Hello everyone,

First, I want to give a big shout out to my Texas friends. I very much hope the flooding wasn’t near your home or affected you or anyone in your family. There has been some strange weather in diverse places.

As usual we have been busy here and here it is half way through July. June started out getting the gardens set up and planted. Mark had a short window of time to help me lay the weed fabric, drip lines and trellises as he was preparing to head back to Juneau, Alaska for the summer of more tour bus driving. He left the middle of June and has been gone for a month now. Time has really flown for me here in Idaho. Each day I set out to do the daily chores of feeding animals, milking my three goat girls, bottle feeding the three little kids and weeding. Lots and lots of weeding. All that aged cow manure we put into our flower bed produced a very healthy crop of weeds. Some even as tall as four feet or more. It has been a challenge to get it under control before it goes to seed and still see my flowers bloom. My hope is that next year there will be fewer weeds and easier to maintain. Will see.

We had a lot of really warm days this spring. I think more so than the last two years. I even wondered if we would get any late frosts like we did in the past. Well, sure enough, I got everything planted and the middle of June cooled down over night and a very light frost did happen. With all that temperature fluctuation I did lose some of my melon plants and decided to direct sow. I hope they will have enough time to produce before our short summer is over. We will have lots of potatoes though, green beans and strawberries. The strawberries started to ripen a few days after Mark left and by the end of the month, I was picking around 20 pounds every other day. I have already exceeded strawberry sales this year compared to last year. Extending the rows last year and adding double the plants really made a difference. I’m guessing we have over two hundred strawberry plants now.

Our chicks that hatched out in April were big enough to move out into chicken tractors in the orchard area. We now have two chicken tractors with almost twenty chicks in each one. I move them every day so they can get fresh greens and soil to scratch in. They have grown a considerable amount. In the meantime, Mark saw that Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa had a limited supply of Rhode Island Red chicks available. We jumped on it and ordered twenty-nine, twenty-six females and three males. They also sent us a free chick and all thirty made it safe and sound the end of June. Eventually when all these new chicks start laying, I will sell a majority of my older hens and two Australorp roosters.

Our three little goat kids we purchased from Trinity Valley Ranch are doing really well and growing fast. We will be bottle feeding them three times a day through July and then cut down to two times a day after that. They got to go out into a real pasture I fenced off with electric rope fencing and now are trained to respect the shocking experience. Each evening I bring them back into the barn fat and happy. I started leash training Talia since I noticed she seems to be the leader of the pack and makes it easier to take them out to their pasture each day.

I’m going to keep this newsletter short since I’m so late getting it out. Anyways, things are going very well here other than feeling pretty tired and sore by the end of the day. I really enjoy this lifestyle though and am thoroughly glad I am still young enough to have the energy to do it. It is a true blessing to be able to live this way.

Many Blessings to you,

Joey E. Barnes

Hello everyone,

They’re here! No, not extraterrestrials from outer space, though they might look just as strange. The new goat kids from Trinity Valley Ranch in Deer Park, Washington. Deer Park, Washington is about a five-hour drive north of us so it was a long day. On top of that we stopped at a farm in Spangle, Washington to buy 15 fifty-pound bags of alfalfa pellets.

Our goat kid choices changed slightly. We originally planned to purchase a doeling born back in March that we initially called Geisha’s Treasure. However, our space issue with separating different size and age goats was a problem as well as making sure everyone had a buddy to hang out with. If we had chosen Geisha’s Treasure, we would have introduced her to our two kids but she was smaller than ours and there was potential that ours could hurt her. In the end we chose two doelings born within a few days of each other beginning of May and the buckling we originally chose who was born April 27th.

We had an interesting time coming up with names for all three. These kids will be registered with the American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA) and this year their naming category has to have a T name. We chose the name Tovia for our buckling which means in Hebrew God is good. The black and white doeling we named Talia (Ta-lee-a). In Hebrew that means dew from heaven or dew from God. The brown doeling is named Tyomi (Tee-o-mee). We only found one sight online about the name Tyomi and we think it is an Asian name, possibly Indian and means pure love. She is certainly that. She loves to be held. Tyomi looks quite different from the other two. She is a mix of Swiss goats. She has Oberhasli, Sable Saanen and Alpine in her. This is why she is so brown in color with some Sable Saanen markings. Tovia is her half-brother from another mother but same father. Therefore, he is Sable Saanen and Alpine but no Oberhasli. Talia is in the process of getting DNA tested because the sire of the other two kids jumped in and may be the father of Talia so we are waiting for the results from Trinity Valley. Otherwise, she should be full Sable Saanen. We did have some concerns about breeding half-brother to half-sister and discussed this with Trinity Valley Ranch. The opinion given was that looking at the genetics these kids did not show any negatives to be concerned with and that Trinity Valley would breed them together. This would be known as linebreeding where breeders frequently choose to mate parents who have a common ancestor, but who are not as closely related as in close inbreeding. The aim is generally to improve or maintain specific traits within the breed. I still hesitate to encourage this as I am still new to raising goats and have a lot to learn. Tyomi and Talia won’t be bred this fall as I feel they will be too young or small yet to do so and don’t want any birthing risks with their first kids. It is better to have them at least a year old. Tovia, our buck, will be bred to our three current does but likely not to Saber who is our doeling born March 1st of this year.

We are bottle feeding three times a day and they are growing fast. To feed them and still have milk left over to make yogurt and cheese, we separated our original two kids, Winter and Saber from their moms. They are over three months old now and are big. I didn’t know how much milk they were drinking until fully separated. Winter was so round. Now I know why he was so round. On top of eating lots of greens he was drinking over a ½ gallon of milk a day. Saber was drinking just as much from her momma.

Besides the goat kids our 38 chicks are growing fast. We took twenty out to one of the chicken tractors in the orchard this week and will take the other eighteen out to the other tractor this coming week. The brood room needs to be cleaned out and set up for another batch of chicks I ordered that arrive the week of June 23rd. We are getting Rhode Island Reds. Maybe finally we’ll have a breed we’ll be happy with for egg production. I’m selling an average of 15 to 20 dozen a week now and have plenty left over for us to eat. I am also selling duck eggs to one customer. I only have the one duck hen but she is a steady layer on average one egg a day.

On other news, our barn is finally getting more siding put on it. We scored big time in finding a person in McCall, Idaho selling used grey siding cheap that almost matches what we already had. It likely saved us $1,800. That was a huge blessing. We hope to see the barn wings go up this summer.

Other projects in May were getting the garden and overflow set up for planting. I now have several hundred seed potatoes planted, yes, we had that many. Whew! Also, we were given another thirty empty mineral tubs that ranchers use for their cattle in the winter. They are big plastic tubs that originally hold 250 pounds of minerals. Once empty they are perfect for raised bed gardening. Which means we needed more aged manure from our friend down in Riggins. I now have those planted with potatoes, beets and carrots.

Lots of long busy days here. I hope you are all well and enjoying spring. Until next month.

Many Blessings,
Joey

The kids. Tovia in front having a stare off with Sasha, Tyomi in my lap and Talia laying next to me in the back.

Tyomi is beautiful and super lovey.

Talia is the smallest of the three but as you can see not any less colorful.

Tovia our new buck.

The chicks are doing great. One in particular is very friendly and curious. We think and hope it will be a hen.

Tyomi the cuddle bug.