Just as I was laying down for a late afternoon nap today I heard Mrs. Doubtfire- one of our pregnant nanny goats- making a noise that goats make when they are in labor. I flew out to the barn to see how far along she was and, once I knew that there was time, ran back in the house for my camera, video camera and house guests. Suzy, Jen, Roxanne and Win all followed me out to the barn. Here’s what happened in pictures.

We shot some video as well, but I won’t be able to get it up until Monday after the Homespun Yarn Party tomorrow. Statler was born first; Waldorf followed about four minutes later. Both boys are doing well although Waldorf has weak back legs that required splinting. He will be fine in a couple of days.

It was so great to get to share this experience with my  friends today. Seeing it through their eyes was lovely.

Gonzo & Camilla

I have some super-exciting new! For about a year now, Gale Zucker have been looking for a project to collaborate on. Gale is the amazing photographer behind Shear Spirit, a book I could only love more if Juniper Moon was in it.

Gale is coming down to the farm to teach one of her famous photography workshops for knitters!

Here are the details:

MAY 15 & 16TH   9:30-4:30
Two days of Photography amidst the sheep, lambs, goats, hens & yarn !

Topics to be covered:

• Photographing yarn, fiber, and finished objects, both on & off people.
• Looking at colors and light, choosing settings,and backgrounds.
• Photographing sheep , goats, people  & scenery while we explore the setting.
• Simple lighting tricks and solutions to fiber &  knitwear photography problems.
• Optimizing your images once they’re out of the camera and into a blog page or website.

Workshop space is limited, register soon !  Fee: $ 295.  by Paypal togzucker@snet.net Includes 2 days of class, and delicious lunch & snacks each day by Susie Gibbs of Juniper Moon Farm. Questions?  Email gale@gzucker.com

Gale’s Bio

Gale Zucker is the co-author/ photographer of  the book Shear Spirit: Ten Farms, Twenty Projects and Miles of Yarn (PotterCraft 2008) . She is  an award-winning editorial and commercial photographer who’s worked on assignment forSmithsonian, Yankee, Wine Spectator, TV Guide, CraftStylish, and Womans Day, and for The New York Times. She also photographed the Potter Craft title Mason Dixon: Knitting Outside the Lines (October 2008).

If you’ve tried to watch and this and gotten a private video message, clear your cache, refresh the page and it should work.

Well, that was exciting! Last night, I got all dolled up to go out and see some live music with my friends Suzy and Frank, their daughter Sierra, Erin and a couple other friends. Right before we left, I did one last barn check and had one moment of hesitation. Hannah was laying down in funny way with one leg kicked out in front of her. BUT, I was already dressed. And I was really excited about going out for the first time in eons. And Hannah probably wouldn’t have her baby, right?

More wrong I could not have been! We had no more gotten a beer and found our seats before we were inundated with phone calls from lambcam watchers letting me know that there feet hanging out of Hannah’s back end. By the time I’d gotten my car keys out of my bag there were two new member of the flock.

Suzy and I left everyone else at the concert and drove back to the farm at unsafe speeds to make sure the babies were dry and nursing from their mama. When we arrived, we found Hannah nuzzling a baby boy and itsy-bitsy baby girl. We had those babies dry and nursing in record time and made it back to Charlottesville in time for the second half of the show.

Suzy in her fancy-going-out clothes snorgling the buckling.

Me and the twins. The doeling is on the right and she is just as noisy as her mama!

Sierra greeting the newborns after the concert. My guess is that she was the only six-year-old in the U.S. that got to see a concert and meet newborn goats at 1 a.m. yesterday.

The buckling

We jacketed the babies to make sure they were warm enough. Doeling in pink, bucking in blue.

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Both babies are healthy and strong with full bellies this morning.

Lauria, the winner of the goat naming vote, arrives Charlottesville this afternoon. The first order of business will be to name these little ones. The naming convention for the goats is Muppets.

Congratulations to Lauria and Wendy for nominating the winning candidates for the 2010 naming conventions!

In accordance with the rules, Lauria and Wendy in SC will get to name the first kid and lamb, respectively. By coincidence, Lauria is coming to Juniper Moon Farm tomorrow to spend a couple of days helping out, so she may get to name the first kid in person!

The three nanny goats continue to expand but only Hannah seems close to kidding.

Her udder is full and very tight, a good sign of impending babies. And she’s very fussy this morning. I’m hoping she either gets the show on the road and delivers in the next few hours or waits till tomorrow morning, cause I’m going out tonight. I hope.

This is a busy, busy, busy week at the farm. 81.9% of the Fall 09 Shares have shipped, which is a new record. We’ll be getting the rest out as they are dyed. I also have a whole bunch of friends coming stay this week. By a whole bunch, I mean seven, but they are staggered throughout the week.

Everyone is coming to help me get ready for the Homespun Yarn Party a week from today. We’ll be unveiling a whole passel of new colorways at the party (they’ll be released in the online shop the following Tuesday) so I hope those of you nearby can join us. It will be a de facto JMF meet-up, so get there if you can.

In other news, my friend Maggie will be moving into to Juniper Moon Farm this week.  Maggie will be working on the farm part-time, mostly helping with shipping and the like. Y’all will love her. The timing was perfect, because Paige recently decided she wanted to be closer to town- Paige is very, very social- and she moved out on Friday. Maggie will be in Erin’s old room.

We will also be welcoming Seth, a WWOOF-er, on April 1st. Seth will be here for three months. [I'm still sorting through apprentice applications. We were swarmed with them and it's taking me longer than I expected to get through them. Don't be distraught is you haven't heard from me yet.]

For as-it-happens kidding updates, follow me on twitter and stay tuned to the lambcam.

Okay Cyber-Shepherds. Time for you to help us choose the naming conventions we’ll use to name this year’s crop of kids and lambs. The examples next to each convention are not necessarily the names we’ll use if the convention wins; there just there for illustrative purposes. Please select your two favorites. The polls will be open till Sunday at midnight.

The polls are now closed! Thanks to everyone for voting.

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Reader and lambcam watcher Sandra asks, “Why is there a sheep in the kidding area?”

Daisy is my only Babydoll Southdown ewe and she is what they call an “easy keeper.” She can get fat even when she’s only eating hay. Even though she’s bred, I pastured her with the boys and lambs this winter because they were on an all hay diet and I didn’t want Daisy getting even fatter by feasting on grain all winter. Now that she’s getting close to lambing, I want to move Daisy in with the ewes and start her on some grain to give her the extra nutrition she needs for her last month of pregnancy, but putting her in with the ewes and their ample portions of grain would be too big a transition and would make her sick.

Daisy is in the kidding area so that I can control the amount of grain she gets for a week or so, and slowly ramp her up to get as much as the other girls. Hannah is furious that Daisy has invaded her space by Nanny McPhee and Mrs. Doubtfire don’t seem to care.

In other farm news, we had to giant round bales of hay delivered this morning by our friends the Hopkins.

We put one round bale in with the non-breeders and one in with the ewes.

Then, while everyone was busy eating, we fenced them into small paddocks with moveable fencing.

Keeping the flocks confined to small areas now will allow the new pasture to come in and establish roots before the greedy sheep and goats are turned out on it. We practiced rotational grazing in New York and on Martha’s Vineyard but we never gotten started so early before. Green grass in March is like a dream.

The main advantage round bales is that they are about 1/2 the price of square bales. (Each round bale equals 20 to 25 squares.) There is also a small time savings in that we won’t have to haul hay out to the flock twice a day. The disadvantages are that they are difficult to move and subject to the weather. We put the ewe’s bale in the large run-in attached the barn so it would stay dry, but that wasn’t an option for the non-breeders. They will still eat the hay after it’s been rained on, but it isn’t as appealing and loses nutritional value.

Hopefully we will be able to turn the flocks out on to pasture in two or three weeks. It’s going to be 70 degrees today and the green grass is coming on fast. Rain tomorrow and through Saturday, but we need it, and at least it’s going to stay warm.

Still no babies in the kidding pen. Stay tuned.

If you’ve tuned into the Lambcam in the last couple of days, you may have noticed that one of the three nanny goats waiting to give birth is a bit louder than the other two. And when I say “a bit louder” I mean loud enough to deafen people in Washington DC and parts of Maryland. That loud mouth is Hannah, and I absolutely adore her obnoxious self.

Hannah and her twin brother Martin were my first goats and my first bottle babies. As kids, they followed me on hikes around the farm, trailing along behind the dog and my then-husband. We treated them more like dogs than livestock, and probably spoiled them a bit.

I think Hannah is just lovely. In fact, I think she looks like Julia Roberts, although I totally get that most people don’t see it. Her fleece isn’t so lovely, though. And she is a little bit…entitled. I didn’t breed her until she was three and I had some concerns that she wouldn’t be a good mama. Her mama rejected her after all.

More wrong I could not have been! Hannah’s first kid was a single, named Mint, and Hannah was a fantastic mama.

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time, ever. Hannah and Mint, just an hour after he was born.

Last year, Hannah had twins, Jasmine and Jester.

I used to think I was Hannah’s biggest fan, until my friend Linda brought her friend Grace over to the farm last year. Grace and Hannah immediately struck up a friendship. Grace became a frequent visitor to the farm but really, she was there to see Hannah. I know they were both heartbroken when we moved to Virginia.

Hannah will almost certainly have another set of twins this year.

And she will dote on them as she always does. But for me, these babies will be extra special because Jack, another goat that I raised from one day old with a bottle, will be the Daddy.

Jack is the opposite end of the bottle baby spectrum from Hannah. He’s calm and gentle and just lovely to be around. It’ll be interesting to find out what the temperament of the kids these two produce will be.

Stay tuned. Hannah’s udder is getting full. Babies soon.

I don’t care what the calendar says. Today is the first day of Spring on Juniper Moon Farm! It’s going to be 66 degrees today and stay in the 60s for the next five days. I couldn’t be happier if it was raining money.

The nanny goats are settled into their stall in the barn awaiting the arrival of kids. If you’ve been watching the lambcam and wondering who the goat with so much to say is, it’s Hannah. I adore Hannah, but I might be the only one who does. She and her twin Martin were my first goats and my first bottle babies. Hannah is a spoiled brat and very entitled. She can’t believe she is being forced to share a stall with Mrs. Doubtfire and Nanny McPhee and she lets me know it every time I come in the barn.

[Thankfully, FoF Nancy figured out what was causing the echo on the lambcam; refresh your browser and the echo should disappear!]

The lambcam is in the white box mounted on the wall pointed down at the goats.

Miss Linda, Dimples and Jasmine were evicted from the kidding stall to make room for the nannies. It was time for them to get outside, but I do worry about Linda. She isn’t very competitive at the trough and the ewes tend to push her around a bit. I’m keeping a close eye on her to make sure she’s getting enough to eat and I’ll move her back in if she starts to lose weight. I’m also giving her a very strong pain reliever every morning to help with her arthritis.

The three of them seem happy to be outside with the rest of the flock, although they are still very much a family unit. When one of them wanders away from the others, they call to one another the way a mama calls her babies. Remember, Jasmine and Dimples aren’t Linda’s babies; she just adopted them when they were all thrown in together.

Do you see what I see in this picture? Yup. That’s green grass coming up in my pasture! The flock has been grazing for a few days, but I assumed they were just picking at the brown, dead stuff from last year. That grass is as good as money to me, cause it means I will be able to cut way back on hay very soon. This is much earlier than we ever saw green grass in the Northeast; my love for Virginia increases every day. I might be able to get away with only buying one more big load of hay this season.

It was a lovely morning with the ewes. I’ll spend some time with the non-breeders [whethers, buck, and lambs] this afternoon and take some more pics. In the meantime, I have to get back to dyeing our Fall 09 Yarn CSA Shares.

Erin came over today to help Paige and I work the flock. It’s been about six weeks since we last wormed everyone and we also needed to vaccinate for CD&T and delouse the goats. Since we’re only a few days away from the nannies kidding and about a month from lambing, it was a good time to check the ladies to see how their pregnancies were progressing.

The nannies are so wide! Judging from the size of their udders, I’m betting that Hannah will kid first, followed by Mrs. Doubfire and, finally, Nanny McPhee.

When they aren’t bred, the udders on ewes and nanny goats almost disappears, becoming completely flat, and their teats shrink down as well. Although she’s laying on her side, you can see that this nanny definitely has milk coming in.

The end of each teat is plugged with a waxy substance that prevent bacteria and gunk from getting into the udder. When the kid is born, we will make sure that the plug is stripped out so that the babies can nurse.

The ewes are all showing signs of bagging up as well. They aren’t nearly as far along as the nannies, and with good reason; they shouldn’t start lambing until April 15th.

All the ewes have loads of glorious fleece! On March 19th, Emily, our A-MAZ-ING shearer, is coming on March 19th to begin the shearing process. We have way too many animals to shear in one day without rushing and risking excess nicks and cuts. We’ll shear about half the flock in March the rest at our Shearing Day Celebration on April 24th.

The bad news from today is that there is a possibility that Miss Linda might be bred. We thought we had kept her well segregated from the buck but it looks like she may have gotten caught anyway. Of course, there is a chance that she’s experiencing false pregnancy- Linda lives to have babies, and she has produced a set of twins every year of her life since she was a year old. (We think she’s around 15-years-old.) I am hoping very hard that she isn’t bred, because Linda is just too old to feed one baby, let alone two.  If she is pregnant, we will bottle feed her kids from day one but leave them in with Linda to mother. But keep your fingers crossed that she’s not, please.