Four legged friends

So Joni's been living with us for a couple of weeks now.  So far, so good!  She spent the 1st week or so tethered near a big grass pile.  But I was worried that she was a little lonely there.  I know I was anthropomorphizing, but I just felt like she needed a few friends.

So on a rainy day, GB, Luka and I went down to retrieve the goats from the lower property.  

Luka did a fine job leading them up the hill

GB and I took Joni on a walk to meet her new friends.  Sometimes the walk is a bit of a struggle.  I think GB had taken over for me at this point.  There's just so much yummy food to eat along the way...

 Taking a little snack break while Luka rides up and down the driveway.

 Meeting the goats!

 Hmmm.... Joni seems a lot more interested in me than in the goats.  Loki, however is VERY curious.

 Back to the tether for one more night!  Ducks come out of their enclosure to see the large friend.

We did end up moving Joni in with the goats the next morning.  They've been together there for about a week so far.  At first, Loki maintained his status as the alpha male.  But after a few days it seemed like Joni's got the upper hand.  She stomps at the goats when she doesn't want them around and they scatter!  I suppose it's smart to respond to an animal that's several times larger than you!

Joni doesn't seem all that interested in the goats.   She's there with them, but unless they're in her way, she doesn't pay them too much attention.   Perhaps she likes other donkeys more?  Or maybe she's just a people donkey!

In any case, it's nice to see Joni in the pasture where she can run!  Tethered, she can't really exercise her legs.  Seeing her running is so nice!

Mark and Kassie just sent us some pictures of our dear donkey, dressed in a saddle, with ribbons in her hair.  Isn't she so pretty?!?

 

Typical goat play-- up in the air, butting heads

Joni

Well, we bit the bullet and adopted a donkey.
Since I last posted, GB and Luka spent the day visiting a couple of donkey places in Puna.  They talked about bringing home a pregnant female that they had liked.  We decided to visit another donkey rescue operation in Waimea.

So the day that Ra'am left for UCSB (sniff sniff), GB, Noam and I loaded in to our car and headed up to Waimea to meet Casey and Mark and all of their donkeys.  They had just received a lot of 15 or so wild ones.  They had 2 donkeys that they were using to train the others-- Super Boy (who Noam was smitten with) and Eeyorie.  They kept mentioning Eeyorie's Best Friend as a possible donkey for us, since she was a fairly solitary donkey and seemed pretty mellow.
They invited us to return in 2 weeks after they had had some time to work with the new arrivals.

We returned yesterday and soon after our arrival, they offered Eeyorie to us.  She was the most friendly of the donkeys-- she came right up to us at the fence.  And she is just super mellow.  Even though they are both really attached to her, they felt as though she would be a good fit for us-- easy going and very comfortable with people-- especially with the kids.
AND... they offered to bring her this am!

Like all the farms involved in the donkey rescue, they are just inundated with animals.  Super Boy has taken over training of the other donkeys because he's much faster than Eeyorie.  So  that was our gain.

We've changed her name to Joni (Mitchell).  The name suits her.

Joni, just arrived at our house, in the trailer

checking out the foliage.  See the pretty teal ribbon on her tail?

Casey shows Luka how to touch Joni

 Joni hasn't met the goats yet.  The pasture we would like to put them in together is recovering, so in the meanwhile, Joni is tied to a stake in the yard next to a hugely overgrown thing of grass.  They assure us that she could stay there for several weeks without problem.  If we need to move her, it will be easy.  She's DOCILE!

On another note, GB and Luka set up the electric fence at the tilapia pond for the ducks.  The fence is useless-- they can get right thru the holes (elecrified or not), but they are so thrilled with the large body of water, that they stay.  So far so good!

Burros?

There's been a lot of publicity of late regarding wild donkeys/ burros near Waikoloa. GB read that 100 of them were being airlifted to California, and called to find out about adopting one (or two). Apparently they dislike dogs and would be good protectors for the goats.

He and Luka are going to check them out this week. We may end up with a baby (who would require 3 months of bucket feeding!). OR... there's a pregnant mama who needs a home. We wouldn't have to keep her baby (due in 4-5 mos, they guess), or we could keep it.

It's a new adventure!

plant and woe

We've started some end of summer planting here. I love planting new stuff. Even though it's a lot of work, the potential for new food/ trees is awesome!

Today we planted this bamboo (blue bamboo?) that Stardove and River gave me for my last birthday.

Last week I planted these two figs here near the house. They're hard to see, but this gives me a record.
I also weeded the pineapples and mulched them heavily. I want to see how long the weeding/ mulching lasts
One of a few pineapples we got this year. I bet next year is a bonanza!
All was peachy keen. GB and I were working together, and we had the bamboo in the ground already. The backstory is that since we got the plants (these including some atroviolacea bamboo), we've been walking the property trying to figure out where to plant what. Since the atroviolcea and mango are large, it's important we make good decisions about where to put them!

So we chose a spot for the mango near the firepit. I thought that maybe the phone line went thru that spot, but GB assured me that the phone line was in with all of the other utilities and we'd be fine. Famous last words.

To make the digging "easier", GB got on the tractor. One swipe with the bucket and he was leaning over looking at something.... the severed phone/ DSL cable. shoots!

Luckily, Gerard, the electrician was a mere 5 minutes away and came and made a temporary fix. He's got to order the part to splice it permanently. No teenagers were home to scream about the lack of internet. Gerard saved the day.

And we got the fairchild mango planted--- Well above the shed and any utilities ;)

Pippi

Before talking about Pippi, I wanted to give a duck update! We went to the mainland and left 5 wee ducklings. 2 weeks later they are full on DUCKS!

We let them out of their cage and within 24 hours we had lost one (to an 'io, I think). We put them back in for another 5 days and they were big enough and now are growing fine! With a larger area, they aren't quite as smelly!

But the big news is Pippi. I have been really angry with her, because right before our trip I found her breaking open one of the chicken eggs. Previous to that, I had been thinking about getting her a boyfriend....

When we got home, though I found her sitting in this planter box. Hmmmmmm.
When I heard her fly away and start cackling, I went down to the box and found these!

Without a male, we're obviously not going to get any babies, so we brought in 3 of the eggs to taste. GB read they are like chicken eggs. It's hard to see how large they are in the above photo.... but they are, and the shell feels a lot stronger/ thicker than a chicken egg.

Cracked in a bowl:

For comparison, 2 large chicken eggs in the same bowl

Verdict? Peacock eggs are delicious!

And Pippi is still sitting on the 4th egg (and we haven't seen anymore since). She is on her nest all day (even when we have a party) and gets up once a day to eat and do her business. When she does get up, she makes a lot of noise to scare away predators. I'm a little sad for her that her eggs won't hatch, but since I don't need any more peacock poop, I'm happy I never got her a boyfriend.

More grass!

The area behind the house, in between the house and garden bed has just been a total eyesore since we moved in. Because of the earthworks and rain and slope, there was just NO topsoil there, and all we had was a bunch of crappy clay. We've tried so many things to help grow some soil and grass there, but nothing worked..... until now!

The Biermans, once again, came thru as our trusty grass suppliers. Murphy and Harry spent the summer digging up their front yard, piling the grass for our taking.

Ra'am loaded severl truckloads full of grass and brought them over here for our extensive grass planting adventure!

GB took the tractor and scraped a good area for us to start.

Here's one of the many loads Ra'am brought

Despite the fact that the grass was already cut up, it was still a ton of hard work! Loading up, UNloading, and then planting was hard! Each clump of grass is a different thickness, so there was shoveling, raking, filling, and puzzle putting together skills used.

Here's a huge pile ready to be planted

Noam working hard! This picture shows the area almost done

We also planted in the cinders directly behind the house as well as down below the pool in a "problem" area. So far the grass is looking good (one month later) and I can't wait to see it all filled in!

PIGGIES!

The pigs came back this year with a vengeance. We started seeing a few here and there, and then it seemed like every time we drove down the driveway, we'd see bands of them, eating mango or just tearing up earth. We called Barry back, who set snares all over. In total, in a couple of months, he's caught maybe 10 pigs. I'd like to say I feel badly about it, but after learning that they are able to reproduce near 4ish months and then can bear 3 litters in a year, I am not worried at all for their population, plus they're all getting eaten.

On a particularly pug-full day, we caught two here on our property. Barry already had one in his truck from another area, and was on his way to get a different one.

Here he's hog tying the larger of the two caught here (after lassoing it)

Here are the two from our property

Duckies need a home

So we kept the ducks inside for all of 24 hours. We were totally unprepared for their copious amounts of smelly poop. We've had chickens for years, but ducks are very different and way smellier!

The lady we got them from said we could just put some hardware cloth in a circle and then stick a board on top, to protect the ducklings from predators. GB went up to the shed to grab those items, and came back with this fort.

As you can see, Pippi is very interested in the new fowl.

We set up a plastic drawer full of water for them. They jumped right in and went for a swim! (10 minutes later the water was brown)

Of course, this temporary shelter has to be moved every day or so. The ground underneath gets fowl very very quickly!

Duckies!

It's always been part of the plan to get ducks and put them up with the tilapia pond. This summer our chickens have been pretty poor layers. I don't know if they're getting too old, or what, but when you're feeding 9 birds and getting one or no eggs per day...

GB found some duckies on craigslist and they were delivered soon thereafter, at 2 weeks old. They are indian runner, campbell khaki and something else mix.

Welcome to our family, little duckies!

What's New

Since our last post about the goats going on a walkabout, we've had more goat issues.

They went missing from another pasture while GB was out of town. I was alone with Luka and was so worried because I had NO idea where they had gone. I started calling around to see who could help me with Luka and/or searching for the goats.

I had just dropped Luka off with Sue and was awaiting Jake to come searching thru the gulches, when my phone rang. Our neighbor, D had received a call that am from his neighbor asking if he knew of anyone missing goats. Our neighbor D had called GB's cell phone, but GB was out of the country. Fortunately his daughter was in a play with Noam and when he dropped her off for rehearsal, Noam gave him my number. The goats were safe and sound at a nursery on the scenic route!

They had followed a bicyclist for a mile before he worried they'd go to the highway, so he brought them to the nursery.

Luckily they had a place to corral them! They gave them some water and ti leaves. Jake and I came and got the naughty kids.

In the meanwhile, Noam and I set out to fix the upper pasture where they first escaped from. I figured we'd find a couple of places where they could get under the fence. What we found was 3 trees that had fallen and messed the fence up. It's a much larger job than Noam and I can fix.

This is the largest tree. You can see below that the fence post is piercing it

This is the 2nd tree. It's a MESS in there. There are all kinds of branches on top of the fence.

Needless to say, we can't put the wily goats in this pasture until the trees are chainsawed and the fence is fixed.

Naughty Kids and What's new?

I was only kind of shocked to look at the blog and see that I haven't updated it since November! It's not that there's not been land work/ progress, but more that we've been in a maintenance mood rather than a new project mode.

Naughty Kids:

We moved the goats to the upper pasture a few weeks ago. It was an easy move with good goat compliance. The goats happily munched away up there.

I went up a few days later to worm them. And they were nowhere to be found...

Now I haven't written yet here that in November we lost another goat. Tamarind was killed by a dog (neighbor's :( ). The killing took place in the upper pasture and after he died, we quickly moved the remaining goats away... and they hadn't been back in there since.

So when I called and no one came running I thought the worst. But it was hard for me to believe that ALL 4 goats would get killed or drop dead since I had seen them the day before. I walked the whole fenced in area (not easy there!) calling. Nada.

I did see one spot in the fence that they could possibly have gotten under. It was tight, but it was worth checking out.

I walked back down to the house feeling dejected and like we had lost all 4 of our precious goaties. The most accessible car to go driving and look for them was our little Honda Civic-- our other 2 cars are big. but this one was there.

So I set out on the next driveway over to look for them . And lo and behold, there they were, standing on the road like nothing was amiss.

I called the house to get Ra'am to drive over with the truck. But I tried to capture them anyways. And I got all 4 goats into the car (by picking each one up-- thank goodness we have dwarfs!).

You can see in the above picture that Floyd had a little poop incident in the car (floor on paper).
Loki and Neo "enjoy" the ride. That's Gandhi's tail there and the way top of Floyd's head.

Needless to say, they have NOT been back in the upper pasture and the fence line needs some work!

Garden:

Ra'am and I cleared out the garden in the last couple of weeks. Today I planted eggplant starts (that sat too long here- we'll see how they do), okra starts from Heather, started bush and long beans, and planted some lettuce mixes in the pots.

Palms:

Planted 4 lanceolatas along the side of the driveway near the water tank this weekend. They are about 4-5' tall now.

Hopefully the next post will be full of garden veggie goodness!