decisions

Today I woke up and took a nice cold shower. My showers come from a hose connected to a well. Sylvia likes to heat her water with the sun first because it is very cold. This morning however was extremely hot. After my shower I milked the goats. While we milked them they ate the last bit of the food the farmer had given us for them. I would have to go to Agway and get them more food. Orlando came over and picked me up to go to Agway. On my way there I figured I should read up on goats to see what else I might need. Wow, goats very needy creatures. Goats are also like humans. They are very sociable animals, they get stressed, they require a lot of maintenance, and they like everything to be clean and orderly. Goats need to have a consistent routine in everything that goes on with them. Their diets have to be very balanced and nutritious or else all sorts of bad things can happen. And one of the most important things I learned is that for them to drink water it has to be crystal clear with no trace of hairs, insects, food, hay, grass, etc. Goats need a lot of water to produce milk and if they do not drink water their milk output decreases and their diets crash. I had been giving the goats water in a plastic container and I only changed it everyday. Turns out I have to constantly be checking that their water is clean and in a metal container so they do not absorb other tastes. I also got them some salt lick because it is very high in minerals and makes them drink more water.
Back at the farm, I took out the orchard/alfalfa hay mix I got for them and they went crazy. They hadn’t had hay since they got here so they were very excited and concentrated eating it. I then scrapped some salt lick into their feeder so they would drink while they ate. The goats are eating a lot more now and are starting to gain their weight back.
The sun has been scorching all day. Once I finished with the goats I did some laundry. The plastic bin I was using for goat water is own our laundry station. I put all my clothes in the tub of water with some Dr. Bronner’s soap and just let it sit. The sun really is the best cleaning detergent. While my clothes soaked, I mapped out the fence we are going to put up around our quarters. We then started collecting and gathering posts for it. When can’t build it until we get some actually fencing though. The fence needs to be built in the next few days because the amount of flies we have is outrageous, the smell is overwhelming, the goats try to get in the tent all the time, and now the chickens are crawling underneath the tent.
A problem we’ve run into is what to do with all our free time. Once the sun comes up around 6 am I am busy with my animals and housekeeping until around 9 am. Then we usually have some left over dinner for breakfast. But then we end up having the entire day until around 4pm to do anything that needs to be done. Sometimes we weed the garden, or go fishing, and other sorts of activities to fill our time. But this doesn’t happen everyday. With school around the corner my time will be filled with reading summer reading books. This relaxes me because I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time.