Rhododendrons Suck

When we first got the sheep I came across a blog that talked about how careful you have to be when moving sheep past rhododendrons, since these plants are poisonous to grazing animals (and apparently, even the honey made from rhododendron pollen is toxic for people). After reading that, we fenced off the rhododendron plant that's in the yard by our house right away. When we put the goats in there, I added another layer of fence to block off the plant since goats are much better at getting over/under/through fences than sheep are. 

Yesterday morning we woke up to 2 very sick goats. They were both unusually quiet and standing still and shaking. May had vomited and neither was interested in food. I knew right away it was the rhododendron - sure enough, they'd pushed the fence down (I'm still kicking myself because I *knew* that fence wasn't strong enough to keep them away from the plant). 

We started reading what to do; the goats needed to be given activated charcoal to try and soak up the toxins. Since it was 7:30 on Sunday morning, we couldn't reach anyone except the small animal emergency clinic, and they wouldn't give us any charcoal since they aren't licensed to practice on large animals. 

While waiting for drug stores and health food stores to open (I guess people use activated charcoal for their own stomach issues) we made an oil/baking soda/tea/ginger mix and gave it to the goats. The oil apparently coats the stomach, the baking soda helps to relieve gas, the tannins in the tea help neutralize the toxins and the ginger helps relieve pain. Honestly, I have no idea how well this works but it was better than doing nothing while waiting for the stores to open. The sooner you can get some of the toxins out of their system, the better - so it was good that May was at least vomiting some of them out.

We ended up going to at least 10 stores before finding the activated charcoal tablets at a health food store. We mixed some of the tablets with water and gave that to the goats, followed an hour later by milk of magnesia. By the afternoon the goats were seeming better and were interested in eating some blackberry leaves. This morning they are both eating hay and a tiny bit of grain. They're a bit quieter and less active than usual but they are much better than yesterday. 

This is where that damn rhododendron plant went:

Needless to say, that was not a relaxing Sunday. Emma was supposed to come visit for the day but I had to cancel since we were dealing with the goats. I'm going to buy some electric netting fence today so that we can make temporary paddocks for goats and sheep when we want them to graze/browse certain areas. We let the goats out on Saturday and walked around with them but we need to train them some more before they have free range of the property - at this point we'll just lose them out there!

Up until Sunday, we had a beautiful sunny week and a few visitors. My mom came on Tuesday and we roasted the last of the roosters (one of the two that we'd slaughtered a few months ago). Then Ross visited for the rest of the week to plan a trip that we're going on next week. 

The chickens have him cornered.

Magpie has decided that she likes walking around on top of the coops. She can fly up 8" no problem!

The cows that may or may not be pregnant...if they are, the calves are due any day. It's like that show "I didn't know I was pregnant". The women are usually so large pre pregnancy that they don't get any bigger when pregnant. Never seen that show? Yeah....me neither....I never watch crappy TV....

Abby continues to love her foster sister, Lexi...

(this is also how I feel about those rhododendrons!)

Expansion

We spent a lot of the weekend working on a new winter sheep/llama barn with our landlord. I've never built anything like this so it was pretty cool to start from scratch and end up with the framework for walls and a roof. Eventually we'll make some stalls on one side and a small area for hay on the other, and maybe some shelves on the top for storage. The back will be open and the front will have a door. There should be plenty of room for Zeb, Thomas the the girls in there.

Look what Nathan found! Hidden nest #2.

You may not want to look at the following picture while eating...

Speckles' foot was still swollen and seemed to be getting worse instead of better. I did some more bumblefoot reading and the consensus was that there is almost always a large, fairly solid mass in the foot that needs to be dug out. When we did the surgery before, I didn't cut very deep into her foot because I got scared. This time, I took my trusty scalpel and a whole bunch of resolve and made a deep cut into her foot while holding it under running water so I could see what I was doing. 

Ta Dah! I got a lump the size of a pencil eraser out of her foot. She's already walking around much better and the swelling has gone way down.

This photo is horrible, but Zebra Head made it onto the roost for the first time the other night! Normally he sleeps on the ground with two of his chubbier lady friends. They probably should have decided to sleep on the roost again last night instead of on the porch to their little house...

When we went to lock the chickens in for the night, I had Lexie on leash. She had thrown up her dinner and was lethargic (she's fine now) and just trotting along next to me instead of on high alert like she usually is...so I wasn't paying as much attention to her as I should have been. When I leaned into the coop to check the water container, she lunged from behind me (still on a very short leash, luckily) and grabbed Raven right off the porch. I screamed for Nathan while trying to open Lexie's mouth - it was dark and I had no idea how much of the chicken she had. Chickens apparently (strangely) stay in their trance-like night state even when in the mouth of a dog. We finally got Raven loose and we were very very lucky - Lexie had only grabbed a mouthful of tail feathers and there is no damage. Lesson learned - never get complacent with dogs and chickens!

We've been getting so much produce out of our garden. I think it's time to preserve some instead of just selling and eating it. 

All of those tomato flowers really did produce tomatoes.

Red peppers! My favourite veggie of all.

Basil this morning

Basil after trimming...can't even tell. Grasshoppers have been devouring it but luckily they haven't made much of a dent.

The herb garden isn't exactly neat and tidy anymore...and there's that giant zucchini taking over in the back.

Speaking of zucchini, make this. Or don't...because you'll eat the whole thing within a day of it coming out of the oven, and you'll tell yourself it's ok because it has vegetables in it.

http://therecipecritic.com/2013/08/chocolate-zucchini-bread/

Over-ripe and not quite ripe cantaloupe in their nets.

Pumpkins starting to ripen.

These "Thai Dragon" chillies are so good and hot! Three plants and we'll have more than enough to cook with for a year.

Spaghetti squash using tomato plants as their trellis.

Giant kale and normal kale. Or maybe normal kale and stunted kale. Either way, we still have massaged kale salad almost every night with dinner and we aren't sick of it yet.

Fall veggies planted in the grow bed. Lacinato kale, broccoli, cabbage, peas.

The greenhouse in June:

The greenhouse now:

Another (temporary) Farm Addition

This is Lexie. We're fostering her for That'll Do Border Collie Rescue - she is mostly Kelpie though, I think. We'll train her until she finds a good home. She's 6-7 months old and FULL of energy. She jumps and she's mouthy (I have the scratches and welts to prove it) but she loves other dogs and *loves* people. She's already having a lot of fun on the farm running around and playing ball. She isn't sure whether to lunge at the chickens (she's on leash around them) and she barks at the horses and sheep. I don't think she'll be hard to train, though, and she's really cute!

The sheep have pretty much grazed their whole pasture so for the last few days we've been letting them out into the 'general' farm area where there is still lots of grass. They've been fine every day - they usually put themselves back in their paddock in the afternoon. Today, though, as soon as I let them out they jumped through a gap in the wooden fence, then pushed through the electric fence to get into the paddock with Thomas and Zeb. "No big deal", I thought, "I'll just call them back out for grain" (we only want the sheep to be bred in October). I wasn't in a huge hurry since I've read that you sometimes won't even see sheep mating because the rams can be 'shy' and only do it when you aren't watching. Well, our Thomas is no shrinking violet, that's for sure. As soon as those ewes were in there he was on it, so to speak. Why do these things always happen when I'm here alone?? I raced to put Abby and Lexie away (new foster dog barking wouldn't have helped the situation) and grab some grain, then turned off the electric fence and jumped through, hoping that Thomas was too preoccupied to bother ramming me. I tried to get Ryan to go get the ewes but they wouldn't separate - the whole motley group, Zeb included, was running around, with Thomas trying desperately to mount the ewes as they ran. Oh, and did I mention there's a pony in that paddock, too? Because an angry stomping pony was exactly what was needed to complete the scene. Eventually I got the lambs to come over for grain. I think they were actually more relieved to get away from humpy Thomas than anything else. They ran through the fence and I sprinted to turn the electric fence back on before Thomas decided to make a break for it. Crisis averted...hopefully. If someone pops out a lamb in January we'll know why!