I guess you could say we are just plugin along with our small scale farming lifestyle. About 3 months ago we started milking our goat full time. Yeay! This has been a great accomplishment for us and one of the big reasons we moves up here. Leaving palm desert, we pictured having fresh eggs, goat milk and a big garden. The chickens and gardens just come with work and time. Buy chickens, wait for them to lay eggs. Next, read a bunch of crap on how to garden, figure out what and how you wan to plant, and see what happens. Gardening is a ton of work, but worth it. Now, getting a goat that may or may not be pregnant, or buy a "breading pair" so they can love each other and get pregnant, or buy a goat that's supposedly already pregnant and wait and see what happens... all of these above mentioned steps may just get you nowhere and in fact we have done all of the above and it got us nowhere. In fact it got us to hate goats. But that happened because who knows, the first pair of goats we ever purchased turned out to be very difficult. So the one thing that worked for us was actually buying a pregnant goat that was literally about to have a baby any day. And we, being goat retarded, apparently needed that as our only option. Look at her and know without a doubt that she is surely about to give birth. And that my friends ended up working out us. One morning I went out to the barn to feed and there was a tiny wet baby that had literally just came into the world and a first time deer in the headlights mama.
Lots of details and months went by and waalaahh we are drinking fresh goat milk and are loving it. I will have to do a milking post next.
I would've been fine with goats and chickens but Nathan wanted to raise pigs again for the delicious meat and he also convinced me that raising turkeys would be fun. Haha. Well in his defense, two years ago we bought a full grown turkey to fatten up for Thanksgiving and we did love how funny and cool the turkey's personality was. Yes I know, why become emotionally attached at all when raising animals for meat? In my experience, especially with what I teach my kids, I think it is almost necessary to love these animals. We are giving these animals a far better life than they would EVER have if they were being commercially raised to be sold on our supermarket shelves. So I say, love them, name them, have fun with them, and know that God put them on this earth for us to have dominion over and also for us to respect.
Here are a few recent pics.
