Goat-capades

I thought I'd include some chicken pictures since I had my camera outside. They're getting big!!

Gretta has had a little trouble this week getting into stuff that she can't get out of. I guess she's been here long enough that she's getting comfortable enough to poke around. I was feeding the chickens the other day, and the bag was empty so I opened the chickens door, and tossed the bag out into yard, where Gretta is, pulled the door closed and finished feeding the chix. When I opened the door, this is what I saw....

It was so funny I had to go get my camera. She pushed it around the yard licking the inside until she got everything she thought was good out of it. Then it got stuck and she was walking around the yard backwards bawling trying to get it off.
Then she wanted to check out the camera and see if it was edible.
Then the next day at 3 I went out and watered and fed her before I went to town. Then when Justin came home at 7 we went out to milk, and feed everyone. And this is what we saw....
No that's not her pen, that's the chicken yard that runs parallel to her pen. She likes to lean on it and scratch her sides. She leans as hard against it as she can, then slowly walks along scratching and stretching. But the chicken wire isn't strong enough for her weight, so its slowly tearing, and I guess it tore all the way the other day, because as near as we can tell she leaned up against it, it tore, and she fell into the chicken yard, and couldn't get out.

So Justin had to let her out. She sure was glad to see him!

Sandhill Crane Invasion

Justin, dad and I were outside last saturday, stacking and splitting firewood like we do every chance we get, and there were 2 cranes walking around the neighbors yard that we were watching off and on. Then we were standing there and a flock of 9 cranes flew over, saw the other 2, and started circling lower and lower until they just "dropped" onto the ground in the neighbors yard by the other 2. It was so cool to see 11 cranes walking around the yard. They picked the yard for a long time getting all the bugs they could.

Heather tagged me!

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. graduating high school (yikes!)
2. working at the gas station
3. getting ready to go to MSU-Bozeman
4. swimming in the ocean
5. umm, I think that was about all I did

5 Things on my to do list:
1. finish painting my living room
2.go to Anchorage
3. milk the goats (I do the milking in the evening)
4. sew some stuff to sell
5. finish scrapbooking my honeymoon

5 Favorite snacks/foods:
1. potato chips
2. Reese's big cup
3. pie (rhubarb, lemon meringue, etc.)
4. cake
5. cheese

5 Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
1. Build my dream home/shop
2. Travel
3. help out both sets of parents
4. Invest in business
5. buy cool cars

5 Bad habits:
1. I eat too many treats
2. pick at my fingers and feet
3. losing my temper too easily
4. not following through all the time
5.giving in to my insecurities

5 Places that I have lived:
1. Joseph Oregon
2.Homer Alaska
3. Bozeman Montana
4. Laie Hawaii
5.Anchor Point Alaska

People I tag:
Anyone that wants to and has time!!!

I love this next picture of Mya - she's so funny.
I have been wanting some pictures of Gabby to use in our etsy advertising and thank you cards, so while I was out taking pictures of the fish, I took some pics of Gabby. I think they turned out cute.

I experimented with making cheese this week, which was pretty cool. I made some soft cheese (I can't find the pictures of it, I must have them on the other camera - we have 2 cameras, one that is mom and dad's and one that is Justin and I's, but they are exactly the same, except ours has the shoulder strap, so it gets confusing - which camera was I using??), which was a basic white cheese, and it turned out pretty good, it needed a little more salt, but it's good! We've enjoyed snacking on it. Its definitely something I would make again. The other cheese I made was a "Chevre" or "fromage blanc" but it didn't turn into cheese so much as it did REALLY good sour cream. The whey didn't seperate very good while it was hanging, so we just mixed it in really well, salted it, and saved it for sour cream. Its good! I put part of the recipe into molds though to make chevre, which is supposed to be a cream cheese like spread made from goats milk. It isn't done yet, so I don't know how it is. (If you hang the mixture it is fromage blanc, or "bag cheese", but if you put it in molds and let it drain it is chevre). It's fun, I can't wait to experiment with more of this stuff. Plus its SO great to be able to eat dairy again, and not get so sick. I haven't been able to have butter, milk, sour cream, cream cheese, etc. without getting so sick. The goat milk is wonderful!

Juju is broken!

Justin has been trying to catch fish since he moved here last spring. He's had some bad luck, and before today had caught just 2 salmon, some kelp, a sea cucumber, and the bottom of the ocean. About halfway through todays fishing trip he decided that maybe his bad luck was coming from the hat he wears when he's fishing, so as we zipped out across the ocean, he gave his hat a fling! And at the next hole we started catching halibut, and Justin got his limit first! Yay! :) Just had to break the bad juju.

Our gardening

We started our gardening downstairs on the desk in our living room, but as the plants very quickly grew we realized we would need to find another place for them to grow, so we built the greenhouse, which I've already posted about. I've just never shown you the planting side of things, and how things are growing.

After the big move upstairs to the greenhouse....Things still look pretty small.
This black tray above is my flowers, zinnia, and marigolds.


But give them a few weeks of warm weather and a little sunshine.....

This picture (above) is one of my cucumber plants. I actually have a cucumber about 5 inches long right now. Its growing inches a day - very cool. Below is the corn, its about 3.5 feet tall.
My flowers (below)

So, this is our greenhouse!

Buttermaking

I think you can see the glob of butter there in this picture. I know its hard to see. Kind of fun though.
One of the things I really wanted to try when we got goats was making our own butter. So, we saved cream off a few days milkings, until we had a pint jar full, then one evening we just started shaking it. And we shook, shook, and shook some more, until Voila! We had butter floating in milk. It was really cool. This actually was our first batch, and it took a while to do, the second batch we let warm up more before we started shaking, and we used a larger jar, so it had more room to shake, so it went a lot faster. Now we've made butter twice!

I tried to make yogurt once, but it didn't go well. I think maybe I didn't let it cure long enough? It was like white snot, not to be gross, but it was. Anyone who's made it before - how do you tell yogurt is done and ready to go in the fridge????