinking we might purchase one of them as a “soon” purchase.

I realized today why more people don’t mineralize their land. For the five acres we’re going to mineralize, we just spent about 20% of the total price of those acres to improve the topsoil a bit. We’ll spend another 20% next year, I expect, and the following three years or so after that. So to try to get our land healthy, we’ll pay the total price again. Wow. I hope it works.