Hello everyone,

The year is just about over and winter has come to our neighborhood. We’ve had the usual getting ready for winter work but also some projects finished. The duck house is completed as well as an enclosed covered yard. The ducks have been in their new house for almost a month and were joined by three new friends. We received from a friend three Muscovy hens to be companions to our Muscovy drake. Donald was very pleased to meet them and quickly made his acquaintance. Of the three hens, one is black and the other two are lavender Muscovy. It will be interesting to see what combos we get for ducklings come spring.

The first week of November we received our Khaki Campbell duckling order from Sherlock Acres in Pennsylvania. All ducklings made it safe and sound though we did lose one about six hours later for some strange reason, likely due to stress. They had sent us a free one with the order so at least we still had the fourteen I originally ordered. I had no idea ducklings grew so fast. Within one week they doubled in size and now they are four times larger than a month ago. At this rate they’ll be big enough to join the adult ducks in the duck house in maybe another month. They are also much messier than chickens. However, come spring we should have lots of duck eggs to sell as well as eat. I made a zucchini quiche late this fall with duck eggs, fresh goat cheese and garden-fresh zucchini and garlic that was probably the richest flavored quiche I have ever had. It was so very good. Duck eggs have extremely large yolks and very little egg whites and make for wonderful baked goods. Khaki Campbell ducks are supposed to be a top egg laying duck and can lay 250 – 300 eggs a year. We also plan to hatch out a bunch next year to sell.

The exciting news for this month is that Mark found a job finally here in Idaho. He has to travel a bit to work but so far, he is enjoying it. It is very physical labor but the scenery is beautiful. He is working on a ranch in Pollock, Idaho. That is about an hour and a half drive south of us. He is currently repairing fences. The ranch is owned by an Australian who only comes to the ranch maybe twice a year. It’s a special ranch for shooting groups such as military and police force. The owner of the ranch developed a high-powered rifle scope that ranges from $1000 to over $3000. If curious what scopes these are check out Nighforce Optics.

When Mark is home, he’s been busy on small projects like building new hay troughs for the goats so that they don’t waste so much hay. My goats are spoiled. Any hay that falls on the floor they tend to ignore. We’ve been trying to find ways to contain the hay better. Earlier this fall we won an auction for a metal hay trough that has a scooped bottom for any loose hay to fall into. Thus, the goats can eat it out of the scoop instead of it falling to the ground to be stepped, peed or pooed on. It works really well. We have three stalls so we needed two more hay troughs like this. Mark built one out of lumber he milled and a cut out piece of cattle panel. We put this one into the boy’s stall and so far, it is working really well. It has cut down on the waste by at least half. He has one more to build for the kid stall.

I finally had time to get back to one of my passions. All summer I’ve been dreaming about beading some new designs I saw in a couple of Potomac Bead tutorials. With all the new beads I purchased in September, it just inspired me even further. I finally had time this month to work on those new designs and I am pleasantly pleased. One is rather Victorian in style with a crystal teardrop as an accent. More to come soon.

Tovia is no longer considered a buckling. We believe he did his service with four of our girls. Our two smallest girls won’t be serviced until next winter as they are still too small but we did go ahead and have Saber, our doeling who was born March 2nd, be serviced. If all are pregnant, they should be expecting around the middle of April. We could potentially double the size of our herd if all four should each have twins. I doubt that would happen though. Saanens commonly have only one with maybe a 25% chance of two and very rarely more than two unlike other goat breeds that easily have three or more. We will be selling some kids next year. We are particularly excited to see what our black and white momma’s have from Tovia’s brown and white genes. We’ll have some very pretty kids.

Have a great rest of the year. Stay safe and you’ll hear from me in the new year.

Many Blessings,

Joey

Hello everyone,

Hopefully you are all doing well this fall. Mark and I have been busy getting ready for the snow. The harvest is in, the weed fabric has been pulled up along with the drip lines for the garden and orchard. The chickens have been getting a treat by being let out into the garden area to eat what greens are left, weeds mostly. We have been stacking fire wood for my mom’s fireplace. It has been pretty chilly here with frosts just about every night. We also received our first snowfall though it only stayed for 24 hours.

Our new project in October was getting a duck house built next to our pond. Mark has been busy milling lumber for it and Robin, our contractor, has been building it. We call it the duck chalet. It’s so nice that it’s even insulated and has a concrete floor. Well, two inches of concrete over the wood for easier cleaning. It is up off the ground to allow air ventilation and to keep the dampness out. It is 12 feet by 12 feet total but only 8 by 12 is the duck room and the other part is the feed room. Our Muscovy drake does not like to be around chickens so it is very nice to finally get him out of the old chicken house where my mom’s Red Star chickens are kept and put him into his own house along with Daisy our Pekin hen duck. Soon we will be getting three Muscovy hens from a friend of ours to keep our two from getting lonely.

I finished selling produce down in White Bird for the year but still have some customers wanting eggs through the winter. My egg production will be down for a bit though as I sold 23 laying hens to make room for 54 pullets, young hens, that should start laying soon. Twenty-six of those hens are Rhode Island Reds. If the Rhode Island Reds are as good as everyone says they are then we will eventually change over to that breed completely. In the meantime, we still have Black Australorps, a few Buff Orpington and seven Americana. Of the twenty-three I sold, thirteen were the Barred Rocks and ten were Black Australorp we purchased last year. I was not overly pleased with the Barred Rocks in general. Their eggs were small to medium and they liked to peck you when trying to reach in to get the eggs from under them. The Australorp are a nicer chicken and lay larger eggs. The ten I sold had gone broody on me during the summer. Everything I’ve read told me this variety of chicken rarely goes broody. Well, out of twenty-seven hens, ten of them went broody. Not good when you want egg production. For the most part I was getting an average of fifteen dozen eggs a week during the summer and easily sold every dozen. My hope for next summer is to have twice that amount. Between what we have in the barn and my mom’s chickens in the old chicken house we will have 90 laying hens once the young ones start laying. That’s up from about fifty-seven layers this summer.

The hen house is quieter right now. We butchered ten roosters. One rooster was last year’s bird and the other nine were hatched out in April. Our new roosters are Rhode Island Reds that we purchased in June with the twenty-six Rhode Island Red hens. Our neighbor had a chicken plucker we borrowed to help in processing our roosters. Then I gutted and saved the liver, gizzard and heart for our cats and dog. We cooked all ten roosters in two very large Oster Roaster ovens overnight and then I picked all the meat off for freezing. Our cats and dog got an excellent week of chicken skins and innards. Today I am making chicken curry for lunch. Yumm!

The goats are doing great. The little girls are growing up so fast. We’ve been debating on if we should breed Saber who was born March 1st. We think she is at least 80 pounds now. The other two girls who were born beginning of May are still too small and won’t be bred until next winter. The three does I am still currently milking have finally gone into heat but we will wait until late November when they go into heat again to breed. Saanen goats go into heat in the fall and winter months every 21 days for a three-day cycle. The signs of being in heat is a lot of tail wagging, stretching their neck like a preening model and being very talkative. They are funny to watch especially when teasing the buck from the other side of the fence. We took the girls for a walk one day so they could forage and had a hard time with one of them that was in heat. She didn’t want to leave the barn where the buck was. After the girls are serviced (pregnant), they have a five-month gestation so the plan is to have the kids in April next year when our snows should be mostly gone. Our first kid this year had been born in February and it was still very cold wintery weather. I’d prefer to have some green grass showing this round. We also hope that our little buckling Tovia will be big enough to do his job, especially with our largest girl. We estimate our largest girl to be around a hundred and twenty pounds. Tovia is probably half that size. He was born end of April. I suspect next year he will be double in size. So will see how the breeding goes in a few weeks. At least he hasn’t been aggressive to either Mark or I even though he’s showing signs of being in rut. He’s very stinky. We are very pleased with his personality.

That’s the latest happenings here. I hope you all have a great November and stay safe during the changing of seasons.

Many Blessings,
Joey

10/4/2025

Hello everyone,

You haven’t heard from me in a while but I’m ok. It’s just been a very full summer of picking produce, taking care of chickens and chasing goats. I have to say this has been the busiest summer yet and a lot of it is thanks to the goats and the extra batch of chicks we raised. This year we had the three bottle fed kids that we kept separate from the larger goats and we are still bottle feeding them through to the end of this month. Our buckling Tovia, has to be large enough to do his job hopefully mid to late November with our current three does. The three doelings will grow another year before we breed them. Our buckling Tovia and our wether Winter, moved in together in August. I put the three doelings together at the same time. For the most part the doelings got along pretty well but Winter and Tovia had to do some head butting until they established the male dominancy ladder. Tovia is very gentle and docile plus two months younger than Winter so he follows Winter around wherever he goes. We are very pleased with how gentle and sweet our little buckling is. He is completely different from how Vincent behaved. Vinny was made into goat burger back in May after he knocked Mark down with his aggressiveness.

To add to the busyness, I sold produce and eggs twice a week. One day I set up in White Bird, Idaho and another day in Kooskia, Idaho. White Bird was averaging over $200 for the day and Kooskia between $100 to $200. Kooskia farmers market had a lot of produce venders so it was more competitive. Plus, Kooskia is an hour and a half drive away from home. I recently came into contact with the new owners of Hoots Shop & Stay which is a gas station/convenience store/restaurant located off of Hwy 95 outside of White Bird, Idaho. They approached me at my little stand this past Sunday in White Bird and offered me a spot on their property to sell produce. I am very much looking forward to this opportunity and believe I will start setting up there next year on the days I would normally go to Kooskia. Thus, allowing me to not have to travel as far but hopefully gain a wider network of customers.

My strawberries and eggs have made up of about half my earnings this summer and I will end the year with about double what I made last year (over $5,000 total this year). It is still not enough to live off of but it is a good feeling to see our little business grow. Mark’s earnings from working in Alaska for the summer have helped pay for the construction work on the barn this summer and the new duck house being built this month. We currently have two ducks, Muscovy drake and a Pekin hen and once the duck house is finished will be acquiring three more Muscovy hens from a friend of ours in Riggins, Idaho. We also plan to order about a dozen Khaki Campbell ducklings this fall that will start laying in the spring. Khaki Campbell ducks are supposed to be one of the best laying ducks out there. They are made up of three different breeds of ducks, the mallard, Rouen and Runner duck. They average 250-300 eggs a year. We currently have one customer who prefers our Pekin duck eggs over the chicken eggs. Our Pekin only lays during the spring and summer though and now that the weather has turned cold, she has stopped laying.

In July we acquired another farm critter. A neighbor gave us four coturnix quail, three hens and one male. They lay very tiny eggs that are jam packed with more nutrients than a chicken egg. I find the eggs much milder in flavor than a chicken egg. Mark has always wanted to try coturnix quail. They are very quiet, a little flighty but easy to take care of which was a good thing for my busy schedule.

Our contractor Robin started work on the wings of the barn in August. Both sides are now complete. The chicken side has a fenced section now for chicks to come outside of the brood room and yet be safe from the adult chickens. The goat side is sectioned up into three sections. This allows each inside stall to have a little atrium for the goats to go outside. This is especially nice in the hot summer where I can leave the door open and they can sleep outside and yet still be enclosed for safe keeping from predators. The barnyard is sectioned up into two sections now. One small section for the boys to roam in and a larger section for the girls. During the spring and summer, I still take them out to electric fenced in pastures for them to graze. Once it gets dry here though the electric doesn’t zap as much so sometimes the goats don’t want to stay put and that’s where it is nice to have a tall heavy duty wire fence for the barnyard for my misbehaving goats. Just when you think you have everything figured out, the goats prove you wrong. I once watched Tovia literally climb the five-foot barnyard fence and go over into the chicken yard to eat the maple tree and wild rose bushes. Fortunately, the maple tree is tall enough and him short enough that he couldn’t do much damage but it was quite the show seeing him climb that fence. Mark stabilized the fence and made it harder for Tovia to climb it. Tovia has tested it but so far hasn’t been able to climb it again.

Mark did make it home from Alaska on September 25th. He was put to work right away fixing a goat stall door that our largest girl knocked down that same day. I guess that was her way of welcoming Mark home. She is one strong goat!

Each night feels colder than the last one. We haven’t gotten our first frost yet but I know it will be any day now. I still have tomatoes and melons ripening and lemon cucumbers galore. Even the strawberries continue to produce. We have been digging potatoes and carrots. It has been a very blessed summer. (Since I wrote this, we did finally get our first frost so now it is clean up time on the garden.)

One last wonderful thing that happened this summer, I met another fellow bead artist. I was set up at the Kooskia farmers market and this very nice older lady came by. She was wearing a gorgeous beaded necklace that I found very elegant. It was like a string of pearls but with beads. She saw my beaded art and mentioned that she was getting out of beading and wanted to find someone who would appreciate what she had. I was enthralled. Several weeks later I met with her to discuss beads. I discovered that she was 90 years old and had been beading since 2007. She had so many beads of so many designs, shapes and sizes. My bead stash looked so small compared to hers. I saw some of her work and decided that she had more talent in her little pinky than I had in all of my fingers. She also paints, knits, does flower arrangements and a whole lot more. What a neat person. I filled up Mark’s truck with a bookcase and many boxes worth of beads, findings, gemstones, pearls, etc. She asked for $1000 and I estimate there was easily $3000+ worth now at my fingertips. I am so excited to start trying some new things this winter. I’ve already got some ideas to play with.

May this find you all well and that you too have had a blessed summer. Take care everyone.

Many Blessings,

Joey

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.