Posts Tagged ‘goats’

“Wide Load” Signs Needed

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
We have a goat that needs wide load signs! We’re pretty sure Miss Maggie is due in December – Could we have our first case of quads???? Don’t know, hopefully just two healthy does. Two other does are probably due in December too – we’re watching them close. What a crazy time to be in the barn birthing animals! (Good thing the barn is getting bigger & the girls will have single stalls – no more of them all escaping at the same time – poor Nathan!).

Kitchen is done!!! Yeh Pat! Soap/sundries room is almost completely painted and re-stocked. Yes, it looks like a bee!
Pat is getting all the windows/sliders to get the back porch turned into a country store for the months of the CSA – should be awesome. He’s so wonderful to get all these pretty things done for me – just in time for the last cheese class of this year.

Goat shares – we’re not going to be in the goat share business any more. We’ve decided that since the goat share area is gray about it’s legality, we are going to not do anything that could be considered illegal. I do not want to prove that I do not own the goats. We will be doing boarding instead. Your goat, your milk, your babies, etc. This saves us from taking all the risks inherent in goat shares.

We have 4 new baby turkeys – we had 5, but one drowned. We moved mother and babies to the broken chicken tractor so they’d be protected for about 4 weeks. In that time they are so fragile – but after that time you can hardly hurt a turkey.

Next week is the Souled-Out Women’s conference and yesterday the boys and I spent a few hours in Versailles making products. We have to return Saturday to finish up. Our regularly scheduled shows start Oct. 3rd – Lakota West. – they continue thru the first weekend in December. Mostly OH shows – and all juried. We hope to be at Cooper HS in KY the weekend before the huge Ryle HS show (which we’re at too).

We’ve added two scents to our line-up: a Candy Apple that is supposed to be a type of the BBW Candy Apple – this one will be labeled Apple Dulce(will start in shampoo and body wash) and the other is a type of the Herbal Essences scent (oh so close and wonderful) that we have named Herbal Extravaganza. I love it when people ask for scents and they turn out to be more than we had ever dreamed they would be.

Note on scents: Almond sells 3/1 over any other scent and the new Violet is so clean smelling that it’s fast becoming my son’s favorite scent – not flowery and hard to explain, but so CLEAN. Thanks Joan for NEEDING this scent!

Time to get back to school and cleaning . . . I have a lot of catch up to do before people come tomorrow to visit the farm. It won’t get all done – but here it’s 24/7 and you never get it “done”. Something always breaks, gets sick or gets interrupted by something more pressing.

Blessings from Marilyn,

aka: The Goat Woman

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Summer Updates

Thursday, August 13th, 2009
We’re cleaning, weeding and getting ready for breeding season with the goats. We hope to have 7 milkers in about 6-8 months.  A few of our chickens have had babies -  and one turkey hen is suspiciously missing . . . after 1 month I’m sure we’ll have lots of new additions to tell you about!

We’ve made lots of soaps this week in anticipation of the craft season starting – I think everyone has finally figured out what my sister Claudia knew all the time: the Shea butter soap is Sensational!! The new Sandalwood shaving soap is curing! I have mint and rosemary soaking in Olive Oil right now to make Rosemary/Mint soap later today. What a pleasant mixture!

As we get ready to start our CSA – we have ideas pouring in from those of you who are desperate for good, clean, truly local food. Keep it up – we need to know what you’d like to see in produce from here and how involved you want to be in the farm. We’re collecting recipes to include with every share day – we’ve gotten some fabulous ones!

Did you see the ABC news report about the 12 most pesticide-ridden fruits/veggies? Peaches tops the list – we hope to offer you pesticide-free peaches next year. All it takes is the weather cooperating as we will not contaminate our fruit or veggies. Makes me a little crazy to see all the news about what’s supposed to be “food”.

Have you seen the Food Inc. movie??? Joel Salatin, my hero! What a role model! From homeschooling to raising chickens – we’ve learned so much from this man.  The movie is coming out to purchase soon and we will have a few copies to share around. This is not a scare tactic movie but reveals a lot about what kinds of food are subsidized and why it’s so much more expensive to buy REAL food. This is just an eye-opener that I think every American needs to see.

We are getting ready to build raised beds. We hope to use the almost the entire front yard, a new bed in between the greenhouse and the goats and along the back of the greenhouse behind the goat yards . . . should triple our garden space. With well over 20 families signing up for the CSA and some working here -  it should be a growing season to remember.  We are scheduling work parties and cherish your help – all of the beds must be done or mostly done by the end of September. This way they can “cook” over winter and be ready to be planted as soon as the ground is ready in Spring.

There are a few things that will be planted right away before winter: spinach, more strawberries, the garlics, etc. Most of the rest of the herbs, rhubarb and such will just need to be covered and protected.

Oh, and the porch needs to be transformed to windows/sliders to make a wonderful meeting place for those coming to visit the farm. Lots to do – but what an awesome time of growing and learning and doing!

Keep the ideas pouring in -  now to go find out if my lost boy is out in the pasture asleep on his goat Whisper . . .

Marilyn, aka the Goatwoman

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Looks like spring is here…

Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Well the milk is starting to trickle – not flowing yet, but we have a few more does to go. The first girl, Hope, is just a first freshener so she’ll have probably another year before we get much – but her bag looks very promising. There will be milking does for sale and/or shares in a few of the goats in a couple months.

The new chicks are starting to lay – about 3 dark brown eggs a day. It’s a good thing too – the oldies, but goodies are laying very few eggs right now. And, no, the roosters still aren’t in the freezer yet and Thanksgiving & Christmas (the Narragansett Turkeys) are still strutting around contrary to their specific names . . .

The new, retro-looking kitchen isn’t complete yet – but it’s down to painting the shelves and making counter tops with the flat laminate sheets. All this to house my beautiful 1950’s Chambers Gas Stove which I got “free”. (My husband cringes when I get something free – well deserved too I guess). It’s waiting patiently to come upstairs after the gas is plumbed and several of its parts are put back on. Can’t wait to do my cheese classes on that stove!!!

What else have we been doing? I helped Pat put in a stove pipe for the wood burning stove – what a nightmare trying to get it into the firebox area! He ended up cutting a piece of the top of the metal firebox out to get the pipe to make the turn into the area where the insert goes – hopefully it’ll make all the difference in how this stove heats.

We are getting ready to head down to Versailles to make product. We are going back to putting Ostrich/Emu oils in most of our products – we miss the qualities they impart.

We are deciding right now when to have a soap making class. Many of you out there have asked – and we try to do as much as we can to please you . . .

We have onions, lettuce, spinach, kale and wheatgrass growing in the basement. We will be starting tomatoes, peppers and flowers very soon. Some of this can be set out during the raised bed class if the weather allows.

The bulbs are starting to push up through the ground, the garlic is peeking up and the babies are starting to be born – it must be Spring is really coming – I just can’t wait!!

The Goatwoman

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