Moving right along, the walls are now up on the new showerhouse!! I managed to get the plywood roof on, just before the winter rains came. I must add that this door is a Habitat for Humanity purchase. I highly recommend going to the local Habitat store to purchase building materials. The walls are two different colors, as I am experimenting with colors. I hope to put the sage green metal roof on, within the next 45 days, if the rain stops long enough to get it done. I have some beautiful blue pine, cut on this hillside, ready to have planed, to use for the ceiling in the showerhouse! I don't have this house finished, but have already figured out how to use it to hang and dry clothes and will use it to start my garden seeds, come March!

This is a confusing farm, on the hillside, as my new bull may not be tall enough to breed with those "Highland girls" and the young colored buck doesn't seem to smell bad enough for the does to like him!! Who knows how many new kids or calves I will get in 2011!!

Shower house construction

Yikes, I don't know where the time went, but it went. The shower house is really beginning to take off! My son-in-law came for a visit in May and we have now framed the walls and it is my job to finish the roof, before winter hits. With the lack of carpentry skills, it will surely take me all summer to get this part done. The local Habitat for Humanity store is where I am searching for some windows to put in the roof, for sunlight, as well as some solid wood doors for the entry to both the shower and the wash room side.

I just finished installing a small, instant hot water heater, in the yurt, so now it has hot running water. I was going to wait and install the solar batch water heater, outside, but then it can't be used in the winter. So, I guess the solar batch water heater will be used strictly for summer showering and washing clothes.

It rained so much this spring that everyone planted their garden very late, including me. I downsized from last year and only put in half as much produce seed. My fruit trees are really happy with all of the rain, however, and it shouldn't be long before I start getting fruit from them. I didn't touch the raspberry plants this past year, in hopes of actually gettting a crop off of them and now it is like a jungle down there! I do see some berries though, so maybe the jungle will be worth it, as long as there aren't any rattle snakes hiding in those vines!

There are now two calves on the ground, half breeds. They are half angus and half Scottish Highland and as a result of that mix, it doesn't look like they will have horns, which is a good thing. They are now two months old and eating out of my hand. "Here comes the beef" in about 14 months. They are "Sassie and Scottie" and Sassie definitely lives up to her name!

"Sir Edward" is like a two year old!

Wow, where has the time gone? I meant to make this a weekly writing event, but time has slipped away from me! The snow has come and gone and it is time to prepare the barnyard for the arrival of the "kids" and the "calves". When I started out living on this "hillside farm", I started the animal menagerie, with two does (angora) and have since added the long, red haired, Scottish Highland heifers. Well, the time is almost here to sit back and watch those little "kids" jumping and romping, as only kids will do and strengthen the fences for the arrival of the first of two Scottish Highland calves. In the meantime, I had to start the barnyard cleaning and do some repairs in my "shanty style canvas barn, from Costco" and "Sir Edward", who was my bottle fed baby last summer, had to help. He is like having a two year old, who wanders around looking for someone to pick on or something to get into. Here he is, eating the buttons off my shirt, while I attempt to make repairs to the indoor feeder! Goats can be the most entertaining creatures you will ever meet!

These first calves are half Scottish and half Black Angus, so will be great meat, especially being raised on alfalfa. I know, you may not be into butchering beef, but there are plenty of city folks who need and want some excellent grass fed meat! As if having them bred to the angus wasn't enough, I have a a deposit on a full blooded Scottish Highland calf, born last June, but he "Duncan" lives up in the mountains of Southern Oregon and so he cannot be retrieved til some snow melts, in May. Duncan will be in charge of the whole hillside, I am sure!

New Years Eve and Snow!

Wow, it is December 31st! Not sure where the year went, but it sure did go fast. There are 5 inches of snow on the ground and more to come today and for the next several days. Yesterday the day was spent plowing and moving snow, with the Kubota tractor. What a wonderful piece of equipment it is. It was one of the first things I bought, when I moved to the river and it has earned its keep. I did have some struggles with learning to drive it and move snow, the first year, as I ended up putting it into the ditch. I will have to take a photo of the snow covered road, later today and post it, and then you will understand how I ended up in the ditch, instead of over the hillside to a bad landing below!

This has been the busiest year of my life, in the past 12 years and frankly, I am ready to see it end, as probably alot of you are. The economy is bound to change this next year and so will lives in the country. At the moment, I have an over abundance of mohair to sell and need to find some buyers for it. What I can't sell right now, perhaps will be spun into some interesting yarn.

Speaking of yarn, I am trying to learn to knit, after avoiding it for 25 years. So far, I have torn out this scarf 12 times and restarted. I have put out feelers for a knitting group to get started, here on the river. If I can get at least four ladies or men together to knit, on a weekly basis, maybe I too will be successful. So, learning to knit then naturally brings you to wanting some mohair in the yarn you are working with and then that means learning to spin. Gads, and the list goes on and on, of things to learn and do.

It's a New Kitchen in the Yurt!!

Funny how things seem to evolve into something else, other than originally planned! I was given some kitchen cabinets, a couple of years ago, to put into a garage/studio that I was planning to build. Then reality hit and the economy went upside down and the garage didn't get built. So, in the meantime, I am storing the cabinets in the Mt.Shasta house. When I decided to get busy and do some cleaning, I moved the cabinets to the river, and stored them in the yurt. It didn't take long to realize how very nice they might look, installed in the yurt!! So, two weeks ago, the cabinets were installed, along with the used sink and faucet, from the Habitat for Humanity Store, in Medford. At the time I once lived in the yurt, for 16 months, I didn't even have running water. Now, here I am, still not living in the yurt, but living in a travel trailer, but looking forward to the day when the yurt will be a lodging destination for those who love or want to love, "a yurt". The plumbing and the drain lines aren't installed yet, but the hole is drilled through the bottom of the cabinet and the thick yurt floor, to put in the drain and the water lines. Won't be long now til I can get this put to bed and get back to wiring the electrical into this yurt and the extension cords won't get tangled around anyone's ankle, upon entering this hovel!!!

Button Down the Hatches for Winter!

Finally finished pouring this slab, after a long summer! I am not sure what took so long, but I guess it is the continual interruptions, as farm life often goes. The shower house walls will be framed, come late spring or early summer. It was abit tedious placing and holding, the radiant floor tubing. The radiant tubing is to be connected to a solar batch water heater, which can be used for heating the shower and floor water, in the warmer months. No plan yet on what to do in winter months, but consider this a start! Like most lives in the country, things change and what you start out with is often not what you end up with, in the end. The next thing on the list, to get done while the weather is cold (it is currently 27 degrees at 5AM), is to work inside on the addition of the new kitchen sink's water supply line and finishing the wiring project.

All of the goats are now bred, as well as the two Scottish Highland heifers, so the babies will begin to arrive, early March! There are 3 bred angora does, so should bring at least 3 new kids and maybe as many as 6, if we get lucky! They say the nutrition makes a difference, as well as early breeding, in the number of twins born. They all eat a total of one ton of alfalfa per month, so the nutrition is the best they can get. The cows are totally fed on alfalfa, year round, so their beef should be of excellent quality.

"Scarlett" the wild one!

Ms. Scarlett has a mind of her own!! I had penned her up, last week, in an effort to get her dosed a couple of times, with an anti-lice medication. Well, yesterday was her day to seek out some freedom and she found it, while I was loading alfalfa into a cart, for the rest of the animals! She is so wild, I could have spent all day trying to catch her, as well as her daughter "Daisy" who also got out, or just let things take their course. Deciding there were more pressing things to do with my time, I let her roam about the hillside, never going much farther than the fence line with the billies inside. Now, Miss Daisy, on the other hand, decided to jump in and out of the electric fencing, at will, to nibble on what there was to eat for everyone else! As the day wore on, MsScarlett laid down a couple of times and then as she began to get hungry, five hours later, I found a way to trick her into the garden area. I put a flake of alfalfa in the garden area, while leaving the gate open and in she went an "shut" went the gate behind her. Once back in her pen, and Miss Daisy jumped through the electric fencing, to be with her, I put young buck"Edward" in with them. Well, within minutes, Ms.Scarlett had put Edward in his place, standing on her hind legs and coming down with a crunch, onto Edwards forehead. I think they will have to work things out before any "new kids" are conceived. So for now, all are in their new pens and the breeding season is in partial swing. There should be a new population of at least 8 new kids, come next March or April. That is the best part of this whole gig, are the new cuddly kids!