I know, you're wondering what in heck these pictures are showing, right? Well, the one above and below are the first prototype of Jeanne's homemade GOAT BRA. That's right, she made a bra for goat udders (modeled in photos by our goat, Jasmine). Basically, the udder bra is for latching kids. What does that mean? Well, goat kids will nurse for about a year after they are born, if allowed to. Mother's milk is much better for their development than formula, so we want them to nurse at least half of each day. But, once their rumens are developed, they can meet most of their nutritional needs through grazing, browsing and hay. Plus, we want some of the doe's milk too! And, as kids get older, they, especially the bucklings, can be very hard on the mother's udder, damaging it if allowed unfettered access. So, we put the bra on whenever we either want milk in a few hours, or want to help an udder heal from a toothy buckling's nursing habits. The bra allows the mother and kids to be together, but the kids can't get any milk, until we want them to. Ingenious! Jeanne wasn't the originator of the idea, but only one company makes and sells goat bras that we could find, and they are pretty pricey. Jeanne made this one from an old t-shirt and some nylon webbing and buckles.
We spent a lot of time this month interviewing respondents to our tiny house barter offer. One or two made it through the first interview to spend a day or two at the farm. It's turning out to be hard to find someone that can meet all of our criteria.
We also started preparing the garden for spring planting, cleaning up last year's debris and letting the chickens, turkeys, guineas and ducks continue to spend their days in there, scratching, breaking down last year's mulch and plant debris, eating insect larvae, and adding fertilizer.
Linc undertook a major (for him) mechanical project, replacing four of the hydraulic hoses on the old Case backhoe boom. These four were ones that he always thought would be pretty much impossible to replace, because they snaked through parts of the hoe that were completely inaccessible, but they were leaking badly. Luckily, the job went well, and after a few hours and $400 in new hoses, we had a working backhoe again, and perhaps saved a few hundred dollars on shop labor, which was worth it given our frugal lifestyle.
As early spring rolled around, Linc started pining for a chance to mountain bike the slickrock canyons and high desert around Moab, Utah. Happens to him every year since his first visit there back in 1992 or so. With no one to care for the farm yet in our combined absence, Jeanne one day got tired of him pining (which basically involved being a PIA because he couldn't go) and suggested (for her own sanity) that Linc go on a solo mtn bike sabbatical for a few days while she took care of the homestead. Within a matter of hours, Linc had the car packed and headed for the desert, where he spent 2 nights sleeping in the Prius and biking each day until his legs wouldn't move any more. Wonderful stuff, with the desert just emerging from winter, sculpted multi-hued rock formations, plants and trees with new green leaves and buds, muddy rivers at the start of spring snowmelt runoff, blue skies and snow capped mountains, and hundreds (thousands?) of miles of trails to explore, plus old favorites to return to, like the sandstone dunes of the Slickrock Bike Trail in photos below, with the Colorado River and La Sal mountains in background. Thanks to Jeanne.
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