A little bit of cordwood; a lot of farm

We are finally laying up cordwood for the first time this summer. We still need to fill in the four panels that surround the fifth "bay" of the house's timber frame structure. However our decision to create a farm where there was none---when Sunnywood the cordwood house project became Sunnywood the fully diversified farmstead project---means that the demands of the farm keep getting in the way.


Joe has been doing his best to keep us on track, reminding me that we will once again face a frost deadline sometime in September (even though we could have built through October last year, had we but known). He built a woodshed, not because we have all of our firewood ready to stack under cover, but because we needed a place to put all of the tools and supplies that had taken over the space in which we need to build the remaining cordwood walls. After moving all tools and supplies to the new woodshed, he mixed up new barrels of lime putty, screened buckets of sand, mixed wood shavings and lime for insulation, and dug out the gloves and pointing tools.

But the farm keeps demanding attention. If we don't keep up with insect scouting, the Colorado potato beetle larvae and Japanese beetles will complete defoliate our potatoes and berry plantings. Weeds must be constantly beaten back, crops harvested and preserved, spent crops removed and succession crops planted. The chickens are reaching laying age, so the coop required nest boxes. Sheep and goat grazing management required the fencing of additional pasture areas and construction of gates, pasture shelters, and mineral feeders. The opportunity to acquire four new Shetland lambs at a very good price HAD to be seized, and the new lambs transported and acclimated. Which required more fencing, gates, and moving of animals. Animals still need daily tending; goats must be milked.

We had also been watching our very pregnant doe, Casual Elegance or "El." get bigger and bigger, and preparing for our first Sunnywood Farm birth. I thought she was due on July 4, and prepared a kidding pen in the barn on June 30. The 4th came and went with no signs of El going into labor. I reread the book sections on kidding and put together a kidding kit with towels, iodine for dipping umbilical cords (she could have up to 5 kids!), Nutridrench, headlamps for night birth (we have no electricity in the barn), and bottles and nipples, in the event that El would or could not feed them all.

Another week passed. I called El's prior owner, Suzanne of Second Wind Farm.
"The 4th? No, she's due on the 14th," said Suzanne.
The 14th came and went. I called Suzanne again. "Well, she could have been bred on her next cycle, which would put her out three more weeks." I began taking El out on pasture again with the other goats.

Finally, on the 24th during evening milking, we noticed El lying down and breathing loudly and rhythmically. So after some hastily eaten dinner, we went back to the barn with the kidding kit and camped out. Sarah arrived for a visit just in time to join us. As El began grunting and vocalizing, I scrubbed up, not because I knew what to do but because, as Sarah said, I have the smallest hands.

We watched as El began to push out what appeared in the meager light to be a giant eyeball. This sack looked nothing like the drawings in the books of possible positions of heads, bodies, and feet. Eventually and without too much trouble, El expelled a large, healthy kid, positioned perfectly with head resting on forelegs. She immediately began to lick it clean.

I grabbed it and began wiping the mucous away from its nose and face so it could breathe, even though El was already doing an excellent job of this. The kid found El's teat and took a first drink within about ten minutes.

We settled into chairs in the dark to wait for El to birth the rest of her kids. It finally hit us a couple of hours later, after she expelled and consumed the afterbirth, that there weren't going to be any more. The first birth in our dairy herd had resulted in no hoped-for future milkers. Just one buckling.

Now, we've read all the books that caution you to have a plan for livestock offspring before they arrive. For instance, if you are breeding for a milking herd, any bucklings not destined to be herd sires might best be drowned at birth. That's all well and good until you are presented with a newborn kid. I mean, it's a BABY, for goodness' sake. All of a sudden you're worried about whether it's getting enough colostrum.

I was on the phone to Suzanne early the next morning. "He doesn't seem to be suckling enough. And I couldn't get him to take a bottle." Suzanne and Doug kindly offered to visit and see whether all was well.

"He's HUGE!" they exclaimed when they arrived a couple of hours later. It didn't take them long to determine that his tummy was extremely full, and the reason he wouldn't take a bottle is because he wasn't hungry. "He's a big, healthy, strapping boy!" Suzanne confirmed. What're you gonna do with him?"

Joe and I looked at each other and shrugged. "I guess we'll grow him up to a year and then eat him."

Suzanne looked at us. "You're not going to eat the first kid born on your farm." It wasn't a question, a challenge, or advice. Just a statement of fact. "You could wether him and keep him as a companion for your herd sire." Which is probably what will happen. And as the first animal of any kind born on our farm, he has been dubbed "Uno."

   

The amazing thing about baby animals is how much less helpless they are at birth than humans. Uno was standing within 15 minutes of birth, and spronking about within 24 hours.

 

Uno, one hour after birth. El is a very good mother.

Uno, 12 hours old.

Okay, enough. Back to laying up cordwood!