Thursday, June 30th

We are goat people now, and it is that special time of year where goat people start looking for that special someone to breed with their ladies. Now that can't be any brush billy with in tact testicles. OH NO! It has to be someone with b reeding and distortion and a family history of excellent milkers. So a month or so back Mike and I began to look for a fella for our ladies. Someone worthy of them. Someone with class

We looked at some breeders with stud service and prices and location and found that after factoring in gas, lost time, and lost work, food, possibly boarding fees, inconvenience, having to drag Grace along (how boring), messing with milking times and missed milkings, and then the possibility of having missed the magical window of opportunity altogether. And having to do this with all three goats, on different days, we decided that the expense of buying and feeding and caring for bucks was worth it to us.

This may seem very silly having just talked about butchering our boys, but those weren't breeding goats. And genetic diversity is good, of course. So today we got two buck kids! Grace and I have named all the ladies so Mike asked that he be allowed to name the fellas.We are please to introduce our herd sires:

Thor God of Thunder:

Thor is three months old and, as you can see, he is quite a looker. And his dam is a great milker. According to the breeder we got him from he will be ale to do his duty this season, although we may have to build him a "ramp or platform" so he can reach the vital bits. I genuinely look forward to writing that post. We plan to breed in September for February kids.

AND

Captain America:

"Cap" is just a little fella. He will be a month old in a few days and he misses his friends back home. So we made sure to snuggle him in and he had a lovely huge bottle and fell asleep in the soft hay in his new pen. He will still need bottles for the next few months. Thankfully we have plenty of good milk and Grace is an expert at goat-baby care and feeding. She has been down to the barn about every 15 minutes to make sure he is ok. He of course, will not be ready this season, but we may breed him in the next year or two. He is primarily a companion of Thor for now. Goats need other goat friends. Plus with those lovely markings we may breed him just for the coloring.

Garden:

The garden in general is going gangbusters right now. Just imagine if we got a few continuous days of sun! Here is the big news:

We have an almost completely red strawberry! Finally! Plus some that are starting to get a little color and a ton of green ones. We have company coming tomorrow so maybe we can split The First Strawberry five ways! Or maybe Grace and I will go eat it first thing and then tell everyone about it later.

There is a melon in my greenhouse. It's only about the size of a gobstopper, but it is totally there and I can't stop looking at it. I also have super many tomatoes and probably a dozen peppers and about 10,000 pickling cucumbers. Thank goodness for the greenhouse.

Cheese:

Today while I was turning my cheeses in my aging box I found some mold (the undesired kind) on two of my cheddars. It was under the wax. Don't worry, though, I can totally fix that. The point is we tasted the 45 day cheddar and it was good. It was actually quite good which is awesome considering it is too young the wrong shape, and growing surface mold. I can't wait to try the ones I didn't mess up!

And that is the farm news! We are taking most of the rest of the week "off" to play with friends, go to some holiday fun, and hopefully play in the SUN!

Happy America to All!