Exploring the yard

Nubian Kids

Here are the goat kids. Malachi and Pandora. They were rather weak when they were first born but as you can see they're doing great now. We're going to be putting them into a new pen on the mountainside with their Mom this weekend. I want them to eat down the long scrubby stuff so that we can bring that hillside back to pasture. Young pine trees are about to take it over.

Muscovy Ducklings

We have some new arrivals. We took them away from their Mom this time. All of our previous ducklings have fallen into the jaws of snapping turtles, possum, raccoon... and who knows what else. These,
we're raising by hand until they're more able to take care of themselves.

More views of the workshop

These were taken back in October 2009 just after the building was completed. Of course, now it's full of tools and gardening equipment. 
At one point over the winter we had to build a temporary pen in the corner and  move our pregnant Mamma goat: Mahogany, in there. We had record snow levels and the babies just wouldn't have survived out in the ellements, even with a shelter. She gave birth to two kids at about 3am one morning, buck and a doe.  She wouldn't have a thing to do with them so we had to bring them into the house and bottle feed them. The weather remained so bad that we had those darned goat kids in the bathroom for a month! What a job. I'll never breed the goats so early again. Thank goodness we could eventually move then out into their own little pen in the cabin untill the weather warmed up enough to put them all outside in March.

This is my future art/sewing room. I'll take more pictures as I get it set up.

 

What I really love, is hearing the sound of the creek flowing by while I'm working up there. The only draw back to this upstairs room  is that it gets very warm, even with all the windows open. It's great in the morning and evening but as long as the sun's shining it's extremely toasty. Maybe a fan would help.

At Last, a Workshop

Ok, here's yet another attempt to revive the old blog.
I got a new lap top so I think it will be easier to keep up with things here. Our old desktop computer is getting so crotchety and temeremental that updating the blog was becoming a huge pain in the behind.

Well, anyway. I wanted to post some pictures of our new workshop. It was on sale at The Home Depot last September/October. Ken and I saw one of these two story buildings a few years ago when we lived in NC and really liked them. Never saw them again until last year. We've been intending to build a workshop since we moved here five years ago but we just don't have the time to devote to such a huge project. It's all we can do to keep up with fencing and animal housing.

Watching this building go up was amazing. The company: Classic Manor, had the materials delivered, then a crew of four guys came up from Georgia. They worked almost without stopping and the whole thing was up and completed in TWO days! It would have taken us two years to build something like this.

It's so nice to have a place to work out of the elements. And, what's even better, I get the upstairs loft portion for an art studio! I'm slowly but surely cleaning out the spare bedroom that used to be my art room but became the "junk" room instead.

We've made some huge changes to the farm this last year. I'll post more pictures later.