Coast and Goats

If there's one thing I can say about life, surely it's that living on a farm is "all it's cracked up to be".  The food and the flea bites could not be fresher, the stars could not be brighter and the air could not be crisper first thing in the morning when I wander over to the duck house to collect the eggs for breakfast.  With June-uary behind us, the weather report says nothing but sun until the end of time and the days are bright & hot.  Yesterday was a day of lots of new poultry for us on the farm!

But first, let's talk about this weekend!  I had a lovely visit on Saturday from Auden, Arty and Victoria.  We went to Hagg Lake, which was just as trashy (literally full of trash, we found cigarette butts floating around) as everyone had warned.  Then we came back to the farm and made not one but TWO pies, one chicken pot pie and one blueberry/rhubarb.  They didn't suck.  Auden made amazing crust (shout out!).


On Sunday we drove out to the coast and hiked to Cape Falcon, which was an easy, pretty hike through an old growth forest which eventually spit us out on a glorious cape jutting into the Pacific Ocean (my true love).  What a beautiful, powerful entity that ocean is!  It will never cease to astonish and amaze me.

Auden showed us his super-secret chill spot

Monday was back to business as usual.  We woke up and there were 12 freshly-hatched baby chicks peeping around the chicken pen!  What a total surprise, we had no idea one of our hens had been sitting on a nest.  We also got 11 new ducks this weekend from a student of Rene's, which brings our total up to 20!  Adam and I moved the duck-zone to a new part of the farm on Friday and they went from laying 2 eggs a day back to the desired 10 upon being moved to a fresh area.  This change goes to show the importance of quality of life for livestock!  That shit matters.

That being said, Rene and I got to work on Monday afternoon building (what Anne dubbed) a cabana for the ducks to be shaded from the oppressive Oregon sunshine (ha!).  But seriously, it's hot out there, and so we got to work building something.  I am used to using fancy power tools, but here on the farm you've got two saw horses, a pull-saw and a hammer 'n nails to work with!  So we did and the extra effort paid off when I walked by the ducks on Tuesday afternoon, they were all huddled under their beautiful new cabana!  Pictures to follow soon.

This evening I visited our neighbors down the road who raise dairy goats.  Lis gave me a lesson in milking and I believe I will be helping her on a weekly basis from now on!  The goats are friendly and cute and full of personality.  Milking them is fun too.

I got to milk the white one on the left in the above picture, her name is Alegra and she's a beginner goat, which means she has large teets and doesn't mind being milked too much.