After this Friday’s Fun Farm Fact you might want to thank the next goat you see…
It is a popular Ethiopian legend that goats discovered coffee! A goat herder noticed that his goats were especially energetic after eating the red berries off of the coffee shrub. The goat herder decided to try the berry himself. He had a reaction very similar to one that the goats had and coffee was born!
This has been the week of figuring out what our spring and summer is going to look like. We’ve been applying to farmers markets. Our plan going into the year was to be at five markets throughout the week and so far we have applied to a total of five. I have one more that I am considering. I should have a better idea what our farmers market schedule will look like in a few weeks and I will update the “Where to Buy” section of the website! We are also applying to several late winter and spring festivals.
Kidding season will soon be here! Sonia is due first, in a little over 4 weeks! Ruth is next, followed by Hillary later in the month. Tina is not due until June (assuming she is pregnant, we only bred her a week and a half ago). We will be starting to slowly increase their feed over the next few weeks to help prepare them for milk production. They will also be getting their CDT booster shots.
This is the time of year that things really start to pick up around the farm! The days are getting longer, egg production is picking up, the countdown to kidding has started, and we are getting days that are at least somewhat warm! The winter funk is starting to thaw!
Today’s Fun Farm Fact may shock you!… Goat meat is the most consumed meat per capita worldwide! It’s only in the United States that it is not regularly eaten, although it has been gaining in popularity in recent years. Maybe the rest of the world knows something we don’t!
Goat’s meat is considered to be very healthy. It’s is leaner than both beef and chicken. Goat meat is also considerably lower in saturated fats than beef and chicken. It is also low in cholesterol while maintaining it’s iron level.
So if you are looking for a leaner, healthier meat… consider goat meat.
It has been a very busy week. We are still very much in the adjustment period since Kevin left his day job, but we are finally starting to form some sort of routine. I am in the middle of wedding booking season for the photography business, we are working on our new goat milk soap laundry detergent, contacting stores about carrying our products, building up our soap supply, and taking care of the farm. Busy, busy, busy, but we are loving working together full time.
Last Wednesday we took Tina to have her hooves reshaped. She foundered this past Summer and we spent months controlling the crazy growth and lowering her grain intake to slow it down. I finally felt like we got her back to (somewhat) normal, so we took her to a farm in Culpeper who were going to use a grinder to get her feet back to the correct shape. We didn’t breed her in the fall because we were dealing with getting her feet comfortable again. We honestly were debating whether we were breed her again at all because we weren’t sure if it would be too hard on her, but the farmers in Culpeper didn’t think that her case was anywhere near as bad as others that they had seen and she was cleared to breed again. She went into heat on Monday and was bred to Warner. Her due date will be June 25th, much later than we are used to, but it could set us up for a year round milking schedule. It would be nice to not have periods of the year where we are without fresh milk coming in… We have two chest freezers of frozen milk for soap (it must be frozen to be used in the soap making process), but it’s not the same when it comes to drinking.
Today’s Fun Farm Fact is important to dispel a fairly dangerous wives tale about goats… That goats eat anything and everything. They don’t. Goats cannot eat trash or tin cans… It will kill them, and while goats are known to clear brush and will happily clear your land for you there are plenty of plants out there that are toxic to goats. Here is a great list of plants that goats can and cannot eat.
Goats have very sensitive systems. Drastic changes to their type of feed or amount of feed can mess up their rumen. If we are increasing or decreasing our goats’ feed or changing the brand of feed we make the change slowly over the course of weeks or months. This way their system has time to adjust.
It’s important, when putting goats into a new pasture, to check and make sure there are not plants present that can hurt them. For us personally, we have had to fight black cherry trees. Most people would be thrilled to find black cherry trees on their property. Especially some that are as big as ours, since their timber is worth so much, but wilted black cherry leaves are toxic to goats. So throughout the spring and summer we have to search through our pastures to find any black cherry saplings and . Most of the time goats will not eat things that are toxic to them, but if the foods they do like to eat become sparse they will eat whatever they can find, toxic or not.
It Friday!! Which means it’s time for a Fun Farm Fact!
Capra, latin for goat, is the root of the word capricious. A word meaning to change often and quickly, quirky, and whimsical… Fitting
Today’s Fun Farm Fact is one that I discovered soon after getting our first goats, Tina and Hillary… Goats (like all other ruminate animals) do not have top front teeth! Imagine my surprise when I discovered this for the first time! There is a reason for this… It helps them grind the grasses and other vegetation they eat. In the space where their upper front teeth would be is a hard plate. The lower teeth grind the food against this hard plate breaking it up. While they do not have top front teeth they do have molars on both the bottom and the top towards the back of their mouths.
Oh my goodness it has been an amazing year. I am so proud of what we have accomplished with both of our businesses and I am incredibly grateful for our wonderful, loyal customers, who allow my husband and I to work together, build this farm, and live our dream. I cannot wait to see what 2015 has in store for us as we start our journey of both Kevin and I putting a full time effort into both of our businesses… It’s certainly going to be an adventure.
Stand out moments of 2014
Thank you for all your support in 2014! I can’t wait to see what 2015 has in store!
We have a BIG weekend ahead of us! If you follow our blog you know that the My Manakin Farmers Market opens this weekend. We are so excited to be a part of this market and look forward to starting the routine of having 2 markets a week! On top of that we have 3… Yes THREE… products debuting this week. Tomorrow our May soap will debut and on Saturday we will be debuting our scrubs and bath teas to our market customers! The scrubs and bath teas will then be available on the website next weekend. There is so much to look forward to!
The rain from the last few days has turned the farm into a giant pond. I am going to have to swim to the barn for farm chores tonight. While I normally don’t mind the rain I’m looking forward to a dry weekend.
Finally, this up coming Monday starts the fencing extravaganza! Kevin is taking the week off of work so we can fence off the buck pasture as well as a new pasture for the girls. I know the girls are going to be so excited to get ahold off all those brambles that will be in the new pasture.
Another busy, productive week on the farm! This past weekend we finally found time to build the buck house. Bad weather and incredibly busy schedules had forced us to put off that project a lot longer than we had originally planned. It came together nicely and will make a good home for our boys. Now we just need to paint it, put up the boys’ bed, hang the hay feeder, and fence. We should be picking up our buck in the next few weeks, so hopefully it will come together before then.
We had a pretty unpleasant experience this weekend… While doing farm chores on Saturday we found a snake in the hay. At this point we don’t know if it was a baby black snake or baby copperhead. Our instincts said copperhead so we killed it and threw it far away in the woods. I would have never killed a black snake, but any copperhead needs to be eliminated! The babies are especially scary. After the fact we were looking at pictures of both baby black snakes and baby copperheads and they look quite similar. Either way a snake is a sign of mice and you do NOT want mice in your hay. So our “we think we might need to get a barn cat soon” turned to “we need to get a barn cat now!” We went to our friend Donna’s farm (Money Pitt Acres) to pick out one of the cats she was trying to rehome. We brought him home, set him up in a kennel on the porch and fed him. We were instructed to leave him in a kennel for a few days so he was able to learn that this was his new home. Unfortunately, yesterday, when Kevin was cleaning out the kennel the cat got out and ran away and we haven’t seen him since. We are all very upset about it and have tuna sitting on the porch hoping he will come back… which I sure will attract more than just our cat, but it’s worth the risk.
We are still working on the new scrubs and bath teas! We are hoping to debut them at the opening of My Manakin Market on May 3rd. We have gotten the thumbs up from our testers and now it just requires us to get labels together. We are so excited about offering these awesome new products! We are also only a week away from debuting our May goat milk soap! Check back to see what it is.