Today was a day to work on a whole bunch of little things that needed to be done or started – and a surprise breakage. Rather than do one huge post, I’ll split them up into a bunch of little posts.
But first, here’s something that cheered me up this morning.
Of course, there was checking on the babies.
It’s going to be interesting in the basement, when these guys start getting more mobile!
While doing my rounds, I had my furry escort, including Creamsicle…
He’s about 10 feet above my head in this photo! Of all the cats, he seems to be the one who loves to climb the most. :-D
When I opened the door to the basement to check on Beep Beep and the kitties, I found Beep Beep sitting in the basement window at the stairs.
She immediately bolted through the door.
She had to go through the several cats that were trying to bolt down the stairs at the same time! :-D
It’s a good think I was intending to leave the door open for a while, anyhow.
The babies are definitely getting more curious and mobile! Beep Beep is getting more comfortable with leaving them for longer periods, too.
The girls are calling Butterscotch’s baby “Nickypants” because his fur pattern makes him look like he has white pants, just like Nicky the Nose. :-D
After a while, I had to go hunting for Beep Beep to bring her back down, so I could close up the basement again. I found her on the kitchen counter! Bad Beep Beep! ;-)
We’ve been having some very chilly nights lately, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seed trays. I was happy to see some new growth.
More pattypans/sunbrust squash are emerging, a few more of the zucchini surprise mix are showing, too.
It’s funny how there is this one large sunburst squash that showed up next to the zucchini mix. If I hadn’t put those straws in to mark the different groups, I would have thought it was part of the mix!
Still no sign of gourds, though. There were no new seedlings emerging in the other tray.
I was supposed to presoak the carrot seeds a while ago, but things got busy and it just didn’t happen. Now I’m glad it got delayed, and I think I will delay a few more days. We’re supposed to get a couple of centimeters of snow tomorrow evening! It looks like things will warm up and stay above freezing, even overnight, by Tuesday, so I will aim to start the seeds soaking on Saturday. The video I’m using said it should take 3 or 4 days for roots to show, so we’ll see how that goes.
The kittens seem to be away more often, and squirming around their nest a bit more. When I first came down to tend to their mother, the tuxedo was well away from the others, and close to the outside end of the box. My being there seemed to disturb him, because he quickly squirmed his way back to the fur pile. :-D
My morning escort! :-D
Of course, I tried to spend time with the goat. When I got some feed in the container I use as a scoop, she was willing to stick her head right in to eat, and let me pet her.
As an aside, the Costco popcorn containers are really useful. I’ve got several that I used to scoop up feed or cat kibble. These ones have the bottoms cut off and the lids left on. I use others, without any parts cut off, for water in the winter, instead of the pitcher we used before. The heavy duty plastic of the containers make them better for scooping the feed out, and the size lets me keep a rough consistency in portions.
As for the goat, she was really interested in the feed while I carried it, but once I added it to the feed container in the pen, she still wanted to check me out for feed and followed me around. She let me pet her again, but only while she had her face in the feed. :-D She did go into the pen a couple of times, and at one of them, I swung the “gate” closed a little more. I probably should not have done it while she was in there, as it spooked her out, but I didn’t think of it until it was too late. If we can keep closing the “gate” end, little by little, so she gets used to it, is should make it easier to close her in .
Theoretically. She might simply refuse to go in at all, if it’s too closed up.
As I walked around the yard, she didn’t quite follow me, but she did move further away from the doors. She has been going into the old kitchen garden and finding things to eat in there, which is good – for now. There are plants coming through the layers of mulch we put down to build up the soil that we are trying to kill off. This includes some spreading roses. I had hoped to not have to dig them out by the roots, but it seems I will have to, to get rid of them. There are a couple of rose bushes that will stay. It’s the spreading ones that are going to make using this area more difficult. I was happy to see that she will eat the stems that have come up. The thorns don’t seem to phase her at all.
Of course, she also tried to come closer to the cats.
She followed Pumpshack cat up onto the clothes line platform, but when the cat went around the bin, and she could no longer see him, she decided to give Mary a kiss on the head! :-D
She is also very curious about the sun room! She knows this is where the feed bag is – or at least that food comes out through this door! It’s too bad we can’t use this room to contain her, since she seems much more willing to go into here than the garage. If we did close her in and she tried to escape, though, I could see her knocking my seedlings all over, or even breaking her way through the glass.
I’ve been researching about goats, of course, and one of the things I’ve read is that they don’t like to eat feed or hay off the ground, and if they’ve pooped or peed near food that’s on the ground, they won’t eat it. So I took a container we found while cleaning out the basement – a rectangular bin of thick, hard plastic, with a nice, flat bottom – and put it upside down in the pen, then put the feed container on top of the bin. She seemed pretty good with that set up.
So my plan will be to spend much of the day outside, working on the new garden plot, to keep an eye on her.
The down side with all this is, we haven’t had a chance to work on the replacement door. All it needs at this point is to have the recesses for the hinges chiselled out, touch up the paint in the recesses. Once the paint is cured, we just need to attach the hinges and install it.
Hopefully, that is something we can make progress on, today.
This morning, when I opened the basement door to check on Beep Beep and the babies, I found her right on the top step!
I had a crowd of upstairs cats eager to go downstairs, and I think she was rather taken aback by the sight of them. :-D I headed downstairs and she did go up into the entryway, but then turned around and followed me, as I topped up her food bowl.
All of the babies have wide open eyes now.
No, there isn’t a missing kitty. The fifth one is just hidden away, in the corner, buried in siblings. :-D
After luring the other cats out of the basement so Beep Beep wouldn’t be surrounded by exploring cats, I headed outside to do my rounds.
Looking out the windows, earlier, we couldn’t see the goat anywhere, but she turned out to be curled up on the concrete in front of one of the sun room windows. She still wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. I checked the pen we made, and from the pile of poop in front of the open end, I could at least tell she came close. I couldn’t tell if she had been drinking any water (there was a layer of ice across the top I had to remove!), and the only food we had to give her was sunflower seeds for the birds, and that looked untouched. I know she’s grazing, but there just isn’t a lot of grass in our yard. Especially this time of year.
I continued my rounds, with Potato Beetle doing his usual.
He does this over and over. He runs in front of my feet, then throws himself to the ground and begins rolling around, wanting me to pet him. He seems utterly indifferent to the fact that I’m walking, and how close he comes to getting stepped on, every time!
Once I finished my morning rounds, I headed into “town” to our little general store/liquor store/post office/gas station. This is where we usually get our deer feed and bird seed. I knew they had feed for chickens and such, too, but have never looked too closely at the stacks.
I had swung by there on the way to picking up my daughter from work, just to let the owner – who sees just about everyone in town at some point – know about the goats. She didn’t know who had goats near us, either, but if she had anyone come in, saying they were missing goats, she would be able to tell them they were at our place.
As soon as I came in, she asked me if I’d found the owner. :-D I told her who it turned out to be, and she said she had taken a look at a map of the municipality, so see the different farms near us, trying to see who might have goats. I told her we still had one at our place, about our inability to catch her, and said that I wanted to try using food, and asked her what she had that was good for goats.
It turns out there is one brand of animal feed that has many different feed mixes, all in identical green and white bags. They each have a label sewn into the top (all the feed bags are sewn shut; this way, you just pull at one end to undo the stitching, making it much easier to open the bags). The labels give the names of the mixes, and nutritional information. Thankfully, she has a price list for these, organized by animal! :-D So she was able to tell me which ones to look for. It turned out there were two types for goats; a nanny mix and a kid mix. I grabbed the nanny mix.
When I got home and the goat saw me carrying the bag on my shoulder, she got so excited, and started running to me! I am guessing the original owner bought feed from this same store, and the goat recognized the bag. I went into the sun room to be able to put it down to open it, and she actually started to go into the sun room with me! I couldn’t let her come in, though; it’s not safe for her in there, and she’s not safe for my seedlings! I scooped up some feed and headed out, and she followed me around as I emptied her own feed container of the sunflower seeds, then added the new feed.
She almost came into the pen to get the food, but the open end is narrow, and I had to go past her to leave the pen, which spooked her away. She was clearly very hungry and eager to eat, but rather than go into the pen, she followed me, eyeballing the container of feed in my hand. I ended up leaving a bit in front of the pen, then some more near the sun room door.
Once she saw that, she came right up and started eating, even though I was still standing there.
Yes!!! I was able to pet her!
Not for very long, mind you. Once she’d eaten a bit, she started to become skittish again, so I let her be.
I am guessing this feed, which looks quite different from what the owner had brought over, which was not crushed fine like you can see in the photo, is what she is used to. It was very gratifying to see her eating, and being willing to come so close to me.
Once I was back inside, I sent a message to the owner, letting him know the progress. I told him about our plans to use the new feed to lure her into the pen and, at some point, gently close her in. He was very happy to hear this. (As I was writing this, I was informed by my daughter that the goat has, indeed, gone into the pen!)
Then he told me that, once we catch her and he brings her home, he will put her in with the ram. After that, if we want them, he would be willing to give us BOTH milk goats, once we have a proper pen for them.
!!!!!
Now, this would be a sort of a win win for both sides. He had mentioned that these two goats have been nothing but trouble for him. He has meat goats, not milk goats. With these two being so wild, and so many other goats to care for, he just would not be able do too much about them. We, on the other hand, have no other high needs animals. We could spend the time to get them used to people, and finally be able to do things like trim their hooves. For us, we’d get the milk goats we were wanting to eventually get – for free. If we build a moveable paddock, we can do what I hoped to do by borrowing goats, first; have them grazing in areas we can’t keep clear otherwise, that end up becoming fire hazards. We can even use them to help clear some of the bush for us. Goats can be very useful animals for permaculture.
We have to think about this, though. It’s not just about building a pen for them. If we’re going to be milking goats, we need to build/buy a milking stand, to make it easier to reach, get food grade containers for milking and storage, and a way to deal with surplus milk – cheese making had been one of my thoughts for that, but that requires supplies, too. There is also, of course, the buying of feed. Especially in winter.
There would be a pretty steep learning curve.
We can do it. I have no doubt about that. The question is, are we up to it, at this point?
I am leaning towards yes, but it’s not up to just me!
Beep Beep was doing a good job of keeping her babies warm on this chilly morning.
She didn’t come out at all while I topped up her food and water
The basement actually maintains a pretty constant temperature, but while we didn’t get the predicted thunderstorms in our area, we did get quite a bit of rain, so the humidity has gone up a fair bit. The sump pump is doing its job, though, so that’s good.
Yesterday evening I spent some time working in the basement, leaving the door open. At first, only two of the upstairs cats came to check things out, which was a bit of a surprise, considering how interested most of them are over that door. Eventually, the others discovered the open door and came to visit. Beep Beep, however, preferred to check out what I was doing! :-D
Then she demanded cuddles. :-D
We did get the rest of the cats out for the night; they might be ignoring the babies for now, but why take chances?
Temperatures have gone down quite a bit, today, and it looks like we had rain on and off all night. As I write this, the temperatures outside are 4C (39F), with a “realfeel” of -2C (28F), and it’s expected to warm up only a couple of degrees. I am happy for the rain, but even though the sun room is still pretty warm, I decided to put the seed trays into the mini-greenhouse along with the light I used as a heat source for the cats’ water bowl last winter. Just for a little while. I don’t have grow lights, but I can at least give them a bit more warmth.
Even when doing my rounds, I didn’t see any of the outside cats at all, until I was coming back to the house and found Rosencrantz had come out for food. They’re all holed up somewhere, keeping warm and dry.
My daughter has her one shift of the week today, but other than heading to and from town, this will be an inside day, for sure. Definitely not going to be getting any work done on the new garden plot. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as chilly, but no rain, so by Tuesday, I hope to be able to get back at it. Things are not supposed to get actually warm again until the middle of the month. If all goes well, it will stay warm, I’ll have the new garden plot finished, get the carrots planted, and we’ll be ready to do transplants by the end of May.
Assuming the seed starts do well. I’m not too encouraged by what I’m seeing of the fennel. :-(
The kittens have been getting noticeably more mobile, of late. I found this one – the only kitten without its eyes open, yet – trying to squirm out of their nest!
For the most part, though, they spend their time in a big, sleepy pile.
For the past few days, I’ve been letting upstairs cats into the basement while I tend to Beep Beep and the babies.
This morning, I decided to just leave the basement door open.
Oh, the excitement that created!
Even DahBoy crept his way down to sniff a bit, though he didn’t stay – and his mom had zero interest in leaving her perch in the living room. :-D
Of course, the things that interested them most were the things they couldn’t get at! Like the old basement, and the unfinished bar/storage area.
Keith was the only cat that showed any curiosity towards the kittens, and sticking his face around the corner was as far as he got.
We didn’t leave them down there, yet. After a while, they were lured out and the basement door closed up. In time – when the kittens are bigger – we’ll move all the food, water and litter boxes down to the basement, and keep the door open all the time. For now, they’ll just get to visit. ;-)
I think Beep Beep liked having some feline company.
That tiny little nose peeking out from under an orange kitten is just hilarious. Beep Beep’s kittens have clearly had no problem absorbing Butterscotch’s baby into their creche! :-D
With the more pleasant conditions out, I will be starting to do my evening rounds again. Last night was quite beautiful.
There was also a cacophony of noise! Frogs croaking, birds hooting, honking, cooing, chirping and squawking, and the occasional cat meowing. Some nights we have coyotes yipping, but not last night. I did, however, start hearing the strangest screeching noise, coming from the direction of the old garden. When it didn’t stop, I went to see what small animal was being attacked.
It turned out to be skunks.
They make some of the oddest noises, but it was the first time I’d heard them actually scream like this! There were two of them, and one of them was just standing there, screeching and screaming away until it saw me and took off. :-D
Well, it’s coming up on time to head to the city for our big shop. We have our usual list of different stores to go to for different things, and I’ve heard that some have started to limit how many people per household can come in to only one person. Which is such an arbitrary restriction. But then, so much of the shut down has been pretty arbitrary. I was told about the increased restrictions in some places by the woman who was in the waiting room at the hospital with me. She said she had tried to go shopping with her husband, but one of the stores wouldn’t let both of them in. She, however, has a medical condition that affects her balance and, while she walked with a cane, she could fall at any time with no warning. Having her husband with her was a matter of medical safety. They ended up going some place else. That was a couple of weeks ago, though, and just the one store, so we’ll see how it is with the ones we need to go to.
I’ll just be happy if I can get everything on our list, and not have to go from store to store to store to find toilet paper. That, at least, has started to consistently show up on the shelves locally.
One of the orange babies still has its eyes closed. The other had one eye open, one eye… almost open. :-D
They have also reached that stage where they do the little hissing and trying to spit thing. :-) Beep Beep, however, was more than comfortable with my handling them.
As I head into the basement, there is typically a whole bunch of cats coming over, very curious to see what’s down there. Today, I let Two Face down. Since we will eventually be moving the litter boxes and food and water bowls to the basement, I figured it would be good to start introducing them. Two Face is the most recent yard cat to come into the house, so I figured she would be the one Beep Beep is the most likely to remember. Plus, Beep Beep is her mom.
They did snuffle each other a bit, but mostly, Two Face just wandered around, sniffing at things. She completely ignored the babies, even though she snuffled around their little cave under the chair, and gave Beep Beep an astonished stare down when she discovered her under there. :-D
I brought Two Face back up with me when I was done, and I think she was happy with that. It’s still too new and strange down there! Next time, I think I’ll bring Susan down. She is another one of Beep Beep’s babies, and likely still familiar.
It would be good if we can leave this basement door open in the summer. Last year, we were able to use grid wall to block off the old basement door and leave it open, to help cool the house down. It works better to have both basement doors open and, this year, we can do that. We’ll still need to block off the entry to the old basement from cats, but I think this time, we’ll be able to make another mesh “door” to fit, rather than rigging up the grid wall again.
It’ll be a couple of months before we need to do that, though, so plenty of time to build something to fit.
The Re-Farmer 