The Jailbreak

Yesterday mom and I went to the farmer's market in Bennington, VT, and then to Cambridge, NY to check out some antique shops.  For those of you that read Jenna Woginrich's blog, Cambridge is the next town south from Jackson, where she lives.  It's nice farm country up there.  My neck of the woods is an hour south where the country is hillier and rockier.  Much rockier, much steeper = less farms, less people and less culture.  One advantage to living here though, is that in the 90+ uncomfortable weather in Cambridge, Albany and most other places, it's breezy and comfortable at my place.  I slept outside under the stars last night. So nice.

Being a new goat owner, I have a lot of diffuse fears about things that haven't happened yet, but may.  Sometime.  Like the goats getting out, eating something bad for them, getting sick, getting hurt, etc, etc. 

Well, the first one happened yesterday.  Mom and I were home, the dogs were inside the house sleeping, and not much else was going on.  The goats didn't run away or get chased anywhere.  They came up to the house and started smelling the stevia.  I went down to get the leashes, mom came with me and the goats followed mom.  Back to their enclosure.  Whew.

As I walked up the hill, the goats ran to their out-place and wiggled under the fence to get to the brambles growing through the rhododendron.  (Rhodies = bad for goats.)  I closed up the holes with some rocks and inside they stay, for now.  I'll give them another day to eat more of that green stuff, build a new enclosure today and move them either later today or tomorrow.

It was SO freakin' lucky that we were home and the dogs were inside for the goats' first jailbreak!

Hawktree Hauls in Goats to Deal with Weeds

From Bismarck, North Dakota NBC affiliate KFYR.  Entire story included below and here.

		Hawktree golf course north of Bismarck is a nationally ranked public course. So, while it`s normally known for its beauty, right now it`s dealing with a pesky problem. The course staff is bringing in some outside help to clear out noxious weeds. This season, workers brought in five goats to eat up some of the wild growth. Any golfer who`s played Hawktree will tell you it`s an unforgiving course. "If you make a mistake, it usually costs you double. You`ve got to play straight to play this course," said Bill Bragg, golfer. Bragg is returning to the area from Meadville, Pa. The 18 holes, which lie north of Bismarck, are full of native grasses and noxious weeds. So, this spring, the Hawktree golf course superintendent, Eric Stromstad, pitched the idea to the board to bring in a bit of the farm yard to munch away at problematic weeds. "I was pretty concerned that they thought I might`ve lost my marbles with this whole idea, so I kind of introduced it slowly and made sure I had some good research on it and that it`d be a successful venture for Hawktree," said Stromstad. The board said OK. So, Stromstad brought in two goats at the start of the season. Golfer Suzana Haertzen said: "I think that`s a great idea. I`d much rather see a goat thinning out the weeds than a noisy lawn mower driving by me." Haertzen is visiting the area from Flagstaff, Ariz. The golfers have taken to the goats so well, Stromstad added three more. In the past few weeks, they`ve become the 16th hole`s unofficial petting zoo. "After you see them they get acclimated to people. They`re friendly, people stop by, they feed them, they talk to them," said Hawktree head golf pro Chuck Ruppert. "They want to pet them, so it`s kind of been a topic of conversation at Hawktree." And Stromstad says the hungry goats are doing their job well. So far, they`ve decimated patches of leafy spurge and sweet clover. "They`ll strip down the leaves and they`ll leave the stemming material of the plant and they just grind up everything really good. There`s not much foliage passed through their system," said Stromstad. And, Stromstad says once the goats finish on hole 16, there will be plenty of other trouble spots to move them. "They won`t go hungry," said Bragg. Stromstad says while he got the idea from courses in Ireland, Hawktree isn`t the first course in the U.S. to try goats. He says courses in both Ohio and Florida have been using the idea as well.

What the Goats have Done

Here's about a month of work for these guys (I mean gals).  Inside the fenced area, all the bramble is wounded and trying mightily to put leaves out, weakening the roots.  Outside the fenced area, the bramble is running roughshod over everything.

Here's another look. The goats aren't tall enough to get the tops of some of the larger shrubs, and they've put off the lower stuff until recently.  But they've decimated all the medium-sized stuff!  It's g-g-g-gone!

Here it is closer...

I think I'll move the fences and give the goats some new forage this weekend.

Lighter

Whew.  I feel lighter now. 

Last summer I met someone online and we talked and emailed, seriously, for almost 2 months before we met.  We were talking like it was something real, and I wishfully imagined that I could skip the whole part about learning someone new and move straight to the part about sharing a life.  He talked about bringing his friends over and sounded so sincere, I bought new pillows.  It didn't work out that way.

We spent about 24 hours together one weekend, and then the next weekend, after he was supposed to be at my house, I got a text saying he was not coming, and found an email he had sent (well after I left work) to my work address, telling me that he was ending it.  I was stunned and crushed, and wrote obliquely about it here in October of last year.

Fast forward about 6 months and he's moved two states in my direction and now lives 20 minutes from my house (in a metropolis with a half a million people in it, I drive right by his house every day on my normal commute.  Go figure.  I was here first.).  He never stopped reading this blog, and added emails and phone calls to the contacts he had with me. I thought we might be friends (I know - what was I thinking??).  In April I realized that I didn't trust him to treat me any better than he had and asked him to stop emailing and calling.  I wrote here about closing doors.

I was hoping he'd stop reading the blog, so I could forget about the pain and him completely, but he didn't, and has even commented a few times since then.  Each comment, each day where he came to this blog 5+ times was like opening a wound.  I should be bigger than than and able to ignore that stuff, but I'm not.  Today I asked him to stop again, more clearly and more thoroughly than last time. 

I want that man to fade into my past.  I want to move wholly and completely past him and give my heart, new and eagerly to Mr Right, wherever he is.  Hope, who writes Hope Dies Last wrote about it beautifully today.

Plus, with decks clear, I can be open to try again.  For the last few weeks I've been emailing and talking to someone new.  Shhh.  We'll call him Mr North for now. 

The Barn Door Project

This project has been almost two years in the making.  My shed door swings out, except in the winter when a rock frost-heaves up just enough to block the door.  The rock is not visibly higher, but the shed door won't open.

The onset of winter means bringing into the house all the tools I think I might need in the next few months.  If I get it wrong, I can always crawl into the shed through a tiny hole in a side wall.  Wonderful.  The solution was obvious to me, but it took a long time to get here.  Replace the swinging door with a door that slides like a barn door.  A sliding barn door.

I timed the project for when my mother would be here, since hanging this thing will be a two-person job.  What I didn't anticipate was all the stops and starts.  (Silly me - this happens every single time I try a project that I have no idea how to do!  I should build 3 trips to a hardware store into the plan.)  First it was finding a window.  Then it was buying another piece of tongue and groove, since the 8-inch pieces are really 7 inches wide.  Now it's finding some sort of clamp to pull these pieces together.

It's times like these when I really wish for a handy male.  My ex-husband did this sort of thing really well.
As you can see, I haven't started to fabricate.  Even though I think I've got everything now, there may still be a store trip or two left in this project.

More Wildflowers

I took a pretty deep cut at the lawn yesterday, since, although I love letting the lawn turn into a jungle just to see what grows, I want to be able to get close enough to the blueberry bushes to pick blueberries.  I hope to have people over to pick blueberries this year, and I think they'll appreciate not having to bushwack to the blueberry bushes.  Don't worry Melanie - there'll be plenty left for you to sell!

I saw a bunch of new-to-me flowers from the seat of the mower and went back this morning to take pictures of those I didn't cut down.  I have no idea what most of these are, so I'll post now and edit this post as I identify them.

This red thing is in the jungle in front of the house.  Woodswalker, who writes the blog Saratoga Woods and Waterways has something like it in her garden, which is how I think this might be bergamot.

Newcomb's leads me to believe that the below is Hop Clover.

Last year I thought this rose was multiflora rose, but this year I know it's not.  For starters, it doesn't have many flowers as the "multiflora" name would suggest.  After the logger and his friend finish rebuilding my woodshed, I may dig up some of this and put it over by the woodshed.

The pink flowers of the below remind me of yarrow, but the leaves are different.

Now that I know what the Spreading Dogbane is, I can see that it's ... spreading.  All over the area north of the house.  It worries me, so I mowed a bunch of it down.  Not to worry that I'll kill it all though, here's some right next to some ripe raspberries. (The raspberries, of course, are blocking a blueberry bush.  Hm, the dilemma.)

The lovage is growing in cracks near the front of my house.  It's getting ready to bloom. [edit:  Ellen thought this may be Cow Parsnip, but that has white flowers and lobed leaves.  This has divided leaves and surprise, surprise, I think it IS flowering now and this is what it looks like when it's flowering.]

Below is some mysterious thing.  I hope it's not poisonous to goats because Coco likes it. [edit: it is a dock, I think it's Curled Dock. Thanks Ellen!]

And lastly (for today, anyway), the elderflowers are just approaching their peak. I didn't get my act together early enough to research things one can do with elderflower, so they'll just have to make berries and I'll pick them then. 

What My Company Makes

My plant in upstate New York makes these silicone caulk tubes, along with several thousand other things, like agricultural wetting agents, make-up flowability agents, glue for construction.  I don't work in the building that makes these caulkers, but I visit it sometimes.

We aren't GE, but we used to be.  If you look on the back of a caulker, you'll see my company name.  Aside from me not wanting to work (you know, homestead and all), working for this company isn't all that bad.  I think it's pretty neat that the silicone caulk you use isn't made in China or India or Taiwan.  It's made in upstate New York.

What Goats Eat

Penny discovers that she likes daisies.

I want to get this note out of the comments and onto the main page of this blog.

Milkweed is poisonous to goats and sheep.

One article I read says that symptoms begin at 2% of body weight.  Assuming that the goats weigh 30  pounds right now, that would be 0.6 pounds of milkweed each.  Another article said 0.2% of body weight, which is much less.

The onesy-twosy leaves that they've been eating haven't come close to that threshold, and I suspect they'd self-limit how much they eat.  But nonetheless - I went around the yard last night while talking on the phone to a new potential Mr and pushed down all the milkweeds I saw.  I'll go back later and pull or dig them out.

I know that some other things on my property are poisonous to goats, the rhododendron and the pieris to start.  I've read some long lists of poisonous plants and have been advised that some of the items on the list aren't actually poisonous, or aren't very poisonous, like english ivy.

But what about bracken fern?  I've got TONs of fern at my place - methinks I need to learn the difference between bracken fern and any other type of fern.  If bracken fern is bad - are other ferns absolutely OK, or are all ferns somewhat bad?

What about stone fruit, like the cherries and apricots about 60 feet from the goat shed?  Apparently some cherries are bad and some are not.  Hm, and Hm again.  This looks like a long-term research project, but worth it.  This is something that I absolutely need to know, and know well.

Goats Like Millkweed

Here is a milkweed with the flower out of focus because the focus is on the leaves.  Or rather the half-leaves, because the goats have eaten most of the leaves.  They take a bite and then move onto the next plant, so what you see here is a few days worth of stops by this plant on our way back and forth to their shed.  Note that the grass is untouched by goat lips.

I'm really diggin' being with them twice a day.  Since I'm leashing them up and moving them, I can't just throw them food and bolt.  I need to touch them, look at them, ... interact with them.  I'm learning how to be with goats and they're learning how to be with people.

They're also learning how to be weed-eaters.  They think they're done with the area I've had them in for the last few weeks, because they ate all the easy-to-get blackberry leaves.  Despite their wishes, I'm still taking them back to the same area.  They've finally realized that they can push down tall plants to get to the tops, and have been doing that for the last 2 or so days.  Then, I hope they'll get to the lower, foot-high stuff that's been ignored so far.  It seems like a long time on this small area (whatever can be enclosed by 240 feet of fence), but it's 2 goats x 30 days = 60 goat-days.  More goats = less days.  If I charged $5 a day per head, it would have costed $300 to clear this area so far. Considering that it was completely impassable due to thick bramble, and on a steep hill - that's not a bad deal.  Plus, these goats are just babies.  They'll eat more and faster when they're grown up, and in a future world, they won't spend 12 hours a day away from the jobsite.   I'll throw down some grass seed to get something good competing with the bramble, and as the blackberries weaken and die the nature of this hill will change the way I want it to.

We've got a ways to go yet.  I'm still trying to entice them to eat stinging nettle.  Twice a day we stop by this rock for a little snack and I linger, hopefully.  They're eating everything else, but passing on the nettle ... so far.  They're big fans of apple leaves, so the trip from shed to worksite is rock, apple tree, apple tree, jobsite and the trip back is the same stops in reverse.

Blueberries and Meadowsweet

The first blueberries are almost ready, about three weeks earlier than last year.

Here's the upper blueberry hill, where the bushes around the edge of the below shot are highbush blueberry, about 8-10 feet high, surrounding the central area full of Meadowsweet (which I just identified today thanks to Newcomb's again!)

Meadowsweet flowers ready to pop.  I used flowers from last year to count 5 regular parts.

 There are some lowbush blueberry (I'm guessing), about ankle high with my foot to the left.

Wikipedia says that Meadowsweet contains salicylic acid, one of the components of aspirin.  The fellow that invented aspirin for Bayer used this plant as the starter.  It was used in the middle ages to strew on floors for the good smell, and for bridal garlands. Apparently, chewing part of the plant relieves headaches.  Who knew this plant I thought was junk was such interesting stuff!

The Workout

Whew!  My house has gotten quite a workout in the past few weeks and few days.  I feel like the house is really beginning to show what it's capable of, housing my friends and family over the last month.

Right now as I write this post, my aunt and uncle are in one bedroom upstairs, and my mother is in another bedroom upstairs.  If there were more folk, I could sleep 3 more without a problem at all (more if they're close, ha ha).  Oh, maybe the bathtub would be in constant use, since it's the only one, but the kitchen, dining and living area and other common areas would accomodate with no problem at all.  Over the last few days, we've spent time as a group on the south porch, in the south yard, in the living room, in the who-knows-what-it-is-but-my-mother-wants-to-call-it-a-game room, etc, etc.  It all works.  It flows.

I'm so happy about this.  It's like when you think something is a liability for a long, long time, and then find out that it's really an asset.  Life gets bigger.  My house is welcoming it's first group of people in a long, long time.  I like to think the house is happy, too.

June-end Walk Around the Yard

I never fail to find some new-to-me flowers every time I take a walk around the yard.  Yesterday, my ace in the hole was the Newcomb's Wildflower Guide that my friend Linda gave me a few weeks ago, making these less of a mystery than usual.

That's how I found out that the below yellow flower is Sundrops, and the white ones are double Feverfew.  They could be carnations for a doll party.

These purple flowers are Creeping Bellflower, (I think)...[edit: now I think that they're Harebell]

Last year I thought these were some sort of Mallow, and this year it's confirmed by Newcomb's. Musk Mallow.

And these are Spreading Dogbane (I think), which upon reading looks to be kind of nasty stuff and bad for ruminants.

I'm pretty psyched that I was able to identify all these new-to-me flowers!  Notably, it took an hour or so of uninterrupted concentration to find two of the five, the bellflower and the dogbane.  I think it's because I wasn't using the system properly.  Once I settled down and went through his steps in order (and didn't just skim the section looking for a picture that matched), they kind of fell into place.

Sister Time

My mother (on the left) and her sister enjoying quality time together.  Nice to be able to take a few days off and enjoy spending time with family.  Nice not to be cleaning or arranging the house any more.  Maybe I can get away without cleaning the house again for a few months?  I can dream!

Wordless Wednesday: This Rampant Oregano is Taller than my Dog!

The Story of This Bread

My local fire department has a pizza fundraiser one Saturday a month.  I've been supporting it (not a chore since the pizza is delish!) since I moved here a year and a half ago.  In the last few weeks, the phrase "my local fire department" has a whole new meaning - because the local fire department is ME, plus a bunch of others.  I've been approved by the commissioners.  I'm in!

Last Saturday I supported the pizza fundraiser from the hot side of the kitchen wall (if ya can't stand the heat ...).  It was hard work, but fun, and it felt like the kind of teambuilding exercise for which companies pay millions.  Anyhooo - there was extra dough, extra toppings, extra everything at the end of the night.  That means free pizzas all around, and anyone who wants can take lots of dough home with them.  I took 6.  Here are two of them.  Well, one and a little. 

These loaves were an experiment ... can you cook pizza dough as if it were bread.  I'm happy to report that the answer is yes.  The next four are going to turn into two big loaves for sandwiches for the guests, and I sense there'll be more pizza bread in my future!

Gak! Guests!

This year's family reunion is going to be a little different than last year.  Last year, my mother and her two sisters (and husbands) got together in a rented house for a week.  This year it's only one sister (and husband), and it's at MY house.  Gak!  Thankfully, it's for only a few days.  (I mean, I love them and all and am thrilled to see them.  But hosts don't relax. At least I mostly don't. Then again, I don't often ever relax.  When I was married, we lived in a huge, 5 bedroom house and we had guests over all the time.  Lots and lots of them.  I remember an easter dinner where we served 26.)  As the years passed since my divorce, I've lived in smaller places and hosted fewer folks.  I looked in my towel closet the other day and realized that I don't have enough towels to be a proper host for even the three people I expect in a few days.  It's been that long since I've had a house full of life.  Even towels, those long-lived things, have disappeared somewhere along the way from 1998 to now.

Mom and I picked up the new/old sofa and chair yesterday (after taking the old sofa to the transfer station Saturday), so here's what the front room looks like now.  Much better than before!  Muy bonita!

This sofa and chair look like some offered by Pottery Barn (the Manhattan collection, designed to resemble furniture used in Manhattan nightclubs of the 1930s).  Their catalog shows that this set would cost $4400.  This ersatz leather stuff cost me about 3% of that.  Ho ho, hee hee, ha ha!  Of course, the true test is how long it will look this good under that onslaught of furry, muddy paws.  I'm happy to report that Maggie has shown exactly zero interest in laying on this, when given the option of the more comfortable (for her) stripey thing near the windows.

Eleven Eggs

Must. Use. Up. Eggs.

The chickens are giving me 4-5 eggs a day, and I've been consuming 2-3 eggs a day.  After I filled up my third dozen (three dozen in the fridge and increasing daily), I declared a house emergency, googled "use up eggs" and found some recipes that should put us in the good soon.

This here lemon curd consumed eleven eggs (!!!), some whole and some yolks.  It will go on a pound cake (6-8 eggs).  Last week I made a sausage quiche (6 eggs).

My religion is egg-based.  I've been eating 2-3 eggs a day for about 25 years and when the talking heads said, "don't eat eggs," I shut my ears.  This glut of eggs and me trying to put them into everything I eat means that my food seems more ... whole, more substantial than the carb calories of my friends.  If loving eggs is wrong - I don't wanna be right!

Benign Neglect

Last year I was brutal in my efforts to "improve" this area and others around my new/old house.  I took out a bunch of stuff, planted other stuff - all before knowing what was in here before I came.  Yeah, I know.  Dumb.  In my infinite wisdom, I managed to eradicate horseradish from here - at least I couldn't find any this year after digging out a ton of it last year.  Bleh on me.

A few hardy things managed to grow despite my "help," like one, lonely foxglove.  I didn't know what the yellow thing was, so after looking in all my wildflower books and not finding it, I asked here, on this blog and got the answer tut suite.

This year is different.  I've learned (a little anyway).  I'm gonna let my plants express themselves.  The foxglove is back in yellow, and in purple, too!  You may be able to see those above.  A bunch of mystery stuff is here, too.  Some of it I know from last year is coneflower, and the rest of it, we'll just see. 

Looking at the magnificent mess from the side shows that peonies are still blooming, invisibly, below the canopy.  This is one area where I wish I could turn back time and leave it as it was when I came to this house a year and a half ago.

Pear Pests

I took a few minutes to walk around my small orchard yesterday evening and saw these pests on one of the pear trees.

There's the ants, and there are these tiny, green "balls" bunched up at the new growth at the top of the plant.

First, does anyone know what they are?  All the online pictures of pear pests show them fully grown (or at least all I could find in a 10-minute search). 

Second, can I assume they're pests, and not good?  (There I am with this whole white hat-black hat thing again!  In my newbie world, things need to be good or bad.  Shades of grey will come later, with wisdom.) 

Third - what to do about them?  Spray them off with water or soapy water?

SAP = Life

I've been getting into the depths of SAP for a project at work.  The kind of depths where I have to cancel all my meetings so I can concentrate for long periods of time on multiple tables, data field names, queries and all sorts of "fun" stuff.  (Or maybe I was looking for an excuse to cancel meetings!) 

I get so wrapped up in computer stuff that it takes over my life.  I get amused that I can name an infoset with 9 joined tables after myself.  Next I'll be naming infosets amusing things like, REALLY_GOOD_INFOSET.  It took me days to make a really good query that doesn't work right, and have to change the infoset, which means changing the query, and back and forth we go.  I remember this type of work from some programming work I did years ago, back when they had this thing called a command prompt, and this other thing called DOS.

After hours and hours of SAP work, I looked up and saw a neat, swirly icon.  Hovering the cursor over the icon shows that it means Enhance.  My brain is discombobulated in SAP-land, so the first thing I thought was, "How cool!  If I click this button will my life get better? Will it be like going through a wormhole in space and everything will be wonderful?"

Even better is the icon two to the right of Enhance.  It looks like a matchstick, but it's really a magic wand!

Tonight I think I'll dream about clicking buttons called Enhance and swirling into a better world...