Yesterday we tried the pumpkin kombucha and it was awesome! It was so fizzy but by the time I thought to take a picture of the fizz it was sort of gone. Oh well. Just know it was delicious and soda-like.
Our goats are all doing well, aside from a slight lingering cough with three of them. We’ve been treating them with oregano oil, high doses of vitamin C in the form of Sodium Ascorbate powder, and a homeopathic. They look fine and act fine, just an annoying cough every so often.
Yesterday Mustachia decided she wanted some milk stand practice, so up she jumped! Okay, actually she just wanted some alfalfa, but you can start them early for practice! She did great. (I’m not really doing anything other than getting her used to being handled.) She’s so tiny it will be another year before she can be bred, if at all. We’ll see how her growth goes. We’re fine with just having her be a pet at this point. To be so small at six months seems pretty unique.
Her brother Burrito, however, is not fine with just being a pet and today he bred with Felicia and is looking forward to being a dad. Their breeding was the simplest thing in the world; took about 30 seconds of our time rather than the hours trying to breed the bigger goats. Thank goodness for goats that can reach each other! Seriously. So two goats pregnant and due in March. 2-4 to go. We still haven’t decided whether to breed the twins; they are well above the 50 pound minimum to safely breed and are 8 months, which according to my dairy goat book is a green light for breeding. But we’re back and forth about how many babies we can handle since we’ve never done this before and also how many does in milk we can actually deal with!
I’ve had a hard week this week with my hands. For the first time in my six months of milking, my wrists HURT. As in, they feel sprained. It doesn’t feel like “just” carpal tunnel; I’m not sure what’s going on really, but Christine has had to milk a few times for me and even carrying things like water buckets makes me want to cry. My plan as of today is to get some physical therapy to help strengthen my wrists. I’m assuming nothing past weakness is actually going on. I’m not sure 🙁 I’m praying that this is temporary because the idea of not hand milking is pretty heartbreaking and also bank breaking as the milk machine that is “hands free” is $675. Yeowch. It’s called a Simple Pulse milk machine. We do plan on getting one eventually, but it won’t be this year. I agree as much as I hate the thought of washing all the parts that it would make life easier with goats like Felicia who have inadequate sized teats and really cramp up the hands/fingers. As for my wrists, I did ask in a goat group on Facebook about what I could do and some people recommended chiropractic which I go to for back issues but hadn’t thought about for wrists. Also recommended to me was frankincense oil rubbed on the wrists which I believe we already have on hand. I’ll try a few things and see what might help. We did have one of Christine’s work friends lead us through some exercises for hand and wrist strengthening and she also recommended filling up a double sink, one side hottest water you can stand and one side ice water. Starting with the ice water, you put your hands in for a couple minutes, then switch to hot, and go back and forth three times total. It sounds promising but I’ve been too lazy and our sink is usually full of dishes so it hasn’t happened. I also had some really handy wrist braces but since our move I’ve not been able to find them. Luckily I ordered more so they should be coming in the mail this week.
I’ve made three loaves of bread so far and will make more tomorrow. I bought cherries and chocolate chunks to try out a sweet bread using the same recipe. We’ll see how it comes out. My teenager has been snarfing down most of the bread, but I also shared one loaf with our farrier who was here Saturday and is such a nice friendly guy that I wanted to share some organic goodness with him. He gets the food stuff, he shares our beliefs with vaccines and also has TONS of information to back it all up, and he LOVES to talk. I learned more than I ever wanted to about a renewable power source yesterday better than solar energy. It was honestly over my head and made my brain hurt but I can tell it’s something he is very passionate about.
We went to a fermentation festival today but didn’t really learn anything. We DID try ginger ale made from a ginger bug, which is cool timing since I’ve been watching Youtube videos all week about ginger bugs. It’s essentially chopped up fresh ginger that you put into a jar of water and then feed sugar on a regular basis. It gets very fizzy and then you can use it as a starter to make natural soda; like kombucha without the tea, caffeine, or long wait time. I can’t wait to try making some! The ginger ale tasted good, but you can flavor ginger bug soda with anything you like and from what the Youtubers say it doesn’t have a ginger taste necessarily. I’ll report back soon.
What is the plan this week? To vote. That’s going to be our big thing tomorrow. For once we feel good about the options (we never vote for “the lesser evil” but this time for once it seems like there’s a good option).
Next weekend I’ll be taking a four hour cheesemaking class where I’ll learn to make hard cheeses! I’ve had the supplies for hard cheeses for several months but I’ve been too intimidated to make it by myself. Sometimes Youtube just isn’t enough. I look forward to learning in a real class.
Happy Week, Everyone! Goodnight from the chickens, all ready for bed on their roosting bar. Not shown are the Silkies who sleep in a cuddle pile on the ground. Not the smartest of creatures but at least they’re cute. We are getting about 3 eggs per day now, but anywhere between 1-4 is normal for us. Could have sold a dozen today but I forgot to take them into Austin to sell to a friend. Whoops!
