Fresh Milk :D

It's quite a joy to have fresh, unadulterated milk that I got all by myself. It tastes so much different than store bought goats milk. Goat's milk is sweeter than whole cows milk, other than that there's not much difference.

Zoey is such an easy milker. That is... as long as I don't remove my hands from her udders once I start! If I have to adjust the bowl or anything else and remove both hands, once I resume milking she becomes a little dancing queen!!

Welcome Wooly Dog Down Zoey!

Came home with our second goat today! Welcome to the farm Wooly Dog Down Zoey. 

She just kidded with triplets so she's currently in milk! I'm a little nervous about having a goat to milk. I was hoping to get used to just having goats before I had to milk one, but I'm definitely not going to have this milk go to waste!

Characteristics:

Blue Eyes

Black with moonspots

20-21"

Adga: D1621551

Ags: D-47503

My First Goat!

I brought home my first goat today! Her registered name is HBR Catch Me If You Can, but I think we'll call her Chloe. DH and I drove all the way down to Indian Trail, NC to pick her up from Five Points Farm. I don't currently have another goat, but I'm hoping to pick one up next weekend. I really didn't want her to be solo, but my attempts at coordinating a pick up during the same weekend from 2 different states just didn't work out! For now I have my dog out in the pasture to keep her company and I try to be out there as much as I can so she warms up to me.

We've had a couple breakouts... I think I'll have to alter the wire spacing in the fence.

The first escape:

Easy Strawberry Cage

This year I would actually like to get some strawberries out of my garden. Up until this point most of the strawberries have been eaten by the birds. When I planted them, the plants were spread out to give them room to grow so it wasn't easy having a strong net system over them. When I did spread a net over them, the birds seemed to get caught in the netting half the time and I'd have to free them... to live another day to eat the fruits of my labor. Therefore, this year one of the things on my to-do list was to make a cage/enclosure to keep the birds out. Mission accomplished! I replanted the strawberries close together, which also makes for less weeding and put together my net system. It's not too big so it's easy to lift up when I need to do some harvesting.

Simple - 1" x 3"s attached in a 7' x 2' 1/2" frame, with a 1" x 1" center support

Hard Boiled Eggs Tip

Getting eggs from my chickens every day can make differentiating hard boiled eggs from not hard boiled eggs a bit tricky in the fridge. I usually have 2 or 3 egg cartons floating in there at any given time. One day I stumbled upon a technique that was easy, chemical-free, and didn't alter the flavor of the eggs. Simply add a handfull of dry onion skins to the pot of boiling water with your eggs.

The onion skins dye the egg shells a light brown

Top - eggs boiled with onion skins, bottom - fresh eggs

Beneficial Insect - The Wheel Bug

I first came across the wheel bug last summer. When I went to go check on my bee hive I noticed a very strange, prehistoric looking creature cruising around on top of the hive roof. I snapped a few pics and posted them online to see if anyone knew what it was. I found out that it was known as a wheel bug and it was probably doing some bee hunting. I will admit that at first I was not too fond of this bug, considering the work I put into my bees only to have them eaten. Yet, there was only one lone bug that I saw and I couldn't imagine it doing that much harm.

If you do encounter this insect in your yard be careful though! They are capable of piercing skin and secreting a substance which is said to be 10x worse than a hornet sting! Eek..

Marking Queens

I went to a bee workshop this morning hosted by my local bee club. The rain even held off until we were about to wrap things up. If you are thinking about or just getting started with bees, I would definitely recommend reaching out to your local club. They oftentimes have classes in the spring and can connect you to a mentor to help you one-on-one.

I took this video of an easy technique to mark a queen on a frame. This frame ended up going into an observation hive that will soon be in the local visitor's center.