major cuteness

Luka and I were visiting the goats and Milo came along. There was so much cuteness going on I ran down to the house for a camera.

Luka held Gandhi

Then we traded- he took the camera and I took the goat.

sweetest goat ever.Milo and Helo are very curious about each other

Milo is over it

Why are these goats so interested in me??

hmph. I'm outta here

cute Helo

cuteness all around

3 new kids!

Yesterday Sue and I drove to Kona to pick up our 3 new kids! They are so sweet and we're in love. They're all almost 3 months old. The small one (maybe Gandhi) was born 2/7/09 and the other 2 (Neo and Helo?) were born 2/14/09.

Here are all 3 coming to see us

This one is sooooo sweet. He was the runt of his triplet littler. He's sucking on my finger

All 3 have blue eyes

The mostly black one and the one in the back are brothers.

sweet one lets us hold him

chickens.... we have 6 nesting boxes and all 8 use this same one. Here only 2 are struggling for space, but some days I've seen 4 in there (and for the record, they are about 12x12")!

Ke'o and 'Ele

the other animals that live here

yes, we do have quite a few animals that we take care of. We're currently have 3 boys, 2 lambs (castrated males), 8 hens (would like more), 3 cats, and many many fish. This Thursday I pick up 3 baby pygmy goats.

but we also have animals we don't intend to feed, but who are living off of us.

Like this wild chicken. She struts around out chicken coop, eating grain that has been pushed out.

she also struts around the pool

And the pigs!!! he's a picture of one lovey, who ran across the driveway while I was on my way home.
we have since seen at least 10 more. GB happened upon parents with 8! piglets!




and then while my parents were visiting we had a dog who was chasing a pig fall into our pool at 12:30am and almost drown.


life is certainly not boring

GARDEN!

I just realized how I never put up pictures of the completed raied beds! And here I am with garden news....

Luka planted flowers- zinnias, sunflowers, calendula and marigolds
Here are his sprouts coming up on March 9, 2009

He also planted the pretty swiss chardHere he is on April 17th standing next to the same sunflower pictured in the first photo above!

Here are some photos of the veggie garden taken March 16th. We planted mostly greens then- bok choi, pak choi, several lettuces, kaleNoam's planting some bell peppers and some cukes

Here it is April 17th. We've been eating salads and stir fried greens regularly!

New Sheep!

We decided to get some sheep to put in the lower pasture. It's farther away from the house, so not as easy to watch.... and goats are $$.

GB went today to pick them up while I stayed home and waited for the 7 tweens who slept over to be picked up.

He arrived home and I was surprised to find that he was so smitten with the sheep that he invited them into the cab of the truck!

(just kidding.... the roads were bad from his place and GB didn't want the poor things sliding and bouncing all over the back of the truck)

You can see the black one's (Blackie?) legs sticking out from the back seat.The guy we got them from had bound their legs with duct tape

.... so even after taking it off, Blackie here was still a little out of it.

Free at LAST!

Picking Up the Sheep

I went to Shane's to pick up our new sheep. Of course I brought the truck, thinking I'd put the sheep in the back, but the road was so bumpy I decided to give the sheep a more comfortable ride.
Not, completely comfortable, but at least they weren't sliding into each other!

Our homestead from the air

On my last flight in to Hilo I snapped a pretty good shot of our whole homestead. You can almost see where the top of our driveway touches the highway at the very top edge of the photo. You can see both our river gulches and if you look closely, you can even see our two goat sheds: one down by the river and the other halfway between our shed and the neighbor's  (Glen's) house  at the top of the page. Obviously you have to click on the picture to get the details.

Seems to be working

At least the yucky work is paying off.
We've caught 8 mongoose. Today the trap lays empty (so far!).

Luka and I went out to the chickens and there was a hen sitting on 4 eggs. It's been awhile since 4 eggs could sit there w/o being snatched. That, and the chickens look "happy" (yes, I am anthropomophizing them).

We've had no luck on finding the goats, but have found 3 who will come live with us at the end of April.

Realities

It's not all fun and paradise here.

Last week we were saddened to find our 3 goaties missing. We searched high and low but have found no trace of them- no trail of eaten plants, no trail of poop.....
We're not sure if they got out on their own and then someone scooped them up.... or if they were stolen straight from their pasture.... or if they're wandering the neighborhood.
It's been over a week now and we're so sad :(((

And then our chickens have been terrorized by mongoose. We're lucky that the mongoose don't seem to be interested in the chickens themselves (they have been known to kill them ruthlessly), but are taking eggs AND chicken feed.
Each time a mongoose crawls under the fence into the chicken run, the poor birds scream and run and get all agitated. Not only is it heartwrenching to see, but stressed chickens don't lay so well.

When I cleared some brush near the chicken run, I found food scraps, and a ton of eggshells.

If you live in HI you know what a pest these animals are. They were introduced here in 1883 to control rats. Too bad people people didn't realize then that mongoose are diurnal where rats are nocturnal. The damage they've done here in the endangered species capital of the world is huge.

So the bottom line is that we bought a trap, and have been extinguishing them. So far in 1.5 days we've caught 6 of them. We'll see how many we catch today. It's not fun, but it's real.

Goat shed complete(ish)!

Building the goat shed
Day 1

It's wet.... but we're "free". GB and I went shopping for materials and brought them down to the site. The goats are very very curious.

All we did this afternoon was place the footings. Of course that took time, and it did rain on and off.

This is the goats' new river view.... lucky!

And rain sucks, but rain often= rainbows. This is just above us- towards the oceanThe day was not lost.... we went up to the shed so GB could cut down some 4x4s and some roofing. Check out the sparks flying!

Day 2:
GB was planning on animating.... but the Biermans offered to take Luka and I felt we should take advantage of the nice weather and child free day.

Here we start

A short while later things are taking shape

Rocky, Diego and Weed are curious. What ARE these humans doing??

Apparently Karen makes faces when she uses power tools. We borrowed Jake's sawzall....

This face helps her cut wood more effectively

gutters up (to catch rainwater into a pond for them.... no hoses down here!)

Then Karen had to leave to chauffeur children around.... so GB finished up ALL of the cleaning and putting in the small pond (thanks!)

Day 3:
The shed needs some paint on it so it'll last longer. So Luka and I head down to prime the boards.

He's telling me important things here

Of course it's important to take a lot of breaks. The goats love these weed-y gunpowder trees, and Luka knows it.

Done for now! It's lunch time!

And on the way up for lunch we see Ra'am and Noam. They had a 2 hour mandatory pull miconia session today. Here's Noam looking for more

And you can barely see Ra'am up there (with nasty miconia in the foreground) pulling weeds. He's on the hillside.

Now all we need for the shed is a coat of real paint and we're done. Sun is shining.... better get out there before it starts raining again!