Birth

I have been told by several farmers that kidding season is an emotionally wrought time on a farm. I had the privilege to help Uni bring three strong babies into this world on February 26th. 

After catching, we dried the kids with towels and hair driers, tucking them into our jackets. We fed them colostrum from bottles and listened to their wailing while watching them learn to move their elegant legs.

This is life
This is real
And raw and pure
This partnership is old like the earth and rough and beautiful

Career Move

So much has changed since my last post. I've gone from thinking, "wouldn't it be nice if..." to "this is what I want and I'm making it happen!"

I've realized that goat husbandry and cheesemaking are more than an interest, they are my career passions! So I've now moved away from my search for employment in sustainability consulting to fulfilling my dream of sustainable living.

Thanks to my volunteer work at Rosasharn Farm with Anne Petersen, I've decided that I can do more than just dream about owning goats on the side of my career and family. Instead, I'll make that my life! The more I thought about it, one week on the farm, the more it made sense to me. But more than making sense, owning a goat dairy and cheesemake has become an obsession. I have fallen head over heals in love with goats and cheesemaking! Granted, this is more than a career decision, it's a lifestyle choice. And one that I make with eyes as wide open as I can.

So I have to say, thank you, Anne Petersen, for opening your home and your farm to me. Thank you, Ellie, for giving me Anne's contact information one day when I told you that I'd fancy learning about goats. And I'm so thankful for all the supportive people in my life, the positive agricultural experiences I've had and all the cheese tasting goodness I've been privy to. Oh, and I'm thankful that our country and thus our government thought it fine to deregulate our financial sector so as to let our economy go to shit. Who knows what job I would have landed had there been no hiring freezes?

Milking

Today is much colder than it has been this week. The goats are in their barns and I can just imagine the dogs cuddling amongst them. My milking is improving: yesterday morning I sat with all the goats, even the difficult ones. While Painted Lady managed to tip the milk pail, I continued to milk her once I finished cleaning her mess. Rosasharn Farm's goats are Nigerian Dwarfs and they are simply adorable.

Andora seems to be doing much better today, though we don't know what happened to one of her rubber drains. Eaten?

Poop and Dreams

Andora isn't doing too well today: she hardly ate, though she has no fever. So while she rested, we spent the better part of this warm, beautiful January day in heaping mounds of shit. The farmers trucked in three loads of horse manure to dump and mix with leaves for the coming vegetable season. Following that, we started cleaning the goat barns and, let me tell you, goat excrement is pungent! Good for the muscles, not for the nose.

I've started compiling a list of dairy goat farms to contact about interning. I'd like to be experienced in certified cheese making as well as goat husbandry. I dream of owning my own land.

The Goat Farm

In my quest to begin my career, I've spent some of my time volunteering for causes, people, and organizations.  Currently, I'm spending a week at Rosasharn Farm outside of Providence, RI.  This place has a heard of 45 goats, chickens, geese, and livestock dogs.  They also had a pig named Wilbur, but he's now on our plates. 

During the summer and fall months, Rosasharn offers a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to people interested in picking up a wide selection of vegetables every week.  This CSA began last summer and was such a success that they decided to keep it up and even to build a greenhouse.

Today, Andora needed stitches.  She's a Great Pyrénées livestock dog and she was attacked by another, more aggressive female livestock dog.  I helped keep her paws up and out of the way while the vet cleaned, drained, and sutured the many puncture wounds across her body.  That was my first experience with surgery and, while I empathized, I'm happy to say I felt relatively comfortable.