A sizable swarm in a tree

One of my hives threw this swarm on a warm saturday afternoon. I eventually managed to hive it up, but I missed the queen the first time around.

On my second attempt, I managed to locate the queen and put her in a screend box. Knowing they won’t abandon the queen, I left them to their own devices and came back later that night to pick up the cluster. Easy peasy.

However, in captivity, the need for self defence is greatly reduced. Horns get caught in fences and feeders, pose a risk to other goats and owners, and are generally a pain to deal with. As such, some goat owners choose to disbud their goat kids to keep the horns from ever growing in at all. This process has recently been the subject of controversy in a number of circles, often being lumped in with general animal cruelty. I don’t think you’ll find much argument about the fact that it is unpleasant and painful for the kids, but after much examination, I believe (at least in our situation) the benefits outweigh the draw backs.

Compare the 20 seconds of pain to a lifetime of horn trimming (and associated risks), potential injuries to other animals and people, quality of life if the goat is ever sold, etc. In my mind disbudding comes out on top. That’s not at all to say that it is enjoyable. It’s not. Far from it. Anyone who tells you otherwise has no business keeping these majestic animals.

The process of disbudding involves burning off the cells that produce the horns on the goats head. It’s as simple as it sounds. Disbudding irons that glow red hot in a darkened room are manufactured and sold for this express purpose. The tip of the iron is applied to the goat’s head over the horn nubs where it cauterises the skin and nerves, killing the cells that are responsible for horn growth. In my experience, the kid will usually cry out and often urinate on itself. The only up side to the whole thing is that it is quick – only a few seconds per horn, and that the nerves are burned off immediately making the pain short lived – or so I’m told. I believe that there is some truth to this because after the process, the kids often go right back to playing and romping around as though nothing has happened.

It’s a simple process but disbudding should only be attempted by someone who knows how to do it properly. A botched disbudding can lead to brain damage, disfigurement, or even death. All that and never mind the burns to the person doing the disbudding. In our case, we went to our vet for guidance. She did the disbudding, but I asked her to show me how to do it properly so that next time we can take care of it on the goats schedule instead of ours or the vets. I figure we owe them that at least, right?

Each goat owner must decide for themselves whether disbudding is appropriate for their herd. But properly done, I believe that in most instances this practice is a necessary part of raising goats. The goats and the owner are safer and usually better off in the long run.

It doesn’t make it any easier though.

One of our does a few hours after being disbudded.

Muscadines

Listener feedback show with some swanky new bumper music!.

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Watch us on Youtube!

Music: The Rabbits, The Gruff
Call the Pollin Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Canning

Brian and Laura come back from vacation, take some feedback, talk about new critters, try to buy a truck, itch like the dickens, keep deer out of the garden, and do some irrigation.. redneck style.

Links:
Pearson’s Farm (formerly Big 6 Farm)
Richard Scarry
Rain Chains (Our Rain Chain)

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Watch us on Youtube!

Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
Call the Pollin Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Burning AFB Infected Hives

Join me on my way down to Baxley to pick up some bees. The first in a series of shows where we focus entirely on bees and beekeeping. We go over some interesting breaking developments in beekeeping amd discuss some of the microbial pathogens that our bees have to deal with.

Gardener’s Apiary
Baxley, Georgia

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Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Making hot while it's cold.

We take some feedback, talk about the bee-koozies, giggle a little about mustache wax, and discuss the perils, pitfalls, problems and preparations to do with shopping for your hobby farm.

Some Links to get You Started

Rural Property
Farm Seller
Land and Farm
United Real Estate
Farm and Ranch

Music: James Larson, Gaia Consort
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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The Three Amigos - Irish, Hollis, and Casper

Part 2 of 2 where we drive around, I talk about our neighbor’s barn going up in flames, and finish up our discussion on goat breeds.

Music: James Larson
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Irish, one of our Sannen goats

Part 1 of 2 – Time to talk about goat breeds. More UMs and Uhhhs than a convention of Buddhist monks and we finally get the stall finished.

Music: James Larson
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Showing off the Fruits of our Labor

Guerrilla podcasting from the mobile studio today. Sorry folks. It was mobile or nothing this week. We give a recap on Inman Farm Heritage Days, finally get the horse on stall rest, pick a buttload of grapes, and talk about the agricultural side of dealing with flooding.

Special thanks to Ricky for spending his Saturday slogging through the mud at Heritage Days.

Information on Flooding
Muscadine Harvest 2009

Music: James Larson
PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Inman Farm Heritage Days

In the days leading up to our favorite festival of the year – the rain threatened, and then – unfortunately for us it then followed up and made good on the threat. In spades. Friday looked good, but Saturday was wet and muddy from the get go.

I will say that given the rain, this was a dedicated crowd. I made enough on Saturday to cover family dinner at the concession stand. The Brunswick stew was to die for and I ate much more than anyone should be allowed to eat.. shamelessly.

I had a tough time keeping the soaps from sweating with the uber-high humidity, so on the list is trying to figure out some way of packaging them so they keep dry. Any of you soapmakers out there have any suggestions? Wrapping them in paper towels seemed to work in the short term.

My daughter helped with the booth and held her own selling cookies and brownies.

Although the heavy rains did put a dent in our bottom line, we made out okay and caught up with some old friends. If anything, this weekend served as a good reminder to me about why I spend all this time and energy lugging a booth around in the rain to try and hock a few jars of jelly.

It’s certainly not for the money. No, It’s the people. Like so many other things.. it’s the people.

It always has been, and for me at least – it always will be.

Thank you Rick, Joanne, Stephanie and everyone else that works so hard to make Heritage Days what it is.

-Brian

Our Former Rooster, Drumstick

Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce! For nearly an hour, show 14 finds me taking our inaugural voice mail, almost making it through the feedback without botching someone’s name, bidding farewell to our rooster, looking forward to Inman Farm Heritage Days, skirting the law.. maybe, and pontificating on the idea of setting up an outyard. Thanks for listening!

Cool Link:
Inman Farm

Music: James Larson
New PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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Our Three Goats

A short one this time. Still trying to get this car recording stuff ironed out – so the audio is kinda crappy. A short one. I prattle on about how I almost crushed myself with the tractor this week. Twice. Then we pontificate on the fad popularity of hobby farming.

Music: James Larson
New PodCast Call in Line: 740-5-MYFARM

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A snake that was squatting in our hen house

I go mobile for this podcast and drag you along for my morning commute. We play catch up on some farm updates to do with bees and snakes, stumble through a few verbal blunders, rant about my experience trying to become a certified egg candler, decry the outrage otherwise known as HR 875, and even manage to spit on Monsanto somewhere in the mix.

Cool Link:

Hobby Farms
The Survival Podcast
The Chicken Whisperer

Music: James Larson

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Our Rainwater Catchment System

The semi-long awaited 10th episode!
On this BubbaCast I answer some feedback, apologize for completely messing up the feed while doing some housekeeping, go over some other webby stuff and talk about designing a rainwater catchment system. Yes, I did edit in a disclaimer around the 39 minute mark. I don’t normally edit much, but I thought it was important. Thanks for listening!

Cool Links:

More Rainwater Harvesting Info
Self Sufficient Homestead Podcast – with Johnny Mac & the Queen
Shurflo Pumps
Uniseal

Music: James Larson

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Making Peach Butter

In this pre-tenth BubbaCast I go mobile and cover some peachy product updates. I get a HUGE shout out from Sean Kennedy (how awesome is that?!), accidentally drop the ‘F-Bomb’, try to adopt an immigrant worker, toss kittens around, and tell you just enough about electric fences to do some real damage. Thanks for listening!

Cool Links:
Rant Media
Freedom Gardens

Music: James Larson

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Our new roof is finally being put down.

Woohoo! The new roof is going down (or is that up?) today, and it looks great! This crew is amazing. I’ve never seen people work so hard.

Peaches and Cream Soap

Boy howdy have we been busy around here. On the way back up from Jekyll we stopped at Dickies Farm and picked up a few bushels of peaches. Needless to say that on top of everything else we’ve spent our spare moments canning and soaping. And what do we have to show for our efforts? Well there’s the peaches n’ cream soap pictured above. There’s also peach jam, peach butter, peach salsa, and ginger peach jam (amazing!!). My dining room table is covered in mason jars.

Canning stuff is hot work. I can only imagine what it would be like in the dead of a south Georgia summer without air conditioning as it was back the day. I also managed to bang out some more lard soap which turned out really nice thanks to a tweak I made to the recipe.

The bees are doing ok. I’ve lost 3 hives this year, but the remaining colonies seem to be thriving. Go figure. I’ve got several hive updates to post as well, but will get around to those as I am able.

More later…

The makings of peach jam

I was up way too late last night making ginger peach jam. We don’t grow peaches, but we picked up a few bushels of them from Dickies Farm about an hour south of us.

It was a really neat experience and well worth the stop if you happen to be in the area. The fresh peach ice cream is unbelievable.

The ginger peach jam was looking good this morning and we’ll get it up on the site in a few days. We’ve got some other products that need pictures taken so expect those to be fixed around the same time.

I’ll just go ahead and tell you guys.. this stuff is delicious and I expect it to go fast. If you want some, get your order in quick.

Me next to a seaturtle nest on Jekyll

As far as squinty-eyed constipated photos go, this is a personal best.  However, I’m really just hanging out chilling with around a hundred of my closest baby sea turtle friends.

With their nesting habitat quickly dwindling, Jekyll Island is very important to sea turtles and home to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.

The gloves are because I rode the bike there.  They are not a tribute to the late King of Pop.

Dolphins

In spite of the small craft advisory that the Coast Guard issued this morning, we took the boat out to the south side of Jekyll Island near St Andrews Sound.   To our luck, the local dolphins were still having breakfast and posed for some pictures.

Peach Packing at Dickies Farm

On the way down to Jekyll Island we stopped at Dickies Farm for peaches and fresh peach ice cream.  The ice cream was phenominal.  This is a picture of their packing operation.  According to Dickies, they run the oldest packing house in the state.