Michelle vs. the Squash Bugs

This is WAR!  Last year I naively planted yellow squash.  Without a care in the world I watched the most beautiful plants come forth.  They were huge with equally large, orange flowers.  I was amazed and impressed with my own green thumb.  Then I saw them.  They were small brown bugs shaped like a leaf.  I had no idea what kind of bugs they were but soon I started to notice my lovely plants begin to wither and die.  What could be wrong, I wondered?  I did some research and found out those little bugs were the reason for my plants demise.  I only saved two small squash before all my plants died.  I was too late to save them.

This year will be different.  There is no way I will let those little fellows eat my plants to oblivion. 

This year's squash.  Beautiful!

I went out to do an inspection today and found squash bugs again.  This time I got moving.  I had read that one way to kill them was to pluck them off the plants and drop them in soapy water.  Wow, it sounded so easy.  I went out armed with a glass of soapy water and one yellow kitchen glove (Hey, it wasn't that I didn't want to touch them...).  Turns out that squash bugs are very fast and my hand disguised as as squash didn't help.  I was able to catch about 15 bugs and kill them.  Next came chemical warfare.  Yes, I am sure they never saw that coming.  Hopefully, in the next week we can see fewer bugs and more veggies.

PS. Japanese Beetle: YOUR NEXT!

The kids are here!

Kidding season is now officially over and the milking has began. We ended up with four beautiful goat kids. Jewels gave birth on May 2nd and gave us a lovely doeling we named Juliet. She weighed in at 8.8 lbs.

Heather gave birth on May 4th to a sweet doeling we named Tessa. She was a hefty 10.2 lbs.

Elizabeth kept us waiting past her due date. I think she was holding out for a crowd to gather:

We were so happy my mother-in-law, Ruth, my sister-in-law, LouAnn and her kids could come watch the birth. It was so much fun to get to see our niece and nephew watch the birth. I hope they had a great time and learned a lot.

We had given up hope that any of our does would have multiples, then Elizabeth surprised us again...



Introducing Eowyn and Aragorn, our first set of goat twins. Eowyn, a doeling and the lighter colored of the two, weighed in at 8 lbs and Aragorn, a buckling, weighed 10 lbs. Aragorn is polled, meaning he was born without horns.

It is so interesting to me the variety in marking between all the kids. Their moms are marked similar and they have the same father. All the little girls ended up with Pepper's frosted ears. Our buckling is the only one who is a solid color.

We are so proud of our new additions. We are planning on retaining all the girls and finding a good home for our little buckling. More on the milking adventure soon.