Eggs (week ending 7/23): 42Inches of rain last night: 2.2. The rain came off the roof of the barn so hard that it stripped off some of the accumulated, impacted manure I hadn't gotten the chance to fork up and tote to the pile.
Eggs (year to date): 1353
Minutes spent hunkered in the basement: 30.
Number of lightning proximity hits: Too many to count.
Number of blown breakers in the electrical box: At least one.
Number of tornadoes: 0 (but it was close).
What else do you expect when the day temp is in the 90's, it's 81 when the storm hits and 69 when it leaves? The good thing was that the first storm chilled the air so much that it defanged the tornado-making apparatus in the clouds. It all blew over without incident.
A vet came over Monday to de-horn the two young bucks and worm all the other goats. Yesterday a nephew who is fascinated with the farm animals came over and helped with chores. I put one of the wethers on the milking stand, had the nephew give him feed, and pulled his current scur easy as you please. Let the wether eat for a while to forget the unpleasantness of being locked in the milking stand. End of story.
The milking stand has made goat milking a pleasant experience according to my daughter. We don't have pasteurizing equipment yet, so the milk goes to the cat and chickens. The chickens love it. My daughter reports that the chickens now mob her when she goes into the barnyard to milk the goats. When she started, egg production leapt up to 7 eggs a day. It's back down. I'll have to see if daughter has been consistent about supplementing the hens' diet with milk.
Speaking of goat dairy products, my wife, daughter and I went with some friends to an amazing place in Akron called the West Point Market. It specializes in hard-to-find or obscure foods. For example, I was able to pick up a jar of Lemon Marmalade there (and now want to return for Lime Marmalade and the Sangria Jelly). They carried Coffee Crisps, my favorite candy bar (made only in Canada) and Aero bars (another Canadian confection). If you want grape Nehi, Moxie, Ginger Beer, this is the place to get it. It's one of the biggest wine dealers in the nation, with 3,300 labels available. Exotic fruits and veggies aplenty. Fresh cuts of meat, spiced sausages like I'd never seen. The grocery shelves had such obscure brands that when I ran into a familiar national brand (e.g., Jif peanut butter sitting amidst all the natural peanut and cashew butters), the effect was jarring.
But the point of this exercise is that we picked up (for a dear amount) a bit of goat cheese to try. This particular brand was awful - it tasted like buck goat smells, which makes me wonder about where it was processed (for the uninitiated, buck goats are particularly nasty, especially with their odd hygienic habits, and the odor of one is capable of permeating things for miles around - which is why we had the man with the band come and fix our little bucks so the offending glands that cause this behavior will fall off, making them much-more-presentable wethers).
My wife claims she's had goat cheese that didn't taste bucky at all. So we'll try a different brand next time. Meantime, the french bread, the marmalade, the guacamole dip, the birch beer, and the other cheese we got were all superb. As was the lunch we had at their in-store deli.
In store: more eggs (and hopefully increased production); finally getting to build the chicken tractor; goat milk; goat's milk fudge; and goat cheese that doesn't taste buckish.
