Shopping for baby chicks, baby goats and other springtime shenanigans

Nothing screams "SPRING" more than baby chicks, baby goats and crocuses.  And this blog post is filled with 'em, because guess what?  Spring has sprung, more or less.  More last week, less this week, with the snow line falling again.

I accidentally came home with six new baby chicks after entering our local farm store.  They were 50 percent off, so how could I have resisted?  The chicks live in our bathroom for now, with a heat lamp and a brooder that keeps them safe.

Our dogs, especially Raka, the big one, love these little fluff balls.  Raka lies on the floor with them, letting them flutter all over her and even lets them peck her nose.  It's incredibly cute, albeit a tiny little bit exciting, because Raka could fit all six chicks easily into her mouth at once.

If you want to raise chicks and know how to build a chicken tractor to keep them safe, you can take my online chicken raising course for 10 percent off with coupon code "chicks", but only until Sunday at 10pm Pacific. Click here to check it out.

Also: baby goats.  Ahhhhhhhh, baby goats.  Last fall, I sold all of my goats to have a breather and figure out what I want to do with my life, but very soon I realized that this life needs to have goats in it.  And cheesemaking. 

So I've been spending time with friends' goats to see which ones I want.  The problem is: I want them all.

Below are mini Nubians with their adorable long ears, which I'm drooling over because I've bred and raised ear-less La Mancha goats for over a decade.

And then there's the white Saanens with their bunny rabbit ears.  

Choices, choices.  What's a girl to do when one baby goat looks cuter than the other?

This whole spring thing happened pretty quickly.  One week, we were covered in snow and ice, and the other, things were melted.

The worst part was when I had to shovel snow and ice to clear a path for the chicken tractor.  The poor girls had been stuck in one area for weeks, blocked in by snow, until I finally had enough and freed them.

Good exercise, y'all.  And happy chickens pecking at grass.  It was worth it.

As soon as the snow was gone, I jogged out to the garden (in a T-shirt and barefoot) so I could plan it out for this year's planting.  I practice crop rotation to keep things healthy, and I keep a stained, tattered garden journal that's 15 years old.  It documents every single year of gardening we've done on this piece of land.  It's epic.  And dirty.

So there I was, squatting in the garden, and although I had only planned on laying out garden beds, my arms and legs started twitching, and before I knew it, I had filled the wheelbarrow with compost from the goat barn, spread it on a garden bed, broadforked it to make it nice and loose, and planted all the garlic.

I love when that  happens.  Garlic's in.  Check.

I shall leave you with images of last week.

... Sun shining onto the Cascade River...

... Sun rising in our back yard...

... My sons heading into the woods with their friend to target practice with their bows and arrows...

... My husband sniffing Devil's club inner bark he harvested to make a tincture with...

... Is your garden snow free yet? 

Birth (this time not goats) and gorgeous scenery

Easter morning I thought I would burst. I had gotten up at 3 am to support my friend when she was giving birth to her baby girl, which was an amazing experience. (Head over here to my other blog to read about it, especially if you are a mother.)  I promise, it's worth it with a beautiful message.

I came home after the baby was born, just in time to watch Eva hunt for Easter eggs.  Her older brothers were too cool for that, but they still watched and later shared in the sweet bounty their generous sister distributed among them.

It was warm and sunny that morning, and as I drank a rare cup of coffee on the deck, telling Steve about the beautiful birthing experience with my friend, I felt like I could burst with happiness.

In order to channel this excessive energy (thank you, coffee, and thank you,  bonding-hormone-oxytocin), we went for a hike, which literally starts in our backyard and leads to this:

I know, right?

When I keep telling you we live at the edge of the wilderness, I'm not kidding.  We walk out of our front door and hike up to these mossy cliffs with a view in 45 minutes.

The trail meanders through a magical mossy fern-covered forest, along a roaring creek, dotted with huge boulders and giant cedars.  

It's the kind of place that makes your heart expand wide and makes you realize what a beautiful planet we live on.

All day long, we saw signs of spring: blooming salmonberries and trillium, nesting swallows, sunshine.  

What a beautiful day to be born!  The whole day, I was flying high from this birthing experience and couldn't stop thinking about it.

And talking of birthing, did I tell you that my other goat gave birth to twins?  We now have two goat mamas with two sets of twins, and a barn with feisty baby goats full of themselves.

I like to escape to the barn in the evenings and let Steve deal with the human kids' chaos in the house.  

Then I immerse myself in the goat kids' chaos, sitting in the straw, letting them chew on my jacket, jump up and down on my lap, and watching them head butt each other.

It's a pure comedy show, that.

Although we do see signs of spring, it has been incredibly wet and yucky outside.  It gets on my nerves, this weather, especially since I am itching to put seedlings in the ground.  But I can't work the soil when it's so soggy, so we just wait, wait, wait.

I will leave you with images of Luke and me holding our chickens to trim their wings.  They kept flying over the fence to scratch in my garden, which could be murderous for my garlic greens poking out of the soil.

Once the garden is planted, the chickens have to be securely contained, because they would destroy it with their scratching and pecking.  So their flight feathers had to go.  It doesn't hurt them, and they are so tame they like to be held.

PS: In case you forgot, click here to read my blog post about my birth-assisting experience and what it means for us mothers.

So this is what happened on Wednesday...

Hello darlings. Wanna know what happened on Wednesday? This is what: Baby goats. Triplets.

Quasar, the Mama goat, gave birth to one big buckling and two doelings, one of them very, very, very tiny. I didn't know if she would survive, but it looks like she is doing fine. I have to help her nurse, and we even gave her a bottle to make sure she received colostrum right away.

Steve happened to be at home, so we were able to film the whole birth, while my six-year old Eva helped dry off babies, bottle feed, and lend emotional support to the mama (which mama, you ask: goat or human? Actually: both). Her running commentary and excitement about the process of birth helped me with this messy, adrenaline-and-wonder-inducing event.

My two sons weren't present for the birth because they slept over at a friend's house, but as soon as they got home, they raced to the barn, and all three kids proceeded to hold babies and argue about what to name them.

These goats... they tie us down, are a lot of work and a huge commitment, but how could you not want them around?

I wanted to film the birthing process because I'm putting together an online course to teach how to raise goats totally naturally: from birthing to trimming hooves to disbudding to milking... you name it, I'll film it and write about it so people can learn everything they need to know to get started with goats.

Other news of the week: the garden is thriving, the butterflies are going nuts with the lilacs, -------------------------------------------------

(Whew, you guys won't believe it. Just as I wrote this last sentence, my kids came inside, screaming and yelling, telling me about a Robin's nest that had fallen down from our Kiwi trellis. Two baby birds were dead, one still alive. I put it back in the nest and put it up in the Kiwis again. I don't know if it will make it...)

---------------------------------- the butterflies are going nuts with the lilacs, baby birds are falling out of their nests, and my roses are blooming.

We've been having bonfires and picnics, some of them in the tipi which will host June's summer weekend camp for kids. The picture below shows the Cabra Al Vino I made, which you can learn to do in my online cheesemaking course, and the bread is the most amazing fermented bread I teach how to make in my online fermentation course.

We also roasted sausages and ate watermelon at Diablo Lake, which is great for that sort of thing, plus kayaking on it.

I will leave you with an image of my friends and I singing A Cappella at our local radio station (KVSU, 90.1).  We've been singing together for about seven years, and we are getting braver when it comes to putting ourselves out there. If you want to listen to a little impromptu singing, my husband took a short movie of us singing at the river. (Melody: Andrea, Alto: Linden, Soprano: me). You can see it and listen here.