Let's see, I have been so busy this past week, that I haven't had time to update my blog. I got Frio sheared on Tuesday, about 3 pounds of raw fiber. I'll work on washing it this week, as I didn't get time to last week. Didn't do much crafting this past week or weekend. I did get some Red Heart Holly yarn to make a Christmas stocking with and got it cast on and two rows done, while we were driving to Las Cruces.

Bob brought home fencing, but no posts and we wanted a gate for the new fence. It is around our grapes and I need to be able to take care of them. We went to Las Cruces to look for a weld wire gate kit, this is a tublar frame for you to attach welded wire to and comes with hinges and a latch that are designed to fasten to metal T-posts. The one place that carried them was out :( So for now I'm using a sheet of particle board across the opening to the grapes. With them fenced in, we moved the cross fence back to where we had it originally at the back of the yard, to protect the pine trees we have back there. The fenced in area is about 60' wide x 105' long, so the goats have a lot more space and weeds to eat.

Bob got the supplies and made me a mineral feeder for the goats out of pvc pipe. It works great and the goats seem to prefer the loose minerals over the block we started out with. We attached it to the outer fence near their water tank. We picked up the feeding trough this weekend and put it in the same general area of the yard. The trough will hold a flake of hay, that has been fluffed up, so they are wasting a lot less hay with it.

We found a local farmer who grows hay, a blend of alfalfa and Bermuda grass. They had equipment break down while haying and had some field where the hay grew taller than normally allowed. They call that hay "mature hay" and were selling it for $3/bale compared to $5/bale for regular hay in the field or $6/bale for hay in the barn. We bought 30 bales of the mature hay. That should get me through most of the winter. Bob was just going to get 4 bales of hay from the feed store, but they wanted $14/bale! I'll see what the goats think of the new hay when I'm almost finished with the two bales of pure alfalfa that I got when we bought the goats.