Remember the "Garden Workshop Baby goat?" Well I've been wanting to get her prettied up for some pictures because she sure is looking nice. So today Andrew and I were out working with the goats separating out the young bucks and wethers and decided to catch her and give her a bath. Once we were done bathing and clipping I had to get Anna outside with the camera. The goat wasn't cooperating the greatest as she was ready to go back to her mom, that's the reason for the sorry backgrounds...lol main thing is to get her to setup correctly! :D I'm really happy with this little girl, can't wait for the state fairs so I can show her! Oh..and she needs a name too, I don't think "Garden Workshop Baby" is very fitting, as pretty as she is she needs something better!
Well, this post might be just a little late...but I was having so much fun with my dearest friend Danielle last week that I didn't want to take time to do a blog post!! :) So better late than never right? I had such a wonderful birthday, thanks for all the emails and blog comments! I'm sure most of you saw the birthday pictures on my Mom's blog, but I'm going to post a few myself too. Mom really went all out on the decorating, it was something else!! Between five tons of sand, building a tiki hut, and all the other stuff she had out there it was pretty major!! Definitely a birthday I will always remember. The games were so much fun too, we all were laughing so hard on the "Beach Bum Relay" quite hilarious!
Getting our team ready for the Beach Bum Relay
Hurry up Dannie!!
And the winner....Dave!!
We played tons of volleyball most every night, it was so much fun! Dannie was looking pretty cool in the sunglasses!
And since it was so hot...and we don't have a swimming pool we decided to take a swim in the cows water tank. Its the perfect size to cool off in, and the cows weren't around so in we went!! Okay Dannie, I will admit you are quite the country girl now, I'm proud of you. :D All was good until the cows got thirsty...and here they came!! Dannie was terrified, I guess she thought they were gonna drink her up along with the water or something, I'm not sure, but they were so shocked to find people in their water tank that they wouldn't even drink out of it. :D
Here come the cows!!
Saturday morning we went to the Farmer's Market, and then went to an Estate auction afterwards...it was pretty fun but so hot outside we were wishing we had just slept late and stayed home. LOL And then that evening Caleb, Daniel, Elijah, Anna, Micah, Andrew, Danielle and I all went to Bricktown.
It was so much fun!! First we went to Bass Pro and walked around a bit, we had fun trying on all the huge sunglasses in there!
After that we walked down the canal, it was neat, reminded us of being in San Antonio where we met each other. We finished up by going to Marble Slab and getting icecream, it was such a blast!! I was teasing Danielle that she still has just a bit of city girl in her for enjoying being in the city so much. :D
Monday morning we went shopping and then to the Tea Room in Edmond. It's kinda a traditon whenever Dannie comes and we always have so much fun there! They were all giving me such a hard time about the hat that I picked to wear...lol for some reason they thought I looked like a German soldier!! Goodness...what a compliment!! :D :D
My German Hat... :D
And this was just totally a joke picture...
That evening we went over to David and Katelyn's for supper. They live up on a hill and it's so beautiful up there, we had to get some pictures sitting up on their rock formation, and then...well yeah we tried jumping off of it too.
1,2,3, JUMP!!
Thankfully the pictures of me didn't turn out! After dinner we played more volleyball, and then went inside to do some more crazy things which included racing through their kitchen on a rolling chair!!
Relaxing on the front porch...
Tuesday we spent a lot of time working on a song that Danielle had written, I enjoyed it though, and we got her parts recorded before she left, so now we just have to put in my violin part..and maybe some orchestra behind it.
And of course we stayed up late every night talking and having fun, we made so many fun memories, it was a wonderful week!! Thanks for coming Dannie-Girl, I loved it!! :) Miss you so much!
Things have been busy around here, we're in full swing with the farmers market, picking and canning green beans, and just everything else that goes on around here. I got a batch of soap made yesterday as well, it's a new recipe that is scented with "White Amber & Ginger" and smells lovely!! It will be available here in a few weeks after it cures out.
All my baby goats are growing up so fast!! The older ones are so big now, the Boer bucklings probably being close to 90 pounds. I'm very pleased with this kid crop, looks like my Boer buck threw just what I wanted, they are so thick and muscular!
Reba and her two babies
The "Garden Workshop" kid
Me and some of my herd :)
Duffy and Dooley got hair cuts this week, poor Duffy had to get shaved, his hair was so long that he was getting very hot, so I figured he'd be more comfortable this way. :) I still think he's cute, but there's several in our family that don't care for his new "do!" He kept closing his eyes everytime I'd take a picture, because of the flash I guess while Dooley just had the perfect pose.
Dooley had to try riding Mercy's trike, Josh had him out there pushing him around on it and I had to get a picture!! :D
Anna took this cool picture of the sunset with a goat silhouetted against it, I thought it was pretty neat!!! She was wishing it was a cow instead of a goat though. :D
And then my 20th birthday is coming up on me fast, yikes!! My dear friend Danielle is flying in on Tuesday so she can help celebrate, we're all so excited to see her again!!
And boy did we ever have a great time!! I know you all have seen pictures on my Mom's blog already...but hey, how about some more plus my version of the trip? :)
We left really early Tuesday morning, I was thinking we were leaving at 4:00 a.m. but then Elijah comes in and wakes me up at 2:30!! Earlier than I thought!! And you all know that I'm NOT a morning person!! :D However I did get up and we left at about 3:20. We ended up having two carsick little ones... :( never ceases to happen on all those curves through the mountains. Soon as we got there at about 9:30 a.m. though they were perfectly fine. :) Tuesday was definitely the hottest prettiest day, and we got right out onto the lake. I was determined to try knee boarding...was a bit nervous about it, but finally did and I really enjoyed it!! It was so fun trying to cut in and out and jump the waves. It's pretty hard on you though, lots of stress on your arms and back so I couldn't do it for very long. And that was the day that I got sunburned really bad on my knees....no fun at all. I don't burn easily at all so I'd never got it that bad and didn't realize how bad it hurt!
And then of course we did lots of tubing, the neighbor "Mr. Johnny" let us borrow a bunch of flotation devices (don't worry Dara, they were all pretty safe!) which were a lot of fun! I think everyone's favorite was "Mabel" which was a big chair type thing that you could sit up on and did it ever jump the waves!! Wow, you would fly up so high on that thing!! And when you went on the curves you had to hold on for dear life, or else...lol we did have plenty of wipe outs!! Poor Anna wiped out the most I think, it was pretty funny watching her wipe out, not to be mean, but you'd just have to be there to see what I'm talking about. :) Actually she liked to be pulled so fast and crazy on it, so that's why she'd wipe out so much. :D I got her to try knee boarding too, and I took the camera out on the boat to get pictures of her, she did really good!! Had a few crashes..but it happens.
Taking off!
This picture was blurry, but it was so funny!!
Yikes!! Just about to go!
WIPED OUT!!
This is "Mabel"
Getting Mom to go on "Mabel" was something else!! You all should have heard her screaming!! I think every picture we took her mouth was wide open!! Daniel drove nicely though, and she managed to get back to the dock all in one piece. Funnier though was when we took her on the boat while we were pulling Daniel and Anna on the tube, I think that scared her worse than being pulled!! She was majorly ready to be back on the dock by the time we were through, Caleb was almost in big time trouble for how fast he was driving.
Isn't she cute??
Thursday night we had a fish fry, and invited Mr. Johnny over as a thanks for letting us borrow all of his stuff. And then afterwards he took us for a ride on his pontoon boat, it was really neat especially after dark when everything was lighted up around the lake, so beautiful!
Caleb, Daniel, and Elijah all got really good at wakeboarding, they were jumping waves big time!! Really fun to watch them, I wasn't brave enough to try it though, I saw how many times they crashed...and yeah didn't look too fun. :D
By Friday I was pretty much worn out, and ended up with a bad headache all day so wasn't able to do a whole lot, oh well I think I made up for it with everything I did on the other days we were there. :)
The whole trip was a blast, we all had so much fun!! Thanks Paps and Shirley for having us!!
Hope everybody had a great Memorial day! We sure had a lot of fun, David and Kate and the Wilson family came over and we had a blast, played TONS of volleyball, shot potato cannons, drank lots of coke, and of course hotdogs and hamburgers, and homemade ice cream. It was great, and David even went out on our "raft" on the pond, he did better than me though and managed NOT to fall off. :D
And Saturday my new buckling came in!! I'm so excited about him, his sire is *B Kastdemur's Most Wanted, who is sired by the 2008 ADGA National Show Premier Nubian Sire. His dam is a beautiful stylish doe SGCH Blissberry R Rockin' Robin 2*M. I'm pretty excited about this little guy, I think he's going to do some great things for my herd. Oh and the best part!! It only cost $10.95 to get him flown in all the way from MN!! Reason being is that the airline forgot to put him on the flight and the plane left without him...so since they messed up and it was a guaranteed booking, they put him on a bit later flight for only $10.95. :) Made my day for sure!! It usually costs at least $200.
My kidding season finally came to a close, with the last doe kidding with twins a buck and a doe. (Boer). I was very grateful that it was a pretty uneventful birth for the most part, the buck did have one of his front legs back a bit, but once I got that fixed he popped right out. So lets see if I can do a rundown of all the kids that were born this spring.
Boers Reba- 1 buck 1 doe Fat Doe- 2 bucks 1 doe Poco- 2 bucks Alyssa- 1 buck Paint- 1 buck 1 doe Christiana- 1 doe Destiny- 1 doe Wenneveria- 1 buck 1 doe Moonlight- 1 buck 1 doe
Nubians Maggie- 1 buck 1 doe Sassy- 2 does Madeline- 1 buck (Boer cross) Shardae- 3 does
So that's a total of 24 kids, 11 bucks and 13 does...wow I guess I actually ended up with more does!! I must say it was a really tough kidding season this year...starting off with losing Gauger's preemie trips, and then having several stillborns, and I lost one older kid to dogs...and then Fat Doe's tangled triplets...and Destiny's preemie, (she's doing great now though) and then a few other minor problems. But I'm very thankful for the 24 healthy ones that the Lord blessed me with!
I finally got a picture of my beautiful "Hot To Trot." I'm SOOOO happy with her, she's so long, level, and just so pretty! I can't wait to get her in the show ring.
There's few random pictures of some of the new babies as well, isn't the one so cute with the all white ear? :)
Okay, since you all wanted to hear it, I guess I shall tell it. :) Sorry, no pictures from it actually happening, although I do have a picture of Micah and Josh transporting the "Raft" on the four wheeler so you can get an idea of what it looks like.
So it was a kinda cool day last week when Anna suggested that her and I take Micah's "Raft" out on the pond. Sounded fun, so we grabbed a couple of life jackets and took off. Now the "Raft" is 3 pieces of foam block, (used to make Insulated Concrete Form Homes) with several 2 X 4's nailed across it to hold them together, and then a little seat in the middle. I was a bit nervous at first because it's kind of tippy if you don't get it balanced right, but as long as you stay still in your places there's really no danger of it flipping over. So I was on the back side with our paddle, (which was a piece of wood with the plastic lid to a 5 gallon bucket nailed to it) trying to get the thing out to the middle, I was actually standing at this point, and suddenly my foot slipped and went down right through the gaps in between the 2 X 4's! Goodness, so now my skirt was wet, and my boot full of water, great. We made it out to the middle, and had fun paddling around, until Anna almost started choking on something so I had to take her back to shore. :D She was fine though.
So a bit later Andrew decided to get on with me, so we went out to the middle. By this time I was getting pretty used to the "Raft," so we started getting just a bit crazy out there. I'm heavier than him so I pretty much had control of which way we would tip. :) So we started doing these "cool acts" where we would see how high up we could tip the boat without it totally flipping over or us falling off. Anna, Josh, Jeremiah and Micah were laughing at us from the bank enjoying the show. So after doing that numorous times without falling off we headed back.
Well then Micah decided to go out with me. Now Micah (for whatever reason, it was cool that day) had been swimming in the other pond out in the pasture....so that mean't he was already wet, and didn't mind getting wet again. NOT good. AND he's heavier than me...so I wasn't really going to have control of the "Raft." Off we went, the "cool acts" were a bit scarier with Micah, and we were falling all over the boat, but still managing to stay on. And I still only had both boots full of water and about half my skirt wet, not too bad. So we tipped it and when it was at the highest point Micah jumped off into the water hoping to make the "Raft" flip!! However I managed to quickly get it balanced back out and stayed on. :) Nice try Micah! :D
We were having a lot of fun, but then suddenly on one of our "cool acts" I was on the side that was going up high off the water and I totally lost my balance, and the part of the boat that I was standing on broke off!! I did like a big back flip straight back into the water, so deep that even with the life jacket on I had to swim up to the top!! :D :D I was SOO not expecting that!! It was cold too, and of course I got a ton of pond water in me. So I'm coughing and sputtering, but managed to swim back to the "Raft." I was NOT wanting to get wet, and here I am totally drenched from head to toe...oh boy. We got back on the boat, and being both totally soaked (Micah fell off too) we decided just to try tipping it all the way over, so we did. By this time I'm REALLY cold and wanted to go back to shore. So we headed back, on the poor upside down broken "Raft." About halfway back I got really sick to my stomach, (maybe it was seasickness, I'm not sure) and so I'm like "Micah hurry! I'm about to throw up in the water!!" He realized I wasn't joking either so he's paddling as fast as he can, and I'm laying on the raft moaning because I was feeling so bad. LOL We finally made it back without me throwing up, although I almost did, and got out. Boy it was hard to walk back to the house with water logged boots. But I made it and then had to take a shower to get all that slimy pond water off of me. :)
So...that's the pond story! It was a lot of fun actually, I guess it wouldn't have been quite so interesting if I hadn't fallen in. :)
Wow, it's been quite the weekend with goat birthing around here. :) On Thursday I noticed that one of my Boer girls, who I didn't expect to kid until the 17th, having a lot of weird discharge. It really looked like she was going into labor, however no contractions or anything. So on Thursday night I decided to go in and check to see if her cervix was open, and just make sure there wasn't a incorrectly presented kid in there. Cervix was totally closed, no evidence of labor other than the discharge. I was really thinking that something was probably going to be wrong, a dead kid or something. Finally on Friday afternoon she started contracting. I checked again and her cervix was opened about the size of a half dollar and I could feel two hooves just past that. About 30 minutes later she started pushing hard and presented the two feet. She wasn't progressing beyond that though, so I pulled gently....still nothing. That kid was just STUCK, poor goat she was pushing as hard as she could and I was at the other end pulling as hard as I could, by this time I figured that the kid was probably for sure dead, but I had to get it out of there. Finally it popped out, and it was alive!! However it was thrashing around unable to breath, as she had aspirated a ton of fluid into her lungs. So I picked her up by the back legs and started swinging her around and patting on her back and ribcage to get the fluid out. Mom was like "Besh are you SURE that's what you should be doing??" I guess it did look a bit drastic but that's what it takes sometimes to get that fluid out. It took a good five minutes of working on her before she was able to breath easily. Whew...that was scary. Her poor little head was quite swollen, probably from being in there so long and the hard pull. She was really tiny, but seemed to be doing okay trying to stand up. However because of the swelling I couldn't get her to nurse or take a bottle, so I tube fed her a couple ounces of colostrum. Later that evening I got her to nurse off the bottle, and the the next morning she was nursing off of her mom.
So for now she seems to be making it okay, walking around fine on her own and nursing. However I am watching her closely for aspiration puemonia. Hopefully she's going to be fine though, such a cute little thing!
The doe did have second kid, which was dead. I really expected that though, because of her going into labor early, and everything just wasn't normal. I was a bit concerned about her passing the placenta, and she ended up having to have several shots of oxytocin, to get her to finish cleaning out.
And then on Saturday, another Boer doe kidded, she did just fine, and had them all by herself. A boy and a girl, I need to get Anna to take some pictures of them, they are so cute, and the little girl has one white and one brown ear.
Oh and my CA doe kid flew in on Tuesday!! She's just gorgeous!! I still need to get pictures of her sometime soon too. Her name is "Hot To Trot." And....the other news is it looks like Lord willing I'm going to be getting a new Nubian buckling as well. Kind of a last minute decision but I really want to be able to breed my kids from this year in the fall, and the only Nubian buck I have right now is the sire to them all. I'm really excited, his dam and sire are VERY nice. He'll be coming from Minnesota, the same breeder that I got Main Attraction, and Elegance from last spring.
Sooo, anybody tired of hearing about goats?? :D My first dairy show is coming up soon too....can't wait to see how Shardae does as a milker now!
Anyway, that's pretty much what's been going on lately, besides some other adventures involving me falling in the pond....maybe I'll post about that sometime.
I'm just a 19 year old adventurous, fun loving farm girl, very blessed to be living on a farm right smack in Oklahoma. I'm also the 3rd of 13 children, I love goats, dogs, my family, and most of all the Lord, and am seeking to honor Him in all that I do.
