The Farm of Hale is Worldwide

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted anything. We have had lots of stuff going on here at the farm but nothing too exciting. I will try to do better at posting more often. I wanted to tell you all something I think is amazing and really cool. On my last post about learning to farm I got a comment from a lady that said she was excited about the learn to farm opportunity but sad because she would not be able to attend because she lives in the UK. That's right another country, across the Atlantic. And it is not like this is one of our friends that lives over there, like Walt and Annie who live in Germany and read our blog (at least I think they do). This is someone I don't know and have never met before. Her name is Danielle Gohin and she is a science technician (teacher type person maybe?) at a school. She has a blog, click here to see it. Our blog is on her list of blogs she follows. I think this is really awesome that somebody that does not know us in a different part of the world follows our blog. It makes me wonder if there are other people out there who don't know us that follow our blog and I wonder how they came across it. If there is anyone else out there who reads our blog, who we don't know, I would love for you to leave a comment so I can find out if there are others out there.

Learn to Farm

I had an idea the other day. We often have people tell us that they would like to learn some of the stuff we do on the farm such as taking care of animals, gardening, etc. It gave me the idea that when we have stuff that people might be interested in helping with, we should plan on doing those things on Saturdays and invite people to come out and help/learn if they want. This isn't a situation that we are saying we need help to do these things (although extra help is always nice). We just thought we would open it up so if people had interest in what we are doing they can come check it out. So, this weekend will be our first "Learn to Farm" Saturday. This Saturday, we are planning on doing goat care. We are going to check all the goats to see if their hooves need to be trimmed, check to see if they need to be wormed and worm if needed, and castrate the baby goats that need to be castrated. Sounds like fun doesn't it. If this sounds like something you might be interested in checking out, send us an email or leave a comment and I will let you know what time. Who knows we might even let you stay for dinner. If it rains all day Saturday, we will do it a different day.

The Reality of Farm Life

Farm life isn't always good times. Sometimes unhappy things happen. This evening one of those things happened. A baby goat died. I am not sure why it died, it was very unexpected. Yesterday it was doing great and today when I got home from work, it was mostly dead. I tried to save it but I don't think it was anything I could have helped. I don't think it was sick. The only thing Margo and I can think of that might have happened is that it got butted really hard by one of the bigger goats or it got stepped on or kicked accidentally by the cow. The reason we think that might have been what happened is because it could not stand up or control it's body but it still looked healthy, it's eyes looked fine and it's ears were still perky and moving around. It would not nurse or swallow when I tried to force feed it. It seemed to me like it was a brain injury, spinal injury, or other major internal injury. I guess we will never know for sure. I don't always make a big deal out of a baby goat dieing since that kind of thing tends to happen but this was a special baby goat, and that is the extra bad news. This baby goat was everyone's favorite. It was the baby goat we referred to as Yoda, the brown one with the ears that stuck straight up. We are very sad, we really liked him. We had even talked about wanting to keep him even though he was a boy and we only keep girls. But, that's life on the farm.

New Cabinet

Sorry it has been so long since the last post. Not a lot of exciting stuff has been going on around here. We have still been trying to get the place cleaned up from Mr. Ice Storm. I will have a few posts to make this week though so be sure and check back. One thing I started working on before the ice storm that got interrupted was I was building a new cabinet for the house and more specifically the dining area of the house. Those of you who have been here know that we have one big open room that is the entry, living room, piano room, kitchen, and dining room all in one. One thing we wish we had more of is kitchen cabinets/storage. I built a cabinet for the kitchen a while back that matched our kitchen cabinets to help with this. This new cabinet was the next piece to help solve that issue. I finally got time this past week to finish it up and I was able to debut it for our Valentine's Party at our house on Friday night. I built it with oak so it should be pretty solid. I tried to stain it close to the same color as our table and chairs, barstools and behind the couch table. They are all a dark walnut/cappuccino color. This proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be because those things are all built out of different woods (even thought they are all basically the same color). The table and chairs are out of parawood, which is a type of wood I really like but isn't readily available around here in lumber form, the barstools are pine and the couch table is mostly veneer. I am going to pause here in talking about the new cabinet to talk about parawood since I am sure lots of you don't know about it or have never heard of it. Parawood comes from the rubber tree which is the tree they extract sap from that makes natural rubber. After many years of harvesting the sap for rubber, the trees get old and stop producing very much sap and so they are useless for their primary purpose. Someone discovered that this wood of the old rubber trees is great for making furniture. It has a dense grain (comparable hardness to maple), minimal shrinkage, attractive color and acceptance of different finishes. I am a big fan of it and wish I could get it to build furniture. Now, back to the cabinet. I could not find a stain that would match the color of the other furniture so I had to use 3 different colors of stain layered to get close to the right color: first coat of dark walnut, next was red mahogany, and then dark oak. It is not an exact match but it is close. I think this might be my best piece of furniture I have built to date. The design I came up with worked out well, it came together really well and it looks good without very many mistakes. I think it is definitely something that we will hang on to for a long time. I enjoy designing and making furniture. Maybe one of these days I will get some more and better tools to be able to make all kinds of furniture. Since this post is getting long, I will get to the pictures.

Here it is.


Side view


Open View- it holds lots of stuff which is what we needed


As you can see I made the top part of it a 6 bottle wine rack, I like that part the best.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Electricity

Finally, on day eight after Ice Storm 2009 we came home to electricity. It was a very welcome sight. We have really enjoyed staying with friends this past week but it is nice to move back into our house. It got really tiring going back and forth everyday and not being in our own bed. I wanted to say thanks again to everyone who let us stay at your house and fed us meals. And to everyone who offered help to us. I wanted to give a special shout out to Adam and Sarah who we stayed with most of the time and who let us store our freezer and refrigerator stuff at their house. It is really awesome how great everyone was in offering to help us out, I think we have some of the most awesome friends in the world.

Here is a great old music video for all of you to watch in celebration of us getting our power back.

Chainsaw Massacre

We still don't have power. The power company said they hope to have 90% of the customers back with power by the end of the week. I hope I am in the 90%. I want to give a special thanks again to everyone that has helped us out and let us stay with you and cooked us meals. I also want to give an extra special thanks to everyone who came to the farm and helped us out on Saturday cleaning up limbs and trees. We had five people besides us helping out. We got a lot of stuff cleaned up, it would have taken Margo and I like three weeks to get done what we did on Saturday. I cut up trees for five hours straight while everyone else stacked brush. We also have been going around helping other people get their trees cut up and yards cleaned. I am so sore from sawing up trees, that is all I have been doing the past 3 days but there is so much more to do. I have never seen so many trees and limbs down.

Here we are out on the farm cleaning up on Saturday.

Still No Power

Things finally started to thaw out today around here. There are still tons of streets closed because of trees down and still tons of people without power. All the schools are closed including the University because of no power and downed trees. My neighbor talked to the power company today and they told him it would be 1-3 weeks before we had power. So that sucks. We transported all our freezer and refrigerator stuff to our friends' who we are staying with freezer and refrigerator so we would not lose it all. I wanted to say a special thanks to everyone who has called and offered help and to let Margo and I come stay with you. You may be sorry you offered because we may be calling you when our current house hosts get tired of us. Several guys have called and offered to come help us clean up on the farm. So, we are having a clean up day on the farm tomorrow. Margo and I will be out there all day working on cleaning up trees and stuff. If anyone is bored, come on out and we will put you to work. We will have at least 2 chainsaws going. I am sad about losing so many trees. I had cleared a good portion of our land to get grass growing and help it look nice and I left all the trees I really liked and now they are mostly destroyed. I guess that is all I have for an update today on ice storm 2009.

Pics From the War Zone

We still don't have power (of course). We are staying with some awesome friends (Adam and Sarah) who have power and internet. We go home after work and work on stuff out on the farm and then come to town at night and spend the night.

This is shed and barn


A limb on the back yard fence, this one got within a couple feet of the house. I worked for a few hours today getting our fences back to at least where they would hold in the animals, there is going to be a lot of repair to the fences.


This is the the corral by the barn, you can see a goat under the tree


This is an area I cleared out last year between us and our neighbors to plant grass, normally you could see our house looking this way


This is another area on the far side of the house that I cleared out last year and was working on planting grass this year, notice some trees are bent completely over, some are broke at the top, and some are uprooted.


Our county road.


This is me trying to stay upright on the ice while carrying a chainsaw (sounds safe doesn't it), it took me about 2-3 hours to clear our 1 mile of county road up to the highway.


This is a shot of the state highway that leads to the interstate, it was mostly one lane in and out of trees for the 7 miles. We drove over 4 downed power lines along the way.


Another shot of the highway

No Words

We are alive. I can think of no word that can express how bad things are here in Northwest Arkansas after the ice storm. This post is just to let all of you who don't live around here know that we are okay and it is really bad here. Hardly anyone has power here, the latest report said an estimated 150,000 don't have power just here in NWA. I am at work right now and we have power today here at the hospital (there wasn't power yesterday) and I have internet here at work which is nice. Our power went out on Tuesday night and by my best estimate it will be weeks before we have power. The people in town were told it would be the weekend before they might have power. This area got between 1.5 and 3 inches of ice. There are no trees left untouched, I would say 60-70% of my trees on the farm are completely destroyed. My fences are destroyed, there are limbs on all our buildings, our house had 3 limbs hit it during the night. It was really scary. Limbs and trees were breaking constantly yesterday. The good news is that so far all of our buildings at the farm are intact, the falling limbs have not caused major damage. We did have one baby goat die. I cleared our mile of county road yesterday morning and it took me around 3 hours to get a car path to the highway, there are two power lines down just on our county road. Last night we fed the animals and then we came into town before it got dark and stayed with some friends who had their power back on. The state highway between our county road and the interstate is one lane only because there are trees covering a lot of the road. I drove over 4 downed power lines on the highway. It basically looks like a tornado came through but instead of just a limited path, it took out all of Northwest Arkansas. Apparently, last night Obama declared Arkansas a Federal Disaster Area so hopefully that will help get some relief here. I will try to post pictures when I can. The Farm of Hale has changed. Please pray for all of us here, it is really bad.

Everyone's Favorite

Sorry I have not been posting much lately, not a lot is going on around here. People have been asking for more pictures of the baby goats. They are all 2-3 weeks old now and they are growing like crazy. They are being very playful at this stage which is fun. We have had lots of people come out to see them and they have been a big hit with everyone. We have one baby goat in particular that seems to be the overall favorite. It is our little brown one that I have talked about before that has the ears that stick out. It's mom has smaller ears than our other goats but they don't stick out like this baby goat's does. It just got the freak ear genes. Margo calls it our "special" goat, and one of our friends, Ashley, nicknamed it Yoda. I kind of wish it was a girl so we could keep it around but since it is a boy and won't do us any good to keep it, we will have to part with it in a few months. Here is a picture of it from today.


It's ears are like this all the time. It is even better when he runs because then his ears go straight up like a rabbit. That is his brother next to him and that one's ears are more like their mom's.

In other big news Margo's brother and sister-in-law had their baby January 15th. Her name is Ella and she weighed 10 pounds 10 ounces which I am told is very large. The only picture I have of her I took with my cell phone in the hospital the day she was born. It is not super high quality since it is from my phone but I think it is a nice picture.

Baby It's Cold Outside

As I am typing this it is 11 degrees outside with a wind chill of 3, which is pretty cold for around here. We decided to put up a couple of heat lamps for the baby goats tonight. We usually only provide heat lamps for the baby goats at night for the first day or two after they are born and only if it is cold outside. After the first couple days of being alive they can withstand pretty much any cold weather that we have around here, but it is extra cold tonight. We figured as long as we have the heat lamps and because it is unusually cold tonight we might as well turn them on for the little ones. Margo went down to check on them a few minutes ago to see if they were taking advantage of the heat lamps and almost all of them were snuggled up together under the lights. It made for a cute picture (you don't hear me us the word cute very often, so enjoy it).

+4=11

We had two more baby goats yesterday and two this morning. This brings our total up to 11. We have one more goat that has not had babies but she will probably not have hers for another month or so. We started out good having equal numbers of girls and boys but these last four were all boys. So we have 4 girls and 7 boys, sounds like a future barbecue to me. We got some action photos of the goat having her babies last night, so they are a little graphic.

Here is the goat starting to have the second baby, those are little feet sticking out.


Here is the baby freshly out, still mostly in it's fluid sack


Here is mama cleaning it up, and that is it's brother in the background


This is one of the boys born today while we were at church


Here is other brother that was born today. He was our biggest baby. We averaged around 6 pounds for most of the babies. He weighed in at a hefty 9.1 pounds.


We had several friends and some of my co-workers and their families come out this weekend to see the babies.

This is one of my co-workers, Cathy, holding one of the babies born last night. For those of you who know our goats, this is Crazy's baby. Crazy has smaller ears that stick out a little. Well, this poor baby got the ear stick out gene and her ears are longer, it makes her look a little "special"


This is some friends of ours daughter, Sophie

When it rains, it pours....goats

Holy baby goats. We are growing like crazy. We have two goats that I thought were going to be our first goats to have babies but they weren't. I thought for sure these two were going to have them today because they are looking close (if you know what I mean). But they didn't, it turns out they are going to be almost the last ones to have theirs, because three(yes three) more goats had babies today. Two of them were a complete surprise because we thought they were another couple weeks off. The first one we discovered that had babies today was one of our goats we have had since we moved out here (thanks Trav). She had two babies that might be the cutest babies ever. They were all dry and up nursing and walking around with no problems when we got home. We took them and put them in the barn with their mom and then Margo went to feed hay to the rest of the goats and cow and I went to go cut some wood. Margo came running back from the hay feeder to tell me we had a surprise. One of our other goats we weren't expecting to have babies yet had two babies. We have a set of white twin nanny goats we got last year that this is their first year to have babies and it was one of those that had the babies. I thought it was crazy not only that she had them this soon but also that she had two babies. Usually the first year goats only have one baby, and she was not that big either. When we went over there to catch them we noticed that both of the twin nannies were bleating like they were calling for their baby. And then it hit us....the pregnant twins had their babies on the same day. How crazy is that. They each had one baby and we had no idea which one went with which goat because the twins look a lot alike and the babies looked a lot alike and they were all together and the babies weren't for sure who they belonged to, they were going to both mamas. It was very confusing. We took them over to the barn and just had to watch them until we saw which baby nursed which mom and then we separated them into separate stalls. We will make them stay separate for a few days so they can all get figured out who belongs to who. I just hope we got it right. We now have 7 baby goats total and I am expecting we are going to have 5 more. So, I need all of you people out there to help. I need you all to come out and pet and play with the baby goats. The more they are handled by many different people now the more tame they will be when they grow up and I want them pretty tame. Please come help. I am sure you are all saying, get on with it, we want to see pictures. Well here you go.

Here are the twins that were born today, they are super cute. The boy is chocolate brown with one white foot and a white place on his head and the girl is mostly white with brown splotches.


Here is one of the twins' baby. It is a male


Here is the other one's baby, it is a female

The Brother

I am finally getting around to putting up some pictures of the brother to the little female goat we had in the house the other day. The brother did not have any issues after being born and is doing great. By the way we were able to leave the little female with her mom and brother last night in the barn (with a heat lamp) and all day today. She is doing just fine so far, maybe a little behind her brother but I think she will catch up. Here are some pics.

Here is the brother


And here they are together

Next

Well, we had more baby goats born today. It was kind of a surprise. We knew this goat was getting close but thought two other goats were going to have their's first. There is a story to go along with these though, one about did not make it. One of the problems with having baby goats at this time of year is if it is really cold the babies can get hypothermic quick, especially since they come out all wet. It is especially true for the first baby to come out with twins because the mama does not work on drying it off until she gets the other one out and that few minutes makes a big difference on a 5 pound wet baby goat when it is 35 degrees outside. Back to the story of these babies. When we got home I went and checked on them and one of the baby goats was standing next to the mom and the other one was laying all sprawled out not moving. I thought it was dead at first but when I got up close to it, it let out a really faint sound and then I saw it's eye move a little. I picked it up and it was freezing cold and a little stiff and could not move. I ran it into the house and we dried it off good and put it in a plastic bag up to it's head and put it in the bag in some really warm water to try and get it warmed up. After several minutes of that we took it out and rubbed it really good with a towel to try and get it's blood pumping and we set it in front of a heater. It starting to perk up a little and make more movements and a little noise. I went out and milked it's mama a little and squirted some milk in it's mouth and it swallowed it which was good. We kept warming it up for an hour or two and it finally nursed from a bottle with a nipple on it. After a while we took it down to the mama and let it nurse from the mom, which it did, which was a really good sign. We brought it back in and put it by the fire, which is where it is now, and let it watch the Fiesta Bowl game with us. It is starting to stand a little on it's own now and wag it's tail. I think it is going to make it, it is a little girl by the way. I think we will probably keep it in the house tonight out of the cold and if it keeps improving we will put it with it's mom tomorrow. It's sibling is doing just fine, it is a boy, and is out in the barn with his mom. The boy weighed just over 6 pounds and the girl is 4.5 pounds.

Here it is nursing from a bottle. It kind of looks like I am strangling it but I am just holding it's head in place.


This is when it was first starting to stand on its own.


I will try to post pictures of her brother tomorrow when I can get some while it is light outside.

Big News

Yes, our first kid. I hope you are all as excited as we are. We thought it would never happen but last night it finally did. It was born around 6pm and weighed six pounds and it's a girl. There were actually two born but one did not make it. The mama birthed them in a place with a lot of loose dirt and we think the one that died got dirt stuck all to it and around it's mouth when it came out wet and got choked. Very sad. The other one is doing great though. We have four more mamas that are due any day as well. So, before too long we will have lots of little ones running around. Now for some pics.

Looks just like Margo




Here is mama with the baby nursing

Merry Christmas To All

From the Farm of Hale

Happy Christmas

I thought I would share some entertainment related christmas things with all of you. First of all, I am sure you have all heard it, but here is the funniest rendition of a Christmas song I have ever heard. Click here to listen, it gets funnier as it goes along.

I also thought I would make a list of my top 10 favorite Christmas movies. I also put clips from the movies in case you want to watch. Feel free to leave me a comment about your favorite Christmas movies in case they are different than mine.

10. The Nightmare Before Christmas



9. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original)



8. Scrooged



7. A Christmas Carol



6. A Christmas Story



5. Home Alone



4. Elf



3. It's a Wonderful Life



2. Love Actually



1. Christmas Vacation

Cabinet Maker

I finished a project a week or so ago and I am finally getting around to posting about it. I built us a cabinet to put in our kitchen. We have had a metal stand in the kitchen by the back door that held pots and pans and had the microwave on the top. We don't have that much cabinet space or countertop space in the kitchen. I was tired of the cheap metal stand look so I decided to build a cabinet to put there instead. My plan was to build a cabinet that matched our other cabinets so it looked like it was there originally. This did not work out. First of all, our countertops are formica. I called the company to see if I could get a top to put on my cabinet so it would match but unfortunately they stopped making that color in 2006. I decided just to make the top out of the same wood as the rest of the cabinet. By the way, our cabinets are cedar. I had a hard time finding a cedar that matched the cedar the other cabinets are made with. I found a cedar (western cedar) that I thought was it so I built the cabinet out of it. After finishing the cabinet and finishing it, it turns out that it is not the exact some color as the others. I am not sure if it is due to the wood, the age of the wood, or the finish I put on it. Since it did not turn out to color match exactly I was a little unsure if I wanted to install it or not, even after all the work. Margo (with a little help from Adam) finally talked me into believing it would be fine and better than what we already had. So, I finally got it installed. It does not look too bad, and it has more space in it which is nice. Here are the pics.

Here is the old stand. It served it's purpose. If anyone wants it, I will make you a great deal on it. It has two adjustable shelves and a wood top, I think it is Martha Stewart brand.




Here is the newly completed cabinet.

Long Week

As you can tell from our lack of posting, we have been very busy this week. We have had lots of activities going on from razorback basketball games to broadway shows to hanging out with friends. The only evening we have been home all week was on Monday. I also had to take a class at work the past two days called ACLS that I was a little stressed out about, so I spent all my spare time this week studying for it. Basically ACLS is a step beyond basic CPR training. You will all be happy to know that I passed and I can now shock the crap out of you if you have cardiac arrest. Clear. One of the things we did on Thursday night was go to a show at the Walton Arts Center. The show was Spamalot which was a part of their broadway series this year. Spamalot is based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the broadway show won the Tony Award for best musical a few years ago. I really like Monty Python and especially Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was one of my favorite movies in junior high and high school, I used to watch it all the time and I still quote it all the time. I think I may quote it as much or more than any other movie. In fact, in my high school drama class, my good friend Travis and I reenacted a scene from the movie for one of our assignments. Anyway, the show on Thursday night was really good. It had some added stuff and was a little different from the movie but was still very funny and we really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to any of you if it comes to your town. As a side note, the girl who plays the lady of the lake on the North American tour is from Fayetteville. I will try to get back to more regular farm posting soon. Until then, enjoy this clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.