Today we added some more friends to the farm!
We are really enthusiastic about raising animals this year since it’s the first time we are doing it ourselves, with methods that we have learned from other farmers and homesteaders. I’m so grateful for this experience, how we are able to try new farm endeavours and different enterprises. It is so valuable to try new things and make mistakes now since we have a security cushion under us. So we are giving it our all, and stepping out of our comfort zone. With pigs and ducks now under our belt we decided it would be fun to experiment with a small dairy operation on the farm, which lead us to goats.
We purchased 2 Oberhasli does and 1 Alpine/Saanan mix, one of the Oberhasli’s is pregnant. We started by reading some literature and doing some internet searching on which breed was best for cheese and yogurt production and got some helpful hints. Our only website that we used to search for goats was craigslist, which was very limited in selection and animals sold very fast. It was even more of a narrow search because we were looking to purchase two does in milk so we could start our business now instead of waiting a year until they gave birth. Because of our urgent ambitions we had to split the coop in half and have the goats on one side and the ducks on the other. Luckily there is more than enough room, and we hope to be getting started putting the saw mill together soon.
