Dads

Dads are great! My dad totally saved our butt today. Justin got a super migraine this morning and between throwing up, and not being able to see or really even stand, he was in no shape to be running his machine. So we ran with one machine for a while, as best we could. Then we got super slammed, even more than we had been earlier which was much busier than usual. Anyway, so we got slammed and I called my dad and asked if he knew anyone that could help us, and as soon as he could he came and ran our machine for us. I don't know what we would have done without his help today! When he got there we had 4 boats waiting to be launched, and 5 boats waiting to be brought in out of the water. He hates running skidders, the machines we have, because they are really hard on your neck and back, because you're always looking over your shoulder and then forward, and over your shoulder and forward.......all day long, which is very painful after a while, but he jumped right in and helped. THANK YOU DAD!! You saved our bacon! or our boats I guess! :)

Also fun to report today was our 2 busiest days in the last 2 days. Friday we had 46 launches, which ties for our biggest day. Then today we had 68 launches - way past our previous best day! It was so busy, but it was really a fun busy. Especially after dad came, and we had the capacity to handle all of our busy-ness. So although Justin was sick we have much to be thankful for!

Goat Baby Updates

This is my absolute favorite picture of the goat babies from tonight. Her cute little tongue sticking out just cracks me up. :)

Susan stepping in while I was trying to take a picture of Bob

Friendly Susan

Jumping down

Susan and Bob

Susan is a big jumper and climber, she's always looking for food.

The tail end of Lucy's yawn - so cute

The suspicous Lucy. She's a little more shy than she would have been if I was bottle feeding her, but after the disaster of the first four and all that trouble, I just wasn't up to it. We won't get as much milk, and the babies will be more shy, but I guess that's just the way it has to be.

More lucy

I lifted the heat light to shine on her for a better picture, but she wasn't such a fan of the light in her eyes, not that I blame her.

"Are you taking a picture of my bum??" funny little goat

Mama Gabby

Gabby peaking at me

Watching my every move to make sure I'm not bothering her babies

Fawn scratching his head

Chewing his cud, such a cute pic of his lip sticking out

Fawn

Here's Billy Bob

Bob again

Susan, Bob, and Fawn

Susan, Bob, and Fawn again

So right now we have Susan, the only survivor of Gretta's brood. We brought her home about 10 days ago or so. Then we have Bob, or Billy Bob as I call him. We bought him from Beth the goat lady, to keep as our own buck. He's a funny guy, totally different personality than the lady goats. He's only a few months old, and he's already trying to get to Gabby, and trying to flirt with her and stuff. Kind of funny. Next we have Fawn, or Mr. Tumnus the Fawn, named from "The Lion, the Witch and the wardrobe". Lucy is also named after Lucy from the book. They're gabby's. We don't yet know if we will sell Fawn or eat him. The jury is still out on that. Then we have mama Gabby. She's doing good, taking good care of her babies and very protective of them. And that's our goat brood!

Baby Goats

Here's the pictures from the first night, about an hour after the babies were born. Sorry for the bloody stuff, but hey, this is farm life right? hehe :) The lighter colored one is named Fawn, and he's a he. The blacker one is a girl, and her name is Lucy. We thought the black one was a boy, so we named it black billy, and the other one Fawn because we thought it was a girl, but obviously we were wrong. So we (I) changed the names a little. I decided to go ahead and keep the name Fawn for the billy, after Mr Tumnus in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe who was a fawn. And then I decided to name the black one Lucy after the little girl in the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.

And then there was one

Well, another baby goat died, well she had to be put down technically. She got some sort of vitamin deficiency or goat disease. She was paralyzed, and had a 107 degree fever. She was fine yesterday, then today she was dead. That seems to be the norm now. They do fine, and then they die. I'm not really sure I'm cut out for this, because frankly, this sucks majorly.

Eagle and dogs

The other day there was a really big, cool eagle sitting on the edge of the parking lot. I got some great pictures of him (or her I guess). I wasn't 8-10 feet away from him, and he just sat and looked at me. It was pretty cool.

My funny girls. They have to sit in the trucks or be on chains most of the time they are down there because they like to chase stuff, run, and just generally get into trouble and other things that smell nasty. But they look funny and cute sitting in the truck waiting.

Boat launch

Catching some sea doos. If you can put it on a trailer we can launch it or retrive it! :)

Here's Justin cutting the skid plate off the bottom of his machine so he can get to the transmission and front end to work on them. The skid plate isn't supposed to be welded on, whoever had the machine last really did a number on it!

There's Justin's legs under his machine. See how the tire is off the ground? He used the blade to life the front end of the machine off the ground.

More of Justin under the machine.

The door wasn't quite latched when Earl took off and as he went down the ramp the door flew open, got hooked on the tire, and popped off. It was hilarious!

There's the boat as it motors away.

Farther into the water

Deeper and deeper

Pushing the boat deeper into the water.

Backing it into the water

Down the runway

Down the way

Here they go

Hauling our first boat out to be launched

Our other skidder - Justin's skidder. He runs the yellow one. His dad runs the red/orange one

The big house loaded on the trailer to go down to the beach.

Skidder with all its teeth, ready to go to work, rake some rocks, and launch some boats.

Bunkhouse ready to run down the road.

Here's our first little bunkhouse, safely delivered to the beach.

Down the road...

Just can't wait to get on the road again...

Our first skidder.

Justin's dad welding some "teeth" onto the blade of the skidder. The teeth are for raking rocks off of the beach.

Talatha, and Justin's mom, putting together some spill pans for underneath the skidder. We put them under the skidders while they're parked to catch and leaks, spills, etc.

Here's our "big" bunkhouse/kitchen/bathroom. It was quite a project to build. Then we also built another small bunkhouse, that is just 3 beds.

Here's the "little" bunkhouse on the trailer, ready to move to the beach.

Little bunkhouse, loaded on the trailer to move to the beach.

Well those are the pictures of our first couple weeks of boat launch business. I'll try and get a video of us launching, and a video of us retrieving so that you can really see more of what its like.