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It has been a very busy start to the 2009 farmer’s market season. Both Cold Spring and New Paltz markets opened on Memorial day weekend and the weather was spectacular. We are happy to be joining the vendors at Cold Spring and have been warmly welcomed by the customers who remember our two Saturdays there last October. This is our sixth year at the New Paltz market and it is always a treat to see all the familiar faces who support our market.  We have been warmly welcomed at the Tuesday CSA share pick at Brook Farm Project and hope to work out an ordering system for Brook Farm members who pick up their shares on Saturday.

We are just beginning to wean the alpine/nubian cross kids along with Neesa’s and Calypso’s kids. This will make a considerable difference in our cheese production schedule considering we are currently feeding twenty-one gallons of milk to kids per week.

Here’s to hoping for a sunny weekend!

The regular farmer’s market season begins in less than two weeks and let me tell you it is BUSY around here. Our live in intern arrived a couple of weeks ago and we have been doing farm clean up and getting things in place and generally running ourselves ragged to make sure that when the market season starts we can make cheese and get to market with a smile on our faces.

The weather has not been our friends lately with rain coming down in huge quantities followed by dry spells that have triggered brush fires and one big blaze on the mountain in the next county. Keeping the goats healthy when the ground is forever wet or the wind is blowing is tough but we want the animals to be as healthy and happy as possible so it all somehow gets done. The milking does have been able to spend time down the hill and have been browsing the spring growth and making happy milk for the cheesepot. Another group of kids are nearing weaning so we will be able  to spend more time on paddock rotation and less on milk feedings which is a good thing in the rhythm of the day.

Cold Spring and New Paltz markets open in only a week and a half so milk will be going to culture for chevre on Friday and batches of fudge will be in the works for early next week. Stop by one of the markets and say hello and taste the cheeses and fudge.

We look forward to seeing you.

****warning… some of the photos posted here are graphic in nature****

The latest wave of kiddings is complete with the delivery of Marshmallow and Cassandra this morning. Both yearling does had single buck kids. This leaves us with twelve does kidded in early February, eight from late March to mid April and three left to kid in the second half of May.

First a look at Peaches two buck kids. This was taken yesterday at one day old.

Now for this morning… We went out to the barn to milk Peaches and Buffy but Dixie, our Anatolian Shepherd Dog, was letting us know something was up in the kidding pen. We found that Marshmallow was in early to mid labor and we had to milk Peaches and Buffy quickly and then we waited with Marshmallow. In this picture you can see the string of goop that means babies will be coming soon (Marshmallow is the white doe). The other doe in this photo is Cassandra who was in early labor and kidded right after Marshmallow.

 Here we see Marshmallow getting more serious about having her baby and you can see one hoof emerging. I was wondering where the other front hoof might be at this point and was becoming a bit concerned about where the head might be.

Marshmallow was not convinced that standing up was a bad idea for delivering her kid but no amount of coaxing would get her to lay down. Here she finally got down into a comfortable place and we can see another front hoof but still no head. It turned out that the kid had a huge head and it took quite a bit of help to get him out.

Here is the little guy sort of dry and on his legs. He set off looking for his mother or anyone who would take care of him…

The first thing he found was Dixie who was happy to help clean him up after his rough birth. All of the kids are formally introduced to Dixie so she knows what they smell like and that they are ours. This way she will let us know if they are not where they belong and she guards them with all her attention.

As I was milking Marshmallow for colostrum for her baby Cassandra got ready to start pushing her baby out. She is a vocal doe and yelled through the entire birth and delivered an average size buck kid fairyly quickly.

Cassandra’s buck kid is nearly as vocal as she is but he has a very tiny voice and is proof of Cassandra being bred to Morpheus… the bar on his nose and the frosting on his black patches come from Selena Morpheus’ mom.

Peaches finally kidded with two bucks yesterday morning. She had us guessing since her due date came and went with no babies.  We now have only five yearlings left to kid two of which should be having their babies soon and the other three are due next month.

The kids born in the beginning of February are being weaned and will be ready to go to new homes soon.

Time sure slips away… Calypso and Neesa kidded two weeks ago and not mention or pictures on this blog. I have been very busy and the time just got way from me.

So… Calypso is a yearling doe who is descended from one of my first girls and is a very pretty thing who comes from some excellent milking lines. I have very high hopes she will be an assest to the herd. Her single doe kid arrived at about 3am and is the first kid from a line breeding using one of our young bucks.

Neesa kidded at 9am in the morning two weeks ago Monday. She is a daughter of Sprinkles our herd queen who we lost to complications of kidding this year. She delivered a large buck kid with some of the dominant white seen in that family. He will be disbudded and neutered and will be going to live with my (current not living) in intern along with the doe kid that had the injured foot earlier this year. He should have a great disposition like the buck we kept who is a sweety.

The first of the two alpines kidded yesterday around noon. The kids are cute as buttons but the buck is huge and he came into the world with one front leg turned back at the shoulder… I had to help pull the kid out but all turned out fine. The kids look allot like alpines but the ears hang down like the nubians.

Willow’s doe kid will be staying so we can see what happens when crossing a heavy milker alpine with good milk lines in nubians.

Our first alpine/nubian cross babies were born around noon today. Willow had quite a time trying to deliver a very large buck kid who had his left front leg back from the shoulder. I had to help her quite a bit but I was unable to bring the leg forward. The buck was followed by a pretty little black doe. Pictures will follow soon. The ears are the funny part on these kids… the buck seems to have short nubian ears while the doe we are not sure what is going on… maybe alpine ears but then one might be alpine style while the other is nubian style….

Or at least the calendar says so. It was 15 degrees here this morning! We are still waiting for Neesa to kid… very hard to believe but she will kid when she is ready so what can we do….

We did actually have some very nice weather this past week with highs in the 60s so spring is really starting to get going. I have the mini-greenhouse ready for seed starting and picked up some addtional seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library at the farmer’s market today. I will have to prune the fruit trees this coming week also and get some dormant oil onto the apple tree. I hope to pick up some more material to build additional raised beds in the garden for the potato trials we are participating in this year. We will be growing three different varieties of organic potatoes as part of a program that NOFA-NY is conducting.

Our regular winter famer’s market season ended today in Poughkeepsie with the final Winter Sun Farms sponsered market. It was a great winter season and we look forward to next winter with the Winter Sun markets. We are not finished with winter markets though, we will be at the Rosendale community center on April 5, 2009 for their winter market. The regular market season will being the thrid weekend of May at Cold Spring and New Paltz… not far off at all.

We are still waiting for more kids to be born. Poor Neesa looks about ready to pop and is so wide it is pretty funny. Her udder looks like it is beginning to fill so we may not be waiting too much longer. Neesa’s daughter Peaches is not letting on about when she may kid even though her due date is within a day of her mom’s. In the yearling barn Calypso is looking like she may not wait until the 18th to kid but she comes from a line of does that always keeps us guessing – LOL

The weather turned very warm over the weekend and it rained most of last night and this morning so the sheets of ice are pretty much gone and have been replaced by deep mud and standing water. It is a messy situation but it does mean that spring is here… afterall spring is mud season.

A large amount of snow had been predicted for today and schools closed in anticipation but in the end we only got four inches. Not much snow to me but the kids were a bit confused by the stuff. They stayed inside until the snow stopped this afternoon and the sun peeked out. They ventured out and got cold little hooves and promptly went back inside. We still have three February kids in the house because one had an injured hoof. She is much better now but I can’t put her back outside untill the current bitter cold passes.

We need to get the kidding pen ready for the upcoming births. Neesa and Peaches are due this coming weekend and one of the yearlings around the 18th. I also discovered that all the wind we have had took down a tree at the northeast corner of the bottom pasture so we will be fixing that fence before the herd can go down the hill.

Thirteen does kidded between February 6 and February 13. It was a quite a week with both the joy of easy births and the sorrow of losing our beloved herd queen Sprinkles. Sprinkles was eight years old and a gentle giant who had triplets on February 9 around midnight. Unfortunately two of the kids were stuck in the birth canal and it was quite a time to get them out into the world. Sprinkles became very sick afterward and although we did everything we could she died on Wednesday the 11th.

We will miss her….

The next kiddings should be around March 7 – 18 followed by a few in April and then the yearlings mostly in May.

We are very busy with kid feedings, winter markets, and CSA orders.

The cold wind is back after some nice mild weather last week. I sure wish spring would get here.