Take your children to work day!

Penelope participated happily in "take your child to work day" by bringing her two young children to the milking stand with her today. They seemed fascinated by the whole process, studying it in depth and I think they even nibbled out of the treat bucket.

It's great to see parents involving their children in their professional lives!

posted from Bloggeroid

Quick Update on things for April

Sorry, no pictures on this post. Quite honestly... we have been a bit too busy to keep up with reporting on things.  So here is a quick update:

1. The fave beans are sprouted, reasonably well. Not as good as hoped, but not bad. The week of warmer rains might bring a few more to the surface... hopefully.

2. We did manage to get the entire main garden tilled this week, just in time for the rain. As always, the plan is to till as soon as dry enough, then let it sit through a warm rain (at least not cold) to sprout initial weed set, then a light till when it dries again and plant.  We have the first tilling done, now waiting for the rain, sprouting, retilling and planting. For the curious, the main garden this year is right at 1 1/2 acres in size.

3. We have 2 more areas hoping to get planted before summer, the old goat pen and the present pig pen. Those two are well fertilized and ready to go. But, the goat pen is much too muddy yet and the pig pen is.. well.. housing pigs yet! Plus the pigs totally tore down one side of fencing, held up by a pallet, so that must be replaced.

4. There are 2 more potential areas to plant this year... one has been housing horses for several years, and the other is the original winter garden spot. both should grow well.

5. The goats are almost all into milk now, ready for the season.  It has meant some serious restructuring of the barn to accommodate the bulk of the herd all at once, but it is slowly coming together.

6. We did manage to get the milking barn rebuilt, cleaned up from the winter, and useable again.

7. The new chicken flock is doing well, we ended up with right at 150 young birds that look healthy and happy. They will be coming out of the brooders this week and into their first job of fertilizing one garden area.

8. The new guinea fowl arrive this week, which means we will be retiring the old flocks to start anew, providing some excellent meat and organs for sale.

9. We have tested last year's home made "feed" of dehydrated zuchinni and greens. It stored exceptionally well! opening the buckets after 6 months revealed perfectly dry, aromatic, well preserved vegetables! The chickens were the first recipients of this marvelous free feed and they love it as long as it is ground a bit into smaller chunks. And their eggs... WHOA! the best eggs we have ever produced! Thick orange yolks, well developed whites, perfect aroma and a beautiful soft flavor. These are , in my humble opinion, the best eggs I have ever seen! And that is without the bug barn in operation, just zuchinni and greens! It looks like the experiment is a smashing success!

10. This week with the rains we hope to spend time finishing the barn insides and getting the chickens moved into their spring positions. Then it's office work! We have lots of paperwork to do to support the new may announcements!

I think that's about it for now. Please forgive us for not keeping up with emails this week, the pleasant weather break meant some long days, and enough hours in the sun to build a nice sunburn! The rains means that things will settle a bit and we can get back on top of things.

Thanks for all your support!

Garlic! The miracle food with a strong and laaaassstttiiinnnggg flavor

Garlic, perhaps the single most important plant to support health. Its good for SO many things in man and beast.  For the latter, one thing it does quite effectively is kill internal parasites naturally.




It does, however, have quite the flavor....

We routinely treat the animals for parasites, as parasites are ubiquitous in our world.  While most farms use harsh chemicals (i.e. poisons) to treat the animals, we have chosen a different route... herbs and plants.  We rotate through a set of herbal parasite control throughout the year. This not only effectively treats parasites, but actually increases the animals health in the process.

It does, however, have quite the flavor....

So yes, this time the garlic parasite treatment of the goats was very effective but, well, tended to linger on... and on...  We had timed it so that the treatment started in between all herdshare milkings, with expectation that the flavor (which does get into the milk)  would dissipate before the next herdshare milking came around.  Well, yea. That didnt work out.  The flavor lingered.

So for 2 weeks now, the milk has had a distinct and lingering although decreasing taint of garlic / onion flavor. Some days it was stronger than others. But always there. Sometimes it would take two or three drinks for the flavor to build, but it was there!


For herdshare members: as we said in email... if you find the milk objectionable, we offered a $20 credit on your account to compensate for any inconvenience. 

We are happy to announce that it is now all clear! after two weeks, the milk is back to its sweet creamy flavor!

Next time we will keep this in mind when doing a parasite purge with garlic!

Goats goats everywhere

Just in time for the first serious winter storms, here comes a flood of baby goats. And I mean a flood! My apologies for not posting sooner, and not having dozens of cute baby goat pics... we have been overrun with caring for these little ones in this weather. Plus.. a good number of these are brand new first time moms... so milking has become... interesting.

All together, there have been about 10 to 12 births over the last 2 weeks. That's just about a birth a day... in the cold rain. Fortunately most have been strong and healthy! But still, first time moms are rarely experienced at caring for little ones, so it requires extra precautions. For instance, we dedicated one barn stall for the nursery, and all new births go there for several days. This ensures relative safety of the babies from the bigger goats, and helps ensure bonding of mom and offspring. Without this we have had babies get lost in the herd, and the new moms can actually forget that they had a little one.

Things are finally calming down... except for milking! Wow... what was a peaceful 90 minute daily retreat is now a bit of a rodeo! Teaching a half dozen brand new first time moms what a milking stand is.... that is an experience! Milking can take as long as 4 hours, and not necessarily peaceful.

The good news is ... milk production is climbing again. We hope to be back making cheese soon.

posted from Bloggeroid

Birds eye view of milking

These three little kids just couldn't resist...  They had to peak in and see what was happening in the mysterious "milking room".  Of course...  They needed a lift to see.

Here's how you do it...

Levi learned to milk this week. He has been watching for a while and just decided that he wanted to do it himself.  right away, he is an old pro!  He loved showing his little brother his new skills this morning :)