Germination rate on apricot and peach seeds is pretty good. I put the seeds in pots in early November. Plan to use most of these seedlings as rootstocks.
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It’s a faint sound, you have to be w/in like a foot or so of the bee house, but there are 100s of them, so quite audible. scritch scritch
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Agree, Rosdonald. Except all the apples are on M-111 which is slow to bear, and isn’t winter hearty in containers after the leaves have come out and it dips into the teens.
Maybe I’ll have to swap you out of a twig of Dula’s Beauty…one I definitely think is a winner, but when I ordered from David Bowen, it wasn’t available.
Its not fruit related, but it is “What’s happening today 2020” so I hope you’ll forgive me…
This little girl was born this morning. I’m a grown man and still say “awwwe” when I see my new baby goats! haha Nothing cuter.
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OhForCute! (one word, say it fast- it’s a MN thing!)
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I love goats! I am always playing with the thought to get some as an addition to our cows for our steepest hills. I haven’t until now because I don’t love the thought of chasing goats every day. (Our neighbour has milk goats and they are devil outbreakers). Are these South-African Boer goats?
Edit: I looked at them again and now I think they’re dwarfs? I thought Boer because of the coloration and the floppy ears but the bodies of the adults look wrong…As you can tell I’m not very knowledgeable about goats!
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@KSprairie that is a very unique phrase/word that I have never heard before! Then again, I’ve never been to MN. I’m sure I have a lot of saying/words from here in the south that you haven’t heard!
@Oepfeli believe it or not, I’ve never know what kind of goats most of these are…they are just kind of mutts. I bought some from craigs list about 7 years ago and they didn’t know what they were and since then I’ve added another mutt or two and of course they have all bred so its just a big mixed up mess! The exception is the mostly white one…it is a fainting goat (Also called Tennessee Goats). In case you don’t know, fainting goats literally faint when they get excited or scared. It’s really something to see. THey go completely stiff as a board, fall over, and about 30 seconds later they get up and go about their business like nothing ever happened.
Anyway, I strongly encourage you to get a few goats. They are endlessly entertaining, and by far are the lowest maintenance animal on earth. I give them a little worm medicine 3 times a year, and only have to feed them daily in the winter. Mine are on a great pasture bigger than they need so in warm weather months I just put out a mineral block and feed them about 3 days a week. Otherwise they completely fend for themselves (except in winter) .
But they are escape artists! But even that shouldn’t stop you. You can keep them in with a fairly good fence, and when they do get out they usually just stand around like they wish they were back inside the fence! haha THey take no special knowledge or work and are a lot of fun.
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Oh my god they are fainting goats! That is so amazing, I am slightly confused at how that fence keeps them in but then i saw the barbwire on top and all your green must keep them happy. Now my wife wants them and that is just not helpful. They are the most adorable things ever
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haha. Give your wife her way on this one… happy wife, happy life and this is something you will both enjoy! My fence is a 5 ft “goat fence” with a strand of barbed wire. That top row of barbed wire is insulated and installed so it could be electrified, and for the first year or so it was. But that was more trouble to keep working and didn’t seem to really be necessarily anyway.
As for the fainting, it is just the funniest thing. I don’t make a habit out of making them faint because it just seems wrong, but honestly they don’t seem to mind or even know its happened. Occasionally when someone comes over I will clap and sort of jump toward him and he falls out like a statue! ha. Often when its feeding time and I shake the feed bucket he get so excited that he will start to run toward me and the food and BAM! “Down goes Frazier!”
I must tell you my all time favorite fainting goat story… soon after I got him and my other goats, a neighbor man brought his little boy (about 5 yrs old) down to see the cute new goats. Well, they rode down on a 4-wheeler. Just about the time they pulled up the 4-wheeler backfired. Sure enough, the fainting goat falls down stiff. All of a sudden the poor little boy gets upset and seems about to cry and he says “Daddy, we’ve killed it”! hahaha. Poor little boy, and who could blame him…thats what I’d have thought too if I’d been him!!! Fortunately a minute later the goat gets up in perfect condition and the little boy looks like he has seen a miracle!!! Everyone was happy!
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Hahaha that is super great, what a cool kid. We both took care of baby fainting goats when we were kids and i think they just have the best personality and are wonderful and a perfect size as the bigger goats are harder to handle for sure. Sadly we have 1/4 acre that is beyond maxxed out right now and while i think my dogs would love a goat there is just no way i could protect my trees and its so arid here that they mow the grass down super fast and move on to all sorts of other things 
I just had to agree that when we get some acreage we will 100% get fainting goats, your young goat is adorable and please keep bringing us pictures!
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What a sweet story and kid.
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@thecityman,
A quick glance at only the first pic, I thought your new puppy looked peculiar
We love watching fainting goat videos. So weird and funny.
Heard about goats eating all kinds of things including non-edibles. Have your goats done that?
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Oh I believe you, chewing insects do make noise. I just didn’t want people to think it’s an imagination.
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Of course now that they’re hatching out, the weather is coming too cold for them so they’ll stay inside
my nephews goats ate the aluminum siding off the shed over winter!
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I know it’s windy and cold here. I’m rebuilding my shed. I might just stay inside too. We got teased with a 70 degree day two days ago. Now I have a bunch of stuff laying all over covered in snow with 20 to 30 mph winds!
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Staying inside soundslike a plan
The bees won’t come out to work until it’s 50 - sensible creatures.
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its funny that you mention about how goats eat anything. I say that because I have actually been shocked more by things they won’t eat!!! After a lifetime of hearing just what you said- that goats eat everything- food based or not- I have decided my goats are just oddballs. For example, in my garden I often have yellow sqash, zucinni squash, and cucumbers that get a little too big and I usually put them on my mulch pile. But I’ve also put all those things in my goat’s area and was shocked to find out they wouldn’t eat them. They will eat bark off trees, thistle weeds, and paper bags if I’m not careful, but they WON"T eatsquash and cucumbers??? Crazy!
@RichardRoundTree I misunderstood you and thought you were surprised at hearing that fainting goats existed- that’s why I was explaining them to you. ha. Sounds like you know all about them after caring for them as kids. 
But yea, I totally agree that they are perfect goats in almost every since, including size. All my goats are about that size- smaller than most goats but not as small as dwarfs. I
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Evereste Crabapple I planted not too long ago from Raintree absolutely loaded up with blooms. I’m amazed that a little whip can have so many.
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