May 2010
Feta and Cinnamon Arrive!
We finally committed to welcoming two very sweet Nubian dairy goats, Feta and Cinnamon,
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| The Jajas, Feta and Cinnamon |
into our lives. There were several factors to consider, one being how will Winston and Blunt(boisterous boys armed with horns)treat the new hornless arrivals. Second and heavy on the soul searching was the reality that if you want to have a few dairy goats for milk and cheese you have to breed them, and you simply can't keep all the kids, especially the boys. I've been a vegetarian for 22 years, but I do eat cheese so somewhere some youngster is going to turn into BBQ in order for me to enjoy fondue...I'm not fundamentally opposed to eating meat, but I do have issues with how our furry friends are treated on the way to the plate. Dino remains a confirmed carnivoure and is not opposed to a little goati roti...
Morrels in the Orchard
I was delighted to discover a few morrels in the orchard - with my mushroom book in hand I was confident that these would not poison us. I was right and they were delicious - hope some more will pop up after the next rain!
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| Fresh Morrels from our Orchard |
The Bear
Annie alerted me to the presence of something in the back field. When that mare is distracted from her dinner you can be sure something is up. On further investigation there was a black bear sitting in the field - although exciting to see one it is also good to let him/her know that he best be moving on. We're really careful with our compost, animal feed and garbage as we all know what happens to 'problem bears', although in truth it's usually problem people.
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| The Bear ambles off to find a new toilet, hopefully. |
I grabbed the camera and Dino grabbed the shotgun - a few shots over the bow and off he went. And yes, they do shit in the woods, also on the field, roads and pretty much anywhere they choose.
More Construction
May was shaping up as the get construction finished month. The wash house needed completing and the deck for the tent had to be built so we could put the tent up. Taking a break from the wash house we decided to get the tent deck done. A lot simpler project than the wash house. We knew our size, the tent is 14' x 16' and we wanted an 8' porch area out front for a total size of 14' wide by 24' deep. Bill scraped and graded the plot and laid down the road crush that the 6" x 6" skids would rest on.
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| Renata dreams of the tent's future king size bed. |
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| Goats are ardent deck builders, always willing to give advice. |
Squaring off the deck framing was made a lot easier with the help of the goats. They just love construction work and take every opportunity to lend a hand. We have no idea how we got anything done without them. Around this time I'm seriously thinking a nail gun is in my future.
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| Deck in place Renata cleans the newly cut tent poles. |
Once the decking was down we trimmed our tent poles to size and started to lay them out in preparation for raising the canvas. Renata cleaned all the metal poles so they wouldn't stain the fabric. We laid out all the poles and connectors before raising the tent.
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| Mmm, a bit short me thinks? |
The tent came in two parts, the main section, 14' x 16' has a roof, sides, back, windows and doorway, the second part is the porch area which is just the roof and two walls. We later added mosquito netting to the front of the porch for obvious reasons. We don't get much wind here in the valley but the day we put up the canvas it was pretty damn windy. Lots of fun.
So this is the first time we managed to get the entire tent up. There's still alot of work to be done, but we're very happy with the results as you can see from our main web site.
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| long way to go, but getting there. |
The canvas had to be shrunk, tied down to an exterior wood beam frame and a large fly sheet protects it all from the sun and rain. Once erected the tent was much bigger than we'd imagined.
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