Galwith750acres's Weblog

It’s one thing to get a Holiday Card from a Friend, but it’s a whole other thing to get a box with 100’s of Vintage Holiday, Cards from a Friend!!! I have been haning up the cute 60’s Christmas Cards all over the house, stringing them along ribbon for a decorative garland. Thank you Heather!

“you always worry that a cougar or coyotes will get your goat, but you never think it might be your own lovable hound dog…” gal with 750 acres, December 2009.

View of the sky, the night I laid Miss Foxy to Rest.

The last thing anyone wants to do is come home to find their beloved pet dead. And even worse than finding the pet simply dead, is finding that another one of your beloved pets killed it.

I drove up just a few afternoons ago, to find the goats out in the front yard, nothing unusual about that. But then I noticed Lucky, my hound dog running around with them, which was unusual, as he is usually in his dog run during the days. I did a quick head count to find that one goat was missing. My heart sank, and I instantly new something was awry. Where was Miss Foxy???

I quickly spotted the crime scene. She was lying dead and bloated about 15 feet from the dog run. Her neck had been snapped and there was blood stained on her soft goat fur where the neck puncture marks were. OH DAMNIT, WHY!!!!!!

Mild hysteria set in. You wish you could have done something different. She was such a sweet and innocent little being. Sure she was a little rebel who broke out of just about every fence you put her behind, and she did her fair share of eating every plant I cared about. But she WAS such a little sweetheart, and NOW she was just a bloated carcass lying there, staring blankly into space.

That night I placed a “free goats” ad on craigslist, realizing that it would be a matter of time before another goat bit the dust. As fate would have it, the gal that Jeremy purchased the goats from a couple months ago, well, she just happened to see my “free goats” ad that very same night. She arranged to come and pick up her remaining 3 baby goats, and take ‘em back to her home. I had no idea who she was or how to contact her, so I have to say, I do like the way fate stepped in to find her. I just don’t like the way fate played out earlier that day, in the course of this homicide.

As for Lucky, I stuck him at the local dog rescue for the week, until I could build a higher fence for him.  And I am fortunate that there is a great dog rescue located just a few miles from my house.

And the goats. They were a lot of fun to have around. But I was already having issues with the fact that they were darting in front of cars on my quiet little county road. My house is REALLY close to the little road, and while they did such a great job of eating down the weeds on the property, it would’ve  been pointless to just have them locked up all day in their pen, and with me gone all day at work, well there just wasn’t anyone here enough to supervise all the animals. A gal tries, but sometimes she just can’t do it all!

Here is a photo of the goat killer curled up with the chihuahuas just days before the murder. I never would’ve guessed he would’ve done it! I don’t worry about him around the other dogs or cats, and he’s been Mr. Lovable Lucky since he came home, but I don’t doubt that instinct in him to kill critters like goats, sheep or chickens is going away… this gal will do the best she can to prevent any more little livestock tragedies.

I haven’t written a blog post in over a month, and I am pretty sure this is the longest hiatus I have taken since starting this lil’ project. Part of it is to the fact that the last few weeks have been FULL of mis-haps and mis-adventures.

I had been home for less than 24 hours from a short ThanksGiving Holiday in Portland, when I discovered a muddy area in the goat pen. It was pretty damn cold & dry out, as it normally is out here in the winter, we hadn’t had rain for quite a while, and so this was a bad sign. I grabbed a shovel and began to dig into the soft muddy ground. There was a 1% chance a new fresh water spring had sprung up in the backyard, but a looming 99% chance that my main waterline had sprung a leak. The odds were right this time. I dug a couple feet into the earth, and a puddle quickly formed.

I shut the main water off to the house, let the lines drain out, and found my lil’ leak. I don’t know how long it’s been leaking, but I suspect it had just recenlty gotten much worse, as the ground had never been that soft. I figured the least I could do was dig the thing out, clean out a workable area, then consult someone on what to do next. I happened to run back up to the house for a minute, when my magical little phone rang. It was my favorite neighbor inviting me down to try his deep fried turkey dinner. “Oh, I would love to join you, but I have to fix a leak in my waterline….”

Moments later help arrived. We got the thing sorted out, spliced in a new piece of pipe, and I got another lesson in Plumbing 101. I am getting more and more comfortable with all this plumbing stuff each and every day. Not by choice so much, but by necessity!

I am on something a little less than a tight budget. There is like no $ in my current budget, to even budget! So buying new craft supplies is totally out the window. Luckily for me, I happen to have been investing in my ameature craft warehouse/workshop for the past few years, so I’ve already got the glue gun, spools of trims & ribbons, yards of fabrics, a box of candle making supplies, and left over lip balm making supplies. I was also given cases of canning jars, and I have a habit of stock piling flours, sugars, oats and other dry goods, because the trips to town are pretty few and far between.

If I were to write out a Christmas Shopping List, the items I listed above would be on it. But this year, I won’t be doing any shopping, just making! I think half the fun of gift giving is the fun you have making the gifts anyways.

Here are some fun, cheap & easy gift ideas for the holiday season.

Rattlesnake Barrettes. Okay, this is the coolest gift I will be giving, and the only one I am “cheating on”. I had my sister pick up $8 worth of bobby pin barrettes, glue & blank wood rectangles. She is also sending along some snake tanning solution & a paint brush from her personal craft supply. The snake was killed out here earlier this year by a friend of mine. He was kind enough to leave me the skin all cleaned up & salted. I have been reading different theories on snake tanning, many’s first choice is to buy the actual “snake tan”, others use salt or borax. By the end, I will have used all three. I cut out strips of the rattlesnake skin, glue them down to 1 & 1/4″ piece of wood, then use a heavy duty glue to affix the wood piece to a barrette. I have had a lot of friends ask me to get them a rattlesnake hide, but by splitting up this hide, I am able to make 6 gifts (12 barrettes, 2 to a pair).

Candles.  You can make candles in canning jars, ice cream dishes to make them look like sundaes, tea cups, or even tin cans. I used these little metal tins I had, so a gal could keep a candle tin in her purse or glovebox for an emergency or romantic moment (or both), I also had a roll of wick, a pound of soy wax, a pound of beeswax, and a whole bunch of different essential oil scents. It’s pretty much a melt & pour craft. A while back I also invested in a $5 skillet at a Thrift Store for crafting. I like to fill it with 1 to 2 inches of water, get it to a simmering boil, put a shallow rack in the skillet, and then melt down the wax in smaller containers which set on the rack, so it becomes a double boiler. This is the easiest way I have found to do this, and you won’t end up scrapping wax off your stove the next day! I made Lavendar candles which I scented with essential oil & tossed in pieces of actual lavendar for added decoration & scent. For the Coconut candles, I added a coconut essential oil, and just before they finished cooling I topped them with shaved pieces of wax to emulate shredded coconut.

Lip Balm. Like any “new” hobby, there are some initial investements for lip balm making. I suggest buying your supplies from Majestic Mountain Sage, http://www.thesage.com/ . I like to melt down cocoa butter, shea butter, sweet almond oil, beeswax, vitamin E & an essential oil, but you can also buy a premade melt & pour lip balm that is pre mixed.  I use the same skillet double boiler method described in the Candle Making above. Again, just melt & pour. This time around I made a Margarita Balm & a Cranberry Chapstick. I poured it into both plastic tubes and little tins.

Jar of Goodies. Homemade jams and jellies are always great gifts. I also like to bake a couple different varieties of cookies & candies, and layer them in large canning jars, tie a ribbon round it, and tada another yummy gift. Do you have a recipe that you swear by, a failproof cookie perhaps?  A fun idea is to pre measure out the whole recipe and layer it into a canning jar, leaving out any ingredients that require refridgeration. Oatmeal cookies are an easy one. A layer of oats, layer of flour, sugars, follwed by baking powder, salt, nuts, chocolate chips & raisins. Simply layer neatly in a jar, tie the recipe on with a fancy ribbon, and give as a premade mix. When the recipient is ready to bake the gift, they will simply add their own eggs & butter, and follow the recipe you have attached.

Epoxied Creepies. I am always finding creepy crawling things in my house. Just today I found a scorpion in an upstairs bedroom, and I have recently killed quite a few black widow spiders. You can pour epoxy resin into a mold and preserve the creepy things, and make them into paper weights, jewelry, or more hair barrettes!

Homemade Christmas Cards. I think it’s most fun to give and receive homemade holiday cards. I usually end up dressing up a couple of the animals in wacky outfits and having them pose together. Then I use a gluestick to glue the picture to blank note cards. Colored Paper, Glitter, and a Box of Markers can also go a long way! Haven’t yet decided what this year’s card will be, but above is one a I made a couple years ago of Mimi & Ginger dressed up as reindeer.

Wrapping Paper. No need to “buy” actual Wrapping Paper. I like to make gift boxes out of old calendar pages, or wrap gifts in scrap pieces of vintage fabrics. White tissue paper with a fancy ribbon always looks great too!

Ornaments. I love Making Ornamnets, because, when it comes down to it, just about anything can be an ornament! I like to work with scraps of wool felt and fabrics to make little woodsy animals. Here are two goats I just made that will end up hanging on someone’s Christmas Tree. When all else fails, Moms and Grandmas always love to receive homemade ornaments (even well after the kidergarten years are over).

PinCushions. You can use felts & fabrics to make fun pincushions. Pictured at the top are 3 cupcake pincushions I made out of wool felts and stuffed with lentils & poly fiber. They make a cute addition to any gal’s sewing basket.

Okay, now get busy, and make something neat! [hint hint, i love getting homemade gifts too!]

I am learning it’s better to fence the goats “out of things” then to try and “fence them in”. Here they are enjoying the wild flowers I planted in my front yard flower pots. It takes a matter of seconds for a goat to destroy something, so I figured I might as well get a picture since this was inevitable.

So, in following my new theory, I will just start putting up fencing material around plants and trees that I care about, and consider the rest of the place a sacrafice one has to make, if one is going to have goats! I am starting by wrapping chicken wire around the 22 fruit trees to at least protect the bark and main branches, as I have been told many a time, once an animal [goat] eats a ring around a tree, known as debarking, it kills the tree. Sure there is a fence around the whole orchard itself, but goats, they don’t pay attention to no stinking fences.

I also keep coming across info online about Pack Goats. At first I thought it sounded kinda funny and ridiculous to take goats on a hike with you, but now that my little lovely goats follow me everywhere, including onto my front porch, well, I really don’t think it’d be too hard to train ‘em to start earning their keep a little more by carrying packs. Why not be that crazy goat girl who walks her goats down the road? If things keep moving the way they are headed, and the raw materials [fossil fuels] on this planet head into short supply, well, at that point, I guess I will already have my lean mean little packing machines trained to carry my water & supplies to the house. Now that wouldn’t be so ba..aaaa..ad [goat speak], would it?

This is what a sick day looks like at my house:

This is what the last couple of days have looked like. I have the flu, and I’ve got it pretty bad. Rumor is, it’s the swine flu. Guess it’s taken out a local school, took over a good friend’s family, and alas, taken over me! This is my 3rd day off work, and I honestly can’t remember if I have ever missed 3 days of work in a row for being ill, ever before. I have been spending 1/2 my time burrowed under blankets like Mimi pictured above, the the other 1/2 of my time fixing fences, aswering the telephone, and being at the center of a big powerline install. They just brought a new helicopter out, and my house is currently running off a generator, so every couple hours, the linemen stop by, fill the generator up with fuel, hook up the power, or un-hook the power… and so it goes.  I am just starting to get ancy, but get knocked off my feet everytime I attempt to get a project started. These are the sick days!