Did a little clearing today

Two years ago, a lumber company paid us some money to take some of our trees on the acres of land that we had not already cleared.  They cleared out a 2 acre plot that was adjacent to the 2 acres that we currently have fenced in where all of the animals live.  Now when you look at that land, you almost can't tell it was ever cleared.  Jason came up with a plan to clear a 10 foot path around the perimeter of that plot and fence it in using the auger to dig the fence post holes.  Then we can put the goats in there and they can go to town on all of the brush.  

So today was my first attempt at clearing the fence line.  I started out clearing the area outside of the fence so I could make a path to be able to GET to the area that needs to be cleared to make the new fence.  My goal for today was to clear along that fence and then start the new fence line clearing tomorrow.  I actually got that done and cleared out an area for the gate to go in the back corner of the fence.  The goats helped me the entire time.  Well, they mostly helped.  There were a few times when they wouldn't let me get to the brush I needed to clear.  But it was all good.  They made me feel safer because they would go ahead of me, so they would hopefully scare any snakes away before I got to them.  

I cleared a ton of blackberries today - lots of thorns and stuff.  I really, really hope they were blackberries at least, and not poison ivy...  I honestly can't tell the difference.  Guess we will find out in a couple of days.  Lord have mercy on my soul, I mean skin...

Here's the pics from today's clearing.

Here's basically where we started clearing on the outside of the fence.

Stevie and MooMan chompin down

I tell ya, that MooMan loves to smile :)

Making some progress

MooMan

Selfie with MooMan - he's eating my hat as usual

More progress

Stevie

We made it to the back corner!  Dolly Llama wanted to hang out with her goat friends...  Behind the goats is the area that was cleared last year.  Crazy, huh?!  

Here's the view from the back corner

Dolly Llama

I threw some brush over the fence for Dolly to eat

My sweet Stevie :)

Stevie trying to eat my glove

Check out those teeth!

A view from the starting point.

I went back out there for an hour this afternoon to clear some more.  Here's the pics.

This broody heifer wanted me out of her nesting box.  She looked kind of like a turkey I thought because she was so fluffed up.

MooMan tried to eat my glove

Boys will be boys.  Doing a little head-buttin

Acting all sweet

Here's what I got cleared in the afternoon.  It went pretty well.

Took Ezra out to the farm today

I took Ezra out to the farm today and he actually had a pretty good time.  We were there long enough to feed and water the llamas and chickens - probably about 20 minutes.  I got some pretty cute pics :)

Photo of MooMan photobombed by Ezra

Picking up rocks

Stevie seeing if Ezra had anything good in his hand

Pointing.  At something I presume.

Ezra and Stevie

Ezra and MooMan

Ready to leave

On Tuesday, I went out to the farm and finished clearing the area next to the trailers.  I think I got all of the sweet gums cleared.  Here's a couple of pics from that.  I'm more proud of it than I probably should be. That is a really huge pile of brush - I know you can't tell in the pic but I assure you that it is!  Next week (or perhaps tomorrow), I will start the clearing of the 10 foot wide fence area so we can fence in another acre for the goats to clear.  Maybe I should take MooMan off of craigslist.  Or maybe I should reevaluate the situation tomorrow...

I got some other good pics when I was out at the farm earlier this week.

The little chicks came out of the gate to peck around

Look at all of these animals!

Sweet Dolly Llama

Here's a good one of ole Norman in his giant garden

Did a little painting and what nots today.

My 2nd Facebook-free day was another productive one.  I feel so guilty for wasting so much time over the past few months.  I guess it doesn't hurt that it was a perfect 80 degrees out today.

So we have this problem with trees growing at the farm.  It's particularly elm trees, I believe.  They have grown up all over the areas of cleared land on our farm, and you can't just weed-whack these suckers down.  So I got out there with a saw today and went to town on some trees.  I had already cleared the trees away from the trailers yesterday, so today I took care of some of the "forest" to the left of the trailers.  

Here's before and after pics.

Gosh it looks so miniscule, but I assure you that ALOT of trees were cut down.  That's them in that big pile of brush in the front of the 2nd pic.

This is actually a "before" pic from today, but it shows how nicely cleared the area around the trailers/boat is.  That's a separate pile of brush.

So I also decided to use some old paint we had on hand to paint our oldest chicken coop.  It's been that drab tan color since we built it 3 or so years ago, and it needed a painting.  I didn't think I'd get as far as I did with that.  I painted till the paint ran out.  I still want to do the trim in white, but when I opened up the white can of paint, it was all funky and unusable.  Also worth mentioning is that the paint is an interior paint we used on our guest bedroom.  Guess we will find out how well it withstands the weather.  This painting fiasco may all be for naught.  We shall see :)

Here's some pics of the coop.  

Before

After!

Did I mention that I ran out of paint?...

There it is off in the distance.  Look to the left of the chickens.

Oh and those are our awesome juvenile chickens having a wonderful time pecking around in some hay today.  There's been a couple of huge hawks stalking them, but they did okay yesterday and I hope to God that they did okay again today.

Here's some more pics from today.

MooMan and Stevie wreaking havoc on the tack room.  Grrrr!

Stevie got a little paint on him up at the coop, hehe :)

Brutus, Mama Llama, and Dolly crowd around the tack room begging for food.

This is Normans's sun shade - the wheelbarrow.  If you look really closely, you can see him under there.

Here's a pic of Norman from a few months ago, since you can't really see him in the other pic.  He's a sulcata tortoise and is about 3 years old.  He moved out to the farm full time last week.  Since the garden wasn't doing so well, we decided that Norman could reside there and eat the failed crops.  I think he's pretty happy there.

Till next time...

Giving up some marrow

A couple of years ago, I joined the Be The Match registry.  Basically, when you join they send you a swab kit in the mail and you swab your cheeks and mail it back to them.  Then you become a part of the registry, and when a patient is in need of a bone marrow or stem cell transplant, you are one of the thousands of donors to choose from.

I was at the beach with my family a month ago and received an email that said I was a possible match for a 7-year-old girl and that I needed to call them as soon as possible.  I called them up and answered what seemed like 200 questions, and they asked when I could go get my blood drawn to do some more conclusive tests.  Only a small amount of people on the registry go on to be donors (my rough estimate was around 1 in 100).  It's weird, but I almost felt like I had won a lottery.  Not only was I chosen, but I was going to be able to help a child.

I went the following week to my local hospital and had about 5 vials of blood drawn.  The girl who drew my blood asked if I was getting paid for doing this and I said no and couldn't think of anything else to follow that up with.  Honestly, I can't think of a more meaningful way to spend my work sabbatical than to give a child my bone marrow.  I would want someone to do the same for my family members.

A few weeks after my blood was drawn, I received a call from someone at the registry, and she informed me that I was an exact match for the little girl.  She said for small children, a bone marrow transplant is recommended over the stem cell transplant, so I would be giving my bone marrow if I agreed to go forward.  Are you kidding?  Of course I wanted to do this.  This is my chance to help save the life of a little girl.  I can't imagine getting cold feet at this stage and saying I couldn't do it.

So today, I signed my last consent form.  I am going to UAB in Birmingham to have a physical next week.  Then I will have the bone marrow extracted on August 13.  They are putting me up in a hotel room the night before the physical as well as the night before the procedure and the night of the procedure, and they are reimbursing my mileage and meals.  I'm really excited about this opportunity.

They said I will be given updates about the girl at 1 month and 3 months, and that I will be able to meet her after one year.  I'm not sure if I would want to do that.  I think I like it better as an anonymous donation.  But it will be really awesome to get to hear updates about her.  Hopefully.  I can't imagine what she and her family must be going through right now.  In the 9 days before the bone marrow transplant, I was told she will go through really intense chemo and radiation to try to wipe out as much of the cancer as possible.  So her body will be extremely weak when she receives my bone marrow, and my healthy cells will hopefully help her body recover from the intense treatment.  At a time when she should be starting 2nd grade, she will be recovering from chemo.  That just makes my heart so sad.

Whenever I start to worry about the pain of the procedure, I just think of how much more pain she and her family are in, and it helps to put things in perspective.  God I hope I can help her precious little soul.

Those goats, what are we gonna do with those goats...

I guess all of the chickens and egg hatching was not enough excitement for me.  So I hopped on craigslist to seek out some goats.  I found 2 cute little mini nubian buckling goats in Summerville (about 2 hours away) and decided to go for it and finally get some goats.  So on May 1st (May Day, May Day!!!), I packed up the boy and we headed to Summerville.  

This is when we arrived back at the farm.  Notice the 2 goats in the very back in the crate.

I named them MooMan and Stevie.  They were awesome but much louder and more up-in-your-shit than I expected.  MooMan is the one with the white ears and Stevie is a little smaller with brown ears.

I like Stevie more because he is calmer and isn't always up in your face.  MooMan is definitely more "show quality" but is a little too aggressive for my tastes.  Here is MooMan bothering Ezra.

Here they both are, checking out Ezra.  They like to nibble on his ears.  He's not too keen on that.  I'm not either.

Here is cute little Stevie.  I just adore him :)

And here's a funny one of MooMan.

It's always a challenge come feeding time for the llamas.  We have various techniques to keep the goats from getting all of the llamas' food.  The latest technique is locking them out of the gate.  We have also tried locking them in the tack room.  Just have to make sure all of the bins are closed...  Here is Stevie in the tack room.

Here they are harassing the llamas at feeding time.

Here's everyone waiting at the gate when we arrive.  Showing us some love.  Some hungry love.

Dolly llama (our young female that was born on the farm on January 24th of this year) enjoys hanging out with the goats.  Here, she shows MooMan some love.

Today, the goats decided they wanted to go for a ride.  Before I could turn around, they were all up in my car.  Lord have mercy on their irritating little souls.

And I'm not sure why it's so enthralling to take goat selfies.  But I assure you, it is.  Here are a few from today.  It was all fun and games until MooMan started eating my hat, shirt, and freshly-washed hair.  Goat saliva is not the freshest smelling stuff.  Ugh :)

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a goat selfie!

MooMan is pretty sweet :)

MooMan getting a taste of my hat...

Okay, this is getting out of hand.  They are eating my shirt.

That's my sweet Stevie!