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We’ve been truly blessed with some nice weather lately. Really nice weather. The kind of weather I was convinced we wouldn’t ever see again. We’ve taken advantage of it.

The goat barn has gotten a little update. Here’s a before picture of the storage/milking room:

Not bad. But we added a shelf, and it made all the difference - at least to me:

And this is looking from the storage/milking room over at the goat barn area:

That little wall is just over four feet tall - and little Mirrie could jump up and easily look over it. I worried she would eventually be able to make that leap and end up in the storage/milking area - with free access to hay. I have a true fear of that right now…. So, we fixed that little problem. It now looks like this:

Bernie added an upper door to the lower one I go into on the left. And he added a couple of 2 X 4’s to keep her from getting over on the right side.

I also built them a hay rack outside. Bernie will build a lean-to over this area in the very near future so it will be protected from weather.

They seem to like it pretty good.

Mostly Mirrie was interested in getting at my sunglasses I hooked on the door while we worked.

Or playing on her spool.

Georgia doesn’t really like getting on the spool, but she likes aggravating Mirrie when she’s on it.

Georgia is such a sweet girl. Just look at her precious face.

She’s good at finding browse in the yard.

And Mirrie’s good at joining in when Georgia finds good eats.

We also built a milk stand for them today.

Milking is a little way off, but this is also good to use for trimming hooves and doctoring. Once we secure the neck, we can give them sweet feed to keep them somewhat distracted while we do what we need to do.

Check out Fiasco Farms for detailed plans on this milk stand. We didn’t follow this exactly, but it certainly gave us the basis for what we built.

I also had some time to work in the greenhouse this weekend.

This was our first winter with the greenhouse, and we enjoyed tomatoes and peppers well into October with in. It also housed a few plants for me over this brutal winter. I was quite pleased to find that the vast majority of them not only survived, but flourished! Look to the right and on the floor.

The left shelf has the seeds I planted this weekend. I’m hoping they will do well in the greenhouse and flourish in the garden.

With the exception of the Sago, Aloe Vera, and fig trees, everything else spent this harsh winter in the greenhouse. I’m tickled at how well everything did.

I appreciate the sunshine, warmth, and new growth of springtime. And the opportunity to start anew. Spring allows us to do that. Start anew. Thank goodness for springtime.

I’ve received a couple of emails requesting to see the progress on the goat barn. Apparently I’ve been remiss in my updates! We’re coming right along with it. Sunday is looking like the “big day”. And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me!

Because of our building inspector issues, we focused on half of it first - that would be the right half in this picture.

But once we got our “farm use” permit, we added the second half. Our neighbor “Mad Dog” has been helping Bernie with the second half all week. Now we have the entire building up, and they are putting in one of the windows in this picture.

The room the guys are working in is the area the goats will live in. I’m taking the picture from the feed storage and milking room in this picture

The next two days will be spent on finishing up the outside so weather can not get inside and shoveling in dirt to fill it to the bottom horizontal line in this picture:

Sunday is the big day. We’ll have our goat babies here and then Bernie will work on the roof, lean-to, and fencing in the paddock.

My friend Charlotte will go with me to get these goat babies. I’m excited to get them home. And I’m happy that such a good friend will accompany me.

Goat babies are wonderful. Good friends are nothing to sneeze at either

OK. With two feet of snow on the ground, and the possibility of 3 - 6 inches more on Monday, it’s quite apparent that building a goat barn isn’t going to happen as quickly as I’d hoped. I’d be fibbing if I said that doesn’t bother me. I think about Mirrie, Hope, and Chance every single day and I do wish they were here.

Even though we can’t work on building the goat barn, I’ve been looking into the best feed/water configurations. So, for those of you who have goats, would you please do me a favor and tell me your thoughts on some of this? I’m mainly concerned about the water, feed, and hay I provide inside the goat barn. The barn will be 20 feet long, and 8 feet wide, divided like this - 5X8 stall, 8X8 main portion for goats, and an 7X8 area for milking/doctoring and hay/feed storage.

For the hay, Bernie planned to build a manger. But I found some wall mounted hay racks that look as though they help reduce waste, and that won’t take up as much space. With three goats, I figure a corner mount and wall mount may be sufficient? What do you think? This is what the wall mount looks like. Would two (corner and wall) be adequate for daily hay inside the goat barn? Or do you think we should just go with a large manger that Bernie builds? The goat barn isn’t going to be extremely large, so I’m hoping to save space where I can - but if those wall/corner mangers aren’t adequate, we’ll figure out something else.

How do you secure water inside so the goats can’t knock it over? I found these wall mounts that look great, but there are several different types. These are also used for feed. What do you do for securing feed and water? This page shows several - do you use any of these, or do you recommend another method?

Kendra, from New Life on a Homestead provided a link to the Fias Co Farm website, where I found detailed plans for building a milk stand. Milking may be quite a while in our future, but I can see that using a milk stand to secure a goat while caring for her may be a necessity long before then. And this is something I may be able to work on in the coming days to make me feel like I’m at least moving a little bit forward!

If any of you goat parents can offer some advice here, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!