Playtime in Noodleville

Following up on the tail of my hay blog, I thought I’d share some semi-related pictures..

Being the youngest, and smallest of the group of bottle kids, Tricks has always had a different routine. She is fed milk outside of the pen to ensure she gets her fair share and at this point she’s the only bottle kid still on milk.

On her trips out, the munchkins often kidnapped her for play time… They race each other, play “King of the Dirt Pile” and the munchkins have been known to share their snacks with her… Basically, she’s a rotten mess who is convinced she’s one of the kiddos.

When we first unloaded the hay, we just shoved it off the trailer and wherever it landed is where it stayed until we borrowed the hay spike.

The kids (and Tricks) found these to be great toys and would climb up them and jump from bale to bale….

Playing “King of the Bale” is much, much more fun than “King of the Dirt Pile", plus, if you’re quick enough, you can dash down the line and conquer the bale on the end first… Needless to say the kiddos (both human & goat) had a blast. What munchkin needs video games when they have imagination, enthusiastic goat kids, and rows of hay bales???

Snapped these pics when they took a lil break:

Tricks & one of the barn cats enjoying the hay bale..

I missed the shot, but this picture was snapped right after I caught Shayla holding the sucker out so Tricks could have a few licks.... According to her, they were taking a "sucker break" & the grape swirl she's got in her mouth is Tricks' favorite flavor...  Nothing like goat slobber to enhance a sucker eh?

In the midst of trying to rake up old hay so we could put in the new round bale, Bleuberry found the wheel barrow to be a great perch to reach a few mesquite branches… Mostly though, I think she just climbed in there to be a pest.

These have nothing to do with the hay… Just candid shots of Rosie & Tricks while out on a walk…

Gotta love those flapping Nubian ears...

Tricks all bristled up watching the neighbor's cattle..

We May Burn Down The Town......

But neither fire, nor broken truck will keep me from bringing my goats home some hay!!

Just as he did last year when he played "The Hay Fairy", my father in law has saved me this winter... He baled up quite a bit of very weedy mixed grass hay and on a trip up for a visit, he loaded me up with 4 round bales to bring home…. With the drought, and no grazing here in west Texas, hay has been hard to find and even harder to afford... Rounds are averaging $120.00 each.... Small grass squares are in the $12.00 range and I won't even talk about the surge in grain prices.....

Forget diamonds and pretty things, give this gal a gift of hay and nothing makes me happier!

As my readers may have noticed, NOTHING in my life, even the most mundane task, can be simple.

Oh no, everything I attempt to do must have extravagant fanfare, drama, or in this case, FIRE.

Trucking on along with a trailer load of hay, I was blissfully happy. Nothing better for me than the security of having hay… Jerimiah is driving, I’m discussing where we are going to store it and we’re hoping traffic won’t be bad as we are just outside of Dallas/Fort Worth….

Cars behind us, and one very slow car in front of us… We move on over to the far left lane to pass and just as we start getting up past them, we feel this bone jarring *thud*….. The trailer broke loose, with four, 900+lbs bales of hay, in the middle of traffic….

Ya ever wanna clear metroplex traffic, just lose a trailer and watch those folks scatter!! Hate to admit it, but the look on the other driver’s faces was just fabulous…... Yes, I am aware that my sense of humor is warped...

Gotta hand it to Jerimiah, he pulled some slick maneuvering. Swerved the truck in front of the trailer, it smacked right into us, and he was able to get it across the lanes of traffic and into the bar ditch.

Had a terrifying moment when we split a large sign…. His truck went to the left, the trailer went to the right, just barely missing it by about 4ft!

We jump out, absolutely astonished that we didn’t take out the sign and didn’t cause a wreck… Only to panic about the possible damage we did to my father in law’s trailer…. You never, ever tear up something when it belongs to you, but I’ll be damned if the first time you borrow something, ya end up breaking it..

Ok, I admit, I was a lil shaken, and was giggling like a fool…. Couldn’t go look at the trailer as I just knew it was busted and twisted up… Jerimiah checks it out and yells: “It’s alright!! The trailer is FINE, it was my truck bumper that snapped off and my truck bed is warped!”

Giddy with relief and our freakish stroke of good luck in a bad luck ordeal, I kneel beside him to check it out…. He’s giving it a good once over and I’m staring above his head in disbelief…

 “Honey….. Honey… It’s not ok, can you call 911?!?”




I may giggle like a fool, but hubby poses with disaster.... You can see the poles of the sign we barely missed in the background...

 He stands & looks in the direction I’m staring in and I’ll not type here the words that came out of his mouth next….

Check out our lovely lil fire...... Fire department just arrived...

The trailer, scraping across the asphalt, sparked a nice fire, catching a huge stretch of the bar ditch on fire, and thanks to the dry grass, it was spreading quickly…

With us, it never ends, I swear, I don't know why anything even shocks me anymore.....

Poor Jerimiah, my giggling while he called 911 probably didn’t help, but it was either hysterics or giggles… Giggles don’t bother the kids like hysterics would..

Our bumperless, warped truck..

Anywho, once again, luck was on our side and the fire department came & got the blaze out before it did more than burn a bunch of grass, and by some miracle, we didn’t get a ticket!

I also didn’t get my hay that day....... Had to call my father in law since the truck was broke and he hooked up and toted my pretty load of hay back home with him… Such a sad sight.

Ya know how they say good things come to those who wait?? Well, I was chomping at the bit to bring home my hay, and a few months later, we were finally able to trek back up there again, and this time my father in law loaned us his big pretty trailer and put 10, yes I said TEN, round bales up there for me…. Couldn’t have made me happier!

We made it home in one piece, didn’t wreck, burn or break anything, though I must confess after we pushed that 4^th round off by hand, I wasn’t loving the fact that we had 6 more to push off….

My nice lil hay stash all lined up..

This weekend we borrowed a hay spike to put on our itty bitty tractor to get those bales moved……

It doesn’t look like the prettiest hay in the pictures, but once you peel off that outside layer, the inside smells fabulous, has a lot of green and is chock full of big leafy weeds that the goats just LOVE.




Sweet Miss Ginger....

We put one bale in the grown does pen and smooshed it against the fence so the bucks could share it, then tied a panel across the front so they wouldn't jump all over it & waste it... You can see Tonka and my new Alpine herdsire, Austin, hanging out in the background. Doe in the picture is the almost 9 year old doe, Ginger, who I brought home in the back of my car on that last road trip mom & I took.. She is Heidi's dam...

　
And here is Star enjoying the new bale.... Yet another doe I never got around to introducing here.... Star and a cute lil Lamancha doeling named Mocha came this summer after Casper went on to her new home.... I'm up to 10 goats total now: 1 Alpine buck, 4 Alpine does, 1 Lamancha buck, 3 Lamancha does and of course, our 1 token Nubian... The very generous gift of hay will definately see us through the winter...

Thankfully all the goats are in hog heaven and are just crazy about this hay... Had they turned their noses up at it, I think I would have had a nervous melt down after all the drama we went through to get it here....