Boys in a box...



















Boys now in the icebox... until we make room in the freezer and the canner.

Don't hate me because I am beautiful, hate me because I photograph well even while napping.

That's right, he is chromosomally just a boy

Ty was his shelter name, Eiley named him Beau. We couldn't agree upon a name, so we chose Ty-Beau. Or Taebo. Or sometimes TyTy (Bri) or Bobo (Eiley). Or in the middle of the night,

Upstairs: "Daddy/Mommy waaah"
Downstairs: "What's wrong?"
Upstairs: "Cat on the bed!!!"

So here he is, Mr Patient, himself. At 6 mos old, he is willing to be carted around repeatedly. Very Percy like.

What was that? Can I chase it? And playful as only an older kitten would be.

These wrappers make nice chase-y toys too. And super-tolerant of the kids poking him, carrying him, playing with him, etc.

This piece of seaweed was very beautiful and very hard to leave behind - but Bri left it in the ocean to live out its life. And hopefully in a few years she will scuba dive and see its offspring.

Sand and water all over my face?!*!&! - I am as surprised as you!







This lobster meets the other lobster and the one that has a claw left wins, right Dad?







Ah, a bright future in minimum wage cashier work awaits them.









This climbing helment doesn't quite fit me. Yet.









Yes, I like putting my hands in cold water!

Here it is - the new home of the chicks - bumped up from the chicken tractors to a hoop coop - made from 16 foot cattle panels.

Chicken wire all around to hold them in (held on with zip ties), tarp over the top to keep off the rain and sun (held on with bungie cords) And bungie cords to dangle the food and water. Now that is genius.

But wait, there's more! The door is a clip setup from those clips that fit inside cabinet doors - you know, the old cheap ones from the 1970s. But we had to come up with a way to stabilize the door laterally, the "poor man's door" of chicken stretched across the opening wanted to pop back. So, Carol screwed in some bottlecaps to keep the clips clipped. She is soooo smart.

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These two names - can you pick them out from a sea of random letters? - these two names are the first words (other than Brianna) that Bri spelled on her own.

She asked before breakfast to organize the letters into color groups again. Then she asked to spell Lola. We got as far as the L by sounding it out and had to go find a Charlie and Lola book.

Then we sounded it out more and checked the letter choices, one by one, against the book cover. There was Lola.

Then, she wanted to spell Charlie - with less of the book's help. Our challenge was to find another L after she used two of them for Lola. Hooray to Carol for repurposing the 7.

Cat... bah. Dog... naw. How about Mom or Mommy? Nope. Ditto for Dad. My daughter spells Charlie and Lola.

Dick and Jane are eating their hearts out this very night.

There he is, Mr Big Stinky...
















There he is, Mr Escape Artist...

Mina hiding in the goat, reaching upward to nibble some hay from the hayrack.














Chambray on the milk stand. Not the most cooperative milker, she is stubborn and too smart for her own good. She should fit in here just fine :D

From Dawnland: Phoebe, Doe #6

This is really not a great picture, but that on the right is Phoebe, the buck on the left is her brother. Phoebe's mom is Dotty, whose main claim to fame is a goofy ole' picture of her "smiling". Dotty is a great dam with a mixture of Goodwood on her pa's side and some crazy milking standards on her ma's side.

Phoebe's dad is Tabby L.

From Dawnland: Jonquil, Doe #5

Jonquil is SweetPea's newest daughter - we loved Sweetpea from the get-go and when we saw that the doeling that was born and retained by the breeder we did the sad "cross another name off the list" face to each other.

But when Dawnland offered Jonquil to make room for does coming in from another herd, we jumped at the offer. This pic shows Jonquil about four or five days old. She takes after her mom in color and conformation. Bit early to say much about what she will be when she grows up. Maybe an astronaut. Capronaut?

Doesn't matter, she is cute enough!

From Dawnland: Luna, Doe #4

Luna is a cross between Mona Lisa and Water Tabby - two amazing lines - we wanted a baby from this same cross this year, but couldn't get anywhere near. So we got the next best thing, one of their does from last year.

She is long and well-proportioned, the line of her back is also pretty nice. And best of all, she is very 'dairy', which means her skin has this certain pliability which goat people like.

Won't know that b/c she hasn't breed yet, but when she does her milking should be awesome

From Dawnland: Erica, Doe #3

Erica is amazing - she has another great lineage from Caesar's Villa, a NC Nigerian farm that has some nice milkers and show goats too.

Her mom is a 7*D, which means she comes from 7 generations of recognized milkers. Woof.

She is nice and wide with awesome bones up front, good for easy birthing and with her dam's milking, she should be a great doe.

From Moonspinner Farms: Nekoda (Cody), Buck #2

This is our second buck, Nekoda or Cody, who is scary cute looking here. One of the things we were told to watch out for was "don't fall for a cute buck with nice coloration, look for a good buck and then look for cute".
Cody is both - he has an impressively high judged score of his conformation and his up-and-down black just is too cute for words. He passes his coloring on to his kids easily too. Very nice.

Like Amador, he has an impressive lineage. But compared to the others, he is an "outcross", which is bafflingly some of the breeders we are buying from, but we are biologists and inbreeding is not the goal.

From Dawnland: Amador, Buck #1

Here is Amador, this pic is when he is a few months old, today he is just 2 yrs old. He is our "Rosasharn" buck, which means he is in the line/style of Rosasharn (which is the most famous and oldest of the New England Nigerian Dwarf farms). Rosasharn bucks are smaller-boned and leans towards being longer but more compact than a typical buck.

Apparently, tho, he is a super-sweet buck and his lineage is crazy-good.

From SM3Pines: Chambray, Doe #2

Chambray is a three year old doe who doesn't quite fit into SM3Pines future breedings, so Stacy offered us Chambray too. She has a pretty cool background - look at her pedigree, the letters in red are good things.

Chambray is a little more timid than Stacy's other does and misses out a bit at the feed trough, but from this pic of her preggers, you can see she does put on the weight pretty well. For some reason, we are both drawn to her.

We are going to go out to SM3Pines in late May to pick up Chambray and Mina and bring them home.

Wait until you hear about our options with Dawnland Farms' babies. Instant herd, just add cash and it can be yours! :D

From SM3Pines: Mina, Doe #1

A doe was born!

This is a picture of Wilhemina, Mina for short, born at the SM3Pines farm in Canandaigua. Little thing, isn't she, just a couple of pounds and Stacy tells us she was born yesterday morning. Still a little wobbly on her feet but Stacy said that sorts itself out in a few days.

Love those moonspots, don'tcha? We do too.

Our two other crosses we were following didn't work out this spring - one doe had twin bucks and the other is a yearling that will breed this spring for the fall. And we need at least one other doe at home to keep Mina company.

Stacy is willing to part with another of her 3-yr old does, Chambray, who just isn't quite show quality. A good milker, but not perfect looking. We are going to work it out and bring Chambray home too. Should be right after Bri's b-day in early June! Time to finish our rearranging of Barn Thing, v7.0 and get the fencing up for the close paddocks.

Now, we just have seven more crosses to watch over the next three months :D

Time to put some seeds in soil

It is still about 8 weeks from our last frost, but that means it is time to start those tomatoes and peppers.

So, here at Weathertop it is a family affair, some of us make the soil blocks, some sort seeds and some decorate the trays with stickers!

Here is Carol and Eiley sorting out which stickers mark the tray (this is how we map each of the five trays, but the kids think we are just down with stickers too).

 

This is what it looked like to begin with:

And this is how it looks now

And here is Muppet - curly hair and all. Did we mentin she is saucy and manipulative... someday she will turn 2 and it will get worse. Ai!

 

Remember when she didn't have any hair at all for the longest time. Now we need a weed-wacker just to find her eyes. I think she might need to visit a hair salon :D

 

Extreme Closeup on Brianna "chirpy" Chickadee-dee-dee 

Eiley says, "Cheeezzzittts....Cheeezzzittts, please"! Now make it whinier in your head and you have the situation.

We got about 6 inches of the nicest snowman-making snow you could ask for. A bit too much for the road-crews so we had a nice family day b/c Jamey was not willing to drive in this sticky slop.

But it was awesome sticky snow for snowmen. And unlike last year, the wind wasn't howling, just sheets of sticky snow (as Eiley's curl will attest).