There are some things that you can learn about only by doing them, and having goats was one of those things for us. We adored the kids, I loved the breed, and I appreciated how personable and intelligent the goats were. But for one and a half years, we cared for them without receiving any milk in return, and the milk-n-cheese pay-off wouldn’t come until we’d fed and cared for them for two years. That pay-off would come with a price: milking every day, which was something I couldn’t imagine fitting into a full-time job and the full-time care of my son.
I realized that, the more I took on, the more stuff I was doing half-assed. I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do everything that I wanted to do and do it well. I also realized that, as a single parent, there’s a limit to how many life-forms I can care for without neglecting some pretty important things.
The people who bought Calypso, Pandora, and Pan are profoundly knowledgeable about goats and will provide a home for them that is far better than any we could ever provide. Calypso and Pandora went to Hillary Kenworthy at Woodland Hills Farm and Pan went to Jacqui Wilcox at Daystar’s Farm. Rhea, our favorite, went to friends on the island.
The problem with all this? Guarding goats was our dog’s job, and since they left, she seems to have lost her anchor. We now have Emma outside during the day, guarding the chickens and ducks, and we have her inside at night, guarding us and the cats. We love Emma and hope that this rhythm will meet her need for meaningful work.
Meanwhile, I miss the presence and energy of the goats, but I don’t miss their demanding bleats whenever we stepped out the back door. I don’t miss paying for and hauling hay–and storing two tons of it in the basement because we don’t have a barn. And I don’t miss having to care for goats in the dark on these short winter days. Both Adrian and I are satisfied with our decision to find new homes for the goats. But it doesn’t really feel like a farm without them.
1 comment
Comments feed for this article
February 12, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Corrie Snell
One year ago, I was anxiously awaiting the big move back to Montana (from CA) that would allow me to fulfill my (then) dream. My days were filled with internet surfing and book reading, trying to absorb as much information about small-scale farming as I could, and also trying to decide which method of this-or-that I would use once we finally arrived and dove head first in to doing it! I found your blog somehow (I’ve posted a comment before) and loved reading about your LGD and your goats. I think your blog was were I first heard of Mini Nubians, actually. After more research, I decided that Mini Nubians were perfect for me, too (goat cheese and soapmaking).
I couldn’t believe my luck when I found someone just an hour and a half away by car from where we live in Montana, that was breeding miniature animals, including Nubians on a small (no pun intended) scale. We ended up getting two doelings and their brother (a wether) within a couple weeks of arriving in Montana. We actually picked them up the same day that our hen chicks arrived: instant farm!
We busily worked, enjoying seeing the farm of my dreams become a reality. Then, my husband had to get back to his traveling job. I found myself in your situation, having to take care of everything myself. It’s not easy. The bucolic dream starting having nightmarish undertones.
When foxes became an issue, we ended up acquiring a one year old male Great Pyrenees/Maremma mix from a working farm where he’d grown up with his mother and father and brother and two other LGDs guarding a large herd of goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, turkeys, llamas and alpacas. He’s a great dog, and his instincts are always amazing to me.
In July, I bought an in-milk Jersey and for the first week, I thought, “what in the heck was I thinking?!” But, after that first week the routine became normal and actually pleasant. I found myself wanting a second cow, you know as company for my first. And since I wasn’t feeding any grain, cow number one was producing only around one and a half gallons per day. That’s certainly a lot of milk, but I fed it to my chickens and they could have easily eaten maybe three or four times that amount. At that point, I had about 30 pullets and 3 roosters, 20 mostly grown meat birds, and 100 little meat chicks.
So, I got a second Jersey. Then, I decided that I’d like to buy a little Holstein bull calf from a nearby dairy to raise for veal. I put him on my first Jersey, and so for a couple months, still only had one cow to milk.
Having a huge garden and trying to keep the pastures irrigated with a mobile sprinkler system added to the work through the summer. I also felt like we were hemorrhaging money getting the farm set up. I could buy two cars (and not cheap ones, either) with the money we’ve spent in the last 11 months on fencing, housing, feed, the animals themselves, etc..
All of a sudden, the goats weren’t adorable kids anymore. They were noisy, devilish escape artists (even through electric netting) who would make a beeline for my newly planted strawberry patch, or newly planted baby fruit trees (we’ll see, after almost all of them lost most of their leaves at some point or another, if they come back this spring), or the garden or the chicken feeder (which is full of expensive organic whole grains purchased from the health food store). They also went through a phase where they’d get their heads stuck in various places. I hated them. Why did I get them, again?
The winter has seemed to mellow the goats, maybe they’ve just matured a bit, too. And so I haven’t despised them as much over the past couple months. Still, at some point this past fall, I admitted to myself and then to my family that this isn’t the life for me. I realized that the life I’d had before suited me to a T and that my new life was making me feel trapped and unhappy. I decided to sell the goats, right when it would have been time to get them bred for the first time. I didn’t want to rush into any decision, though, and also assumed that I would have a hard time finding buyers at the beginning of winter. So, we hung on to them, we’d already filled the barn with hay for the winter anyway.
Butchering all those meat birds was an exhausting, dirty, stinky job that I’ll never do again. So much work for so little food!
I also decided that we’d sell the two Jerseys in the spring. That idea did make me sad. I’m really attached to them. That happens after milking them daily for so many weeks. Seeing that bucket fill up day after day with incredible milk/food that their bodies produced was quite an experience. It really created a deep respect for them, in me.
The first Jersey we got in July, had been bred back very recently, after having calved for the first time two months earlier. The second Jersey was open when I got her at the end of August, and about a month later we had her artificially inseminated.
An severe cold spell in early October drove home the necessity of getting the water line and heated waterer installed immediately. Another large expense. A serious mastitis scare dominated the month of November. My husband came home for the last two weeks of December and first week of January, he took over all the chores, providing me with a much needed break (you never got a break, did you?).
The plan was to dry both cows off at the beginning of the year. I had planned a three week trip in January, and I couldn’t ask my sister, who was caring for the animals in my absence, to commit to the daily milking chore. It was close enough to time to dry off our first Jersey before her early April calving, anyway. The second Jersey was just going to get a nice long break until her June calving. The mastitis scare forced us to dry the second cow off in November, though, making her dry for almost her entire pregnancy.
When the end of the year rolled around, we began drying off our first Jersey, as planned. A few days later, my husband said that there was something that looked like a jellyfish on the floor of the barn. Upon investigation, we found that it had definitely come from our first Jersey, the one who had come to us already bred, who we’d expected to calf in early April. I had heard a couple times that it is possible for a cow to retain products from her previous pregnancy. When this happens, she won’t come into heat, and she can’t get pregnant, and a pregnancy blood test will show a false positive.
About three weeks later, right on schedule, she began showing signs of heat. This was in the form of trying to mount my sister! (I had been warned about that, too). I was still away on my trip. Luckily, other than bruised knees and sore wrists, my sister escaped injury. I’m home now, and the cow is in heat today. The AI person will come this evening. But, I have a dry cow, who will remain dry for nine months.
Homes will have to be found for the cows and goats as soon as possible in the spring, although I’m still loathe to sell the cows. The chickens we’ll keep until they begin to molt next fall, at which time I’ll probably get rid of them, too.
Our LGD, Titus, is probably my biggest concern. Although he’s more of a pet now than he was in his old situation, he’s still a working dog. He is outside with the animals 24 hours a day and has done an excellent job of keeping foxes, skunks, hawks, crows and magpies away. My garden was also safe from deer because of him, although he did his own damage (he likes to dig). I have photos of him on my neglected blog. I’ll have to find him a new home, too, though, because going back to my old life will have me traveling with my husband for his job.
Why did I write all this? Well for one, once I started, I couldn’t stop. But the initial reason was that I wanted you to know that you’re not alone. Although I obviously took on way more than I could handle, it’s good to know that I’m not alone, either. “Their demanding bleats whenever we stepped out the back door…” is putting it mildly! They sound like they haven’t been fed in days and like they’re being tortured to boot!
Someone recently told me, “you can’t become a farmer, you have to be born into it.” While I don’t completely agree with the statement, I understand the thoughts behind it. I had done probably thousands of hours of research before we got here, and yet the year was still full of miserable failures. Even those who are raised on a farm with the careful tutelage of parents and grandparents who were raised on the farm, have miserable failures.
It’s not an easy life, even with the modern conveniences farmers have today. It’s really understandable that people left farming for “better lives in the city.” Thank goodness there are people out there, though, who although they weren’t “born into it,” have found that it “was somehow ‘into’ them.” (Quoting Dirk van Loon from his book, “The Family Cow”) We just need to make sure they get all the support they need!
Thanks for sharing your story.