Seasons change: Summer, Milk, Fall, Breeding

This past Spring we invested in a milk machine that has proven to be a great addition to the farm many times over. Our milk production has increased from previous years and my arms just couldn't take the manual labor of hand milking any longer. I was spending my days with aching elbows and my nights tossing and turning because my inflamed muscles were causing my arms to fall asleep far more than I was sleeping.

We've enjoyed the milk machine and didn't even mind the daily cleaning and weekly disassembly for deep cleaning anywhere near as much as we thought we would. (For those interested, the machine we purchased after a lot of research was the Simple Pulse, with the additional 6 gallon tank)

However now our milk season is coming to and end and we've dried up all but one goat. She's our highest producer and doesn't seem to fair as well with stopping milking cold turkey like the other, smaller producing does can. Abbie is living milk machine herself and will keep producing through breeding season and beyond, I believe, if we were to let her.

So we've been slowing her down each day and letting her dry up slowly to avoid any problems. We are now back to hand milking since it seems silly to use the machine for a small amount of milk each day (right now about 1-2 quarts).

I have to say even milking this small amount each morning really has me appreciating that machine investment though. My muscles aren't used to this work anymore after a lazy summer of machine milking... When before that I was milking 1-2 gallons each morning without even thinking twice.

Our freezer is full of milk for soapmaking during the winter and early spring until we start up milk season again. Which means... It's breeding season for our goats. One season ends and another begins.

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Team Greta

Friday, February 9th started off as a normal day in the barn, but as I was doing chores and feeding the horses and goats, I quickly suspected that Greta, one of our La Mancha goats, was showing early signs of labor. It was her due day, so I wasn't surprised. I removed her from the herd and placed her into one of the three kidding stalls in our barn so that she could have some peace and quiet. Four hours later at 10:46am, she delivered two beautiful big twin boys. As per her normal (this is her third year with babies), she was quite proud of herself and insisted on showing them off to me nonstop. The twins were up and wobbling around in no time and Greta was a busy mom fussing over them. Saturday morning was uneventful and Greta and her twins were comfortable in their kidding stall, but by early afternoon, something wasn't right. Greta wasn't finishing her meals and she just seemed tired. I took her temperature at 3pm and it was normal -- 101.9 -- even though she

Behind the scenes

If you haven't seen already, we have a YouTube channel that has been pretty active lately... Don't forget you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and keep up with all of our new stuff and silly farm shenanigans!

Here a chick, there a chick... and dealing with burn out.

After taking more than a year off from raising chicks, our first little fuzzy munchkins arrived last week via USPS from a hatchery in Iowa. I ordered them late last fall for their first 2017 delivery date, and instead of going with our usual production layer breeds, I opted for the rare breed section and pretty much just kinda sorted ordered two of everything. Looks like we will have an interesting flock this year but that's not really what I am here to talk about. Living on a farm of any size, especially with livestock, is a lot of work every single day. Goats, chickens and horses don't take holidays off and neither do you; you have the same morning, noon, and evening chores no matter if Santa is flying in or a hurricane is blowing through. Throw in elderly animals with special needs (we've got two horses well into their 30s and a blind dog with congestive heart failure), and you've got an additional element of care and attention on your list. Sometimes you ne

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