Singing Goat Farm/Homestead - part 2

Day 2: Turkey day! We "helped" (read, "watched") Irene and her husband, Breeze, slaughter 3 turkeys. By turkey #2, we were able to get our hands in there a little, helping with the plucking and gutting. We learned about turkey anatomy, and why it doesn't make sense to keep turkeys longer than 8-10 months. Also, another set of twin lambs was born today, bringing the current count to 9. After Brent played with the community orchestra the other night, he's become a part of Olea's (Irene's daughter) homework. Her music teacher (who is also the conductor of the orchestra) says that they must play together for at least 15 minutes every night.

Day 3: Went into Hoopa with Irene in the morning so she could introduce us to her friend Spencer. Spencer has a fruit and berry orchard: raspberries, white nectarines, apricots, pluots, a small market garden, and some other really interesting sounding things that I'd never heard of before. We helped Spencer take care of some irrigation chores, and weeded his peas for him.

Day 4: Made a simple goat cheese in the morning, helped Irene re-erect and check the electric fencing around the animal pens, and retrenched a little stream that was making a mudhole on their property. In the evening, Olea and Irene treated us to a small concert featuring Irene on the Gaida - a Bulgarian bagpipe. Olea also showed us her Godolka, which is an odd looking Bulgarian violin.

Day 5: Milling day: Breeze and his neighbor, Dan, spent most of today milling logs for Irene's barn. The logs are all from trees on their land, and they're hand-milling with chainsaws. It's a slow, laborious task. At the end of the day, I think that they had about 6 nice, new logs, which were still going to require some refining the next day. Whle they were working hard, Brent and I were moving more firewood to the new woodpile, which is getting bigger and bigger. Later in the afternoon, Breeze, Brent and I went mushroom picking looking for black chantrelles. Brent is a mushroomer extraordinaire, he found more than Breeze and I put together and doubled! Extra bonus, tonight we had a big turkey dinner - one of the 3 slaughtered on day 2! I even contributed with 4 loaves of fresh bread! Delicious.

As an aside, I mentioned the wandering gangs of chickens earlier. As a completely logical consequence of this, I found a random clutch of tiny, bantam eggs under a tarp this morning. So cute!

Day 6: We woke up really early this morning so we could accompany Irene on her morning rounds. Brent milked the goat! Later, Dan and Breeze milled more logs, and finished the previously milled logs. It's Saturday, so Galen (Irene's youngest son) was around most of the day. We finished digging out the stream and directing it across the property. Breeze lit a big brush pile in the morning, and we babysat it with Galen, then he helped us put in some steps down to the sheep pen.

Day 7: Brent was feeling a little weird today, so he spent most of the day just sort of laying around or practicing. But I had a great day. Irene and I sheared the boys today! That's the angora billy goat and the chocolate colored ram. It all went very well, the clippers are sort of scary, but there was only minor blood, and no gore. Irene freaked out a little when the billy tried to pee on the clipped wool though. There was a pot luck dinner at Irene's neighbor, Nancy's house tonight, so I made some more bread and we all trooped up there for a ginormous dinner. Brent and I stayed a little later and played a dice game called Farkle. It's funny, I remember playing the same game with Korin!

Day 8: Today Irene had school all day, so she was going to give us the day off. We said "no way!" and went down to work at Spencer's place instead. Afterward, we discovered that the library isn't open on Mondays, so we sat outside on the concrete and pirated wireless and power.

Day 9: Our last full day here, we sheared some more sheepies. Ladies this time; one who was sort of bitchy and twitchy, and got a couple of good clipper knicks because of it. And one other who was so mellow and sweet, she got extra grain because she was so good. Since this is our last full day here, Irene and Olea tried to teach Brent some Bulgarian folk tunes after dinner. They sounded really neat! Brent and I also decided that we were going to kidnap Bowser, their dog, but they said that they needed to keep him. pooh. We aren't very good kidnappers.

Anyway, a great time was had by all! We did end up going through Etna to go down to the winery, but I talked Brent out of the Marble Mountain Marvel for the second time. What's wrong with me??

kim

p.s. - here is a series of turkey pictures you'll all enjoy...