Pumpkin Carving

This was Lovely G's  first pumpkin patch trip. It was rather chilly, so though we enjoy spending time at Williamson's Pumpkin Paradise, it was a short visit.

Dad chose a pumpkin for Lovely G.

Newest Farm Addition

Meet Violet, an example of what happens when you have a stray female dog show up a few weeks before your dog is scheduled to be neutered. She is well loved, and is now running around the house with the kids. We may try to have a house dog again. May. Her mom isn't really much of a mom, so we've been feeding her and doing her care. We actually had to drill a hole in the bottom of the sheep barn to rescue her, after her mom buried her under there. There were others in the litter, but they were gone by the time we found them. She is awfully sweet.

Late Winter (!) Dusk

Swingin' Goat Farms at Sugar Creek's Farm Animal Update

Princess Pi (white nose) and Bunny, our french angora rabbits. Both doing well. They have actually moved out of this home and into their newly constructed bunny palace, courtesy of Dad. It is housed in the goat barn, and they are loving their two story home. We may look into a different colored gal sometime in the future, but with my cat allergies (and thus bunny ones, as well), these two are enough to groom.

The teenagers. These birds recently moved from this, the brooder, to the big bird home. Up front are our two guineas and the rest are just and end of the week special from Sand Hill Preservation Center. Everyone looks good and has moved into the coop and run well.

The bird coop and run

Most of these birds aren't here anymore. We butchered and processed everyone a couple weekends ago, so now they reside in my freezer, save for 21 hens that have been happily laying eggs that we have been happily eating :)

Chrysanthemum

Dawnae and Cassidy

Autumn Star, the goat's guard llama

Skooter-the pest

Chewie, (Chewbacca) our buck. A very laid back buck, who is doing, from what I can observe, an excellent job at what he's supposed to do. Once the gals start kidding in the spring, he and Skooter will move into the buck pen. For the winter, though, they are with the ladies, to help keep everyone warmer.

Thorn, our mighty Border Cheviot ram. We have another ram, Melmoth, coming soon, so we can start keeping breeding lines separate.

Jazzmin

Cloudy. We had to put Cloudy down a couple weeks ago, very sadly. She served her purpose very well, protecting our sheep, and also was the proud mama of Autumn Star. Though she was stand-offish, she was a good llama and mother (she even extended nursed Autumn Star, a good 6 months past when she was supposed to nurse her). She will be missed, and we will be looking into another llama for the sheep. For now the dogs do a good job of keeping predators at bay.

Sullivan (Sully), our beautiful herding dog, courtesy of Ebersole Cattle Co.

Bolt, a charity case, but a gentle dog.

The view of the front paddocks

The play set I built in the spring after it sat in the garage for a year. A great investment!

Doofus Dog

We love him, but seriously. Don't eat fish hooks.

Bolt

We are looking into a kennel for the big guy. The shock collar is proving to work well in keeping him off the chickens. I still won't let him off unless we are out with him if the chickens are out, but he is such a sweet dog, my guess is we'll be okay. More than anything he just likes to play, which is totally normal for a puppy.

New Family Member

No, I wasn't pregnant and tell anyone, and we let our foster/adoptive license slip years ago. And if you're hoping for pictures, by now you should know I am AWFUL at posting them, but will get around to it eventually...
Our newest member is a puppy. We had planned on getting one from a friend of ours (by the way Shanen, we aren't going to be able to take one from the next litter because of this...maybe once Superboy is old enough.) but then went to a birthday party Saturday at a friend's and met their little stray. He was named Jared by their daughter, but once Pony Gal saw him (and mama started falling in love with him...) he was renamed Bolt, and that was the beginning of his time with us. The family had just gotten another puppy, and really didn't have room/time for another, no matter how cute and loving, so they were holding on to him until a space at the local shelter opened up or some unsuspecting, innocent visitor heard about him, saw him and decided to steal him away (i.e. us). I had wanted a dog for Pony Gal for awhile. She loves cats. Mom is allergic to cats. So, that hadn't been working out. Plus the whole litter thing, if we decided to pursue more babies. Anyway, we were going to take an aussie/blue heeler mix from a friend once her Rosie had her pups, but the more of those mixes I met, the more I started to think they may be too aggressive for our family. Good dogs, just too much for us to handle. This little guy looks to be part lab, part shepherd, possibly part beagle or dachshund. The lab and shep I am pretty sure of. He has instantly attached to us. I think he is only 3-4 months only, but it already starting to show quite a bit of promist for training, and is responding to just simple back submission for "punishment" pretty well, as well as keeping his kennel clean for extended periods when we can't be with him. I am excited to have a dog again, and Pony Gal loves him. She is still learning she can't yell no at him constantly, but rather needs to roll him onto his back or give him something else to draw his attention. I will try to get pics up soon, and will definitely keep you posted on his progress. This will be my first foray into this sort of training method, but I was pretty educated on a lot of it from reading about it when we were going to try to train a pup my mom had dropped off at her place (he was the one who just too old to retrain-without a lot more time than I had-and had attacked a chicken. So, we are now a family of five-yay!

Goodbye Dasher

I think I had posted earlier that we were taking my mom's dog in, both as a favor to her, and as a guard dog for the goats once they got here. Unfortunately, Dasher (also known as Chewbacca) is not going to work out. We had been keeping him on a leash around the chickens so he could get to know them and I had assurance that he would not attack them. Everything had been fine-they would come up right next him, and he would totally ignore them. So, since we were outside today, I let him off to run around and play. He stayed pretty close to me, then decided to explore. I couldn't see him, but suddenly noticed feathers where there were none before. The roosters have really started getting cocky lately, and I had just seen some fighting, so I kind of brushed it off. I asked the girls if they could see the dog, and they did-"Dasher's eating a mama chicken." OH. NO. I ran to see, and sure enough, he was going at it. I was able to grab him and chase her a bit to get her to run the other way, while praying that she was not mortally wounded. Dasher fought me pretty violently the whole time. I have scratches on my face where he got me with his claws, as he wiggled and jumped to try and get at another bird. I had to drag him up to the bigger garage and lock him in, so he wouldn't take off or injure another bird. After a rest, the hen looked okay. She had some wounds on her backside, but was pecking and scratching about. I'll keep an eye on her, and unfortunately, Dasher will be taken elsewhere tonight. My birds are a priority, and in general, once a dog gets a hanckering for chicken, you can't change them. They get pretty determined to accomplish their goal.