Winter Hibernation Leading to Spring Expansion

If you know what you're looking for, Honey is definitely pregnant! We're at the end of the second month and the way goat pregnancy progresses, she won't "show" much at all until she gets BIG at the end of the fourth month and HUGE in the fifth month.

I'm working on building a "kid corner" for the barn. The idea will be that it can be set up for kidding season and folded up for the other half of the year. It's gonna be a bit before I have anything to show you but I'm working on the blueprints.

I've also been working on curtains for the chickens. I've finished the ones separating the nest boxes (it keeps them from fighting),but I also want to sew a roll up curtain for the wall between the goats and chickens. This will provide them with a nice dark area to roost even if I need lights in the goat area at night. They're made out of old feed bags which are a kind of woven plastic fabric, so they're not going to mildew or anything but I can also take them down and wash them in the washing machine when they do get dusty/dirty.

Kelly and Isabella are laying again. I spotted Jennifer on a nest today and Marsha hiding under the nests the past few days so we might have them all laying again soon! That said, even with just the new girls laying over winter, we had lots of extra eggs to give to neighbours and this past week we dropped off 5 half-dozen at the community food pantry.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to send Hugslut some nasty weather for her birthday so we didn't get to go to Yarmouth for dinner. We planned ahead and hunkered down but those two trips out to the barn each day were not fun. The animals complained on day one when I wouldn't let them out but by that night when the wind had kicked up and howled they understood and just relaxed in the barn for the next couple days.

It's tax season of course so among all the rest we're getting our tax documents together for Hugslut's work-from-home office job and I realized that if I ever plan to sell, I really should start keeping farm records instead of just treating it as an expensive hobby. This means that I've of course given myself yet another new project, "learn what sort of expenses can be partially written off of farm income". Not that I have any farm income yet but it'll be good to get into the record keeping.

Gardening won't be an issue for a few more weeks at least. ;-)