A Year in Review, sort of

No kidding as to what a difference a year can make. A year ago I was juggling a corporate job, my family, the horse, and baby goats and their unhappy Mama.

 Today, I am not juggling nearly as much. Today, I have completely given over to these farming urges that continue to broaden my experience and solidify my certifiable level of insanity. 

In April of 2012, I left my corporate life behind and began working at a horse farm in Forest Hill. It has been the most challenging position I have ever held in my life, and at times, the most rewarding. My poor body may have other opinions as every week I have a new muscular complaint or pure exhaustion by 1PM in the afternoon or bruises from being bitten or slammed into a wall by horse butt or tripped by the donkey at the farm. But I love it...more than anything else I have ever done. 

Despite being around horses for years now, owning my horse, and occasionally help out with a friend's farm to feed and care for her 11 horses, coming into these stables rendered me an idiot from the initial try-out interview. The owner of the stables has little in the way of bedside manners and has fired me 5 times since I started working there. I just return the next day and hope he doesn't literally kick me in the ass as he does with the horses. So far, he has taken me back each time. I have learned how to properly groom a horse in 5 minutes or less,properly hold a horse, trim, and clean out an entire stall along with fresh hay and water in less that 7 minutes. And every day I leave the stables I feel very satisfied.

The main business of the stables is cart horses. Standardbreds that have recently come off the racetrack and are being trained to pull Amish carts. Before working here, I never had a clue that this side of the horse business existed. And it is lucrative to the main dealers....surprisingly so. The Amish have freaking MOOLAH, man. I had no idea! I figured they lived more simply, especially when it came to finances...but not in this world. The horse dealers make more than I ever did, I can promise you that. 

There are times that I miss my daily Starbucks run with my colleagues or running a meeting and the thrill of a successful presentation, but nothing compares to driving a baby black Stallion around the racetrack. Amazing things happen when you pursue your passion...and here I am for now. 

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.

Turkey Eggs

I am reading about whether or not people eat turkey eggs. I am not sure if I would eat an egg the size of a fist, but maybe. OR, how cool would it be to have the egg fertilized and then we could hatch our OWN baby turkeys???

You realize I know nothing about poultry. Not even how to get an egg to have a baby in it. It is going to be a fabulously educational year.

The true meaning of "Vacay"

We are on vacation this week - truly. No jobs (mostly, I should bury my blackberry in the sand), no mail, no interruptions, no laundry, and no animals. I have been struggling with this break, actually, as I now consider my animals to be the foundation of my personal day - of course my children take precedence and root me in reality. But when I am milking my goat, rolling around in the hay with the two kids, and kissing Ruby's soft nose, I know how damned lucky I am to have this life. I am blessed with a husband who will support this madness and constant animal acquisition, children who love to muck out the barn and all the animals, and friends that I have met through being a part of this barn.

Being able to stay in bed with Eliot and Sophia and watch Sesame Street or play the snoring game instead of going to milk and feed the goats is a nice nice nice break, though. The woman I bought the goats from told me that one really can't prepare for how to take care of them, you just do it. And this is true - entirely. There is a lot of juggling of time, fear, pleasure, dedication and tons of milk to deal with. But what I didn't bargain for or even have an inkling about is how much closer I am to nature. I am so proud that my family drinks the milk that Phoenix provides, eats the cheese, and has no complaints.

On our way to Delaware, we were absolutely starving and broke down to get a quick fix at Taco Bell. I have always had a soft spot for Taco Bell as it was my first employer, but I know what goes into that crap so shame on me for giving in and ordering a 7-layer burrito. In the middle of the meal (driving), I tasted the shit that I was eating. Plastic flavored crap. Why? I have gotten used to eating the local beef from Deer Creek Meadow and Level Beef Farms, fresh eggs (until my babes start laying!) from Andy's Eggs, all fresh veggies from our CSA share at Harman's. I have been spoiled.

We ran out of my saved goats milk two days into the trip, and I have been debating whether or not to give in and get pasteurized water milk from the store to keep the kiddos happy. I am going to wait to see if any meltdowns occur before I give in.

I am one lucky lady, I know. And I can't wait to get back to all my animals. We should have turkeys in that mix by this weekend!

Sneaky Like a Fox

The start of our weekend began with the realization that we lost 9 chickens during a midnight fox raid of the coop. I was surprised by how devastated I felt when I learned of the massacre, and was thankful I was not the one who discovered the poor chickens.

In response to this murder scene at the farm, my Poultry Partner in Crime and I double-layered electric fencing around our coop, electrocuting ourselves in the process. Okay, it was my big bootie that accidentally bumped into the live wire fence behind the coop and wound up sending the current from my ass to Poor Leigh. It was pretty darn hysterical though, once we recovered from from the buzzing heat coarsing through our bodies. I am fairly certain I also transferred the electric to one of the goats as well, but they act so goofy anyway its hard to determine the root of the freak out.

Earlier this week, we ordered 20 turkey chicks that will arrive on June 28th! We intend to raise them organically and share with friends and family for the holidays. Should be interesting.

In light of our reduced flock, I have decided we should replace the fallen with a rare assortment of "Rainbow Egg Layers" soon!

Surprise!

When I arrived at the barn this morning I knew something was wrong with Phoenix because she continued to lay on the ground despite hearing the grain scooping. When I was able to get her up, she was favoring her right hind leg, and her hoof was bleeding.

So what was meant to be a quick milking trip turned into an epsom salt bath foot soak (read: Me body-pinning a 160 lb goat and wrestling her foot into the soak bucket) and then digging through all my tack room crap to find my bandages. I have no idea if my intervention will help, but please, please let me have a vet bill break for a month.

I will be going right after work to soak her foot again. I sure wish someone would wrestle me into an epsom salt bath.

Forget Me Not

On the way home from picking up Sophia this evening, we stopped at Harman's Farm. Luckily, the pick-your-own strawberries is still happening, so we waded through some big ol' muddy puddles down the neat rows of gorgeous strawberries.

I have to admit, Sophia and I hunkered down and indulged in a few strawberry samples. Its totally nerdy to say that I literally could taste sunshine in the strawberries. But I think we did. We are pretty stinking lucky to live so close to someplace like Harman's so we can eat such fresh fruits and vegetables.

I was in Minneapolis earlier this week, and had an overnight break from milking Phoenix and fending off the affectionate baby goats. I missed them. I missed all my kids, although my human kids are usually okay as long as I have promised to return from a business trip with candy. I missed my husband and my Havre de Grace.

I missed my routine!

This morning I was still struggling with gaining control over my schedule again, and at 9:30 AM I shouted at Kevin OH MY GOD HONEY I FORGOT TO MILK PHOENIX!! I was just chugging along at my laptop, drinking coffee in my pajamas, when WOW, was hit with that reality. I mean, really? How in the heck did I FORGET to milk an animal that turns into a monster with a goose's squawk when not milked every 12 hours?

Luckily, it was only 13 hours and she was pissed about my lapse, but healthy. The benefit of this scheduling snafu was that I got to learn how to chase chickens back into the barn with only a broom. A story for another post.