It’s hard to believe that summer is winding down already. It’s been hot and/or rainy all summer which meant every time I thought we’d eat outside on the patio, it was too hot, too wet or both. But the weather has changed already. Days are shorter, there’s a cool breeze and this weekend was one of the rare opportunities to eat dinner outside. Not just for us – but for “the herd” too. Happy Labor Day!
It’s the 4th of July and we decided we need to build a picnic table. Our new goats, Heidi and Peter, are rambunctious kids and they need something to climb on. And we need something to sit on when we take our coffee up to the pasture after dinner to visit with them. A picnic table seems to be the perfect solution.
We bought an unassembled one at Home Depot and Chris unpacked all the pieces and parts. Heidi and Peter were full of curiosity. I’m not sure how he managed to get it put together, what with all the help they were giving him!
They love jumping on it, sleeping on it and leaping from it. And they aren’t the only ones enjoying it.
It would be an understatement to say that the “Three Musketeers” – Disa (the Norwegian Fjord Horse), Pono (a miniature horse) and Fiona (our goat) – REALLY enjoy their pasture. In fact, they’ve chomped it down to the roots.
We realized that we probably needed to divide the pasture in half, so they can graze on one side, and let the other side recuperate!
Being novices at all of this, we made a trip to Tractor Supply to look into electric fence tape. In this modern digital age, the aisle of electric fence supplies also offered a free “Instructional DVD” on installing electric fences. We figured it would be really complicated if you had to take home a DVD to figure out how to do this.
As it turns out, it wasn’t that hard (well, it wasn’t hard for me, because Chris did the work). He put in the plastic fence posts, a couple of ground posts, strung the electrified tape, flipped on the power – and voila – we had a divided pasture.
That was the easy part.
The hard part has been keeping (mis)chievious – “Miss” Fiona (the “Miss” is for Mischievous) from jumping through the fence. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. At first Chris would corral her back to the permitted side of the pasture. Eventually we gave up. After all, one little goat can’t eat all that much newly growing grass – can she?
No Rhyme or Reason Farm 