Fun on the Farm - Halloween Night

31 October 2013

This isn't strictly about the farm, so I guess I'm doing what's called "hijacking" my own blog to post other stuff. But that's okay, because it's my blog and I get to make the rules.

Tonight was probably the most fun I have had without leaving home in a long time.

And what was so fun about tonight, you ask?

Well, it all started because my daughter has this fixation with vampires and dying her amazing red hair black. Normally I am not the kind of parent that allows my kids to dye their hair and pierce their body and wear "whatever" they see fit in a state of teenage rebellion. But tonight, is an exception. Halloween is all about dressing up and pretending to be something else.

So, we bought the fangs and the face paint and the hair paint. And she borrowed a dress from my mom so she could be a vampire maid.

No, I really have no idea where that came from. She's 16. Where do any ideas of 16 year olds come from?

And this was the outcome!

In the daylight it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself, even if the black hair paint didn't cover the red completely. But once it got dark out, that's when the real fun began and we scared the bejeebies out of a bunch of little kids and their parents.

Since my porch light needs to be rewired (something I lack the skills to do myself and the funds to have hired done) we decided that Morgan would sit out on the deck with the pumpkins lit and two of the torches burning and she could hand out candy from there. It was great and both the people next door and the people across the street had on their lights so the kids were scooting past our house anyway.

Morgan sat perfectly still with the bowl in her lap as countless kids came by, and as soon as they would get in front of her, she would ask them if they wanted some candy. Screams pierced the neighborhood as one after the other grabbed for the bowl. They told us they didn't think she was real or that it looked really creepy. At one point two little boys about 9 or 10 stood in the middle of the street daring each other to go first and walk up to our deck. We even had parents get out of their cars and come up to talk because they thought it was such a hoot.

Then the boy from the corner house came by ... after running off from us three or four times because he was too scared to come over. But once he did and then stopped to talk to us, he decided he was going to start stalking kids at his house. He hid behind a bush and when they got close he followed them quietly in the dark and then he would just suddenly touch them.

More screams echoed through the block.

And that's what Halloween should be!! Fright night done right!! I haven't enjoyed something this much in ages.

Most of our life is filled with everyday mundane chores of getting on with life. Gardening, farming, taking care of all the animals, working outside jobs to make ends meet - it's all time consuming, labor intensive, mind numbingly dull stuff. Day after day after day. And no matter how much we love our gardens or our animals, some days we just have to kick off our shoes, throw out the rules, do chores early, and have a little fun.

And this was fun!

Next year Morgan's talking about dressing up like a mummy and laying against the hay bale with the candy bowl cradled in her arm and groaning at people as they come up. We'll see ...

And now for the garden ... and a little more goats

20 October 2013

Well, I proved to myself that I could blog every day on another site so I should be able to keep up with a little more prolific blogging here - not that the garden and critters need a blog everyday, but it seems routine is my friend.

So, I discussed the goats yesterday and Vincent's antics. Today he was in fine form as we took them out on their leads. First thing he managed to do was climb underneath my lawn chair. Yes, completely underneath. Head, tail, and everything in between.

No, full grown goats don't really fit under lawn chairs, thus the antics to remove him.

On the gardening front, most things are winding down. We had a brief freeze the other night but it didn't bother anything. The tomatoes are still going and so are the peppers and eggplant. Most of the garden has been converted at this point into fall/winter garden mode.

Broccoli, savoy cabbages, and brussel sprouts are starting to become distinct plants rather than spindly seedlings. The peas are growing great although they didn't germinate well so the rows are kind of straggly looking. The lettuce, spinach, and collard greens had to all be replanted due to the escape of a chicken while I was away last week.

I was not thrilled by the rogue activity but am hopeful that my new seeding will have time to grow before the heavy frosts and freezes show up.

What I am thrilled about, although somewhat puzzled by too, is that my artichokes and Mexican Sour Gherkins are finally growing. Hmm. I planted both in the spring in various places. Neither have been eaten or scavenged during the growing season. However, neither of them has grown at all.

The artichokes seemed to have completely died off and we were about to give up hope of ever being able to grow them this far north. But about three weeks ago after a rainy spell, two plants came up in the straw bales and another came up in a pot out front.

The Mexican Sour Gherkins were planted in the Thomas Jefferson bed, which was a flop with the exception of producing white patty pan squash. The gherkins held their ground but never produced and all but one plant died off in the heat of August. I decided to transplant it then and have kept it watered well. And today, I have 6 itty-bitty teeny-weeny cucumbers set on the vines.

It's almost amusing, all this time and all this work, and all the prolific amounts of other produce we managed to harvest, but here I am excited about 6 of the most miniscule cukes I've ever seen in my life.

Why?

Because gardeners get excited about things like that. Cucumbers that most people have never seen or heard of and most people would have given up on by now or pulled as a weed, that will produce enough for a snack for one, are my pride and joy this year.

Thomas Jefferson grew this cucumber in his garden, 200+ years ago. That's just amazing to me.

For all of our food savvy tv shows and magazines and our hugely varied diets, our meals are still basically the same things people have been eating for hundreds of years.

And I grew it in my backyard.

Goats? Oh, yes, goats.

19 October 2013

Artemisia, our sweet little girl

Vincent, our naughty little boy

This year at the county fair some friends of ours were helping in the petting zoo. They had brought two of their young goats to be petted on and one of them kept eating my shirt through the fence. As I stooped to pet him, we were informed that they were for sell.

My husband looked at me with a sparkle in his eye. "Goats are magical creatures" that glint said. "Goats will solve all our problems" it hinted. I knew I was beat right then and there. I knew come the end of the week we would be bringing home goats. So I said, "It's up to you, dear. But you're taking care of them." What else could I do.

I wanted goats. My children and I are allergic to cow's milk and when I lived overseas I came to love goat's cheese, so I've always wanted a goat for milk and cheese. I had researched the ones I wanted, too. Nigerian dwarf goats - little ones that give lots of milk, that start out the size of cats and stay smaller than a black lab, that don't eat a million pounds of food in one day.

But did we get Nigerian Dwarf goats?

Noooooooooooo.

We got Boer goats, big ones that are grown for meat. Big ones that eat a fifty pound sack of feed in a week as well as good grass hay and alfalfa too. Big ones that can knock me over even though they aren't full grown.

Sigh.

I named them after artists. It seemed amusing at the time. Vincent van Goat was just too good to pass up, so of course the little girl had to have an artists name as well. She is Artemisia Gentleschi, a 16th century painter from Italy. Artemisia fit her name from the start. She is very gentle and shy, every bit a little lady even if she is a goat.

Vincent, well, he's certainly grown into his name. The list of his escapades, you ask? Read on my friends, read on.
1) He figured out how to open the door between the chicken house and the garage, get into the feed bins, and help himself to a smorgasbord of chicken feed, rabbit feed, and goat feed.
2) He learned to unlock the hook and eye latch on the gate to the yard with his lips so he can wander through the garden and eat at will.
3) He managed to bump the rabbit feeder enough that it pulled away from the cage and then he opened the lid and poured out the contents. He really likes rabbit feed.

We've only had them for a month now, so I figure with enough time he'll figure out even more things. Lol. If he'd only figure out how to stand up to our bantam rooster that runs him off from the food bin and chases him out of the house, he'd have it made.