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