Animal Husbandry, and other educational experiments...

Twice-a-day milkings, snow, goat road trips, something close to goat porn, kidding goats, and spontaneous livestock purchases have kept me from updating what was the only link to sanity when I first began this adventure. The past year in hobby farm life has been so incredibly educational that I have had little time to even think or care about blogging. But as new experiences and farm life lessons start to crowd my reality, I must return to document what continues to be one of the best decisions of my life.

Lyndi and I took Phoenix to be bred at a farm in Westminster, MD in October of 2010. She was left at the farm for 30 days to get it on with the buck of my choosing. 30 days of constant and rampant goat sex was not enough to get my girl knocked up, so I wound up purchasing one of the "Nanny" goats that I was assured was "good-n-preggers" and was assured by the fellow crazy goat women that she would produce 3 kids (the norm being 2). The 70-mile ride with two adult goats in the back of my new SUV was quite a comedy point for travelers on I-95. One of my favorite road trips to date.

The winter set in, and my milker Phoenix was all dried up and I had nothing to really "do" at the farm. I have suddenly become a fair weather rider, and wasn't quite up to freezing my ass off just to trot my horse around a frozen arena. I settled back into a "normal" routine with my children and patient husband, and spent the majority of the winter months eating my turkeys and expanding my jeans size. It was a nice break from the schedule-crushing commitment of milking Phoenix 14 times a week, although I did miss the milk.

Fast-forward to a freezing night on Valentine's weekend when my house was full of visiting children, Lily's kids arrived. She promptly dumped them in the snow and left them to freeze to death. And although I never thought for a second that I would bring livestock into my HOA-suburban home, I brought those babies straight into my living room and sat them by the fire all night, bottle-feeding them until they started looking alive. The children were amazed...hell, I was amazed, and the new adventure started. Nothing in the Raising Dairy Goats book prepared me for having three very cute and noisy baby goats camping out in front of my fire.

We lost the runt of the group while I was on a business trip in L.A. in March (RIP PEANUT), and I was touched by the level of support for attempting to get the goat back on the side of health in my absence. Peanut touched so many lives in her short life - and went places most goats do not normally go, especially church, spent the night in my arms on my couch, and walked her way into my in-laws home!

The other two siblings are thriving, Lola and Valentine. I actually decided that it would be best to sell them and have found two lovely and perfect new homes for them. A very young and bright-eyed couple came yesterday morning to buy Valentine, and I just wanted to literally embrace them both for their enthusiasm about raising goats. They were so excited and brimming with hope about their intended sustainable farming. It was so refreshing to get caught up in their dreams, forgetting that their reality will be so hard but so rewarding. It was also comforting to find kindred spirits who understand why I get up at 5AM to drive to the barn in the pitch darkness, wrestle goats with my entire body to clip their hooves, kiss my herd straight on their noses, and make them cookies as treats. I am not alone in this madness, and I am becoming somewhat of a legitimate dairy farmer. A little, anyway.

I am finally milking Lily now, slowly starting to wean the kids off so I can have a decent amount of milk again. Hopefully this will be the year of hard cheeses.

People ask me often How Do You Do It All? And I do not have an answer other than I am a sucker for passion. Never a dull moment. Never. I wouldn't have it any other way.