Category: Latest From High Reaches

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Us and Them Attitudes

I just finished reading a book, “The First Ladies” an historical fiction by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray which I highly recommend. Although the book is about the friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, it reminded me of an us and them incident with my goats.

Stay Away!

I was still relatively new with goats at the time. In starting a 4-H goat project, I met two families with goat dairies. And all my does went dry one winter. So I borrowed a Saanen doe from one of the dairies.

My Nubians are brown and black. They have long, pendulous ears. There was one black Alpine doe with upright ears.

Nubian goat us and them attitude
This is my Nubian herd a couple of years ago. It doesn’t change much from year to year, only loses members. It does reflect what my herd has looked like all along: brown and black. A goat of another color is ostracized.

Saanens are white. They have upright ears. The breed is known for being easy going.

Usually, when a new goat is introduced into a herd, everyone gangs up on the poor thing. She is impressed with the news she is at the bottom of the pecking order. Unless she is very aggressive, she stays there for a long time.

That poor Saanen was ignored. If she walked over to my Nubians, they walked away. Not a single one would have anything to do with her.

My Nubians would lie down basking in the sun, an activity Nubians adore doing. When the Saanen laid down at the edge of the group, they got up and moved.

This us and them attitude held for the several months the Saanen was with us. It had to be such an attitude as the Saanen was a dairy goat like them, ate the same food, was treated the same.

Human Us and Them

In “The First Ladies” the same kind of attitude was most apparent. Government officials, military personnel, the public all saw only that Mrs. Bethune was black. Even when she had a personal invitation from Mrs. Roosevelt, she would be turned away or threatened only on the basis of her color.

Such attitudes were the norm at that time. Sometimes it seems some people think they are the norm now. Us and them. They are different.

Another aspect of the book was most interesting. That was the interplay of perceptions. These women forged a deep friendship and working relationship. Yet, they first had to bridge a culture gap. This is where the different chapters from the viewpoints of the two brought out the us and them attitudes, the assumptions we hold about each other.

This is true not just in the case of race, but also for gender, economic class, about everything we absorb as we grow up. It’s easy to drift along holding on to these attitudes. We are better people, more true to the beliefs we claim to hold, if we challenge these and recognize how easy and sometimes harmful an us and them attitude can be.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Goat Birth Defects

Goat kids are special. They are cute and soon provide hours of fun watching their various escapades. Waiting for them to be born doesn’t include thinking about goat birth defects.

Like people, goats grow old. High Reaches Juliette is old. She got bred by accident – she wasn’t supposed to be in season, her daughter was, but she wasn’t as out of season as I thought – and I watched with a mix of anticipation and dread. The dread won.

Goat Birth Defects

Yes, livestock can have babies born with birth defects. Juliette’s single kid was born with several. Why? I will never know.

In a way, I think Juliette knew. Most new mothers talk to their kids. She says nothing. She doesn’t look for her kid.

The kid was born dead. There was nothing to be done for it, if it was alive.

being small is not goat birth defect
Goats usually have twins. Sometimes one kid is a glutton and gets big while the other is born small. This little Nubian buck kid was one of the small ones. He was too small to nurse and had trouble standing up. That meant he was a bottle baby and had to be fed often. So, he went to work with me.

Disappointment

Yes, I am disappointed. The strain of wondering if the kid would be born during the recent cold made sleeping hard. I was glad the kid waited.

When Juliette showed all the signs of imminent kidding, I was excited. The prospect of new kids brightened my day.

Now there is a different disappointment. Goat birth defects have been rare in my herd, only a handful over almost fifty years. Each is a loss and felt as a loss.

Nubian goat wether
The little Nubian buck kid grew up. Sometimes the small kids have internal problems and they don’t survive. Pest didn’t. Yes, his name is Pest. He is now a wether weighing around 200 pounds and spoiled.

Living With Disappointment

Goat birth defects are disappointing. Such kids are usually born dead or must be destroyed as they will not survive.

Louie, a blind kid, was an exception. He learned to get around quite well and lived several years before falling victim to illness.

Losing livestock is part of life for owners. It’s always disappointing and demands reflection as to what happened, why and changes to prevent it in the future. Unfortunately, this loss for me has no obvious cause or prevention.

Looking Forward

Four does are due to kid in March. All are younger.

Like Juliette, I will put this behind me. March kids will be here in two months.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Spring Gardening

It’s amazing how uplifting sun and temperatures above freezing can be after days of near and below zero. The goats and chickens tumble out their doors to bask in the sun. Thoughts turn to kids and spring gardening.

Waiting on Kids

My Nubian doe High Reaches Juliette was due about New Year’s. The days passed and she stayed fat and showing signs, but no kids.

When she looked like any time, the temperatures plunged. Anxiety began as wet kids stand no chance in zero degrees even with an experienced mother goat.

The cold seemed to stop all kid preparation. As this cold moves on, the wait begins anew.

Reading Gardening Books

There’s not much to do outside with cold temperatures and a dusting of snow. Reading about gardening, seed sorting and starting along with spring gardening plans pass the days.

Much of the country is having much worse weather than the Ozarks. That’s one of the reasons we moved here thirty years ago. Waist deep snow along with temperatures ten and twenty below for six months didn’t fit our preferred life style.

My current gardening book “The Country Journal Book of Vegetable Gardening” written by Nancy Bubel is set in Pennsylvania. Some of the crops, all of the timing and some of the problems don’t apply here in the Ozarks. So, why is the book helpful?

Zephyr summer squash
This is definitely on my garden list for this year. Zephyr summer squash is easy to grow, delicious to eat and somewhat tolerant of squash bugs.

Universal Gardening Ideas

Some things fit gardening no matter where the garden is. The author prefers setting out rows. I have marked out beds. But planting seeds is the same.

Pennsylvania gardens are set out later than mine. But spring gardening planning entails the same details for succession planting, mulching, cultivating, seed starting and more.

Much of this and other gardening books won’t apply to the Ozarks. Enough of it does to make reading them worthwhile.

Besides, its relaxing to read about spring gardening while waiting for the season to begin. Now is when the planned garden is beautiful and productive. Before reality sets in.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Winter Snow

This winter’s weather has been weird. That includes the first winter snow storm.

Past Snows

I’ve lived up in snow country, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, where snow lies waist deep for months. It’s beautiful and cold. Even the moisture in the air turns to tiny ice crystals sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight.

These were dry snows that fell when the temperatures were far below freezing. Many would pour from hand to ground like sugar pours from the bag.

Ozark Snows

Ozark winters rarely get that intense cold. Winter snow often falls when the temperature is thrity degrees. It’s a wet, cement snow great for snowballs and snowmen and deadly to shovel.

These snows rarely lasted more than a day or two before the temperatures rose, the sun came out and everything melted. Children may regret this. I don’t as doing chores in the snow is drudgery.

Ozark creek in winter snow
Over an inch of moisture fell, but only a half inch of very wet snow sat on the land until the sun touched it. Soon only patches sitting in the shade were left. The melt raised the Ozark creek a bit.

This Winter

It was raining as the thermometer stood at thirty-six degrees. This is too warm for snow or freezing rain.

Then the drops turned white. Clumps of snow flakes fell only to melt as soon as they hit the ground. This winter snow was falling when it was too warm to snow.

The snow was persistent and left a half inch of slush on the ground. Luckily the clouds were too thick and held the temperature above freezing all night. I’m not good at ice skating and too old to bounce well when I fall down.

crows in winter snow
Over the winter groups of crows march around the pastures. They are wary birds, taking off at any disturbance. They call back and forth. They didn’t seem very happy with the white stuff.

What Happened?

The cold air bringing the snow didn’t shove the warm air on the ground away. That left the clouds cold enough to snow which they did.

The layer of warm air along the ground wasn’t thick enough to melt the snow before it got to the ground. That meant our first winter snow fell when the temperature was too warm.

Winter isn’t done with us. The next cold front is much bigger, colder and meaner than the last one. We may get a real snow in the next few days.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Buttercup Parade

One task for mid winter is to sort through and back up the plant pictures taken over the year. There weren’t a lot of them last year for many reasons. Still, I’ve come across a buttercup parade.

What is a buttercup parade? After all, a buttercup is a buttercup. Except there are several of them that grow around the place.

Early buttercups lead the buttercup parade
I found a number of these small buttercups growing along my Ozark road. These plants are hairy, leaves, stems and under the sepals. The petals are long and separate.

Wildflower Series

There are a number of wildflower parades around the area. One is the purple ironweed. For people driving by, these are only tall plants topped with purple flower heads.

When I go walking out to the fields where the ironweeds bloom, there is a succession of different ones. Usually the Arkansas blooms first followed by the Purple. Then the tall ironweed takes over arging with the Western. Last is the Missouri. All this runs from July to September.

Another series is the various white snakeroot, wild quiine, common boneset and false boneset. Summer is taken up by the yellow sunflowers. And the blue and purple asters run their series in the late summer into fall.

Dent County Flora

These series don’t matter to most people. Those few who drive by looking at the wildflowers see only the colors.

The series do make a difference to me as I keep nibbling away at the list of plants growing in Dent County. I must first notice the plants are different. Then I take a series of pictures on each plant and flower, marking them so I can come back to get pictures of the seeds or fruits.

Hardest of all is poring over the plant identification books trying to identify each of the plants. This brings me back to the buttercup parade.

buttercup parade in the garden
Bulbous buttercups showed up in my garden one year. They are pretty, bloom a long time and so they stayed. As with other garden wildflowers, they seed prolifically. I now pick out one or two to grow into their lovely mounds and pull the rest.

Which Is Which?

As far as I know now, there are four buttercups growing around me. They are the Early, Harvey’s, Hispid and Bulbous. I have pictures of all four. Now I get to double check the identifications in “Flora of Missouri” and www.missouriplants.com and put them into the Dent County Reds (Yellows and Orange) book.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Looking At Lichens

Wildflower season will begin in a couple of months. I have a new camera to practice with to get ready. So I am out looking at lichens.

What Is a Lichen?

These are a textbook example of symbiosis, mutualism, a partnership between two organisms. Both of the participants benefit.

In the case of lichens, a fungus and an alga are the participants. The fungus provides the structure and nutrients. The alga provides food as it can do photosynthesis. A fungus can’t.

Orange lichen on a honey locust trunk
Most lichens in my area of the Ozarks are gray green in color. But they come in many colors. Orange is bright. It seems to only grow on tree trunks.

Where Are Lichens?

Around my home, lichens are lots of places. They grow on the trees. Some ground and rock areas are covered. Even my clothesline and truck have lichens growing on them.

These plantlike growths come in a variety of shapes and colors. Some look like flat leaves and are called folious. Others are spiky. The many branches of some make it look lacy.

Most lichens I see are a grayish green. There are places where they appear black. The ones on a black walnut near my barn are orange.

Up on a hill I found the soldier lichen. All lichens make a kind of pod that opens to release spores into the air to form new lichens elsewhere. Soldier lichens have bright red pods and got their name as the color was like that of British soldiers.

Wooly lichens spotted while looking for lichens
Lichens are not parasitic. They hold onto a surface and grow there. These wooly ones seem to prefer warmer weather when they can spread all over branches. Only a few were braving winter cold.

Why Bother With Lichens?

If you’ve ever admired Spanish moss, you’ve admired a lichen. Such lichens grow where the air is moist like in the South.

Up on the tundra, reindeer and caribou graze on lichens as grass has trouble growing in such a cold place. Cold, even freezing, doesn’t seem to bother lichens much as long as they have water, nutrients and sunlight.

Looking at lichens often means seeing folious lichen
Folious lichen looks a bit like smashed gray green leaves on rocks and tree trunks. These are often in a circular pattern. They put up cups that produce the spores to drift away on the wind to begin new colonies.

Lichens aren’t Wildflowers

My Dent County Flora is about plants. Lichens aren’t plants. But they are interesting.

And looking at lichens, taking some pictures of them, let’s me get in some good camera practice. Plus they are interesting. Any excuse is a good one to go out walking in the woods.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Goats Are Expensive Pets

My Nubian dairy goats are supposed to produce milk. Instead my goats are expensive pets.

This isn’t entirely their fault. If a goat doesn’t have kids, she doesn’t produce milk. And I didn’t get some of them bred on time.

My herd has started and ended my days for fifty years as of next June. These last thirteen goats are the last of my herd. As they age, many retire and my goats become expensive pets still ordering my days, but producing nothing more than work.

Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela proves goats are expensive pets
My Nubian doe High Reaches Pamela did milk through last winter. As soon as she was bred, she went dry. She still expects her hay and grain on time. The only comfort is that she will produce kids to help defray some of the expenses once the kids are three months old and sold. And, maybe, she will milk all of next winter.

Schedule Adjustments

One of the advantages of Nubian dairy goats is their flexibility. When I worked swing shift, they happily showed up for meals at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. When I was teaching, they adjusted to 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

With many of the does dry, their schedule is moving to 9 a.m. and a half hour before dark. I’m older and don’t really want to stand out in the cold and dark feeding goats. Besides, they are older too and go to bed when it gets dark.

Times Have Changed

When I first had goats, few veterinarians had any experience with them. I ended up learning to do most easy veterinary work myself. Things like deworming, pulling kids, giving shots when needed and knowing when they were needed.

Feed didn’t cost that much. A hundred pounds of oats was seven dollars. Honest!

Now a veterinarian has to check over and prescribe antibiotics. None of the local ones come out to the place so the goat, all hundred plus p[ounds of goat, must be lifted up waist high into my truck and taken to town. Physically that does not happen for me any more.

Feed has moved to fifteen dollars for fifty pounds. This doesn’t count the extras like sunflower seeds. Since I go through a hundred to a hundred fifty pounds a week, my goats are expensive pets.

Nubian doe High Reaches Opal
Nubian doe High Reaches Opal is learning all the routines including the joys of being an expensive pet.

Future Plans

My goats will stay. One by one they will retire and die. I will not replace them and so will no longer milk in a few years. However, the work will continue as long as they do. My goats are expensive pets for possibly another ten years.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Frustrating Chickens

There is a fair sized flock of chickens in my hen house. They are there to eat pests and lay eggs. This year they are frustrating chickens.

Eggs almost ceased to appear last summer. From what I’ve read and heard, this was a common problem for many. There are probably lots of reasons.

Too Many Roosters

Someone dumped off some roosters down the road last summer. They moved into my flock and proceeded to beat up both my two resident roosters and my hens.

Frustrating chickens, all talk and no eggs
Purrsey rooster was dumped off and joined the flock. He is a proud bird and thinks he should rule the roost. Unfortunately the hens don’t appreciate all the uproar between the roosters. I’m hoping this will settle down more next year as the roosters get older. His name is because he sounds like a cat’s purr when he calls hens over.

All but one left. The damage was already done. My hens were traumatized which is not good for egg production.

Black Snakes

There are several big, and I do mean big, black snakes that live under my barn floor all summer. Eggs are a favorite delicacy.

However, the snakes also eat some of the thousands of mice, any rats that attempt to move in and discourage the copperheads. So I put up with losing a few eggs.

The problem last summer was a younger black snake, a mere five footer (The big ones are seven feet and six feet.). This one was determined to get to those eggs, even sliding under the hens in the nests to wait for the egg to arrive.

The hens were not happy. They moved out to the hay trough, the tall grass, anyplace but the nests.

Heat

Like much of the country, the Ozarks had a heat wave go by. The chickens hid in the barn, under the trees, next to the barn, anyplace there was shade. They still panted as chickens can’t sweat. One older hen went hoarse.

Egg production ceased.

Older Hens

My flock is mixed ages. I tend to add six to eight pullets each year. The others stay until they die of old age.

Older hens lay larger eggs, but fewer of them. They tend to stop laying after molting in the fall and not start again until the end of January.

Mr. Smarty, another rooster for my frustrating chickens
Mr. Smarty is a very proud rooster. He thinks he should be in charge and is most upset that I am. He is a Columbian Wyandotte.

Light Problems

For years I’ve used lights to lengthen the days for my hens to encourage them to lay longer in the fall. The new LED lights don’t seem to have the right colors of light, so this doesn’t seem to work very well any more.

All of this adds up to frustrating chickens and a shortage of eggs in my kitchen.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Goats Love Pumpkins

Pumpkins are great food for people and goats. They are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Luckily goats love pumpkins.

Previous Years

I don’t remember when I found out goats love pumpkins. It started me asking people around town for their pumpkins left sitting out after Halloween and Thanksgiving.

These were cut up and fed to the goats. The pieces were about two inches square and a quarter inch thick. It was like feeding coins into a slot machine as the pieces disappeared so fast.

Any pumpkins too soft to cut into pieces were broken up out in the pasture. The goats ate the parts they wanted. Some of the seeds came up the next spring and even made a few pumpkins.

old garden resists new garden beginning
My sugar pie pumpkins seem to have the shortest keeping time in the pantry. These are the first ones to feed the goats. There are enough to keep them almost to the end of the month.

This Year

Another goat owner is now collecting many of the pumpkins around town for her goats. I’m glad as I cringe a bit inside watching leftovers slowly rot away wishing I could take them home.

This isn’t because I don’t want to. My goats love pumpkins and are busy eating them every morning and night. They eat close to a pumpkin a day.

It’s because I raised both my goats’ favorite squash and pumpkins last summer. My pantry has so many piled in it, I have trouble reaching the shelves for stored food. The goats will be eating these easily to March.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although “The Pumpkin Project” is primarily a science activity book, it has lots of information about pumpkins in it. The last section has recipes for soups, breads, cheesecake, pie and more.

Eating Pumpkin

My goats don’t get all of the pumpkins and squash. Some of the pumpkins turn into puree which becomes cookies usually.

The goat special squash is a cushaw cross we don’t care for. So the goats do get all of these.

There is the yuxi squash. We generally eat one or two of these. They are big and, as older people, we don’t eat a lot.

Besides, we love butternut squash. These vines were very busy last summer and we will be eating these for months.

My goats love pumpkins and goat squash and butternut squash. I enjoy sharing them with my goats.

Categories
Latest From High Reaches

Averted Tragedy

Last night one of my new hens, one of my winter layers didn’t come in. All night I thought she was picked off by a fox or a hawk. This morning she was the lucky one that averted tragedy.

Accidents Happen

Rural living is an invitation to accidents. Machines don’t work as expected. Wire snaps. Wood or metal beams fall.

Livestock has its share of accidents too. Some end tragically. Some are averted tragedy.

Trapped Goats

As told in “For Love of Goats”, we had a young doe slip down into the crotch of a tree. My companion found her and lifted her out. Otherwise she was trapped, unable to get her hooves on anything to let her push out of the tree.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
Part of “For Love of Goats” is a series of memoirs taken from my many years raising dairy goats. Kids are often in trouble. They can get trapped, lost, hurt. The best account is averting tragedy for the kid in trouble.

There was another such incident. This time a doe was stepping over a fallen tree. It had two trunks. The ground was a hillside covered with gravel.

The doe slid down the tree trunk into the crotch and got stuck. When she didn’t come in that evening, I went looking. It took two of us to slide her up out of that trap.

The next morning that upper trunk became firewood.

Trapped Chicken

I have extra water buckets placed upside down along the fence into the goat barn lot. The buckets I’m using sit on top of these, easy to grab to fill at the hand pump.

This morning the bucket had fallen onto the ground. When I picked it up, my lost hen was under it. She was eager to get back in the chicken yard where she promptly grabbed the vole the flock was arguing over.

Avoiding Tragedy

No matter how careful I try to be, accidents happen. Some do end in tragedy. Most do not. There is reason for this.

When my flock goes back in their yard at night, I count them. Three of this kind, three of those, seven of the other, until all are accounted for.

The same is true for the goats. I make sure everyone goes out and everyone comes in.

The chickens are locked up at night. The goats are in their barn.

I much prefer taking precautions to having another averted tragedy tale to tell.