The Land

Jeff and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary this past weekend, and we spent part of the day on our land. We began making paths through the brush last month, and we continued to chop our way through on Sunday. We didn't make it all the way to the back property line, but when we got too hot and tired to continue, we took Lily for a walk along the path, who helped make the path wider while enjoying a nice snack. I took the photos last month, when the dogwoods and azaleas were in bloom. We were pleased to discover that there are a bunch of dogwood trees growing on various parts of the property as well as native azaleas, especially near one of the tiny little streams that drain into the larger creek on the back border. There are lots of nice ferns growing along the bank of the little stream too. It's quite a lovely spot. We are very pleased. Perhaps we will build our house on the nearby ridge. We are a ways away from that, though. The first type of structure we will likely build on this piece of land is fencing for more goat pasture. The goats penned at The Haven have gobbled up most of the greenery in that first pasture already. Soon we will fence out another section at The Haven. We will also be working on the new barn some more this week. Luckily, we have a few less mouths to feed around here, though. Over the past week, we have sold 5 of our goats. We sold Hoppy and her doeling, Alanis, as well as Cocoa, one of Lily's girls, and Vida, Paul and Terra's one year old doe, to a family from North Georgia. Although Hoppy wasn't a very good goat, I was still sad to see her go. I miss the kids too (sniff!). We sold Duya's daughter, Vannah, to a local family, who are also vendors at the farmers market. We plan to keep Lily and Zella and one of each of their daughters. Zella has turned out to be a super milk producer, while Lily's production has fallen off significantly. We wonder if the difference could be due to moving Zella to The Haven, where she had access to more greens. Hopefully, we will be able to provide more consistent green pastures to all of our goats in the future.

-Annie

Farmers Market

The Carrollton farmers market, Cotton Mill Farmers Market, began its 9th season a couple of weeks ago, and Jeff and I participated for the first time, selling eggs and soap. We are sharing a booth with Paul and Terra, who are selling eggs, produce, and crafts. Opening Day was rainy, so we set up under the awning in front of some shops near the usual site. Luckily, the rainy weather didn't keep folks away. Jeff and I sold all of the liquid soap we brought, and Paul and Terra sold all of their produce. We sold out of eggs too! Last weekend was not as successful, but we still did well. In the photo, Terra is holding one of the puppets she made using a gourd for the head. How creative! At the market tomorrow, Terra, Ellen, and Myra will be putting on a puppet show.

Jeff and I are planning to make some goat milk soaps soon as well as other natural body care products such as shampoo and lotion. Developing new products involves a bit of trial and error, though. We've been experimenting with ways of thickening liquid soaps, and we're trying to figure out how to make different liquid soaps. Our first attempt to make a liquid soap with softer oils was a bust. I'm also excited about making transparent soap containing luffa sponges. We still have some luffa left over from last season, and I just planted some luffa seedlings by an arbor that we constructed near Paul's garden at The Haven. Another dream I have is to produce our own natural colorants for the soap.

In other news, one of Paul and Terra's game hens hatched out 7 of our Partridge Rock eggs. We put 8 eggs underneath the hen when she went broody, but she seemed somewhat uncommitted to the task after she was moved to private quarters in a separate tractor. Every morning and periodically throughout the day, she was up and squawking before she resigned herself to setting on the clutch of eggs some more. She eventually added 5 of her own eggs to the nest, which is somewhat unusual. However, she set more consistently after that and managed to hatch out most of the PR eggs. Hooray! Our PRs don't lay very big eggs, but they lay pretty consistently. Right now we have 2 New Hampshire Red eggs under Wanda, another game hen, who prefers to wander around the farm instead of staying in the chicken coop. Our 2 NHR hens lay really consistently, and their eggs are bigger than the PRs' eggs.

It's been a rough past few days for our goats. We have separated the mommas from the babies, such that the milkers are at The Haven, while the babies are at Full Life Farm. Poor little Joanie has lost her voice, crying for Zella. However, the babies are old enough to be weaned, and now we can milk twice a day. With the extra milk we are making more yogurt and ice cream, and, hopefully, we'll make cheese again soon. We celebrated Paul's birthday last night with peppermint ice cream and a strawberry rhubarb pie, made with delicious fresh strawberries from the farm. Yum!!

Yesterday, more progress was made on the barn at The Haven. We put up 6 big posts and braced them. Unfortunately, the chain saw is having issues and needs some work done on it before we can put up more posts.

Rural life continues to be good. :-)

-Annie