Goat Notes are now up on Etsy.com!

They are available for purchase, either individually or as a custom set of your choosing.

To celebrate the re-opening of my Etsy shop, I’m having a drawing for a set of all five cards (and a small, surprise gift!) All you have to do is tell me the title of the photo that you like the best. To read the titles, click on each picture. It’ll link you right through to Etsy and you can see all the details.

Leave your entry in the comments below. One entry per person, please. The contest closes Nov. 17 at midnight, EST. International entries are welcome! A winner will be picked using a random number generator. Best of luck!

I thought you might like an update to some of what’s been going on around here.

Remember the cold frames? The soil looks dry and the lettuce hasn’t sprouted, but look at my winter turnips! Even if they don’t get to full-size, the animals will greedily eat these greens up.

It was a busy week for my “actresses who play Tillie.” After her bath, Betsy was clean and beautiful for her appearance at the Walpole Public Library. Her sister, Coco, has finally stopped being broody, so I put her to work and she met over forty children at the Billerica Public Library.

Remember those Brussel Sprouts? I’d like to think that I grew a special miniature variety, but, actually, they never matured to full-size. It was a lot of work trimming the outer leaves and discolored spots, and it seemed like half of the crop ended up in the compost bucket, and I was left with a small bowl of little sprouts. I might have been disappointed, but the goats and hens were very happy about that!

I roasted the Brussel sprouts with olive oil, salt and a touch of balsamic vinegar. Roast them in a single layer in a heavy, dark metal pan (glass just doesn’t give you that same lovely browning.) Bake at 400 degrees F until they soften through and darken (time will vary with size of sprout.) Dust with a Parmesan Reggiano (the best you can get – never the powder from the can!) Delicious.

The big story here of the past two weeks has been my son’s broken elbow. Thank you everyone for your well-wishes! I’ve been in awe of his attitude – he hasn’t once whined or complained, despite the pain, the surgery, the boredom of sitting, and the inability to play his favorite computer game because he can’t use a mouse. This is what he’ll be carrying around for the next four weeks:

Doesn’t it make you itchy just looking at it?

Scooter has been doing a very good job doing what he does best, sitting on a lap. Jacob spent much of the last two weeks in a zombie-like drug-induced haze in front of the TV. Scooter was right there with him. Lily, however, has not wanted to sit around. She’s under my desk as I write this, and she’s very clearly communicating  that we need to get out. Walk!

Okay, Lily.

You can have chickens for years and never have to bathe a hen, but once in awhile a hen really needs a bath. Maybe she has manure stuck to her vent, or had lice and the feathers need cleaning, or you purchased a hen that arrives smelly and dirty and you want to clean her up before adding her to the flock. I’ve made a video to show you how to bathe a hen (and blow-dry!) Here it is:

It’s coming on to winter, so it’s time to think about getting the boots out of the closet and putting them by the porch door. I watch Project Runway. I know that boots with heels are in fashion. Heidi Klum struts around in five-inch heels and manages to look elegant and powerful. She’s probably going to wear boots like these this winter:

Maybe these boots are fine when walking on flat ground, where there’s no ice or snow. Maybe. But to me, they look like an accident about to happen. Fashion is dangerous!

Around here, we have our own sense of style. LL Bean Boots are classics.

Sensible, sturdy, warm. But safe? Not always.

Left by the back door, wild animals appropriate them for their own uses. Always, always, look inside before slipping them on.

What with molting, shortened days, colder weather, and aging hens, I expected egg production to trail off this month, and it has. On Thursday, I went from collecting two eggs (from 14 hens) to none. Oh well, I thought. On Friday, there were still no eggs, which was really too bad because my son with the broken elbow has been asking for scrambled eggs every morning. In the afternoon I took the compost bucket out to the big barn’s run and found these:

They are very well hidden, nestled in the end-of-garden refuse and dead leaves. They’re also in a corner that I don’t usually look in. Here’s a view from outside the bin:

The eggs are in that front, left corner.

While hiding a cache of eggs isn’t unusual on many farms, it is here. This is the first time in over fifteen years of keeping hens that my girls have hidden their  eggs. I’m not sure what prompted the change. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing different with their nesting boxes. Maybe the way the materials were tossed into the compost made that corner irresistible?

Or, perhaps there’s something going on that I don’t know about. The other day, Lily was acting strangely. She kept asking to go out. Then in. Then out, where she’d station herself in the center of the lawn in an attentive sit. Also, the HenCam barn hens spent a nice, sunny day indoors, which is totally out of the ordinary behavior for them. My hunch is there’s been a predator around, and judging by Lily’s tension, it’s not one she’s familiar with. Maybe the bear that destroyed our bird feeders two years ago is back.

In any case, I want the hens to lay their precious eggs indoors. I put a wooden egg in the nesting box, and the hens went right back to laying where they’re supposed to.

I was pretty sure that the eggs were fresh and in good shape, but I checked to make sure. Old eggs develop an air sac and float in water. Fresh eggs sink. Eggs a few weeks old rotate an end and point out of the water. Here you can see a two-week old egg, upright, and the horizontal egg is the one collected from the compost. Both eggs have since been eaten. They were delicious.

(Look closely at the photo and you’ll see some of my egg cup collection!)