Thursday, July 28, 2016

On my horse farm, I also had milk goats for awhile. You will laugh because I wasn't raised on a farm, so when we moved to the country to raise animals and live closer to the land, the milk goat got there before the goat shed and milking stanchion were done. We put hay bales in the garage to form a make shift stall and my 3 children, fed the grain and held the "How to Milk a Goat" book. I sat on the ground, listened to the instructions one child read to me, and milked. 

My brother, who also never was raised on a farm, built the goat shed and best of all the goat stanchion to hold the goat while milking. He also built the attached chicken coop. 

Although I don't remember any pesky raccoons there, we did have an occasional skunk, one who squeezed in between the pipes under the sink where our garbage can was. When my six year old son, opened the cabinet door, the shock on his face brought all of us into see what he saw. His older sisters started to scream, I was beside myself trying to quiet them. We saw him leave in an unbelievably small area around the pipe. 

The extension service told us to find the hole around the base of the house where he got under, scatter flour on the ground around the opening, when we saw footprints in the flour leaving, then we should board the hole up. Not easy in Oregon where it rains a lot. Ha. 

Good thing that resulted was the children were very quiet in the house until we solved the entrance problem.

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