Pond Construction, Continued

Hole perfected, plumbing in place, underlayment down, liner in place, and now waiting for 2 palettes of stone to be delivered later today. That's when the real fun begins!

I still had time to plant a few pots for the front porch this weekend :)

the falls filter leveled and slightly tilted forward

another falls view

the skimmer with pumps inside

underlayment and skimmer

underlayment down and liner ready to be placed 

just some of the mountains of materials

lava rock for the filter media

UV light in place

I think it looks like a military weapon!

using the backhoe to carefully move the liner
to the pond location -- that sucker is heavy!!

underlayment

thanks to several friends and family: the liner is roughly placed!

now ready for rocks and adjustment!

Pond Construction

Last year we constructed our dream home, and this year we are working on our dream landscape. Jim has been busy moving topsoil and grading the lawn, and we have also been busy getting our new koi pond up and running.

Last fall I drew up the plans and conferred with Rich from Hahn Ponds about what we need to order. Hahn's is an amazing place, and Rich is extremely knowledgeable and helpful. A few weeks ago we finally dug the hole, measured multiple times, and then tweaked our order with Rich. Now we have all the equipment sitting in our garage, ready to be installed --- hopefully this weekend.

I am so glad we waited until now to put the pond in rather than rush it last fall. We ended up moving the location to the other side of the sunroom where it will be right in the heart of our outdoor entertainment area and visible not only from the sunroom but also from the dining room and the man cave/garage. I started by laying out a garden hose and playing around with the placement, and once we settled on a plan (the capacity ended up being the same as was our original plan) Jim used paint to outline it and began digging with the backhoe.

Then there was rock removal and fine-tuning the levels, from the deepest areas for protection from predators and winter ice, all the way to the shallower edges for marginal plants. Now we are ready to place the underlayment and liner, and set up the skimmer and filter. This is so exciting! Both Mom and I have had ponds for several years, so we both know what we liked and what our dream pond would be, and this IS IT.

Our goal is to have our fish out of their winter troughs in the garage and into the sunshine and fresh water by the end of this memorial Day weekend. Landscaping the pond will take all summer and even years to come, but that's the easy part :)

let the digging begin!

Jim is in his glory when he is using any piece of equipment

lots of rocks to move

Bumble investigates

Willow checks it out

smoothed and leveled

Bum making sure the levels are level

man cave door

Rich and his employee cutting the liner

some of the "parts"

LBGs!

Little Baby Goats - or "LBGs" as coined by our sweet friend - are selected and will be arriving on site in late June and early July!!! I cannot wait.

LBG shopping is all about Googling and Googling and Googling, contacting farms and meeting new people via e-mail, pouring over hundreds of photos of beautiful goats and their humongous udders, checking out the stud-ly bucks, trying to balance flash with quality, attempting to keep the driving distance under a six hours, trying to avoid $500 doelings without feeling cheap, coordinating the timing with my summer vacation, and finally MAKING FINAL DECISIONS. After you think you have a plan and reservation then the momma goat has only bucklings. Back to square one.

I will not lie: I love every single second of LBG shopping. Literally I will close my eyes at night and see goats and kids and udders (the udders I find to be a little disturbing - they look painfully large - but I guess I need to grow up and put my farmer shoes on). It's a commitment if you want to do it right, and even then it's a crapshoot. Then there's the waiting: waiting to hear back from the busy breeder, waiting for them to send photos, waiting for website updates, waiting for the kidding itself, w  a  i  t   i  n  g    for the baby to be    w  e  a  n  e  d  ...   ... ........

I found two amazing doelings! Two gorgeous doelings are currently busy "growing up" so they can leave their mommas and join our farm this summer. WeberWood Acres Annabelle and RebelWood GJ Butternut are from great lines of high quality milk producers, and they will become our "foundation" does. 'A beautiful tricolored stunner, and an adorable gold and white sweetheart. I am still partially looking for a black and white doeling with blue eyes - Jim doesn't know that yet but I'm sure he will be okay with it :) If one happens along then great, but I am not combing the countryside for her.

So it is official: I am going to go from "I have pet goats" to "I breed goats". Of course that means I will have many more hooves to trim, so I invested in a milking stand. Jim is not a carpenter, so I shopped around and found a very well-made and reasonable at Fire Fly Farms Woodworking.

**5.14.14 Update: We will now be adding a third (and final - I swear, Jim!) doeling this summer: black and white, blue-eyed beauty RebelWood GJ Desert Bramble!! **

photo of milk stand from the Fire Fly Farm site

Doeling Wanted

It appears that this spring has brought a huge surplus of Nigerian bucklings!

In the process of looking for our future baby mommas, I have had the great pleasure of contacting some lovely and like-minded goat people. Facebook has added a new dimension to the usual website photos and e-mail contacts, so that has been nice. I have one definite doeling coming to us from my favorite farm on the planet, Weberwood Acres, the same farm where Jasper and Sal were born. I traveled there Saturday and spent a pleasant morning letting sweet baby goats hop on and off my lap as I tried tried desperately to decide which one was the "right" baby for our farm. It was so difficult! Each was a lovely as the next, and each had a unique yet perfect personality. Finally I selected the most perfect baby goat, and now I just have to wait until early July to bring "Chloe" home. That's such a long time. Sigh.

The second breeding for which I had a formal reservation produced bucklings only :( so now I am back to the drawing board of contacting farms to see who might have a colorful doeling that will be ready to leave their farm around the same time as Chloe. 'So many doeling reservations already, and so many bucklings being born, but I will not give up.


** 5.11.14 Update: The name "Chloe" already belongs to a WeberWood doe, so we have changed our baby's name to "Annabelle". 'Just as sweet, but it also has a family connection as my great aunt was Annabelle Washburn. Here sisters were Della and Gertrude - maybe future doe names? :) **

Here is momma Clementine with Chloe giving her a kiss, and her other two doelings hopping around. So sweet!!

Norman

I am sorry to say that Norman began to decline rather rapidly, and we had to have the vet put him to sleep. It was so difficult - he was the sweetest rabbit and I really miss his happy frisky presence in the barn. I buried him and his "girlfriend" (his stuffed apple) under the forsythia which are about to bloom.

Maybe next year I will think about finding another Holland Lop, but for now I have removed my rabbit link from my farm site.

Norman and his Ladeez

Norman is Sick

My sweet Holland Lop, Norman, has come down with "wry neck", a disturbing condition that causes him to be off balance with his head tilted to the side.

On Tuesday night when I was putting the shed barn (I have to get used to this change) animals to bed I noticed that Norm looked crooked. He seemed happy enough, begging for his nighttime treat, but clearly there was something wrong. I picked him up and noticed the eye facing downward was quite gooky and crusty - more so than the usual occasional crust. 'Scary. So I kissed him, put everyone to bed with fresh water and hay and grain, and immediately Googled what I thought was a bunny stroke. What a surprise to see images of sweet buns all crooked and twisted, and to read about the various potential causes! Read more about this condition here: PetEducation.com

The next morning, Bun seemed no better and maybe worse. That's when I decided to call the vet. Well, my small animal vet told me they don't take rabbits, but gave me a number to call. 'Long story short, I ended up at All Creatures in Amherst, and they were wonderful. They flushed his sinuses and explained that we would be treating Norman for the two most common causes.

Norm is now temporarily residing in my half bath off my mudroom where I can easily administer his meds and monitor him more frequently. He gets eye drops twice a day, and three different oral meds once a day - an antibiotic, some kind of anti-inflammatory, and something to treat the potential of the cause being Encephalitozoon cuniculi, a protozoan (single-celled) parasite.

He is still a happy bun, just a more crooked bun! He is eating, drinking, pooping, snuggling with his girlfriend (stuffed animal), and still loves to be held and kissed. I am optimistic that he will fully recover, even if his tilted head never fully resumes its normal position.

Clover is his favorite :)

Norm is unafraid of babies Vincent and Sal!

He loves his basket!

Baby Norman

Holy Cow, it's March 17th!

Where oh where does the time go??

We are settled into our new house, and the goats are settled into their new barn. Wilbur joined our herd, and he is doing very very well. (Wilbur is a handsome blue-eyed Nigerian Dwarf wether that came to us from a family that could no longer keep him. It is so evident that he has lived with children and has been surrounded by love: he is the most social goat in my herd! We love him already!)

Here are a few photos of this and that:

under that snow lies mud

beautiful goat barn

sunny sun room (Willow & Bumble love it there)

goaties on their table

frosty man cave door

snowy shadows, viewed from the sunroom window

another wintry sunroom view