Saturday, July 31, 2010

fishing, water line, new kids


Last Sunday we took some time off from our trench work and went up to Red Feather Lakes to do some trout fishing. As you can see there was breath taking scenery up there. As always, I was dressed to the nines! HEHEHE.
Dennis spent quite a bit of his time untangling my line. Wish I could go back to the old Zebco's, I never seemed to have much trouble with them.
Ryan caught 2 fish, here is one of them, it is a brown trout;

I caught two, and Dennis caught one, but let it go, or rather, it got away from him after he got it off the hook. But much fun was had by us.

TRENCHING
We did a small amount by hand to fill it, but our neighbor came with his back hoe and filled it in for us. Bless his heart! But unfortunately he backed over our well casing, necessitating us calling an electrician for severed wires, and me having to scout around for another well cap.
This happened Monday, the electrician came out and repaired the wires, but said that he needed an electrical box, and would be back on Tuesday. Well here it is Saturday, and I am still waiting for that electrician to come out. In the mean time, we have the open well covered with duct taped bags, a heavy plastic barrel, and a pallet on top of that.


NEW KIDS!
We got our two new Nubian bucks. They are so sweet. I had them in the back of the Blazer and was unloading them from the large dog kennel that they were in.I decided to take Timmie out first as he was the lighter of the two, since I needed to jump over trenches to get them to their pen. It went without a hitch. As I was taking Chester out, I turned around and here was Timmie, he had got out of the pen to follow me, he had traversed one trench, escaping falling into the 5 foot hole, and was surrounded by two large livestock guardian dogs, that were just loving him up. You got to love them dogs.
Here are my two dogs, looking longingly at the two new little babies.

Timmie and Chester safe in their new pen. Chester is the one with the white band around his belly. Timmie looks brown, but is really a black goat, but just sunburned.


MINNESOTA!
Minnesota here I come. I am going back to my roots for a family wedding. My Mom, Dad and I are driving up, wonder if we will have an adventure like Thelma and Louise? Then I will be flying back. My aunt and uncle are up there now as they summer there to get away from the heat of the Arizona desert. They are coming to AZ early however, as they say MN has been so humid, and the mosquitoes are as big as road runners. Should be an adventure for sure!
More later.............

Friday, July 23, 2010

Christmas in July? baby goats, man overboard!

The dust has finally settled, the earth no longer is shaking and quivering, the scent of diesel fuel assaulting our olfactory has abated.. Our yard looks like a scene from a battle, with fox trenches all over.



Yes, it is Christmas in July, for Dennis and I that is. We are getting water to our sheds and garden. No more aching from carrying water buckets. Well, we still have to carry some, but not as far. We will just hook up the hoses, and off we go. Dennis did the trenching, thanks to the equipment loan from one of our neighbors.
It took him all day, but he did a good job. I have been worrying about the dogs falling in and breaking a leg, but so far so good. They had a great time playing all night in the freshly dug soil. I told our neighbor, we need to get this done fast before the dogs fill in all the trench. The trench had to be 5 feet deep for the water line, under the frost line. That should be an indicator of how cold it can get here. We are also laying down electrical in the trench, but at only 2 feet deep, we will be able to have heated water buckets this winter. No more chipping at the ice. The sad thing about all this excavating was not one earth worm was uncovered. We need more compost in our soil.
The fellow is coming tonight, Saturday to lay the pipe, so we should be able to start filling in the trench.

CHESTER & TY-NEE TIM
We got our new baby goats today. They are way too small, and were weaned too young in my opinion. I think I will see if they will still take the bottle after tonight's milking. Poor little things have been through so much. Well anyway, one is named Chester, and we have not come up with a name for the other little one. He is so tiny, I may just call him Ty-nee Tim! Timmy for short.

HEN HOUSE NEWS
The turkeys are growing nicely, with faces only another turkey would love.

MAN OVERBOARD!
News flash, the plumber did show up on Saturday evening, it is official, we now have water outside! It did not come without its hair raising adventure at some point.
Have you ever said"I have not been sick in months, or I never get colds" And then you jinxed yourself and you get a doozy of a cold? Well, I said the dogs had not fallen in the trench. Boy, did I do it to myself. We have had a pallet across the "y" intersection of the trench. Dennis removed it to start filling the trench after the water line was in place. Bear heard the alpacas alarm and was off and running, he was going to traverse the pallet but it was gone and down the hole he went. I watched in terror as his head was the last to go in. He was not hurt thankfully, but was getting panic stricken as he was walking backward in the trench. I told Dennis I was going to go down and get him, but he did not want me in there so he went in. He got a leash on Bear, and lead him out. We had to add dirt in the "y" spot as a kind of step ladder to get him out. Now, I have been watching these dogs for a few days now, crossing this trench at full speed run, and leisurely. Poor Bear. He got some good loving up when he was back on top. None the worse for wear at his up close and personal look at his future final resting place!




We are taking the day off and going fishing with our son, Ryan.
More later...........

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Knee high by the fourth of July!

Head study of Dosedo. Purebred registered Nubian goat. What a beauty! Had to at least get one animal in here.


I guess that our corn is knee high by the fourth of July. We are finding Colorado to be more humid than we had thought. But still it has not been as hot and humid as Arizona in the monsoon.
Delectable kohlrabi

watermelon and corn

More garden shots. Purple cone flower.

Zinnias


Hollyhocks


While walking my granddaughter in her neighborhood in town, I stopped along the way to take pictures of some of the beautiful Colorado landscaping.





We had a strange visit yesterday, from Geokinetics USA, Inc. They wanted us to sign a permit giving them permission to do a seismographic survey on our land. I asked"What if we don't want this survey?" the fellow then said that the sheriff would get involved. What do you make of that. Do I smell a rat? Well anyway, here are the first few sentences of the permit.

Geokinetics and/or its assigns hereby requests your permission to conduct a seismographic survey, including the right to ingress and egress for such purposes, across your land in Weld County(and then goes on to give our legal description)
This permit shall include any surface or mineral interests you own within this seismic survey, including but not limited to, the surface interests described above.

I mean, for Pete's sake, why do they need us to give signed permission, when they are going to force us to do it anyway????
I'll let you know how life is in the crow bar hotel.
More later...........

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

4th of July, a few days late. The B-day boy!

We were invited to Tera's home this year for our 4Th of July celebration, she lives in the big city of Denver. She had such a nice party, even had live entertainment, an old guitar player. He was very good actually, reminded me of the movie Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges.

The weather did not cooperate , with all the partying, so the party had to move inside a couple of times due to the rains. The temperature was only in the 70's that day. It started raining in Denver about 6pm. When we got home at 9pm it was raining at our place also. Around the Severance area they received 2.5 inches of rain. Kind of put a damper on the festivities.
Here are some pictures of our day.


Here is a picture of a 59 year old fellow trying to entertain his granddaughter. Happy Birthday Dennis!!!!!


Tera also handed out fake tattoos of patriotic stuff. I picked out an American flag and put it on my right ankle. Well anyway the next day when I was painting my front door,

I felt my ankle itch and found that I still had the tattoo on. Dennis and I had went to the home of a veterinarian couple, to purchase 2 male goat kids, (they live on an Elk game farm, and here is a picture of a bull elk in velvet)

We also went to Eaton to buy eggs from a farmer. Boy they must have had something to talk about after I left. The old lady with the tattoo of the American flag on her ankle! No one said anything about it however. I had completely forgot about having it on, it was so comfortable.
The guinea keets are going on a month old now, really nice growth on them. We will be moving them out to the chicken coop to acclimate to the chickens and turkeys in the next two weeks

I just can't pass up the opportunity to show off some of my July flowers.


More later........

Friday, July 2, 2010

summer ramblings


I have come to the conclusion that writing in a blog is a winter time activity. I am not able to keep up with writing even once a week, since we have so much work to get done before the snow flies again. Speaking of snow, we have had our temps in the 90's for about the last week, with some humidity also. But our saving grace is that the temps get in the 50's-60's at night. We have not had rain for awhile, and the garden and the pastures are in dire need of it. Everything looks parched. I was just telling Dennis yesterday, "don't you wish that a rain storm would come thru and drop the temperature to about 48 degrees?" Wishful thinking, as it hasn't happened yet. I guess that I am a true Northerner, and like the cooler temperatures.
I finished painting the coops, finally after a couple of months. I painted the goat huts and their feeders today. You can see the hut behind the girls, and the girls are standing at their freshly painted feeder. They are under the shelter that our grandson, Brady, helped us build while he was here. He had also primed the goat huts and the feeders for me.

I will probably have to put another coat of paint on tomorrow. I did lock the goats out for 2 hours for some drying time. It reminds me of a goat I used to have, my dear sweet Sarina, we had her for 10 years before she passed. I was painting a goat door in the barn, she was such a good goat, stayed out of my way, watched as I lovingly applied each brush stoke of paint. I even painted on an X to make it look barn like. I came back about an hour later, and there was Sarina, lovingly licking off all the paint that I had applied. My X looked like it had been rained on and was heading south. Sarina lived for about 5 years after that, so the paint did not cause her demise. I always use a barn paint that states safe for livestock on the can.

Dennis even got in the spirit of painting and painted the top part of his large pigeon coop to match the chicken coop. Here is a picture of his racing homers' landing board and trap where they will come in after they finish their competition flying. He is hoping to start their training flights soon.


Katahdin "hair" sheep
Sheep that you do not have to shear, or dock their tails.
I have found two Katahdin "hair" sheep to add to our menagerie here. Two little ewelings, sisters. They are seen here just born with their white mother.Can't wait to get them, but they were just born in June.



Grandson help.
Brady is pictured here helping us put up our goat shelter to keep the goats out of the elements as they eat out of their feeder. It also keeps the sun from leaching out the hay nutrients.

Here he is digging fence posts in for the shelter. Boy we sure could have used him earlier this spring!
One of his daily chores was to carry water buckets to the animals twice daily. Getting a water and electric line is on our "wish" list. As I sit here, we are waiting for an electrician to come and give us an estimate.
Brady learned how to do many things while he was here with Grandma and Grandpa, allot of animal husbandry and carpenter and fence building skills. But what he learned the most is that he never wants to have animals other than dogs and cats, and also that he does not want to live on a farm. Valuable lessens no doubt. Here he is doing his favorite thing while staying with us, his XBox!


Antelope!
We had a new alpaca rancher move in about 5 miles down the road from us. As we went for our first visit, we spotted this antelope with her twin calves in the grasses. A little out of focus, I know, but she was to spooky with her babies out in the open.
I was so excited, as we have never seen the babies before. If you left click on the picture it will enlarge for you. Speaking of antelope, both Dennis and Ryan got antelope permits for this fall.

July Prairie pictures
As I walked out to the mailbox, I took some pictures of the prairie in July for you all to look at. Our bird feeder by a lone maple tree in our front yard.
If you left click on this picture you will see honey bees are enjoying the water. I always try to have a stick or something in the water, as sometimes the bees fall in and drown. This way, they have some chance to climb out. Bees are so beneficial and necessary for farm crops!

Wild grasses by our mailbox.

wild alfalfa

sweet clover which is taking over the ditches

some sort of wild daisy

One of our Burbon Red turkeys maturing, we can tell it is a tom as it is getting its red throat patch.
Dennis garden is hanging on for dear life, and he has been watering it daily, during our dry spell. We have eaten very delicious salads and radishes from it already.
Even little Lili is growing like a weed, a good one that is!

I know this has been long, but I might not be able to write for awhile, as well, life gets in the way!
More later............