I'm Here Again!

 Some of Elder H's children at the Anti-TSA Outrage rally at the Capitol.

A perfect picture of Texas.

It has been quite a long time since I have posted, several months in fact. But what is done is done and here I am to start up blogging again. During this summer there were many things going on here in Texas. Here are some of them:

• Our animal count got up to 18 goats, 9 ducks, 2 geese, 2 cats, 5 chickens and 1 cow.
• I flew to Mississippi by myself to visit my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins for 2 weeks in April.
• We are surviving the longest recorded drought in Texas.
• We attended an Anti-TSA Outrage rally at the Capitol.
• We butchered 1 goat, sold 10 goats, and predators ate 2 ducks and 4 chickens, bringing our animal count down to 7 goats, 7 ducks, 2 geese, 2 cats, 1 chicken and 1 cow.
• Our family and two other families from church started a co-op with my Dad teaching Physics, and Mr. O teaching Singing and French.
• Thomas, Pierce and I were in the Filmmakers Academy for six weeks this summer, making one video each week.
• We are still surviving the drought and temperatures up to 100 degrees every day.
• All of us have grown.

There are many other everyday things which have taken up a lot of time and effort this summer, but these are the ones which I remember the most.

For the next three weeks I am going to be going on a trip to California to visit my good friends Mr. and Mrs. S (or Auntie M). Even though Texas is my home now, I lived in California longer than in any other place (4 years, one quarter of my life) and it will feel like I am going back to visit home. While I am visiting Mr. and Mrs. S we will take a road trip from California to Montana to visit Auntie M's family. I am especially looking forward to meeting E, Auntie M's niece, who I hear is very similar to me (or am I similar to her? In any case we are extremely similar to each other). I will be posting updates here for my family and friends while I am traveling.

Lauren

P.S. Well... I intended to start posting again during this trip, but alas, it did not happen. There were too many great conversations happening in the free time for me to even think of writing a blog post. What's done is done.

Goat Birth

We knew that our Nubian does were both pregnant, but we didn't know when they were due. So there was a lot of watching. Daphne's belly was so large that I could feel the kids move when I put my hand on her side. I read that the doe's udders would fill with milk soon before she kidded, so on Friday when we saw that Daphne's udders were larger than normal we started to check on her more often. Two of our other does have kidded since we bought them, but both births took place while we were away. Saturday morning we were rushing to leave to the San Antonio zoo, and as we were getting in the car we looked toward the goats to check on Daphne one more time. She wasn't there. I walked along the fence until I saw her through the trees, about to give birth. We watched as the first sack came out and broke with a little baby goat head following. Now this is not the normal position for goats to be born in. Normally they come out with their front legs first and then their head as if they were diving, but with their legs back it makes their shoulders wider and the birth harder for the doe. I helped pull the baby goat out and clean off his face, and after Daphne partially cleaned him off she delivered another buckling, this time with one of his legs folded up by his side. The older buck is black with white ears, a white speckled nose and a small white spot on top of his head, and the younger one is black with a white belly and brownish markings along the edge of the white, and they both feel like velvet. We cleaned up the mess, trimmed the buckling's cords and made sure that they were nursing before we continued on our trip from the to the zoo an hour and a half after we started to get in the car. We have been naming our goats 1950's names such as Nancy, Daphne, Sally, Betty, Lorraine, Mary, George and Jack, so Dad chose the the names Edward and Albert for the two new bucks.



Our other Nubian doe, Nancy, should kid sometime tomorrow. Her udders have filled and we fully expected to come home from church to new goat kids, but it wasn't time yet, so we are guessing that it will be sometime tomorrow. I was the one who was studying up on goat births so I was the "baby catcher" for the kidding and I will probably be the one handling the goat births from now on since everyone else thinks that it is gross, though Zoe will have to help since she wants to be a midwife.

None of our Nubian does are full Nubian; Daphne is 1/8 Nigerian Dwarf, Nancy is 1/2 Nigerian dwarf and our buck Brandon is 1/4 Boer, making Edward and Albert 1/16 Nigerian Dwarf and 1/8 Boer. These are definitely not breeding animals, but we bought them for milk and the fact that they are multiplying is enough. In about two weeks we will start milking them, letting the kids drink all of the milk directly off of them until then.

Soon to come: Butchering our troublesome goat STEWart