Update Nov 2: Barnabas and Clarisse have left for their wonderful new home (where, I’m confident to say, they will be spoiled rotten). Drama Queen’s two little boys have also been spoken for, but we’ll have more goat babies coming in the spring! Update Oct 27: We are pretty sure that Barnabas and Clarisse have found their happy home, but we will leave the ad up until they’re gone just in case. We will also be selling a pair of Oberian wethers in a couple of months, beautiful boys with intact horns. We would prefer that they go together. Clarisse and Barnabas are a six-month-old sister/brother pair of 3rd generation Oberian (Mini-Oberhasli) dairy goats looking for a loving home. Gentle Clarisse will make a wonderful family milk goat – her dam is an easy milker and currently giving us well over a half-gallon a day with only minimal grain supplementation. Barnabas is a wethered (“fixed”) male, and is her best friend. Wethers are the friendliest goats, and this little cutie is no exception. We want these two to go together, as goats are social animals (a goat alone is a miserable goat) with very strong sibling bonds. Our goats are dam-raised until weaned, but very friendly due to frequent interaction with humans. Their main diet is a mix of organically maintained pasture and local grass hay. We use gentle herbal wormers and have never had to resort to chemical ones. Clarisse has a scur (incompletely removed horn) that lays back along the top of her head, and Barnabas has two that are shaped like full horns but smaller. Their dam (on-site) and sire are both from Mystic Acres Farm’s Oberian lines. They are available as a pair for $175.

Clarisse

Clarisse

Barnabas

Cheesemaking is kicking into high gear…we’re freezing a lot of chevre to enjoy later when the milking slows down, and here’s the beginning of a farmhouse cheddar:

I screwed up the last batch of beer and foolishly didn’t brew for a while.  Our homemade beer (when it works, which it usually does) is much tastier than what we buy at the store, and ends up costing about half as much. 

Here’s five gallons of soon-to-be-porter bubbling away:

Last year, we got a freeze in early September that took out all the tomato plants, and Teri made a lot of green tomato ketchup.  This year, none of the main (Brandywine) tomato crop had turned red by that point, and my dreams of pasta sauce seemed to by dying…but the past month has been mostly sunny and warm, and we’re bringing in five-gallon buckets every few days. 

Though we aren’t entirely dependent on our homegrown food, it’s probably saving us a couple of thousand dollars a year now, so I have a little more appreciation for how much people doing this in the past were subject to the whims of the weather…and for what a joy it is when one’s hard work is rewarded with abundance:

In a break from my usual “functionality IS the aesthetic” carpentry ethic, I’ve made a tea table to go alongside my desk (I hate having beverages and food on the same surface as my computer).  The top was from a rough-cut slab of some unknown hardwood that I got a bunch of for free because of “imperfections”, and the base is something that was left behind when the electric co-op trimmed around the power lines. 

It’s beautiful wood…but I didn’t know that when I got it, so most of it is incorporated into the chicken coop.  Now that I’ve seen it sanded and sealed, I think I’ll be pulling the rest of it off the coop to make things from (don’t worry chickens, I have plain old fir boards to replace it).  Anyway, here’s the table, which I’m quite pleased with:

Closeup of the wood:

Worky work work!  In addition to all this, there are of course the daily chores such as caring for livestock, cooking, keeping the fire going, earning a living, etc…but some other farm residents have more sensible priorities; I leave you with “Snail Love”: