Goat kidding season 2018 has flown by without me having time to journal the experience as I did last year. (Though that’s not quite accurate because I have one girl who still has not kidded yet, but it feels like the bulk of kidding season is over around here.) Let me back up and say our goat herd has undergone some changes since last spring. We had 4 does kidding last spring; two of those – Oakley and Emma – have moved onto to other homes as they were not quite what we were looking for in our herd, and two remain with us – Nickel and Llama. We also added another doeling to the herd last May named Lily. We also used a different breeding buck this fall named Warrior. For those of you who aren’t familiar with raising dairy goats, typically goats are bred in the fall for spring kids. Goats tend to be somewhat seasonal breeders (like white tail deer). A goat’s gestation is 5 months. A goat can be milked 3 months into pregnancy and then dried up for the last 2 months before birth. However, for us, we are tired of milking by the time the fall breeding season has rolled around. In addition, milk production usually declines by the fall. Therefore, we like to dry them up and breed in August or September. Ours are often dry for their entire pregnancy, which is good for them, but means we have no milk. The only risky factor in breeding early is having kids in freezing weather in December or January. However, ours got bred late last year and had kids in freezing weather in mid-March. So, we’ve decided to just breed when we want to and hope for fair weather over kidding time! Goats seem to have a knack for snowstorms - be it December or March. To breed our goats, we put the buck in with the herd and allow nature to take its course. We watch closely and can often pick up on when the deed is being done to be able to calculate an approximate due date. 1-2 months after we think they are all bred, we do a blood test for pregnancy. This year when we tested our three girls, Lily came back negative for pregnancy. This was actually a good thing. Lily was born in February 2017, which means in August 2017 when we introduced our buck to the herd, she was quite young. While it is common to breed a dairy goat her first fall, breeding late rather than early gives them a few more months to grow. We tossed around the idea of separating her, but she was a good size and separation from the herd causes a lot of stress for goats. Weighing all the pros and cons, we decided to see what happens. Upon receiving the negative pregnancy test, we were glad she had not taken early. Our buck then made a visit to another farm for a few weeks. When he returned, we made sure he was healthy and ready to move onto a new home. We had him advertised for only a short time before we found him a new farm. The week before he left, we noticed he was quite interested in Lily. We hoped she would be bred before he left. We chose not to test her because, even if she wasn’t bred, we weren’t going to get in another buck in January. Thus, we’ve just been watching her closely and hoping. The most obvious sign, especially in a first-timer, is the development of an udder 1-4 weeks before birth. Lily is due in about 1 week, and she has a promising udder taking shape, as well as bulging sides. Back to the other girls – Nickel & Llama. In typical goat fashion, they delivered their kids within days of each other. Nickel had twins – Lightning & Star – on January 31, and Llama had twins – Hero & Susie – on February 2. Below are some pictures. As you may have noticed, this year we decided to bottle feed all the babies. We fed them raw milk from their moms. (We test for CAE when we test for pregnancy. [CAE is a disease that can be passed through the milk of infected mothers.] Since our girls are negative, we feed the milk to the babies.) We sold all four of the kids within 2 weeks after their birth. This was, of course, a bit sad for the human kids around here, but they were glad to see them go to good homes and be relieved of the bottle-feeding duties.
And now we get to enjoy the fruits of our labors in the past months – fresh, raw goat milk! For those of you who just gagged a bit, I challenge you to find a home dairy where the milk has been handled and chilled with care to see for yourself. We have many people say it tastes "just like milk!" Stay tuned and check out our goat page to see Lily’s kids! Thanks for stopping by!
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I’m excited to introduce to you a new mini schnauzer at Russell Homestead. Her name is Tachianna Faith. We call her Tachi (ta-chee) for short. Tachi is a dark salt and pepper gal who is sweet, submissive, and smart! Let me begin with the story of her name. As we were picking names for our children, my husband and I usually saw eye-to-eye with fairly common, solid names. We had a boy and girl name picked out long before our first child was born. When boy #1 came along, we used the boy name and tucked away the girl name for later. When expecting child #2, we picked a new boy name and pulled the girl name out of reserve. If you know our story, we had boy #2 and boy #3, but still the original girl name endured. However, sometime after boy #3 was here, my husband heard the name “Tachianna” on a radio show. He fell in love with it instantly! Now, I don’t share my kids’ real names on my blog, but let me assure you this name does not have the flavor of our three boy names. Think something like this – “Here are my children-Nate, Collin, Ben, and Tachianna.” I just couldn’t imagine myself introducing my family using this name, and I just wasn't sure I liked it. However, at the time, we didn’t know if we were having a boy or girl. Since I was guessing it was boy #4, I made a deal with husband to make him happy. I told him IF we have a girl and IF she has red hair (a rare, but not impossible thing for our family), I would name her Tachianna. I felt pretty safe in my deal, since I didn’t even think we were having a girl. Well, lo and behold, we did have a girl! At birth, she appeared to have a little bit of blonde/light brown hair. So, we named her the girl name we had picked out since the birth of our first child. In about 15 minutes, as the nurses weighed her and cleaned her up, her hair had an undeniable red tint. My husband quickly pointed this out and declared I was lucky she didn’t have that tint at birth or her name would be Tachianna! Since my dear husband did not get to name his daughter Tachianna, we named one of our goat kids, born just a few days after our daughter, Tachianna. But she quickly went to her new home. So, it was only natural when we got our next female schnauzer to name her Tachianna.
Tachi has been a great dog for us! She passed the AKC S.T.A.R. puppy program and basic obedience school through Berks County Dog Training Club in the summer and fall of 2017. She is currently in training to receive her therapy dog certification through Alliance of Therapy Dogs. Tachi is a ball of fire in some ways and a complete snuggle bug in other ways. She loves to romp and play with our other dogs. She is very bonded to me and follows me all over. She has a very gentle, cuddly side that shines through when she does therapy visits. We are very happy with how she has matured, and we are eager to see her first litter of puppies (likely to arrive in early 2019.) You can see more pictures below or visit her page. Thanks for stopping by! I read recently on a homeschool blog that some veteran homeschool moms cringe at the question, “What curriculum do you use?” Since I’m still the one asking that question, I suppose that shows my homeschool age (2 years and counting). The blog writer went on to say she cringes because, over the years, homeschool moms tend to be so eclectic and independent in what they use that it is complicated to answer that question, as well as difficult not to overwhelm the newbie homeschool mom asking the question. Since I enjoy hearing what curricula other families are using, here are my 2017-2018 curriculum picks. We started our school year in July 2017, and we are approximately half way through the year. So, these choices are not only my picks, but my actually-stuck-with-it ones! Bible/Science/History – Our core curriculum is My Father’s World (MFW). I did Kindergarten last year with AJ and CJ. This year, we are doing Learning God’s Story, which is MFW’s complete first grade program (see my last year's picks here). I continue to be drawn to MFW for their focus on Bible, goal to have the whole family learning together, inclusion of Charlotte Mason style lessons, list of living books, and engaging hands-on activities. In Learning God’s Story, the Bible and history are taught together using a time line and chronological Bible stories from Genesis to Revelation. A typical lesson involves me reading the Bible story followed by AJ and CJ notebooking about the story and reading a simplified version in the MFW Bible reader. There are other fun activities planned along the way, such as making a Bible times costume and creating a salt dough map of Israel. Science is a collection of three Usbourne books – Science with Water, Science with Plants, and Things Outdoors. Every week, we read the pages in the book about a topic, enjoy books from the book list in the back of the teacher’s manual, and do 1-2 activities with the lessons. Some of the activities are in the Usborune books and some are in the teacher’s manual. For example, our weekly topic last week (scheduled along with Noah in the Bible/history) was rainbows. We read about rainbows in the Usbourne book, checked out several suggested library books on rainbows, and made a liquid rainbow in a quart jar from various colored liquids with different densities and properties. Just a technical note for those who may be interested in using MFW – AJ is in 2nd grade and CJ is in 1st grade, which means I should be doing Adventures in US History with AJ and Learning God’s Story with CJ. However, because they are only 14 months apart in age, I decided to keep them together for all subjects (except reading and math) using the first grade program as my base. We will use Adventures in US History next year. Language/Grammar Oh, may I just gush for a moment about my language “curriculum”? I mean, honestly, who gets excited about punctuation, noun usage, and grammar? Though I am the one silently (and sometimes not so silently) correcting people’s grammar, I do not get all that thrilled about explaining the difference between an adverb and verb to a 7-year-old. However, MFW recommends this nice, skinny little book called Primary Language Lessons for Today. (This book was originally published by Emma Serl in 1911; MFW updated it and published their version in 2014.) The book includes picture study (paintings included in book), copywork, poem memorization, oral narration & composition, and dictation. The lessons are delightfully bite-sized and easily adaptable if you have one that isn’t writing well. The approach feels very gentle, but it works! Reading Learning God’s Story does include phonics and reading, but I did not prefer their approach. It is a very fast-paced phonics approach. While I like the phonetic approach, the MFW first grade did not work for us. We are using Christian Light Education’s (CLE) Learning to Read program. Both AJ and CJ are using this, but at different levels. (CJ actually began with CLE Kindergarten II program, which only takes 30 days.) I like the way Learning to Read balances phonics and sight words. The readers that go with the books are excellent. Math Learning God’s Story also includes math, but again, I did not choose to do their math program. We are also doing CLE math. I like their short lessons with a focus on completing the bulk of it independently. Music/Art Since I chose to buy the deluxe package of Learning God’s Story, I use the art and music they suggest. We did lessons from Drawing with Children. We learned an “art alphabet” and few simple drawing techniques. We are now working through a pack of paintings discussing the artists, history, and techniques through the guides from MFW. For music, we listened to Peter and the Wolf and learned the instruments that portray the characters. We are now learning the 4 families of the orchestra through the same CD. We will end the year with a study of the Carnival of the Animals. Spanish One of my goals this year was to add in some Spanish. I purchased Foreign Languages for Kids by Kids at our state homeschool convention last spring. I only purchased the DVDs, which use an immersion approach. My kids enjoy the DVDs; they do need to be watched over and over to learn the vocabulary. I aim to add a few more structured activities this spring to nail down some basic vocabulary. I’ve heard my 2-year-old, MJ, walking around the house saying “Uno, dos, tres….” so I know learning is taking place! (Note: The above link has only volume 1. There are 8 volumes total.) Spelling We are using the free version of Spelling City. I download the lists they provide and use their free games, which the boys love. I have them copy the words and alphabetize them sometime during the week and do a weekly spelling test. It’s simple, but effective (and free!) Physical Education This semester that one was easy because a PE class was offered at my homeschool co-op. That class ended this month, and now I need to think about PE activities for the spring. Preschool
I am not a fan of structured preschool with young children, but my “littles” (ages 1, 2, and 4) enjoy some mommy-time. I do not use a curriculum for them, but I use the Five in a Row (FIAR) idea. (If you aren’t familiar with FIAR the premise is that you choose a book and read it every day for 5 days. The FIAR manuals include suggested enrichment activities.) I simply choose one of our books from science topic for the week and read it once a day during that week. For example, in the above photo, JJ is illustrating the moon phases with Do-A-Dot markers while we read a fabulous old book called Look at the Moon by May Garelick. We read that book for a week and did this activity as well another simple art project. On days I do not have any activities planned to go with the story, we do a few pages in their "school books" - simple preschool books from Christian Light Education. That gives you a little peek into what we are doing here during our homeschool hours. I would love to hear your favorite curriculum whether you are a newbie or a veteran at this crazy journey called homeschooling! Thanks for stopping by my little blog! |
AuthorVanessa from Russell Homestead. Follower of the Lord Jesus, wife of my knight in shining armor, mother of 5 wonderful children, and joint-keeper of the Russell homestead. Thanks for stopping by! Archives
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Vanessa Russell
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