It's been brought to my attention that it's been quite a while since I've done a blog post! I keep meaning to, but there hasn't been a ton to write about, so I've let it slide.
Here are some general updates, though. :)
1) Thea is still with me, and is still available. I haven't tried letting her and Nala be loose together in a while, so for now, Thea goes to my parents' house while I'm at work. When I'm at the dome, I either have both girls tethered, or I have one loose and one in the crate.
2) I have a bit more firewood...I bought some from a guy at church. If anyone in the area needs wood, let me know, and I'll get you his contact info...it's $235 a cord, delivered. Dry, but not fully seasoned yet.
I cut some more of my own wood, too...some of it with a hand saw, LOL. Ironically, using the hand saw was almost as fast as the chain saw. I just looked over my chainsaw manual again the other day, and learned that I have a lot more maintenance to do than I had realized. I should adjust several things and sharpen the blade before firing the saw up again.
I was thinking of stacking all of this year's wood on the west side of the dome to act as a bit of a wind block.
3) I've used my woodstove a few times. It seems to work pretty well...though it does NOT work well as a cookstove, LOL. It took 45 minutes to get a can of soup up to a tolerably warm temperature. :P (It was a rainy day, and I couldn't use my little propane camp stove.) The propane guys are coming to bring a tank and hook up my cook stove and fridge on the 24th - yay!
4) Here is a pretty picture of Thane watching the goats. He really wants to meet them...and I want him to meet them, but I keep forgetting to grab his leash first, lol, and it probably would be wise to have him leashed for this.
5) The remaining goats seem to be happy and healthy. I really need to prioritize putting up some sort of primitive hay storage structure, though, and buying 100+ bales of hay to make it through the winter. Plus, I'll need to button up their pen quite a bit more...right now, it's open on one side.
Here are the goats peering suspiciously from the top of their hill. I tried herding them with Thea...I think they're more nervous about her than they are about Thane...they can probably sense that she means business, whereas Thane is basically a big teddy bear, lol.
A gang of goats:
Rhode hasn't gone into heat yet, but when she does, I'll be taking her back to the breeder to visit a buck...so Butterscotch Farm should have an itty-bitty kid or two running around next spring! :D And fresh goat milk...lots of goat milk, lol. (I won't be able to sell it for people to drink, though, due to Maine state regulations.)
6. The four extra roosters don't know it yet, but this is their last week of crowing. Saturday, I'll be taking them over to a friend's place and learning how to process them. I'm sure I'll be sad, but of course, this is an important part of having a homestead!
7. This past week, I got my little greenhouse kit in the mail. It'll go over the water pump to hopefully keep that from freezing too deeply in the middle of the winter. I started assembling it on Thursday.
One layer in...so far so good:
Lol, I got all the way done (or so I thought), and was very disappointed, thinking I had read the measurements wrong, because it was too small to stand up inside. I was thinking that I would need to build a little cinder block wall to set it on. And then I thought..."Huh...why are there so many spare parts?" And then I picked up the instruction sheet and studied it more closely...and realized that I had skipped one whole section of the greenhouse. So I added in the "spare" parts, and sure enough, the greenhouse is actually tall enough. LOL. I'm thinking it's a good thing I decided not to repair antique music boxes as my career. ;P
So here's the frame over the well:
I need to level out the ground (I'll probably use gravel) and put the cover on. But hopefully this thing will hold up okay to the weather, and will help with temperature control. It'll also help keep out bacteria from rain water and passing birds.
Oh, and I bought a water test kit...need to get that done so I can see if I can drink this water. It hasn't killed the dogs, goats, or chickens yet, so I'm guessing it's okay...but I'll still check it first.
I think that's a pretty good update of what's going on at the Domestead these days...at some point, I'll have to start having visitors out! I probably should do that before it snows, lol... :P
Anyway, happy Sunday!! [This picture is not from today...I wear church clothes on Sundays. ;) ]
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