Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

Mainly mucking about today. Visited with the goats. Around 15 of ‘em. These girls upfront are the current kingpins of the goat yard. Goats have their pecking order (just like the chickens to come!), which mainly means a few get first crack at food, or crowding at the fence, or whatever else they all want to do, while the rest back away and wait or get butted. It’s mostly rank by size, but a vicious streak counts, too. The one in the middle is on top now (with her friend on the right), the brown pair on the left (the Evil Twins), used to be a vicious tag team running the yard, but they lost their edge. Not that they’re always fighting, a brief burst of deterrent action goes a long way. It’s like a soap opera if you watch ‘em every day. Goats… Every year, this little period in the first half of March is kinda like waiting for the starting gun. I’m full of energy and waiting on the weather. A little EDGY. All the early starts are now under lights: onions (first time from seed), celery (another first), more leek and parsley, plus the stuff started around the end of January (leek, parsley, rosemary, arugula, lettuce). It’s another week to the peppers and eggplant, and then the grow racks will start to get full, and I’m also holding off till then to transplant the early lettuce to the greenhouse. As soon as the snow clears and the temperature warms up a bit, there’s outdoor fix-it work, starting with an old ice fishing hut to turn into a home for the composting toilet (an outhouse for the field!) and the chickenhouse to renovate. There’s a list. Plus a lot of garden clean-up, crops left over winter, that should be pulled as soon as I can. MEANWHILE, I’m waiting…

Woke up to a world of snow. Unlike the heavy dusting a few days ago, this was a serious snowfall, looked like 5-6″ (12.5-15 cm). This will stick around for a while. I didn’t finish mulching the garlic, and there are still carrots out there, but no worries, I’m SURE it’ll melt off in the next week or two, and meanwhile, snow is a great insulating mulch! See snow and a goat! »

One side of the barnyard leads to the market garden field. At the other end is a somewhat rundown goat barn full of…goats. These gals have nothing to do with the organics and the market garden, they’re just kinda pets, around 30 of them now, kept by Bob and Karen. In earlier years, I spent a fair bit of time checking them out. More recently, it’s too busy on this side to pay ‘em much attention. But they’re there, a mixed breed lot, endlessly eating, wandering around, basking in the sun, sometimes pounding on one or another unlucky member of the herd for a day or two until the hierarchy is back in balance. Mostly, theirs seems like the laid-back good life…until a few get sold off for MEAT. For me, they’re an everyday reminder of how cool it’ll be when we finally get around to incorporating some livestock into the big garden plan. First, chickens?