This week on the farm we continued training the new milkers to get on the milking stand. We milk Mothra, Lulou, and Lezlie every day. But, Rosa, Elena, Maria, and Bella are not yet fully trained.
Mothra, Lulou, and Lezlie actually race each other to get to the milking stand. They butt each other out of the way trying to get in to the milking parlor first. In fact, the other morning, Snoopy, the teenaged dachshund, accidentally got out into the plaza in front of the milking parlor (otherwise known as the breezeway in between our houses). He had come out his doggy door, gotten tangled up in baby goats, and just wanted to go through the milking parlor and back into his house. But, one of the goats butted him out of the way because it’s just that competitive, getting through the parlor door and onto the milking stand. Snoopy was frightened, but otherwise fine.
The four goats who aren’t knocking each other over to be first are enjoying a process of being slowly lured onto the milking stand. Jan holds the bucket of grain, pulling it slowly toward the stand, making the goats follow until they’re up on the stand, enticing them until finally they put their heads between the bars. She has remarkable patience with them. Here's Maria, learning to get up on the stand, being overrun with babies.
Kat and I prepared to paint the newer chicken coop this week. One side of that coop was so dense with wild underbrush that we couldn’t reach the side of the coop. We took loppers, Coco, and the gorilla cart to the coop and began hacking away.
As the area got closer to being cleared, I found a chicken bone. And then a chicken foot.
By the time we’d finished removing all the bushes there were enough bones to make an entire chicken! Some poor chicken must’ve gotten shut out of the coop one night, hid in the underbrush, and a predator ate her. Probably Fluffy, that pesky skunk who lives underneath that coop. Or one of Fluffy’s ancestors.
We took a photo of the bones and showed it to Jan. She told us that years ago one of her chickens had disappeared without a trace. Well, these bones solved that mystery!
Kat and I continued work on our new landscape soaps. It was a really exciting week for that. After a week of making soap elements - long cylinders of soap, little orbs of soap, bunches of soap shavings - we were finally able to put the elements together in long molds.
We cut them into bars, and got Confetti Cats:
And Bubble Bars:
Now we’re working on a sort of high-concept soap, Four Seasons soap. Each of the Seasons has a tree and a sun in it, but each is a different fragrance, and different colors. This soap was meant to be Spring, only it is a failed bar. So, we’re pretending it is a desert oasis bar. We’ll try again on a Spring bar.
In any case, please visit our soap website: https://www.serenasoaps.com/. As we’re getting more serious about our soap, we’ve made a few changes. One of them is that we’re now donating 1% of all sales to charity. It’s socially conscious soap! This month the donation goes to the Roadrunner Food Pantry, which has helped residents of New Mexico get through the pandemic (and continues to assist food-insecure folks).
Other events on the farm have been:
Jan bought a flock block for the hens. I love when she does that. I love watching the chickens enjoy their flock block.
The barn swallows have not yet figured out who will use the nest above our milking parlor. It’s odd - there were two swallows sitting in it one day, but they didn’t make it their nest. There’s a little guy who’s been alighting on the gas can (of all places), scoping out the nest. One day he even had a friend sitting on the next gas can. But they haven’t yet nested. We’re in suspense.
Oh! One of the baby goats had an adventure this week. It happened while we were milking. During that time, most of the mamas and the babies are just loose in the breezeway, and the herd guardian dogs are in their outer pen - a pen that runs the length of the milkers’ pen, and also back past the hay barn and all the way to the road.
Bella’s littlest girl discovered the gap between the gate and the rest of the fence, and stuck her head in it. I looked out the milking parlor window just as she was squeezing through to the dog yard. I jumped up and ran, because we’re never sure whether Clark and Vera know that the babies are goats they need to protect, or whether those babies seem so different from the adult goats to them - and so small - that they might activate the dogs’ prey drive.
That little girl had really wedged herself in the gap. She had pushed herself forward till I couldn’t pull her back without fear of hurting her. I finally decided I needed to crack the gate a tiny bit open in order to pull her back, but when I tried to do that, the door sprang wide open, the baby goat sprang forward, and all the goats and dogs erupted into chaos.
Jan grabbed Clark’s collar, I headed out into the outer pen to capture the baby. Those guardian dogs were so good. They knew the baby was part of the herd. What terrific dogs they are. We were so pleased with them. I felt like an idiot for allowing the gate to spring open. But everyone survived. Now I cover that gap with a big cement block before we let the babies into the area!
I’m going to end today’s newsletter with a completely gratuitous photo of Coco reclining on my lap that Kat sent out on SnapChat. Have a great day, everyone!
