We did a lot of farm work Saturday. The goats have been penned up in the main corral for the longest duration since we've had them. During the spring and summer, they'd always been out in the forest with plenty to eat. Now that fall has hit, we've had to keep them in main corral and feed them hay.
We've also had to deal with keeping their stall cleaned out.
I've alternated between a couple of strategies and haven't really settled on the best one yet. The first is to rake out the straw and burn it. It's pretty easy to do but as you can see below, the wet hay is very smoky when it burns and it's kind of a pain to babysit the fire.
The second is to just shovel it into the little trailer, spread it around, and use it for compost. You don't have to deal with the fire, but it's a pain to hook the trailer up to the quad and it's less efficient because you have to shovel twice. I'll keep experimenting until I find the best way.
Our next project was to deworm the goats. It sounds a lot worse than it is. We just feed them some treated feed mixed in with their regular feed every 3 months. The hardest part is keeping them from eating each others batch and getting the wrong dose.
This time we tried make a little cage and just feeding them one at time. It was still tough. They ones who were waiting kept crashing the gate, trying to get an extra bite or two. Greedy little buggers.
To keep Little Momma away, Sawyer tried riding her. We were amazed that she held up and was able to ride him around. It's not something you want to do the poor critters every day, but I have to admit it was pretty funny to watch.
Of course Seth couldn't miss out on the action and had to start riding Gracie. Gracie was so happy to have her feed that I don't think she even noticed.
Seth celebrated getting them dewormed by carrying Gracie around for a victory lap.
We also moved the old cut-rock, hand built chimney so we could finish bulldozing by the old cabin. It was kind of sad to move it. Not just because it's a pain carrying and stacking and endless supply of heavy rocks, but because it was the last remnant of the old house. It's all gone now. I'll have to post a before/after picture in the next installment.
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