Oops, I forgot

I forgot to add the video to the crane post. So, here it is.

Sandhill Cranes

For a week or two now we have heard the sandhill cranes flying around the neighborhood, but hardly ever get to see them. This morning around 10 am I was outside bringing plants out of the greenhouse to harden them off, when I heard the cranes. I watched them flying towards me, then around behind the house, then they landed in the neighbors field behind his house. After I got the plants all drug out into the sunshine I went into mom's room to see where the cranes went. When I pulled back the curtain - there were the cranes on the ground right outside mom's window. They were digging in the dirt that got churned up last fall when Justin put in the ditch right there. We watched them for a long time, and I got some really good pictures I had to share. I have a video too. its a little slow, but if you are interested you can watch them eating and churning up the dirt. Also in the background are some tweety birds singing. Kind of a cool spring morning thing.

Thank you!

THANK YOU to everyone for the happy birthday wishes, and card!! I appreciate them all!! Love you all. Alicia

We've gotten lots of questions about the goats, which I'll try and remember to answer now. They're going to live in a small barn that we're going to build in the next couple of days, with wooden sides, to block out the wind, rain, snow, etc. That way they will be protected, they'll be able to wander around the back yard, once we get it tuned up a bit, and we will be able to get to them easily to milk them. Justin is doing most of the milking, I need to learn how but I haven't yet. We're going to build a milking stand (stantion) so it will be easier to do, and will give us something to tie Gretta's back legs to while we milk so she can't tromp in the middle of the full milk bucket.....again. We get about 1 1/2 quarts of milk per milking, so we're getting a little over 3 quarts a day, or we will once we have 2 successful milkings in a day. We haven't drank any of the cold milk since we got her home, we sampled her milk before we bought her, but haven't had it at home yet. We'll keep looking around for a billy to breed them with, either to buy or rent as a stud service. The next names if the babies are girls will be Bree, Susan, Lynette, Edie.....and the boys would be Carlos, Mike, Carl, Orson, etc. depending on what genders we have. The boys we'll either sell as studs, or eat. We'll be buying alfalfa for them to eat now and through the winter. Hopefully we can find some good rates.

Today I ordered the stuff I need to make goat cheeses. You can make any kind of cheese you want out of the milk, so we're going to try that. I've always wanted to make cheese, so hopefully I'll like it as much as I think I will. We're also going to make lots of yogurt. Everyone talks about how good that is, so we'll do that too. Plus ice cream. We'll breed the goats this fall, and hopefully end up with 2-6 babies next spring. Gretta is the only one producing milk now, since Gabby is just a baby. I can't remember what the other questions were, so if I haven't answered, let me know! :) Love you all. Hope the video works. This is me and Justin moving them to the other pen closer to the house. Right as the video ends you can hear Justin asking me to come carry the baby, so I ran over and grabbed the baby and carried her.

Yep, we did...

...get goats that is. We've talked about it off and on for a while now, and we finally just went ahead and did it yesterday. We've been worried about what we would do for milk, if things got really weird in the world, or if it just got too expensive. So, since its hard to find good milk cows up here, we decided to get goats. Goats should be able to do really well with the land that we have here. That's the hope anyway. We got 2 goats. A mama and a doeling. Unfortunately the baby isn't from this mama, so they've both been a little upset since we brought them home. Hopefully they will adjust soon. They're really pretty, the baby is white with a brown spot on her shoulder, and the mom is kind of tawny/white speckled. Justin had goats a lot growing up, although I never did, so he knows what he's doing. tomorrow we have to get to work on building a permanent barn for them, and a milking stand. This morning she stepped in the milk pail and ruined it all! So, we'll be doing that tomorrow.

Justin also has been building an enhanced (larger) chicken coop for all our 40 chick and 2 turkeys. Yesterday was their first turn in the house too. They were a little cold at first, but when we got them lights in the right spots they did better. Justin has been working SO hard the last week to get all this ready, now he has to build a goat barn. Poor guy, he's really tired. I'll try and get some chick pictures today or tomorrow to share. They're growing so quickly. Last night, Justin went to check on them before bed one turkey was laying down (the turkeys are older and bigger) and the turkey had a chicken curled up in the middle of its back. And the other turkey was standing, and had a group of chickens huddled underneath it, trying to stay warm. And we were worried they wouldn't get along..... :)

Oh, I almost forgot. The mama goat is Gretta, and the baby is Gabby. To make naming easier when we have baby goats, we're going to name them after the desperate housewives or desperate housegoats that is (mom's idea), which I think is really funny.

Chicky Ladies

We got chickens last week, Laying hens, and 2 turkeys. We wanted to start raising our own eggs again. Eggs here are $4 a dozen for junky store eggs, and we can raise our own good eggs for a lot less than that. So, that's what we're going to do. We actually ordered them from the Homer feed store a couple of weeks ago, but then we decided to check out the other feed store in Soldotna. They carry different types, so we got 20 chickens up there last week. Monday the Homer store called and said that the 20 we reserved with them were in, if we wanted to come and get them still. So we talked about it for a couple days and decided to get them too. So actually we have 40 hens now. Its a lot of hens, but we wanted to have lots of eggs, and we will. We'll sell the extra eggs to pay for the feed, and it will be great. We can sell them for $3 a dozen or so. Should be fun. Oh, and I included pics of our plants in our new greenhouse too. :)

Our new greenhouse

Mya's contributions were her stuffed alien, a lot of tail wagging, standing around in the way, and whining if she couldn't be in touching distance of Justin. :) Oh, and biting any sticks or wood bits that happened to hit the ground.
Ok, I'm pretty sure this next picture is some kind of OSHA violation - can a stuffed alien really be the ladder holder? It just seems they don't have the upper body strength........

My wonderful husband built me (well all of us really) a greenhouse this past weekend. We've been growing our little plants on our desk downstairs, but as they've gotten bigger we needed a more permanent solution. Plus its so hard to get good vegetables up here, that we have needed to do something for a years now. Just we didn't ever get to it, but now Justin's done it! Its an 8x8 greenhouse, with 3 shelf areas, up on the deck, hooked to the side of the house. Should be great. We've got corn, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, jalapenos, flowers, and will soon have lettuce, dill, basil, maybe carrots. We also have planted pumpkins, alaska muskmelons, and acorn squash, oh and zucchini. Most of the squash/pumpkin family is still downstairs. They are waiting for cold frames in the garden when it thaws more. For now though we've got a great start! Fun stuff. Today we moved the plants (most of them) upstairs, and put in some brick pavers to use as insulation, or to hold heat rather, so that it will stay warmer at night. Pretty cool stuff!