Duck, Duck, Geese!

Complete with a deck for sunbathing, this pond receives five stars from our birds.

Spring Has Sprung!!!

We've re-vamped our blog in anticipation of Spring! There's so much happening it's hard to keep it all organized! With that being said, expect more blogging out of me and get ready for some new voices. Martha has a lot to say about the garden!

You can now follow our blog via e-mail without being a blogspot member! Simply type in your e-mail address in the bar at the top of our blog and hit the return key on your keyboard! Heck, even feel free to add your friend's or anyone else's e-mail you think might be interested in our farm.

Thanks so much for getting ready for spring with us!

Kiki & Hale!

The new goats have arrived!

Kiki (short for Waikiki; fitting considering Whitt having grown up in HI) and Hale (pronounced "Holly") have arrived at their new home! They are 7yr old Nubian breed twin sisters, but nowhere near identical. Both were born and raised to date at Sweet Valley Farm here in Virginia. They've been de-horned at birth which is a common practice among goat farmers to reduce the threat the horns pose to other goats in the heard if a dominance struggle were to take place. This makes it tricky with our two goats already hear not having been dehorned by there original owners. Nonetheless, we're excited to see how they settle in!

This is Hale! Hale is the only milk producing goat of the two at the moment. She's very timid and seems to be attracted to people more-so than other animals.

Kiki has white ears and a larger beard than Holly. She shares Holly's comfort around humans. She's also pregnant! Her kid(s) is/are due in July!

As mentioned in a prior post, the nerve-racking meet and greet b/w these gals, Rosie, and Eggie has yet to determine the overall acceptance of Kiki and Hale into the barnyard family. We'll keep you posted as to whether it's war or peace in the days to come.

Small Gator, Big Boat!

We had to move the Hobie Cat earlier today because it was in the way of the mulch pile we needed to spread around the new nature trail. The Gator is a piece of equipment we have a hard time remembering how we did without. It can haul 1,000lbs in it's bed, and tow a log-splitter, mulcher, trailer, or boat anywhere on our property while doing less damage than a big truck!

This you had to see to believe!

From the lower garage...

...to the upper!

Getting Ready for Goats!

We're very excited! We've been getting ready for the arrival of two new goats!

The two new goats have been de-horned. Like with any farm animal they need to be introduced to the rest of the bunch. Aslan will love and protect anything we allow into the barn yard with us, the geese don't care about anyone or anything and will probably just drive the new goats crazy, but the big deal is having the new goats meet our goats Egglentine and Rosie.

Goats are herd animals, but don't automatically warm up to other goats and accept them into the "herd." Our biggest concern is the fact that Eggie and Rosie were never de-horned whereas the new goats have been. We've been hard at work dividing up the barn and pasture in order to have some sort of control over the meet and greet. The north side of the pasture has been divided from the southern side via an electro-net running down to the barn (pictured below). Ideally the goats all get along and the division can be removed rather quickly, but we'll have to play it by ear!

Hope the new goats can't jump very high!

Let the Show Begin:

Our toms (male turkeys) have started their displays!

Our bronze tom has been with us for more than a year, so his displays started a lot earlier than our younger heritage bourbon red, but he is finally catching up.

WE NEED YOUR VOTE!

Which tom do you think is more likely to win the attention of the hens? The bourbon red(left) or the bronze (right)?

Just vote by leaving a comment in the comment box below!

We've Got Another Layer!

Another one of our goose hens has begun to lay eggs! Of course, not quite where we'd hoped her to be laying them. The picture below and to the right are of her nesting in Rosie and Egglentine's pen. It was actually quite comical to see her nesting there trying to blend in to her surroundings with the goats and Aslan sunbathing and wrestling right next to her. IT was only when I got a bit to close that she would begin to protest with the usual hissing.

The birds beginning to lay eggs is a promising sign of spring! New life is just around the corner!

Moving South!

Gretchen and Austin have moved to Asheville, NC! Wish them luck and safe travels!

Box Scraper: A Must Have!

We've been making a lot of new roads recently with all of the new construction going on up here. Essentially, each new structure needs to have as designated a road as possible to prevent everybody from getting in each others way, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the weekend BN'B guests.

There are a few steps to building a road:

1st: Plan out the route of the road keeping in mind the incline, what the bulldozer will be demolishing, and how direct you'd like the road to be. Ideally you shouldn't need a 4x4 to make it up or down the road if it's rained recently, you don't want to plow through existing power lines or septic lines, and you also want to have as little impact to the actual forest around the road.

2nd: Find a friend with a bulldozer to clear the area and make a rough path.

3rd: Spread the road surface of your choosing. In our case we use gravel. Start with larger rocks to form a foundation, and then add gradually smaller gravel to really stabilize the road. Finally, spread a top layer of mostly pulverized rock to form almost a tarmac surface that won't get washed away.

Thanks to the ever trusty Dave VanDerveer!

The rough road completed.

Now, the bulldozer tearing down the forest may seem like the hard part, but as long as the dozer driver knows what he or she is doing, it's relatively straight forward: get stuff out of the way. The hard part has been spreading the gravel evenly over the road surface! We've been using a rake attachment on our tractor to spread the gravel, but it never did the best job. Essentially we would just push the gravel around and hope it was even.

WELL! Have we made it SO MUCH EASIER?! Oh yes!

Whitt and I ran to Tractor Supply yesterday to pick up some more feed and waterers for our birds. Dave VanDerveer had been telling us about a box scraper we could get for our tractor to help make spreading and maintaining road surfaces a lot easier. We priced out a box scraper for our tractor while we were there and the price was better than we expected! So we loaded it up and brought it home.

This is the same style rake we were previously using. Ours is a lot more beat up.

The new tool gathers all the extra material in the "box" and spreads it evenly with a smooth edge.

Previously it took me 4 hours to use the tractor rake to push all the gravel around to some semblance of a path (let alone a road). With the new box scraper? 20 minutes! 2 passes! DONE! Now, forgive me for being so excited about this new tool, but ANYTHING that can cut my time down by 90% AND do a better job than what I was able to do previously is something I get REALLY excited about! Not only am I able to do more in a day, but we're using WAY less diesel fuel and putting less wear on our tractor! Yay efficiency!

Here's a video of a similar box scraper set up taking a pile of crusher run and spreading it smoothly and evenly down a driveway. This isn't our tractor or road, but ours works exactly the same way!

The best part about the box scraper is that not only does it make spreading new roads 100% more efficient, but we're able to use it to re-surface existing roads that are a bit worse for wear. It has "ripper shanks" which can be adjusted to dig into the existing road, churn up all of the gravel that's been packed in and re-lay it evenly. Gravel is not cheap when you're buying it by the truck load, so the more we can get out of the existing gravel the better!

One pass down the worst driveway restored it to almost new. (All that gravel was under the dirt!)

Many thanks to Dave VanDerveer for clueing us in to the box scraper, and also for owning bulldozers, dump trucks, backhoes, and everything else needed to move the earth for a living. If you need any heavy duty excavation or landscaping done, he's the man to call!

Happy 60th!!!

Whitt has just turned 60 (believe it or not)!

In honor of the day we had a hoe-down up on the mountain. That's right: a hoe down complete with line dancing, overalls, a full Reba Mcentire cover band, and a cattle auction at the end of the night.

..Actually no. Just kidding! Our version of a "hoe-down" is a pot-luck with great food and all of our friends! The theme of the party was music, so we had everyone bring Whitt a mix CD along with a dish. Thanks so much to the Artz, Fahy, Finn, VanDerveer, DeSilva, Spencer, Cox, families as well as Chris, Kelly, Mary and everyone else that made it up!

It's harder to find a picture of Whitt NOT working than you'd think...