Milkshakes, my friend Amy’s dairy goat that lives here at the farm, is showing signs of going into labor soonish.

It’s a lot easier to tell in this picture, actually.  We bred Milkshakes to Jack, our Angora goat buck. Her babies may or may not be fiber animals; we should be able to tell shortly after they are born. Either way, Milkshakes will join the dairy goat rotation once she has kidded, meaning more fresh goat milk and goat cheese for everyone.

If you’d like to see Milkshakes give birth, keep an eye on the lambcam.

In other news, we are preparing for our first honey harvest in a couple of weeks! I am so excited that the hives are doing well enough for us to take some of the honey they have been busily storing all Summer. We’ll take loads of pictures of the harvest and, depending on how much we get, we may even have some precious JMF honey for sale at our Fall Shearing Celebration.

Okay, so I HAD to go to Washington D.C. today for a meeting. Had to had to. Could not miss it. So it should come as no surprise that as soon as I got to my meeting, my cell phone started ringing.

I wasn’t worried, since my friend Amy volunteered to come over and keep Caroline company while I was gone. [In fact, she's sleeping over tonight so I can have a full night's sleep. I'm so excited I may not even  be able to sleep!]

Caroline and Amy did great! Boy of Hannah’s boys are healthy and strong. You can see them live on lambcam 3. Mrs. Doubtfire and her twins and Jekyll and Piper are still on lambcam 1.

The night is young…stay tuned for more babies!

That’s right, all you guys and gals, we’ve got some new kids on the block!

I got an excited and frantic phone call from Susie a couple minutes ago, who had to run out to DC for a meeting today hoping against hope no one would drop a baby while she was gone, and wouldn’tcha know it, another set of goaty twins was born! This time to sweet Hannah. Boys, both of ‘em!

Susie’s currently on her way back home, and she’s asked Amy and Caroline to take some pictures, which she’ll upload when she gets back.

Their names, courtesy of my husband and Susie herself, are Cortland and Cox’s Orange Pippin. Ken is suggesting that we call Cortland Cort for short. “Not ‘Cort.’ ‘Cort for Short.’” And Cox’s Orange Pippin (that’s his show name, obv) will be Pippin for short. Not “Pippin for Short.” Just “Pippin.”

My 2:30 a.m. pasture check paid off big time tonight! I walked into the run-in shed just in time to see Mrs. Doubtfire delivering the second of two lovely bucklings (male baby goats.)

I started to pick up the kids and start moving them into the barn, but then I remembered that Caroline had not yet seen newborns or what we do with them, so I resisted the urge to check out the new arrivals and went back inside to rouse her from her bed.

I’m happy to report that Caroline popped out of bed and was cool, calm and collected. We got the babies and mama inside quickly (Mrs. D. is an old pro!) and Caroline got to work drying off the new babies while I checked the pasture for signs that anyone else was in labor. Thank goodness no one was!

Caroline learned how to make sure the kids were properly latched on their mama’s teat and getting milk.

She also found out how LOUD a newborn kid can be.

Sweet and cute as hell.

But loud.

I sent Caroline to bed before I told her that she gets to name the new babies from the naming convention you voted for- varieties of apples. I’ll tell her in the morning.

Who knows? We may have even more to name by then!

I didn’t have much time for pictures today; a lovely group of students from VCU’s fiber program came for a farm visit and I got to spend the day talking about the flock and playing with fleece.

I did notice that that at least some of the ewes and does are starting to bag up. Sheep and goat’s udders start to fill up a few weeks before they lamb or kid and it’s a sign that they are getting close to giving birth.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy all day but I’ll try to get some pictures if I can to show you what I’m talking about.

This is King Roquefort’s favorite place to sit– right on top of the hay.

He’s a pest, but I love him!

April 1st will mark the beginning of our lambing and kidding window here at the farm this year and I am just starting to think about it seriously. This weekend I took a quick inventory of the pharmaceuticals and first aid supplies we  have on hand and made a list of what I need to order.

In addition, I will be getting the flock in shape for lambing. Next week I’ll be switching the ewes over to a feed with a coccidiostat in it. The ewes are unaffected by coccidia, but their newborn lambs are extremely susceptible to them. Feeding a coccidiostat to ewes will reduce the number of coccidia being shed into the lambing pens and help keep the lambs and kids healthy.

For the same reason, I’ll be worming all the ewes and does in the next couple of weeks. I would like to get some of the ewe shorn before lambing, but Emily , our shearer, won’t be in the area until April 5th, and by then it will be too late to be man-handling them. We’ll shear the yearlings- last year’s lambs- and the boys on April 5th, and finish up the rest of flock on Shearing Day, May 14th.

The final step in my getting ready for lambing is to clean out the two stalls in the barn, removing all the bedding and disinfecting the stall mats and putting in fresh straw for the ewes and does sleep in when they are close to giving birth. Oh! And I’ll be moving the lambcam in to the stall so that you will be able to see all the action.

BTW, as soon as the Flock Giveaway voting ends we’ll be putting up a Naming Convention poll so you can help us name this year’s crop of cuties.

If you have any questions about lambing, feel free to post them in the comments section.

The time has come to start coming up with our 2011 lamb naming conventions. Every year, we chose a category from whence the lamb names will come.  In the past we have used candy bars, herbs and spices, islands, U.S. presidents, Jane Austen characters, Muppets, and fonts. Here’s the cool part: you get to help us pick the convention!

As I said last year (and the year before that) the category needs to be something with lots of naming possibilities. Candy was great cause there are umpteen jillion kinds. Think broad. Characters from fiction? Good. Characters from Dickens?Fine.  Characters from Salinger? Not so much.

Put your nominations for this years conventions in the comments of this thread. We actually need two conventions- one for lambs and one for kids, although we are only having four kids this year. We will narrow the list and put our favorite to a vote. The first person who suggests the convention we end up using gets to name the first lamb or kid born. Sound good?

Ready, set GO!

It may be snowy and cold outside but here at Juniper Moon Farm, we’ve got Spring on the brain. January, February and March are traditionally a time to make plans our next Shearing Day Celebration, plot out our kitchen garden and prepare for kidding and lambing season.

The 2011 Spring Shearing will be held on Saturday, May 14th. This is a bit later than we usually have it, but there are a whole lot of moving parts to putting this event together and May 14th was the only date that worked for everyone. I hope that by giving you this much notice you’ll be able to make arrangements to join us for what has become our biggest and most fun party of the year. I’m hoping to add a few new elements so that even those of you who’ve come to previous shearings will have something new to look forward to. Details here as they develop.

I have turned the planning and execution of our new kitchen garden over to Jenn and Eleanor; they have ordered a whole passel of seed catalogs and are dreaming of home grown tomatoes. We’ll take pictures and document the entire process and would love any suggestions or tips from those of you with green thumbs.

I’ll write more on the preparations for lambing and kidding tomorrow but it is time for you to start thinking about naming conventions. Like many farms, Juniper Moon names our lambs and kids in themes every year. In the past, we’ve named lambs after herbs & spices, Jane Austen characters, muppets, candy bars, islands and I don’t know what all else!

Next week, I’ll be soliciting your ideas for our 2011 naming conventions. We’ll need two- one for the kids and one for the lambs. The key to a good convention is that it needs to have lots of name possibilities. Characters from Charles Dickens? Great! Characters from J.D. Salinger? Not so much.

So put your thinking caps on and get a list together and look for my post next week.

Breeding season is in full swing at Juniper Moon Farm. This morning Suzy and a couple of awesome helpers sorted all the lambs from the rest of the flock (we didn’t want any of this year’s lambs to get bred by accident) and turned Aldo and Jack- our ram and buck, respectively- out with the ewes and does.

We also built a little pen for Feenat and her new beau, Cyo, to honeymoon in. Why? Because we want to keep the Icelandics separate from the Cormos during breeding season. We don’t need any Icelando lambs in the Spring!

Feenat isn’t entirely sure about this whole operation.

I think she’ll come around. I mean, look at this little cutie. Who could resist his charms?

She was certainly able to overcome her revulsion long enough to eat next to him.

You’re probably asking yourself why this sheep’s butt is orange.

In an effort to pinpoint when we will be lambing in the Spring, we are using a marking harness on Aldo this year. Basically, the harness holds a crayon and when the ram attempts to…um…romance a ewe, it marks their backside with the crayon. Since sheep will only stand for breeding when they are in heat (which only lasts about 13 hours during each 17-day cycle) we know that a mark on the backside means that the ewe is probably bred.

We will keep a chart and every morning check to see if there are any new marks that we need to keep track of. In 17 days, I will swap out the crayon in the harness for a blue one. 17 days later, we’ll switch back to orange.

Using a marking harness is a bit more work for us but it should make lambing time a lot easier. Only Aldo is wearing one though, so the Angora goat kids and Feenat’s lambs will still be a surprise.

We only put Aldo in with the girls this morning and it looks like Dakota, one of our yearling twins, will be the first bred this year.