The French Angora Rabbits haven’t been featured here on the blog in quite awhile, but I assure you all that yes, they are indeed still here. Our bucks are Olaf & Aesop, junior bucks are Henry & Benny, and our does are Hester, Elinor, Agatha & Laura. (Our pet Netherland Dwarf, Lucy, died last month at the age of 15.) So, we currently own 8 purebred French Angoras. Hester and Aesop are both blowing their coats so I spent the…
It’s been a little while since we’ve been on here last thanks to a stomach bug that ripped through our household last week. Only Rachel made it through unscathed on that one. The boys and I got walloped pretty bad. Daniel was the toughest. Daniel doesn’t have the self awareness the older boys do to get to the bathroom in time, so wherever he happened to be was precisely where he would get sick. Consequently, we put about 2,000 miles…
Well, the time has come that I’ve been looking forward too with a mix of both relief and disappointment: drying off the goats. Drying off is steadily decreasing a doe’s milk production until the doe is dry. This is done so that the doe’s body is given a period of rest before her kids are born in the spring and to allow her body to recharge before another 10 months of milking commences. It also gives the farmer a bit…
This cold snap we’ve been having has been brutal. It was 27 degrees this morning–a full 40 degrees warmer than it was a few days ago! By comparison to the sub zero temperatures of the past week, it’s practically balmy out there. I checked the mail today without wearing a coat! I feel like we’ve moved to the tropics! The cold temperatures were especially hard on the homestead, because while the animals handle the cold fairly well, their water freezes…
Well! Our neighbors have put their trees to the curb (even though it’s only the 7th day of Christmas!), the mailbox has been flooded with solicitations from local gyms, Oprah’s on TV hawking Weight Watchers, and I’m at the end of our milking chart for 2017. It must be time for New Year’s Resolutions! I said a year ago that we don’t really make resolutions, but we certainly set goals for ourselves and decide on what we want to accomplish….