Silly Goats and a Hot Air Balloon

We have silly goats!

Annie is a silly goat!

She likes to play hide and seek inside the tarp that we hang on the gate.

River is a silly goat, too!
She likes to get inside the dogloo.
We have dog houses in the stalls because
baby goats need to get inside them to stay warm on
cold spring nights.

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Dear Kaelyn,
We have a lot of animals! We have 8 new chickens that aren't laying eggs yet. We have 4 ducks and 2 ducklings. We have 12 old chickens that we will give away in November. They don't lay eggs anymore so it's time to let them live with someone who only wants chickens to eat bugs. We have 2 turkeys. We have 3 cows, one is a baby. We have one sheep. We have 4 goats.

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Dear Reagan,
No, we don't have baby goats right now. Our baby goats are born in the spring, sometime in March or April.

How many months will you have to wait to see baby goats at Welcome Home Farm?

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Dear Lizzie,
We had 3 people help stack hay this year that weren't from our family. We had 4 people from our family help stack hay. Sometimes we have help from MG, a neighbor girl, on Saturday mornings. Sometimes we hire a different neighbor to clean stalls. Sometimes Quin and Xander come to help, too. They like to feed the animals and fill up the buckets with water.

I do all of the morning and evening chores. I have help from other people once in a while.

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Last Friday I heard some strange noises outside. I stopped milking River and went to see what was over the barn. It was a hot air balloon!

It landed about a block away in a neighbor's backyard. I'm so glad it didn't land in our field or the neighbor's field because the animals would have been so frightened!

Thank you to our friends at The Forge Jewelry Works who were right there when the balloon landed. They were so nice to share their photos and a video with all of us!

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Did you know that mama cows give their baby cows a bath? Echo gives Miss E a bath every morning when I let her back in with Echo for the day.

Does it look like Miss E likes getting clean for the day?

I'll be pressing cider for a lot of people this weekend! What are you doing that is nice for someone else?

New Babies!

This chick is starting to break it's way of of the egg! It's so exciting!

Quin and Xander love to visit new chicks. They also like to give baby animals names. 

Dear Addison,

Chippy was sitting on 5 eggs. Three chicks hatched out of their eggs. Sadly, only 2 chicks lived.

Smily lived for almost a week.
Sometimes baby chicks die and we don't know why.

Chippy and her two chicks are still in the red tub, but I wanted you to see them so I let them run around in the barn for a few minutes.

The white chick is Peepers, and the black chick is Spot because she has a spot on her head.

We have more babies!

As I was walking out to the barn this morning I saw 2 little ducklings and their mama duck. Watch carefully and you can see that the little black one doesn't walk very well.

I put mama and both ducklings in a stall with food, water, and a heater. I hope the little black one gets strong enough to live! 

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Do you see all the feathers in the pictures? There are so many feathers around the farm right now. It's fall and the ducks and chickens are dropping their summer feathers and growing winter feathers. When the chickens and ducks are molting (loosing their summer feathers) they don't lay many eggs. All their energy goes to growing new feathers so they can't lay many eggs.

This chicken looks sick because she is missing so many feathers.
She's not sick, and she wasn't in a fight with another chicken.
She's busy loosing her summer feathers and growing her new winter feathers.

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Dear Hinalei,

We have one cow, her name is Echo. She has a calf named Miss E. We also have a steer named Chuck. How many cows do we have?

Mrs. Hahn is helping Miss E learn to trust everyone!

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Dear Roman,

I get this question a lot! A horse costs a lot of money to feed. They are a lot of fun, and they are a lot of work.

We get milk from the cow and goats, but we only get poo from a horse. We can feed all of our animals (3 cows, 1 sheep, and 4 goats) for the same amount of money that it costs to keep 2 horses. 

Horses are a lot of fun! We're very happy with the animals we have and don't have any plans to get a horse.

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Have you been able to do something nice for someone else every day last week? Did you do nice things for people in school or at home?

Work is Good!

"How much did the hay barn cost?"

That's a good question! 

Our hay barn cost about $2,000 for the wood, nails, and cement to build. We built it ourselves so we didn't have to pay anyone. It was a lot of work for us, but we like hard work. It's nice to be able to look at something we've built ourselves and say, "We did that!"

It was a lot of work to build the hay barn,
and it's a lot of work to unload hay from a trailer and
stack it in the barn.

Our hay barn has enough hay to last until next May for all the animals. In April and May the pastures start to grow enough grass for them to eat. There is still grass for them to eat right now, but not very much so we feed about 1/2 bale of hay a day.

Sometimes hard work is NO FUN! Sometimes the fun is when we're all done and we can say, "Look at what we did!" Sometimes we have fun when we work. I bet you will be surprised that we have people who love to come help us on the farm! One little girl comes every Saturday morning to help with the chores. She fills all the water buckets, and she loves to milk the goats.

We have people who like to help us unload hay, too! We have people who like to come help clean out stalls! That may not sound like much fun to you, but many people like working with animals and working around a farm. They don't want the responsibility of doing it every day, but they love being able to help us, and they really like working hard.

By October we will be feeding at least 1 bale of hay a day because there won't be any new grass growing on the pastures.

Miss E is growing!
She is so sweet, I love going out to the barn.

It's my responsibility to feed her every morning. Sometimes I'm tired and don't want to get out of bed. Responsibilities are good things to have because they make sure we keep doing good things every day.

Miss E is starting to eat hay and graze on the pasture. She was born August 13 so she is one month old. Calves drink milk for about the first month, then they start eating other food like their mama. 

I am also responsible for feeding, watering, and milking every morning. If I don't go out to the barn and do my chores, the animals won't be able to stay healthy and happy. They would be hungry! All the people that like to get milk from Echo and our goats wouldn't be able to get milk, either. That would make them sad. 

Everyone has jobs and responsibilities.

Chippy is our little speckled hen.
Her job is to sit on eggs.
She has been sitting on eggs and keeping them warm since
August 25. They should hatch this weekend.

If a hen doesn't do her job of keeping the eggs warm , they would never hatch. Quin loves Chippy and he checks on her every time he comes for a visit. He's so gentle when he pets her and checks on her. He makes sure she has food and water near her so she doesn't have to go very far from her eggs. Quin wants Chippy to stay happy and healthy while she sits on her eggs.

Chippy will take good care of the chicks once they hatch, but our responsibility is to take good care of her.

This is Side-Kick and Chuck.
Chuck is our steer (boy cow) and Side-Kick is his sheep friend.

Many farm animals need a friend. They aren't happy if they live in a pasture or a barn all by themselves. Chuck was by himself, and he wasn't happy. He needed a herd-mate so my friend sent Side-Kick to be his friend.

Side-Kick and Chuck are not the same at all, but they know how to be friends. I bet you have friends that aren't like you. That's the way it is with animals on a farm, too.

Scout, our dog, and Carson, the neighbor's horse, are good friends and love to play tag along the fence. This video was taken last winter, but it's still fun to see them have a good time playing.

What responsibilities and jobs do you have at home, or in the classroom? What hard work do you do that makes you feel good when you're done?

Don't be afraid of working hard, or of helping other people. You'll get such a good feeling inside when you're done!