Bluemoon

maaaaaaaaaaaah

We are now living on our first ever goat farm! Here at Bluemoon there are also two pigs (fairly young still) and a large garden and plenty of property, along with some wonderful people and house-pets. We arrived here (here being 20 min outside Antigonish) last Friday night and will be staying until about the 16th/17th of November.

Home sweet home for the next little while is a pioneer cabin built by our hosts and a score of wwoofers. It is a one room cabin with a set of handmade bunk beds, some desks and chairs, a shelf unit, and a toilet and sink in the corner. The inside has been decorated and is full of charming objects that really make it feel like home (unicorn touch lamp, Korean figurines, tea cups, rugs, etc). We'll post some interior pictures soon!

The goats live next door to our cabin in a small barn that has been very well adapted for goat needs...namely, their love of hopping and climbing. We wake up every morning to the sound of the goats trotting up and down the ramps to get out the window. Their pasture is large and full of things for them to climb on, but they often escape the enclosure out of pure curiosity. They generally travel around as a quintet and come check on what we're doing throughout the day.

Marney the goat, taking her turn on the milking table.

The first thing we did when we arrived here was help Betty (our host) with evening chores. This includes feeding and milking the goats, and feeding the pigs. The goats get a small helping of feed and their two mangers get filled with hay. The pigs get food scraps (they eat as well as we do!) along with some feed mixed with fresh goats' milk.

the death-ray stare.

Sidebar: we weren't expecting the goats to be as big as they are. The pictures make them look smaller than they appear when they are right next to you. They're bigger than Shetland ponies. When they walk in the barn, it sounds as big as a person coming up behind you. And they're freaky. Sideways pupils? Why?

Our first big job here was to muck out the goat barn.  Betty warned us that the smell might be overpowering, but goat poop's got nothing on the chicken poop that Emily is already quite used to.We only gagged a few times. But there was just so much of it... The worst part was that when we would take a load of poop off the floor and go dump it in the compost piles, by the time we got back the goats would have returned to investigate and left us little fresh poops on the floor. Argh.

Poop removed!

The floor looked pretty great when we were done though. We sprinkled lime for odor and moisture control and then covered it with a layer of wood shavings.

The goats seemed to approve.

It's gon' getcha.

But they're still freaky.

All of the goats here are female, and all of them are pregnant, due to give birth in late January/early February. Except this one in the picture to the left. She was supposed to be preggers but apparently buck-o didn't do his job properly...this picture was taken from the cab of the truck as we drove her back to the neighbour's farm for a little more quality time with the bf.

Other than goats, our efforts have mostly been focused on getting the firewood prepared for the winter. Betty has many large piles of split wood that need to be collected and stacked properly inside a lean-to for winter storage. It's a job we have discovered that we really enjoy - there is a Zen-like state that is possible to achieve as you put a woodpile together. Very relaxing.

It's a work in progress.











I'll end with some pictures of the house-pets here - we always love meeting new house-pets :)

This is Two-toes, guess how he got his name.

Zeta the rottweiler and Bam-bam the chihuahua/dachshund cross, fighting over Moragh,