The well is working and other farm news.

We have well water!! The third pump we have tried is working and the cistern is filling right now. It will take several hours, but today we don't have to haul water. That is something major.

  

The boys finally get their pool.

pump filling the cistern

I have been spreading the manure and compost out in our garden spot. Now we will have the water to get the garden going. I was beginning to worry. The hemp will go in the ground very soon. In this area, the last possible freeze date was today, June 10. Crazy late.

The garden

Fairy Dust's baby goats are adorable. They jump on and off of Taylor, our female black llama, when she is laying down. At first she spit at them, but now she tolerates it. I have been trying to get a photo, but I keep missing it.

The bugs are horrible out here. Nats or something with attitude. They are eating Oreo the goat up. She's the only one though. We bought some bug spray that is environmentally friendly and have been hosing her down. She looks pretty bad. With her scratching, she has rubbed patches of hair off all over. Too bad, I was hoping to sell her and Cookie, her daughter. With the two new does, we have decided to keep them and re-home Oreo and Cookie because they have horns. The horns are just too much to deal with. I remember right after Oreo had her buckling, Coco, I was trying to examine him and she kept getting between us. She horned me, right in the eye, with her one horn. I thought for sure I'd have a black eye. (How to explain that? It was my goat...) I put frozen peas on my eye for a while and had some puffiness, but that was it. Now, I avoid Oreo and her horn. Our goat herd should be horn free. One of the baby girls may be growing horns, so we will have to disbudd her, but the other looks to be polled for sure.

Harley the pig had developed a major aggressive attitude last week. We could not figure out what was up with him, but he was mean, charging at us whenever we went near. I did some research and found out it's a dominance thing. So, we growled back at him and began pushing at him with the trashcan lid, which also serves as a shield. I guess in pig language, you have to shove them sideways to gain the upper hand. Richard got Harley's respect. He had to go in the pig pen to change the water and had it out with Harley with the metal trash can lid. (No one got hurt. I was worried about Richard being eaten by the pig.) The next day Harley's attitude was mostly gone. But, I listed Harley on Craigslist anyway. He scares me. And, after all we did to find his wandering pig self when he escaped. Irritating. Chloe may have been feeling sick or something, which may have started Harley's attitude. I think she may have been in heat. She seems better now and he's acting nicer. In any case, no one seems to want Harley so we are trying to figure out how to deal with him next. I think we need to separate him from Chloe, but I'd love to get them into the garden space so they could till it up. We are trying to build a pallet fence around the garden area, hoping to run electric wire along the bottom to keep the pigs in. They hate the electric wire, we have discovered. We need more pallets and have to find a local source.

Harley, looking all sweet

Building is going slowly, with the 1-2 hours of water hauling daily. I finally got the foundation done on the office. The gravel trench and first course of gravel E-bags are finished. I put gravel on the floor too, hoping it would be better than the sand. I've been thinking of a patterned concrete floor. Richard got the plywood on the roof and is working on the metal. He got the batteries installed, the invertor going, and has been using the van as an office for the past few days. He is looking for solar panels now to recharge the batteries, but has installed a plug to hook the generator up to recharge the batteries. The straw walls are going in soon, and the door needs to be framed in. I was hoping to find a small window to put on the west end, opposite the door to create a cross draft in the hot weather.

Battery box and inverter

Earth bag foundation is done.

I have been thinking of where we are going to put our first small house. This is the house we will overwinter in before we begin to build our bigger house. We have been looking at round Earth bag studio houses with a loft for sleeping. Anything warm that get's us out of the weather will be perfect.

All of our houseplants are living in the big horse trailer with shade cloth. They are looking pretty sad, but the trailer helps protect them from wind and sun. I don't have anyplace else for them now.

Horse trailer greenhouse

We had a storm this week that rocked the camper back and forth. It felt like we were on a boat. I wonder if the wind could ever tip it over? I heard a story from a man at the Artesian well about his little camper being rolled, over and over in a wind storm. The camper ended up at the other end of his property. Scary. We have to get a stable structure built.

So much to do.

This is the Artesain well where we got our water for the past week and a half.