The other day we had the goats out in the yard, and they started running toward us just as Henry started running to the trampoline and right across their path.  Emily yelled “Henry!  Look out!”  Henry panicked and hit the deck, tornado-drill-style, right in front of a charging Banjo.  Banjo very gracefully did a picture-perfect high jump right over him, and never broke stride.  Henry cried a bit because he was scared, but he didn’t get hurt.

We had the vet out last week to see all our farm animals.  For my reference, she gave CD-T to the goats, and rabies and West Nile vaccinations to the horses.  Brad also got CD-T.  She said to give Brad injectable ivermectin once a month during warm weather months to protect him from brain-worm.  Goats can be dewormed twice or three times a year.

We planted three apple trees and a cherry tree about a month ago.  They seem to be doing fine.  If they look good next year, we’ll plant more.  We’d eventually like a nice sized orchard on the other side of the drive.  We did a lot of clearing of brush over there and Emily has been working on it with the mower.

We’ve been finding lots of snakes lately – mostly in and around the hay.  Lots of redbellies and a few garter snakes.

Our pond is full of minnows!  More than I’ve ever seen, and some really big ones too.

I really need to work on this site more!

Delia and I spent Thurs – Sat on Basswood Lake with our neighbors.  The weather was pretty bad but we had a good time and Delia wanted to stay out another night.  Delia caught a walleye and ate it!

Henry and I went fishing today for the first time today.  I caught a 20″ largemouth on Johnson Lake – my biggest bass ever (at least in MN).  Emily and I worked hard to get rid of the leaks in the boat and it worked.  Not a single drop came through.  The motor performed well but did have one instance of surging / bogging.  I’ll keep an eye on it.

The big news is our house addition which is moving along, though it feels like it’s going slowly.  That’s just how this type of thing goes, and I think we’re finally getting very close to starting demolition and construction.  We can’t wait!

Joe and Bev were here and we did some work reclaiming our land from the onslaught of brush.  We bought a device called a brush grubber, which is basically a clamp with teeth that grabs onto small trees so you can yank them out by the roots.  It works great.  We cleared a lot and Emily mowed and now the land across the driveway is looking great.  We planted three apple trees and a cherry tree over there.  Some day maybe we’ll have a nice orchard there.

Henry is speaking more clearly but he still has a ways to go.  He’s so talkative and it’s adorable.

Delia and I made a trip to Nama’s house, and Delia did great – Nama made sure of that by spoiling the heck out of her.  :)  They had a day in Chicago and went to the American Girl store, where Delia adopted Felicity.

My garage is really taking shape.  We can almost fit a car in there now.  :)

We lost two cats in a short time.  Harvi developed liver disease and Coby had cancer (or something – we’re not sure).  It was sad and we miss them, but 3 is a more manageable number of cats in one house.

One of our chicks has an eye problem.  I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, but it’s messed up and keeps getting crusty.  I’m applying saline solution to it a few times a day to try to keep it clean, but it’s not getting much better.  She seems fine otherwise, but we decided to get another chick just in case something happens to this one.  The new one is a black australorp, which is what we originally ordered but got the (bad eyed) gold wyandotte instead when the australorp didn’t arrive.  She’s a little smaller than the others, but she seems to be doing fine.  Delia and I cleaned out their house tonight so they’re nice and fresh now.

Harvi is back with us, and sick. She is having liver trouble, and is jaundiced. I was showing / telling Henry why she was yellowish and how the liver works and also explaining to Ryan that the vet said that her kidney and pancreas levels looked normal so it was just her liver that was malfunctioning.

Henry turned around and pointed to his lower back / side and said “Here is my kidney.” . . . Ryan said “How did you learn that?!” . . . Henry points to the other side and says “I have two.” ! ! ! Ryan says “Where did you learn that?!!?” Henry points to his spine and says “This is my bone.” I say “Where did you learn this?” Turns out he learned it from the human body toy Delia got for Christmas a few years ago. Spine, kidneys, and then to top it off he points to his head and says “This is my brain.”

Yeah, that’s some brain, kid!

A few weeks ago, I posted a flier at the vet clinic about Harvi. She is the only inside female, and we’ve tried a few times to have everyone live together but she just doesn’t fit in with all the males. They chase her around, keep her cornered in weird spots, etc. We’ve had her in one room in the basement for most of the last year, so it was time to find a better place for her.

A nice older couple picked her up this morning. They are going to spoil her rotten and I know she will enjoy it.

I am excited to move stuff around in the basement now that we don’t have a “Harvi room,” and make it even more functional.

Ryan and the kids picked up six chicks today. On the way home, Delia was holding the box of chicks and said “I want chicken for lunch today.”

Henry wants to name two of them Wubbzy – the yellow ones, even though we’ve told him they’ll grow up to be white.

We’ve got two white leghorns, two americaunas, a barred rock, and a gold laced wyndotte.

Our chickens have been really prolific as of late.  We have 4 remaining young chickens ( ) and they’re all laying 5-6 eggs a week, and one of the old chickens – probably the black australorp – is laying too!  She’s 4 years old, so that’s pretty good.

We ordered our chicks the other day.  We got: 2 white leghorns, 1 Americana, 1 barred rock, and 1 black australorp.  We’ll pick them up on April 21st.

I mostly got the stalls mucked out.  They’re really smelly so I’m going to let them dry and air out before I put new bedding in there.  Brad and the goats have been living outside in the pasture for a week or so, but I’ll feel better with them in the stalls while we’re in Tampa, hence the stall work.  Man were they gross.  I pulled 4 or 5 trailer fulls out of there and dumped them back on our Pile Of Nastiness.  The trailer was really waited down and I went over really bumpy terrain, and my shop-made trailer hitch held up!  Apparently my welds were stronger than I thought.

I gave the goats some alfalfa pellets in the potato shed and sat with them while they ate to get an idea of how much they’d go through at once.  They’re so fun and friendly.  They’d go and eat a little, and then come over and cuddle with me, and then eat a little more.  Banjo is still the friendliest, and Moon is definitely the dominant one.  Poor Brad wanted to eat the alfalfa so badly, but he’s not allowed to.

I cut open a new round bale today.  There’s still quite a bit left of the last one, but I want to take that whole pile out to the pasture on Thursday so they can eat on that while we’re gone and won’t need to be fed more for a while.

Emily and I cut the goats’ hooves.  They weren’t very cooperative, but we got it done.  After that I put the new latch on the gate.  The big wooden post Delia and I put in the ground has loosened up so the gate is kind of wobbly, and it was getting hard to chain it shut like we used to, so now we’ve got an easier to use latch.  I had to use the torch to make some modifications, but it’s on there now and works very well.

Brad’s nails had gotten out of control.  They were really long and curled around and it was getting to the point where he was going to be crippled if they weren’t trimmed.  The problem is he’s touchy about his legs, and whenever we’d even make a gesture toward them, he’d flip out and run away or nearly knock us over.  I decided to build a chute to restrain him so we could safely get him trimmed.  Using only materials I got from the dump (with the exception of about $5 worth of screws and bolts from the hardware store), Delia and I built the Llama Salon.

It’s 25″ wide, 65″ long, and 70″ high.  Brad walks in from the back, and then there are two moveable boards at the front that can clamp down (lightly!) on his neck right by his shoulders so he can’t walk forward and also can’t thrash the front of his body around.  The rear of his body cam move some, but he can’t spin around, which is what he’d do when we’d try to do it before we had this chute.  He’s then tied in the front with a lead rope so he can’t move backward.

The Llama Salon made it a LOT easier to get the job done, though it was still FAR from easy.  Let me tell you something: llamas are strong.  Even with his neck immobilized, he was able to completely throw us around when we’d grab one of his legs.  He’d also cush (that’s what it’s called when llamas lay down – don’t ask me why) when we were trying to grab his feet.  The funny thing is he was like an Irish dancer while this was going on.  The front of him stayed completely still while his legs were flailing around like crazy.  He kept eating his hay even while flinging us around.  We finally just grabbed onto one front foot and held it as still as we could and held on until he mostly gave up thrashing it around, and got his nails trimmed down.  The back feet were another story.  We finally gave up trying to hold them after getting slammed against the walls of the chute a few times, and then we discovered we could trim them while he was standing as long as we were quick about it.

On the last nail, some blood was shed.  We cut him a little too deep and he started bleeding pretty badly.  It slowed down but never stopped, so I went over to a friend’s and got some blood stop powder, which did the trick.

So now Brad’s nails are less of a disgrace!  We’re going to try to trim them back a little more next week, and then hopefully they’ll be somewhat slow growing so we don’t have to repeat this process too often.  Nobody enjoys it.

Brad and the goats spent the day in the pasture today.  We’ve had them in there several times in the past month, but today they really seemed to be comfortable out there.  Sancho chased them a little, but he seems to be accepting them more too.