Two very encouraging things are in front of us. First.. people are calling from all over offering their tree trimmings and brush to Little Sprouts. From the Craigslist ad we are getting 2 or 3 calls per day now. It is so encouraging to meet so many truly caring and generous people in our world. What a great experience for our family to get to know these good people and share a few minutes of chat and labor with them. It demonstrates to us just how much good is left in this world.
The other encouraging thing is that the goat's milk production appears to be restored, after only 3 days on tree trimmings. That was one of the motivations in this experiment... The goat milk production had decreased as expected when we cut our their daily grains. over a week or so without grain it dropped to about half. All the dairies we have spoken with tell us this is expected, it takes grain to make a decent milk yield. Considering this we fell back on our Farm Rules. One of them is that we create as natural an environment as possible for each animal. Goats in the wild would not exist on just grains. Studying them, we see that they are drawn to trees.. leaves specifically. Whenever they are loose in our yard they go right to the bushes and trees and strip them clean. Leaves seem to be their food of choice. So we started collecting tree trimmings. After 3 days of as much tree trimmings as they want... plus their grass and alfalfa hay, the milk production is back from half to full. It is a bit too early to tell, but so far this is very promising! If we can sustain a full milk production without feeding grain, by feeding what they are naturally drawn to, I suspect the milk will e of higher nutritional content. This is, after all, the end goal, nutrition - not quantity, BUT if we can achieve quantity plus nutrition... thats the best possible situation. We will do some more experimenting and have the milk tested as soon as we can to tell for sure. For now.. more tree trimmings!
Today we headed over to ashland to pick up a variety of tree trimmings and leaves. We managed to pretty much fiill the trailer and had a great time doing it. Our many thanks to those who contributed to today;s collection!
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| Packing dried leaves into bags |
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| More leaves |
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| Kaelyn takes a break for some fresh organic grapes |
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| Working together! |
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| One last bag |
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| Kaelyn helping dad load cut branches. Always by my side. |
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| Is this too big to life? |
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| Look out DAD! |
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| Hunter loads into the trailer, stacking for best fit. |
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| Wow Dad, look at this one! |
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| What could be better than that smile for a job well done? |
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| Keep em coming! |
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| Whats this little guy have on his mind? |
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| Up on one leg! |
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| YES! Standing! |
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| back down :) maybe try again after a rest |
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| What a team! we loaded the whole trailer togther! |
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| Levi heads back in to check things out |
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| The job quality inspector |
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| What do you think? are we done? |
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| Yep.. looks like time to head home -- he is smiling :) |
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