Less than 30 min after my partner left for a school overnight camping trip he's leading, one dog escaped to go visit the neighbours and I had to run over to retrieve him, and the other dog (the floofball puppy) figured out how to wriggle her way into the chicken coop and eat eggs (fixing that problem requires completely redoing a gate, which I'm not going to have time to do before meetings today. Sigh.)
So far no llama or goat escapes, though I did watch the llama eat dirt... llamas are weird.
Less than half an hour after my partner left for a school overnight camping trip he's leading, one dog escaped to go visit the neighbours and I had to run over to retrieve him, and the other dog (the floofball puppy) figured out how to wriggle her way into the chicken coop and eat eggs (fixing that problem requires completely redoing a gate, which I'm not going to have time to do before meetings today. Sigh.)
It's perhaps the ugliest haircut ever, but I managed to shear my llama over the weekend!
At first I tried to get him into a small pen, but he knew it was a trap. So I just started cutting (with hand shears). He tolerated it for about a minute at a time, then he'd walk away, and I'd give him a little break, then start cutting again.
I got close to 10 pounds of (really dirty) wool, and now he looks like he's carved out of mattress foam. So weird. Hopefully he'll be cooler for the summer now!
@msquebanh This llama is SO good! Didn't try to spit even once. I've only had him a few months so I'm still learning llama body language, but I think this is maybe the most magically chill llama on the planet
(Side note: you are SO amazing! You do so many incredibly good things for the world! Thank you)
I had to edit a MS word thing through my new university microsoft account, and holy cow, all the mansplainy suggestions microsoft thrusts in there are like Clippy went and got an MBA and needs to make sure that you know the $60k he paid for it was absolutely definitely worth it.
I'm getting 6-7 liters per day of milk and so I have to make a lot of cheese. Today's cheesemaking adventure, maybe something I can age at least for a couple weeks.
Am I brave enough to try putting it into one of the willow baskets I made this winter instead of a plastic container? Hmmm
Well, first flip and I've already learned some important things about using natural baskets for cheesemaking. Like...don't have a lip on the inner rim of the basket at ALL. Oops.
But I really love the woven pattern that gets pressed into the cheese!!
Time for a radio interview about planets or something while the cheese drains.
One thing I absolutely love about living here is the way that neighbours helping neighbours is deeply ingrained in the culture of rural farms here.
Last night, just as I was about to go to bed, our neighbour called: "You guys have a tiny horse, right? Is your tiny horse in with my cows?"
OH NO. My tiny horses are ancient and not very ambitious, but maybe something scary happened and part of a fence fell down? We walked quickly through our neighbour's cow pasture to see.
As I got closer, I could see my neighbour's cows all staring horrified at a tiny brown horse... that was definitely not my horse!
I had brought a halter, lead, and a cup of senior horse kibbles, which I shook gently at the horse and he came running right up to me, and let me put the halter on while he gently nibbled delicious super-fatty senior horse kibbles. He easily allowed himself to be led into a pen, and looked hilariously tiny next to my neighbours enormous meat cattle.
We chit-chatted with our extremely nice neighbours while they called the other neighbours across the road, who also have mini horses. After a few minutes of watching the tiny horse (who had a hilariously high-pitched whinny), the other neighbours arrived, clearly coming from some event because they were all wearing nice clothes rather than farm clothes. The dad jumped out, looking really stressed, got a good look at the horse, and visibly relaxed as he said "That's not my horse!"
There were a whole lot of things I was supposed to do today with both farm things and space junk things. But instead, we got a new livestock guardian puppy.
She's already getting along really well with our other LGD, though all the goat mamas seem pretty convinced she is a small bear and will need some time to come to trust her...
@sundogplanets I love goats! There's a farm across the street from my house, and they have about a dozen goats that I visit with my dog a few times a week. The babies are the cutest thing ever!
Today I listened to a bunch of talks on local Indigenous traditional knowledge, went for a hike during the conference lunch break with my partner, talked with an elder at a First Nation that might have SpaceX junk on it, answered a bazillion emails on car ride home, had a pre-interview for a local TV news filming tomorrow while I was simultaneously making dinner and making cheese, had a friend over for dinner+farm tour, helped another goat give birth.
@sundogplanets some say "truth is nation is a modern concept forced on the Indigenous inhabitance like ownership and the separation of man from the environment as its suppressor for gain "
i'm not that radical .
I just got back from a conference and I'm going straight into another one. But this one is hosted at my own university, it's about Indigenous science (so I'm not presenting, I'm just listening), and my partner is also going!
So as long as I don't have 15 interviews and make national news twice this week, I think it'll be a much more chill conference for me. Thank goodness.
Good morning from baby goat land. I got over a gallon of milk from 3 goats this morning, I started draining my second batch of chevre, there's beautiful grass for the goats to eat, and we're up to 12 baby goats this season. I am so grateful!