1 Week Later

The pumpkins and gourds are doing really well.  We hand-picked close to 500 cucumber beetles thus far, but in the past few days we've seen very few.  The small sticky traps were a huge success.  The beetles seem to flock to the yellow color.  We ended up making 4 larger traps out of scrap wood which we attached to stakes.  We love a successful endeavor!!

Pumpkins vs. cucumber beetles: Natural pest control.

Yesterday, while Eric secured the roof for the upcoming solar panel installation, Teresa was busy in the garden.  After a morning of digging, over 250 pumpkin and gourd seedlings were planted in 3 out of the 4 garden beds.  Needless to say, there will be a TON of pumpkins this fall, assuming the cucumber beetles don't attack. 

Which leads us to our second project:  Cucumber Beetle Traps

One of the challenges of organic gardening is dealing with pest control.  With all these plants this year, there is likely no way we can keep up with hand picking off the beetles.  We bought some Tanglefoot (a sticky paste), orange paint, and wood sticks.  We dipped the sticks in the paint yesterday and then will cover them with the tanglefoot and place them in the garden.  Apparently the beetles are attracted to orange color, which closely resembles the pumpkin flowers.  They should then find themselves stuck to the sticks. 

We will see how it works.  Fingers crossed!

Do my eyes deceive me?

One could look at this photo and postulate a few ideas:

1. Lola had a third kid.

2. Abby had a baby goat.

3.  Eric has no self-control.

The answer: #3

I arrived home from work on Friday to find two baby bottles of milk warming on the stove.  When I inquired as to the necessity of the bottles, I was informed that we now had THREE mouths to feed!  Eric went on a trip to visit a goat farm a little South of us and somehow came home with a goat!  There is now a small matching kid for each of the adult goats.

Welcome Lucky.

Goat-mania!

We can't seem to get enough of these cute little guys!  Even at only 72 hours old, the heart-warming "goat hopping" has begun!

A sweet little 5 year old gave them both names until they leave the farm:

Welcome George (as in Curious George)!

Welcome Gerald!

This is the life...

The boys were all curled up under the water bucket this morning still fast asleep. 

This afternoon they made their first trip outside.  The whole gang is enjoying hanging out in the pasture...now this is the life!

The kids have arrived. Twins!

Today we welcomed Lola's babies to Silver Hill Farm!  One twin looks identical to Lola and the other looks just like Lola's mother.

We have spent the past 4 days waiting for Lola to kid.  This is said to be similar to waiting on molasses in February....it's VERY SLOW!  Saturday night, Eric and I took turns going out to the barn every 1-2 hours to check on Lola.  She seemed to have a knack for showing signs of labor right before bedtime.  She'd stop laboring in the early morning and go all day as though she were perfectly fine and not ready to kid at all.  As she reached 151 days today, we felt certain the kids would come soon.  Last night I came upon Lola at 4:00am standing on the hay trough ledge, staring into space, contracting, while the other two goats slept.  At lunchtime I called from work to check in on the progress and Eric informed me that he just finished checking on Lola and she had amber colored mucous, a good sign that the kids were soon to follow.  He checked in on her again around 1:30pm to find her resting on the ground.  

Eric walked over to the neighbors, who ironically had a handyman there who has raised goats for the past 20+ years.  He informed Eric that when Lola was kidding she's scream so loud it would be impossible to miss.  The silence from the barn was a good sign.  Thirty minutes after he last checked in on her, Eric rounded the side of the barn with water buckets.  He heard a small bleating coming from inside.  Eric arrived to find 2 kids, both clean and dry!  

Apparently Lola is a champion at birthing kids.  Within 30 minutes she managed to deliver both kids and completely clean them off without a sound!  After all this waiting and watching and late night barn checks, I missed the births altogether...and well, Eric managed to watch Lola birth the final placenta.