Little Linzee

We lost a goat today. Linzee got her tiny head stuck in a feeder – we think another goat might have jumped on her when she was eating and wedged her in there. We are all heartbroken. I walked around tonight after I finished my day, checking to make sure all the little goats were … Continue reading

Felled

I was trying to be helpful, carrying a small goat out of the kid pen so that we could weigh her and give her some medicine. I lifted my foot to step over the knee-high grate meant to keep the goats from escaping when the door is open, and clipped my toe. Before I knew how it was happening, and well after the point that I could do anything to stop it, I was tipping backwards. I landed flat on my back, knees bent against the superbly effective grate. I don’t know what became of the goat I was holding – I assume she floated to the ground and landed on all hooves, wondering why I seemed consumed by an extreme gravity, and quickly escaping lest it prove contagious. My head landed safely, equally far from the feeder (ouch) and a grenade of goat shit (blech). Stunned, I looked up at the now curious goats that had fled my expanding shadow, and having assessed my figured it w to stand. Sherwin said only, “we’ve all done it” and it was truly the only thing I could have heard at that moment.

New baby goats!!!

We missed the ‘official’ kidding season – the farm had 128 babies this year before we arrived – but they saved two pregnant mamas for us! Your browser does not support the video tag

Farmer Chris

Our week

Phew! A week’s gone by in a flash. A flash of milking, cleaning, bottles, hay, poop and cheese. Not to mention the farming! Ba da bum 🙂 We had our first days off since we got here on Monday and Tuesday. Monday was gorgeous, so we drove out to Mount Rainier. The mountain was out … Continue reading

Cocktail time

Tonight’s aperitif: raw La Mancha goat’s milk. Some nights, we get a little of the milk that’s left over from the previous milking – if it’s too little to start a whole new bucket. We used to drink a glass of milk with meals as a kid, and I do like the flavor. I always … Continue reading

Farm hands

We’re starting to get the hang of things…and the callouses to prove it. We sprayed the barn for flies on Thursday (a ‘green’ solution of herbs and plants done by our exterminator) so we had to move all the goats out into the side pens. Which meant we had to build fenced in areas by … Continue reading

Milking Day!

We milked our first goats! (When I said that to the owner, she said, “in life?” I thought that was funny of both of us.) There is much more process than you would think – grain in the little trays, select 6 hyper goats out of a pen of 20, secure them on the milking … Continue reading

The first 24…

We arrived on the farm yesterday at noon. Well – we arrived at the front gate at noon. We didn’t remember the code from our Dec visit, so we walked up to the farm. C said that after driving over 6500 miles to get here, it was nice to do the last mile on foot. … Continue reading