Complete Randomness

Nikki incognito

Dad making crochet humor.  I thought my little elephant needed a mom so I am in the process making her one.

Frog in glass by Spark

Mac and cheese doesn't have food coloring anymore!!!  It is has been about 10 years since has been welcome in our house, but it's in now! Seems like a novelty to us.

When Fluffles isn't sleeping he's trying to figure out how to get some Temptations cat treats.

Out to lunch

Dancer, the queen of selfies.

Yeah, that's a goat/llama water bucket.  They think the buckets are either a bathroom or a footbath.

The thank you gift we made for Spark's speech co-op leaders.

Double decker sleeping spot.

Car washing.

The want ads at the feed mill.

Bert after a bath.

Goat kids and geocaching

We are ahead of schedule this year and already have our 4-H goats for the fair.

It was a couple hour trip to get them so we took the opportunity to find a few geocaches on the way back.  I can not recommend geocaching with goats in the car.

I love the sites we see that we would otherwise just drive right by though if we didn't geocache.

Kayumba

Spark got a new little goat for a 4-H project.  He named him Kayumba and rode on Dancer's lap on the way home. We bought him and then had a 4-H meeting where he was a huge hit, but how can you not love a baby goat. 

He is about 10 days old here.

It took him a couple of days for him to get used to taking a bottle after being use to his momma.

This kids worked with him a lot to get him to be a successful bottle drinker, even bringing him in the house for snacks at night.

Finally he is a pro at it and can down a bottle in what seems like seconds.  

He has really grown.  This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, I'm not sure Spark would even be able to pick him up any more.  Next to our other goats though he is still a little guy.

And he loves to do chores.  He follows Spark around like a dog and panics when he doesn't see him.  Like all baby goats, he is so cute!

Signs of an Early Spring

We were excited that it was warm very early this year and we were able to get some barn cleaning done.  Yes, that really is exciting, usually the poo is frozen down and then when the snow melts it runs through the barn and make a huge, gross mess.

It was so nice that we shed our jackets.

Pancake sunbathing.  Being a farm cat is good work if you can get it.

Lola and Jamal were happy to be out and not have wet feet.  

And then this happened.  A few inches of snow came and ruined the whole thing.  Thankfully it didn't stick around long.

Escape Goat

The smarter a goat is the more trouble they get into.  Jamal keeps us hopping on fence repair because if there is one little loose spot he is out of the fence and down to the swamp.  Every few days he finds a new way to escape the corral and often it takes us several days to see where he gets out because not only is he smart, he is sneaky.  We can watch and watch and watch him and as soon as we give up he slips out of  the corral.  

On this day he tangled with a burdock bush and in turn got his beard tangled.

Instead of trying to comb the burrs out Dancer just took the scissor and cut his beard off.  We teased  that without his beard he looked like a little kid goat and was no longer a manly man.  

Now Nico, he is a manly man.  

Desdemona VS The Chicken Coop

Short on stall space because our darn goats can't get along and all be together, we tried putting Desdemona in the chicken coop.   It didn't take her long to knock the door off and attempt her escape to eat tasty bushes around the yard.  We saw her when she got this far and foiled her plans.

Dancer got out the drill and thought she reinforced the door.  They say if a fence can't hold water it won't hold a goat, well the saying is true for chicken coops too because she got out a couple more times before we had to find her other housing.

Who Let The Goat Out?

Nico, our buck, was looking in our deck window when we got up in the morning.  We  keep patching the corral but he keeps finding new ways to escape during the night.  This time he took a gate off of its hinges and munched his way around the yard until we got up.  His beautiful white beard is now full of burrs, short of cutting it off I don't know how we were going to get those out.  Fluffles was very curious at who this large white beast was looking in at him.

The Road To Blogging Is Paved With Good Intentions

These pictures are all from sometime in May.  This post is my attempt to do a little blogging catch up.

I'll start with a llama because there can never be too many llama pictures.

We went to Llama magic that was held at a fair grounds in the cities.

At Llama Magic you can buy fiber and llamas in the same buildings.  It was good we didn't bring the trailer with because there were some adorable crias for sale that might have found their way home with us.

Mother's Day we traveled up the road to see how high the water in the Mississippi River was and how fast it was flowing over the dams.  FAST!

At one park the kids couldn't resist climbing on their unique play equipment.

Stopped at the dam where we usually go fishing.  This support has a huge ledge around it that you have to climb up on to, now you couldn't even get close to it.   

The mist was so high that we couldn't see across to the other side.

Helmets Required took a trip up to the Hinkley Fire Museum.  This is a place has a fascinating story.   

First thing rebuilt after the fire was the train station.  Now it houses the museum which we spent a lot of time in because there is so much to see there.

The boys spent a good portion of the time hanging out in an Indian shelter.  They all thought it would be super cool to have one in their backyards.  I agree.

We stopped at the monument for the mass grave for those the survivors weren't able to identify. 

The plan was to start out the day enjoying lunch at the casino buffet and then going to the arcade.  After lunch, however, we found out that the arcade didn't open until later in the afternoon so we trekked back after the museum and boys played games while the rest of us watched and waited.

We toured a fish hatchery.  Working there would be Dancer's dream job, growing little fish in to big fish to stock lakes.  

Checking out fish samples.

Counting how many fish hatched.  

Pumpakunchen just keeps growing.

The 4-H Junior Leaders made May baskets for a local nursing home.  Like the lateness of this blog post, they didn't get them handed out until the middle of the month.  I don't think any of the residents minded that they weren't on the actual day, they just like to have the kids visit. 

This will be the first year we have a llama show in our own county so llama obstacles needed to be built.

Lots of painting and

hammering and we have ourselves a pretty nice set of obstacles to start with.

Helmets Required toured a military museum.  The boys climbed on all the tanks to pose for pictures

while Dancer checked out a Jeep.  I think she had visions of all the off roading she could do in it.

Our Monday co-op did a service project helping a member of the church we meet at clean out and 

plant her flowers.  With 14 people it didn't take very long.

We have enjoyed a few bonfires, always a nice reward after a busy day.

And we will end with a llama.  They got their spring hair cuts.  They will need lots more work before the fair but we did this much so they won't suffer heat stress.