Edited: To the Merry Lunatics with Fire

Congratulations for NOT burning the Galve goat before Christmas! I applaud your resistance against the need for pyromania. Well done.


Happy New Year to the Gavle Julgoat. You made it to 2011!!!!!!!

It really is beautiful.....

Update: Dec 28..... It's still there........ Fantastic!

Thanksgiving Recap

We went to Rockport to spend a week with the family and farm. I love going there and seeing what they are working on next.

Reminder: this is the land of bees, exceptionally large dogs and goats.

Yes. Goats. More on that later.

When we thought about finding a spot of land to try farming, we looked first in South Texas. This is "home" as we knew it but the area had been under a serious drought for so long, all the inland lakes and ponds were dry. It looked grim for the kind on vege-planting we aspired to that we turned our eyes back on Louisiana.

Well, The rain has begun to fall again and their 3 acre LAKE is full. I mean to the brim and where once it was covered in green-growth, it is now clean and filling with tilapia! Which the cormorants in turn fill up on as they feast without restraint. I know because I watched this. In they dive and out they munch. I wonder how quickly tilapia reproduce....

On our drive over, we spotted several pecan peddlars on HWY 59. This the stretch blanketed with pecan trees. We thought we'd stop on the ride home and buy a bag. That proved more difficult than we thought as it rained a good part of that day. However, there was one old guy, one intrepid soul out there and as we pulled off the road, he barely registered our existence. Until we asked about where he got these excellent pecans (and they were). Then he opened up like the skies themselves and the next thing we know, 15 minutes pass. We learned where he lived, what he did in the war, where his parents grew up, that Georgia pecans were superior this year (have to agree) how much it rained this year.

There looked like there was going to be no graceful exist to be found. We paid for our stash and began to walk backward to the truck, while he followed and changed the subject to some other topic and continued away as we opened out doors and climbed inside. He was a lovely guy! I wanted to invite him in but we had a long way to go and said as much. Mistake. That started another conversation.

I still don't remember exactly how we extricated ourselves. The pecans were worth every sentence.

Back on the farm, the goatherd has increased since we were there last year. They are up to 18 goats and ten of those are pregnant. This makes for fun photos!

The weather here is turning colder so we have been covering all the citrus and raised beds. Today is our quilt group Christmas party and I have made another batch of Green Gumbo to bring. While I was out there, I harvested our first chinese cabbage: Witness the beauty of this baby!

Here is shot of the beds before we covered them. Ahhh the kale is splendid! The carrots are almost ready and the beets! The beets!!!! They will be perfect for the Borasmord!

Here Todayyyy Is a New Birddddd! No, That Is A Goat!

Do you remember last year my lamenting the burning of the Gavle Goat in Sweden?

I'd post a photo of it here but cannot sort out how to save one from Google.

Well, here you can go to see the beautiful structure for yourself. It is a WebCam that refreshes several times a minutes. But you must hurry hie there quick before another idiot Grinch comes along and burns this one to the ground!