Meet Honey

Meet our second goat, Honey. We were only planning on having one goat, but as you may know, goats are herd animals. Unless you want to be out there with them all the time you need at least two. Sweetie was moaning really loud every time we left here alone, so we thought it would be a good idea to invest in another. We got her from the same guy we bought our meat and Sweetie from. Here's the kicker about Honey: she's young, only about 1, and she's pregnant. She's due to have babies in March. We thought it might be a good idea to have her pregnant, so when it's time for Sweetie to be freshened, we can still have her milk. Win win. I've never had any animals deliver before, so I think it will be an interesting adventure.

We really like Honey. She has the cutest little bleat and she is a pretty little thing. She's very gentle and submissive to Sweetie. In fact, after we got Honey, Craig said that Sweetie was an ugly old hag. I think he was mostly mad at her because she kept moving around while we were trying to milk her. Anyhow, we like her and are excited to have little baby goats this spring!

Also, on a funny side note, the other day, Roxy, our dog, was hassling Honey and she she charged her right in the buns! It was hilarious! Roxy whimpered off and hasn't given her any trouble since.

The rock situation

We got a handle on the rock situation!! With spring coming, I was getting anxious to get rid of these rocks so I could plant a garden in that spot. A friend of mine gave me the great idea to post an ad on Craig's list. So I did. It said, "Free Decorative Rock. You come and haul away." Amazingly, we got several responses right away. One lady came with her sons and took a truckload and it hardly made a dent. I was discouraged after that. But we listed the ad one more time and another lady came and took the rest over the course of 3 days! They took their last load this afternoon. The area now looks like this:

It was amazing because we didn't have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to hire some one to haul them away and we helped a lady landscape her yard. It doesn't get any better than that! Now this weekend we are hoping to pull up all that plastic and start tilling some manure into that spot so it will be ready by planting time. I'm in awe that we were actually able to do this so quickly. I figured we wouldn't have a big garden for a while, but I guess where there's a will there's a way.

The story of Sweetie and our awesome fence

Many of you know that we've been toying with the idea of getting a goat for a while. We weren't expecting to get one this fast but it just worked out for us. Craig likes to look online for alpacas, because he wants some and he thinks they are awesome. He came across this ad on Craig's List for dairy goats, cows, and alpacas, so of course, he looked into it. He emailed the guy and we were going to come look at some. He didn't email us back right away, but we found his website and saw on there that they had grass-fed beef for sale! Now this is something I've been looking for for a long time. Most grass-fed beef runs about $8/lb and that's a little out of my price range. But here, I could buy a whole cow and split it with 3 other people and get the meat for $4/lb! So I found 3 friends who wanted to do it and we bought it! We'll get the meat at the end of the week. In emails back and forth to this guy I asked if he sold raw milk. He replied by saying he had a great dairy goat for sale and we should come look at it. We were curious, so we went and looked at it this past Saturday. She was so sweet and good with the kids and totally used to being around people. We were able to milk her there and taste some of the milk, and couldn't believe how good it tasted. If we didn't like it, it would have been a deal breaker for us, since neither of us had tried goats milk before. It was so creamy and delicious that we went for it. She just jumped right into the back of our van like it was her home.

It was an interesting ride home, to say the least. First off, when we started moving, she started bleating and sticking her head between the car seats. I wish I would have gotten a video of this because it was hilarious! All 3 kids started crying because there was a huge goat head right next to their faces with big eyes, bleating loudly. Hilarious!

So we were totally unprepared to be taking livestock home. She pooped and peed several times in the van, so that was unpleasant. As soon as we got her home, she started following us everywhere. Roxy, our big dog, was not a fan. She still just barks at her, which is too bad. We were hoping she could keep her company. Samson, our Boston Terrier went right up to her and got head butted. Also hilarious.

So we knew we needed to keep her fenced up, since we have some trees and plants that are toxic to her, and we don't want her to eat all our fruit and bushes. We constructed this fence as soon as we got home. I'm pretty proud of it since we used things we found in the barn and around the yard.

There were 2 huge chain link fence pieces and also some rolled up chain link in the barn. We also had wooden 4x4's laying on the ground being used as borders. We pulled those up, dug post holes, put them in, and tied the fence to it with some rope. It's a pretty sturdy fence and Sweetie hasn't escaped yet. She lives in the west bay of the barn now and can play outside with the chickens. There's nothing back there for her to destroy so we feel good about it. Plus, it's as far away from the house as she can possibly get. And that, my friends, is how we got Sweetie, our dairy goat.