Dandelion, the doe that wanted to lie down every time we tried to milk her, learned new ways to wiggle out of Linc's hands when he would lift her rear end twice a day so Jeanne could milk. Plus, she's a heavy goat. Linc learned too, and propped her butt on his knees once he had her lifted up. So, Dandelion pooped on him. Usually goat manure is dry little pellets, but when they're out on fresh, growing green pasture in spring and early summer, they often expel clumps of smelly green wet poop. Dandelion won. Temporarily. Linc came up with what is shown in the video and photo below. Dandelion, who's a really nice (skittish, but nice) goat, seemed to kind of like the sling. At least, she tolerated it well, except for the first time we tried it with a homemade tripod out in the yard. Linc let her down too much and she got some traction and bolted, pulling the whole 10' tall steel pipe tripod over onto her. Gradually, she relaxed about it. She'd let us put it on, and then dangle in it, seemingly contented. Eventually, she did outgrow this, and as I write this months later, she has learned to jump up on the milk stand and, other than leaning against the wall, has become much more easy going about the whole process.
Here she is in the milk stand, just starting to put some weight on her legs instead of completely dangling.
The June garden, as seen from roof of goat barn. There'll be a photo in September to show how this orderly composition turns into a jungle by season's end.
Those old sickle mowers work pretty well. Mowing this paddock takes only about 30 minutes. Getting the mower onto the tractor takes at least another 30, but Linc thinks if he tried mowing with the hand scythe (we have one, just haven't ever had the time/energy to try to mow a paddock with it), it would probably take him a full day to mow a 3/4 acre paddock and another full day to recover.
Amber spelled us for a long (5 day) stretch so that we could get up into the high country. This is June, mind you, but it had snowed a lot last winter, so we brought some winter gear and skis, just because. Here's a video of our summer picnic at Lake Irwin. Not sure why our camera turns everything purple when we take movies. Maybe because Linc bought it on Ebay for $15...
There was so much snow at Lake Irwin, near Crested Butte, that on our second day out, Linc wanted to go summer skiing. As it turned out, it was kind of a long hike up in plastic boots for some marginal skiing, but the views were very nice.
Wanting to see spring instead of winter for awhile, we drove a few miles down off Kebler Pass to spend a night in Horse Ranch Park, maybe 1000' lower than where we'd been camping on the Lake Irwin Road. There, we were surprised by a big bull moose who walked right through our campsite. By the time Linc realized he wasn't going to charge us, and managed to find the camera and get a photo, the moose was a hundred yards away, but it's still a nice view of a Colorado moose, an event that has gotten much more common out here than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
Well, we weren't done with snow. The last day, we hiked up towards Oh Be Joyful Pass on the Silver Basin Trail. The higher we got, the more snow we ran into and the harder it got to stay on the trail. Still it was solid snow, almost no post-holing, which was a good thing. Here's Jeanne hiking along in her Keen Sandals.
On the way back, Linc took this video of Silver Basin. All mountains seem to be like this in spring, everything feels so fresh and green and new, with the first wildflowers coming up right behind the melting snow, and the sound of running water everywhere. Too bad the camera doesn't catch the smell of spring, but, it's the next best thing to being there.
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