Goat weapon

I contacted a woman on craigslist last night who had posted a dairy goat for sale. She lives about 50 miles from here. I know, I know, I can hear your gasps. A local animal? Are you insane? (older readers know I have driven many miles to pick up animals). The goat is half Nubian half alpine, and bred to an alpine. She is trained to a table, so that makes my life a little easier. The woman informed me that if the goat turns out not to be pregnant, I can bring her back and allow her to run with the billy. I will be going out Monday to see her. I would go sooner, but I will be helping out at the bike shop with my husband today and tomorrow. Today is set up and tomorrow is the open house.

Sunday I will be driving out to Caldwell to pick up a Lott of Bull. I am super excited. Everyone around me is concerned though. The bulls these people have dealt with are not like Dexters at all. They are concerned that he will go on a rampage, people have even brought out barbed wire for us. I thank them and once again try to explain a Dexter Bull to them. I'm not worried, as long as he is fed and has the girls, he shouldn't be an issue.

Saturday I am going to take a bold step over on Women not dabbling. I will be talking about long term survival prep for your homestead. This subject does include weapons. This is not something that is normally talked about by homesteaders, because of a certain stigma, but I will talk about that tomorrow. I do have concerns about how is will be perceived, I am sure I will be attacked for this article, but as rural homesteaders know, you need at least 1 gun in your home, even if you don't like them. But guns aren't the only things I will discuss, as I am partial to throwing knives.

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free

The flooding we had has done in my garden. I need to finish updating my sidebar with everything I have pulled, but besides carrots, peanuts and potatoes, the summer bounty has halted. Makes me rather sad. From here on out it will be gleaning time. I have a pear tree I am going to go raid this afternoon. I am hoping that my good neighbor still had tomatoes, he says he is running thin, but as he sells his tomatoes and gives me the imperfect ones, I can hope.

I have been cleaning sunflowers. My husband will be making me a press this winter. I so look forward to that. I still have bell peppers to put by, and okra to deal with. Time is running out, and here's to my winter garden giving me something.

I think it was something about a donkey and a Priest.

I was doing something yesterday and thought, I really need to write about this. And guess what, now I don't remember what it was.

Yesterday my husband was home from work. Mondays are his normal day off. What that means for me is that I am worked like oxen. After pushing a motorcycle 1/2 mile the day before, my legs are just not up to all this manual labor. (I wanted to apologize to those of you that did not know my darker side. Usually that many people do not click over to my motorcycle blog, and I didn't think to warn you that a can make a sailor blush) We did our fall pruning, checked on the fencing, which meant walking the property, we dealt with animals, cleaning what need to be cleaned. Discussed the potato issue, cut and transported evil stickers out of the field to be burned. Yelled at Edie for trying to push me around. Yelled at a horse for breaking into the feed bin and eating a weeks worth of creep. And made plans for winter projects. My husband will be making me a sunflower seed press, while I will be making a motorcycle fender out of chainmaille.

As we walked, I felt the need to whine, I'm soft dang it! of course I hear, walk it off. But didn't I do that yesterday because of you? Funny, I keep hearing complete strangers informing me that they can see how much my husband loves me, I think it is the look of determination, not love they are seeing. He is determined to break me! I should have been in the house canning and prepping food for the winter. He and the boys can do the outside prep until I am free to help with that. nope, not going to happen that way, so today I have to catch up on 1 days work, before doing today's work. geesh!

Bullluvin'

Last week someone had posted on craigslist that they had a Dexter bull for sale. I talked to my husband about it that night and when I went to email the people, the ad was gone. I was frustrated, so I placed my own want ad. Within a few minutes of the posting I got a response, I will be leasing a bull.

We headed out Sunday to look at him. We took the bike (you can read all about what happened on the bike over here) Once we got to Blessed Nation Ranch, I fell head over heels for their bull, Lot. He is listed as a Dunn, but looks more red than that. He is a least 6 inches shorter than my ladies. And a sweety. Wish I had a camera, but you can see Lot over here.

I really like the owner. We talked for awhile, and I tried to show her how to train her girls to a milk stanchion. I tried, but they just weren't having it. But it did take 3 days for me to get my girls into one. I told her how I did it and showed her as best I could.

Next Sunday we will be going down to pick him up for a month. Mama will be in heat twice in October so this works out wonderfully.