Busier than bees... because they are dormant in winter.

Its been a really busy couple of weeks here at the farm. Though we are getting close to having enough interns, we aren't quite there. Asa result, we are working doubles and have fewer days off. And I still feel like we are behind! But at least there is always something to do. And it has surprisingly been a lot of fun- proving that menial, manual, doesn't-take-a-brain-to-do-it, backbreaking labor is still my favorite type of work.

We've been mucking out the bucks' stall in the barn. After four hours yesterday, we had gotten about a third of the way through. Ouch! All my digging muscles are protesting. Loudly. And constantly. Its such a big undertaking due to the extremely poor design of the boys' feeders. They pull the hay out and throw it everywhere within minutes of feeding time, then proceed to ruin the rest of their hay by climbing around in their feeders as if they were playground toys. There are 26 bucks and 25 of them are energetic, goofy, skittish but friendly, and are messy eaters. The other is still a baby, so I am sure as soon as the big boys let him at the feeder, he will be a slob as well! So today we are going to try to finish the stall. There will be three of us working on it today, so it will go a little faster. I hope. We also have to muck the center aisle of the barn, cause the spillover from the boys stall will make it too icky otherwise. If only the boys didn't smell so bad, it wouldn't be a big deal!

Dealing with the boys' stall smell isn't the only traumatic thing we've done recently. We had to learn to bisbud the baby goats. That means burn thier little horn nubbins so they wouldn't turn into big horns. Its so sad and hard to do, and you feel mean and awful, and the goats hate it. And it smells simply disgusting. You have to sit on/over/around the baby goat, trapping it with your knees, and press its little face into the ground to hold it completely still. Then Marcia presses the hot iron thingy on its horn for ten seconds, while the little baby struggles and screams. Then we ice it for a minute, then do it for ten more seconds to kill the nerves. Then we dribble on some pain killer and ice it again. When the ice goes on, the babies calm down a lot, but the smell remains. Its the smell of burnt hair and skin and horn, and it just lingers on your clothes when you are done.

We disbudded only three babies, one for each intern to learn on, and it was pretty upsetting. They were getting a little too old, for one thing, so it took longer than usual. The worst was Percival. Tom the intern had to hold down Percy the goat, who is playful and mischevious and getting really big. His horn were pretty big already, so Marcia had to burn them three or four times, and Percy bled more than the others. Poor little guy. It was so hard to watch all of them suffer. Hopefully we'll get to the other babies before they get so big, because the littler ones suffer a lot less. Not a part of goat owning I'd be willing to do, I'm afraid. I would just buy babies that are polled (naturally hornless).

Yesterday we did a simpler, less damaging to the psyche kind of project. We made tinctures. I had picked up a bottle of 151 last time I was off the farm to make herbal medicines with, so we finally cracked it open and made two kinds. First we threw cayenne, garlic, and echinacea in with a pint of the vodka. That makes a good general medicine to help fight infection and colds, as well as help with brian function and circulation. The other was a St. John Wort tincture to use as a pain killer. I like learning about stuff like that. Pretty neat to make your own medicine cabinet.

Those have been the major, if not thrilling, projects for the last few days. In addition to milking all the time, torturing babies, and cleaning the barn, we've also been planning the garden and fixing some fencing. Its amazing how time consuming all these projects are. Plus, whenever hay is delivered or the lunch bell rings, we all drop everything we are accomplishing to race to that end of the property. Once it stays light later, we'll have more time for projects. I hope that happens soon!

I am out of fun pictures, so I'll have to get out my camera again before the next post.