The Babies and A Senile Farm Women

I thought I would show you all some new pictures of  my Christmas presents! Even though Susie is still tiny she has visibly gotten bigger in the few weeks she has been here. She should be, she eats non stop it seems!

 When we first brought her and Charlie home they weren't very playful like we have come to expect baby goats to be. Heck, ours start to try to Goatie-goat dance when they are just hours old!  But you can see that has changed now! That is Bonnie and Clyde,the dirty donkeys,watching Susie's antics!

 A good worming and good quality feed and all the alfalfa and horse hay they can eat plus fresh greens from the garden...oh and some probiotics have got them up to where we like them to be,high on the Happy Goat scale!

 Right now little Susie is in her own pen with Minnie who is actually her half sister. Susie is too small to be in with the other goats with out a momma to protect her. We have a few who would try to pound her into the ground and she is just too small to take a pounding! Minnie is one of the gentlest goats we have and she has no horns so she was a good choice to be Susie's friend.
Charlie has been moved to the buck pens. He decided he needed to start trying out his buckly  business on Susie  so he had to go over to the bachelor side of the farm! Goats can actually successfully mate at a very young age and that would have been a bad thing for Susie.

  Charlie is so lovely! I can just imaging how  striking he will look when he is grown!

 I hope all his kids have that wonderful wool! Charlie is not impressed with the buck pens. Mr.Tumnus ignores him and Charlie is a pineing for the ladies already! Several of the girls have not been bred yet and are in season regularly so the boys stay stirred up and spend their days staring and snorting and putting on their buckly perfume..whew! Of course, Charlie is just beginning all that but Mr.T is an old pro at wooing the ladies!

  On to the senile farm woman part of this post. Am I the only one who will  put eggs in the pocket of her coat then forget about them only to rediscover them smashed several days later????

Sadly, this is not the first time I have done this...or the second.....not that anyone is counting or that I could actually remember the number of times since I can't even remember I put the egg in there in the first place! At least this time it was just one egg.
Hope you all have a save and Happy New Year! I am off to scrape the egg out of my coat....

A Redneck Kinda Christmas

Yes,we had a wonderful Christmas here at Laughing Duck Farm!  Here are Hubby and The Boy trying to "out tall" each other by tip toeing and pulling each other down!

The Boy was waiting for me to hurry with the picture taking so he could open his gift. He picked it out so it is not a surprise...he just can't wait to get his hands on it!

 Look at that smile! This was his favorite present this year! Makes his hillbilly momma proud!

  A Mosin-Nagant rifle. It is an old Russian  rifle. The Boys' passions are guns,old Ford trucks and video games that involve shooting. He got other presents, even a new computer but that paled in comparison. Oh, he got gift cards too, which he used for ....ammo!

 Ahhh..nothing says redneck Christmas like the smell of  cosmoline filling the house!  The Boy happily spent the holiday cleaning his new prize possession! It was still in the original packaging, never used. When his Nanna asked him what he wanted for Christmas he said,and I quote,"ammo." His Christmas and birthday list for the next 3 years goes like this,gun,gun,old Ford truck,gun,gun,....! If you ask him what he is saving his money for he will say..you guessed it..a new gun! The Boy also did a little squirrel hunting. Not with that rifle, there would have been nothing left but tufts of fur! He went out with his .22. He would have been happy to have a mess of fried squirrel for Christmas dinner but I was already cooking a rib roast so they went in the freezer.

 A little Christmas day target practice. You can see The Boy has passed up Hubby in the tall department!

 Father and son bonding...makes me smile from ear to ear I tell ya!

 From the sounds of gunshots around here I will say The Boy was not the only one who got a new gun for Christmas.  Half the folks with in a 5 mile radius were trying out new guns! Hey,remember this is Texas folks!

 I hope you all had Merry Christmases ....even if it may not have been a Redneck Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Wishing all my friends a Merry Christmas ..

                      From all of us, human and critters, at Laughing Duck farm!

Soap Giveaway!!!

I am having a giveaway to christen my new Etsy shop! I am going to be selling my soap,which I have been told is pretty good!  I am going to giveaway 4 bars so there will be four winners. All you have to do to enter is go visit my shop and leave me a comment on which bar you would like to try. That's it! Easy Peasy!  If you would be so kind as to do a post about my giveaway on your blog or Facebook leave me three more comments saying you did and I will give you three more chances to win!

Let me tell you all a little about my soap. I started making my soap out of desperation that only a mother can have. If  The Boy had been a junior super hero he would have been "Rash Boy"!  I tried every soap out there from so called mild to organic. No luck. He remained Rash Boy. After some research I discovered I could make my own soap and put nothing in it but skin nourishing oils. So I did. And Bamm! Rash Boy was defeated and  became a regular boy once again! Two of the soaps I am offing right off have herbal infused oils,one calendula and the other peppermint. Oh,and a chamomile made with chamomile tea.There are no dyes or preservatives  in my soaps or lard .   Just skin healthy oils  and fragrance. The color differences are from the herbs,oils and fragrances. All my soap is cold process,which means good old fashioned lye soap! Don't worry,there is no lye in it when you use it, they lye turns the oils to soap then it is gone. My soap is not drying and lathers well for homemade soap. I am not good at "tooting my own horn" so this is a little hard! I will just say we like it and everyone that has used it says it's great!

Straight Jackets for Your Chickens

 It was her or me and I wasn't going down with out a fight!

Chickens are stupid. Yes, I said it and if you have ever had chickens you know it is true. Don't get me wrong, I love having chickens,they are tasty. Plus they're also fun to watch, have cute babies, eat the bugs and ticks and make fertilizer.That chicken poop can grow some big tomatoes! But they are still some of the dumbest critters The Good Lord ever made. In my experience if  they start a bad habit to get them to stop it is difficult. Sometimes penning them up so they can not do their bad habit for a few days will erase it from their tiny chicken brains, sometimes not.  You all may be sensing a story here and you all would be right. Sadly, this is a true story.
I have this one very pretty little hen, she is a black and white bannie with a little bit of Polish chicken thrown in the mix. Basically a bannie with a top knot! She decided she would fly over the fence ever day upon leaving the coop into Mr.Tumnus' yard and stay there despite me clipping her wing. So I started leaving her in there a night with another wild chicken. Now, if this had been before the Great Coon Thinning of the last Spring they would have been a midnight buffet the first night. Well ...they have been roosting out there all summer and fall till a few nights ago and I woke up to chicken screams for help..yes,chickens sound like they are screaming "Help" when something starts eating on them and I can't say that I blame them for it either! Anyways,I jump out of bed and wake a very confused Hubby and 2 middle age people  bumble around like Stooges looking for shoes and shot guns! It turns out not to be a coon but an owl and it has gotten the wild chicken. Of course we just watched the owl fly away.  Now I am particularly fond of the surviving hen despite her above average chicken dumbness. Mainly because she is unique and pretty. So every evening I have been lumbering my middleage, out of shape..joints a poppin',  asthmatic self out there and catch up Little Miss Dumb-Dumb and put her in the coop where first thing the next morning she walks right over the scratch I throw out and to the fence and flies her clipped wing self right over. You would thing that seeing her friend as a late night snack for an owl would have made her want to avoid that area all together. I will say it again...Chickens are stupid. Well...the first night or two she was easy to catch ...after that Little Miss Dumb-Dumb wised up. I know,surprising!  Last night after a hearty game of round and round the goat pen I had had it! Wheezing, out of breath and joints a poppin' I called The Boy to come and help me. When I got my hands on Little Miss Dumb-Dumb I carried her to the shed and got some of that blue painters tape that comes off easy and taped her one wing to her chest! Yes,you heard me! I taped my chickens wing to her chest! But by golly, I had had enough and desperate  times call for desperate measures! The Boy thought it was hilarious, making comments like,"You Might be a Redneck if you make a straight jacket for your chicken out of duct tape!""
 
But you know what? Little Miss Dumb-Dumb is still in the chicken yard! Who's smarter now!!!!

 Yes I did it ! I made a crazy chicken straight jacket out of tape and I am not ashamed!!!! I will take her straight jacket off in a few days if it does not fall off on its own.

No chickens were harmed in the making of this story..well..except the one eaten by the owl.

Getting the Tree

I have heard that many of the Christmas tree farms here in Texas were hit hard by the drought. Thankfully, the one we always visit had plenty of trees!

  Mill Hollow farm is nestled in the pines, a beautiful little place .We went on a cloudy,crisp day. It was lovely!

We don't usually get Fall color until December. I was afraid with the crazy year weather wise we would not get any color but the last couple of weeks have been pretty nice.

 This is and old home place on the edge of the woods. I love looking at places like that ,wondering..who lived there, what their lives were like...

Hubby is scouting for the perfect tree! Of course I am the final inspector!

 Hubby and The Boy discuss the best way to fell this mighty cypress!

 Hubby is strictly a supervisor for the cutting part!

Inspecting The Boy's work..

 A job well done boys,a job well done!

Santa Dog

As promised I got Rascal a Santa suit!

 Please excuse the cluttery mess in the back round,we were putting up the tree. Actually there is cluttery mess in my living room  a lot of the time! Oh well,we live here, it is not a museum after all! Rascal liked the suit but he was not fond of the hat ...we can't let a cute hat like that go to waste now can we...hmmmm..

Beans makes a pretty good Santa Dog too! Although...Rascal will probably demote her to Elf! Actually...Weenie,who hates to dreess up and will not look at a camera and is the Queen of all, will most likely demote them both to elf!

Beans says,"Walwrite, Beans wore the sillwe hat, now were's Bean's cookie??"

Who needs fancy electronics and dish TV ? We have plenty of dogs..err...things to entertain ourselves with here on the farm!

A Goatie Goatie Christmas for Me!

My list to Santa never includes things like diamonds or a new car. Nope,those are not for me! I am just not that kind of gal! What makes me jump up and down like a 5 year old and squeal with glee? 

Christmas goats,that's what!!! Today  I was telling Hubby how the lady I had gotten my pygoras from had some babies and he ask me is that what I would like for Christmas..well you all know that it is! So me and The Boy loaded up and went for a drive.When we got home we had these little stocking stuffers...

Charlie,my new buck! That means I will have my own woolie babies next year!

 He is actually champagne colored and has fabulous hair!

 I can not wait to see what kind of kids he makes with my woolie girls! Of course, right now he is little and cuddly and not stinky!

Along with Charlie is little Susie! There were 3 little black girls there but The Boy fell in love with her  and that meant she had to come home with us.

 She is tiny with the sweetest face and floppy ears!

 They have been hand raised so they are just the sweetest lovable little balls of fluff! They both have healthy appetites and haven't stopped eating since they got here!

 Now I have 3 girls and a boy. That is the perfect makings for my own little herd of pygoras! Yep, it's a Goatie Goatie Christmas for me!

Why We Call Them...

Dirty Donkeys!

We have finally started getting some rain and that means it is the season of  the Dirty Donkeys! Donkeys love,love, love to roll in the dirt! Well, at least ours do so I am assuming all other donkeys do too. You all will have to excuse the glowing eyes,I forgot to turn off the flash. Bonnie and Clyde really are not zombie donkeys...honest!

Clyde is a nice bright white when he is clean. Now he is a lumpy ,clay pot gray! Bonnie does her share of rolling in the mud too, but it doesn't show up as bad on her spotted coat.

They share a feed pan always ,even though there are several out there they will always eat out of the same one. Bonnie and Clyde are very bonded and are never far from each other.

Donkey love..it is a sweet and dirty thing!

Fun

I hope everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving!  Hubby made it home just in time for ours and will be home through Christmas so we are really happy about that! I don't think he has ever been home for both holidays since he has been working overseas.
 Yesterday we went to the Texas Renaissance Festival.We go every year but I can not get Hubby and the Boy to dress up for it!  I think they would both look great in a kilt! This was the last weekend  of the festival. I am glad we went yesterday because it is raining this morning. I thought I would share a few pictures with you...

This  one needs no explaining...! There are so many shops at the festival you can find whatever type of medieval  dress you want!

I love all the costumes! This is a group of faeries.

 A Lord and Lady...

 A Knight,a Lady and Maiden and possibly a pirate! Oh, can't forget my favorites, the Highlanders in the back round!

 This is the band Wine and Alchemy...

 They were very good!

I did not take these videos but found them on you tube.

 This is the group Tartanic. They play the bagpipes and drums and are very funny and have a lot of energy!

 This is one of the wedding chapels. Even with the heat and drought of summer it was still lovely.

 Pirates and a barbarian...

A highlander and  some friends...

 There was even a storm trooper there wearing a kilt! I wish I had gotten a picture of that.  There were so many great costumes and all kinds of performances! If you have never been and you live close enough to go you should ! I think next year I will make my self a costume even if the boys won't wear one...what do you think..a pirate..a lady..a barbarian....a fairy...What would you be?