The newly established Vermont Farm and Garden Exchange has been a wonderful source of information and opportunities to barter farm items, but most of all it has introduced me to extremely generous folks with interests similar to my own. Every locality should have such a dependable resource and connection to their community such as this, in my opinion. Being graciously offered the opportunity to contribute to their blog forum, I have written two posts, which I will reference (and provide links) here instead of repeating the information. The first was an introductory approach to making a soft cheese from fresh goat's milk entitled "Easy Home Cheesy" and the second, a cursory guide to processing acorns for human consumption named "Robbing Squirrels". I hope you will enjoy them both.
I have many posts to contribute to my own blog. At the moment, however, the time dedicated to actually tending a farm is keeping me off the computer, temporarily.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
There's No Time Like the Present...Nah, there's just no time
If August hasn't kicked my butt, then September is definitely going to smack me around a bit. Aside from harvesting every day, canning tomatoes and freezing veg like Armageddon is near, and on top of the usual milking/feeding chores, we were gifted with two more milking goats. Thelma and Louise were sold as kids by our farm and cared for by a very sweet friend, who has more important duties now than to milk a couple of unruly first-freshening goats. These girls have GREAT potential as second fresheners, with long easily-expressing teats, they could be better than our top producers, their half-sisters Cordial and Constance. For now, though, they really just want to mule kick me in the face. My milking helper actually brought her biking helmet out of storage to approach these girls for the morning chore. Every first-freshener has a breaking period, but for it to be this late on a strong, heavy gal is wearing me out.
To make matters worse, my neighbor helper is taking a week off this month, just before my inlaws AND great-inlaws arrive for a visit. We have three family birthdays to celebrate in September, meaning gifts and homemade cake, at a minimum. The meat birds are going to ice camp, etc. AND for some reason, we now have a newly hatched chick (singular...no friends) chirping in my ear at the moment for my 5 yr-old to scratch her (fingers crossed that it's not a damn rooster) head. Oh...and my newly 2 yr-old daughter needs weaning and shots. Insert curse words and beer here!! Come on winter, I really can't wait to sit down!
To make matters worse, my neighbor helper is taking a week off this month, just before my inlaws AND great-inlaws arrive for a visit. We have three family birthdays to celebrate in September, meaning gifts and homemade cake, at a minimum. The meat birds are going to ice camp, etc. AND for some reason, we now have a newly hatched chick (singular...no friends) chirping in my ear at the moment for my 5 yr-old to scratch her (fingers crossed that it's not a damn rooster) head. Oh...and my newly 2 yr-old daughter needs weaning and shots. Insert curse words and beer here!! Come on winter, I really can't wait to sit down!
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| Thelma |
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| Louise |
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