Vaughnshire Farm

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures of the actual disbudding process.  With milking our goats and small children handling the goats, we prefer having them (the goats) with out horns, so we decided to have our friend come over and show us how to disbud our week old baby Alpine goat.  It included putting the baby into a little box with only her head sticking out and heating up something like an iron rod so that the horn buds could be burned off.  She ended up looking quite strange for a while…

I took my first sip of our goat’s milk not too long ago— very cautiously.  We have heard bad stories about how horrible goat’s milk is…it’s goaty, tastes gamey, you won’t like it…

However, I was pleasantly surprised that the goat’s milk we have been getting was far from the stories we have been told!  Maybe the taste of milk differs drastically between breeds or maybe all the bad goat milk comes from animals that eat all the brush and wild onions?  All I know is our goat milk is absolutely delicious and we are enjoying having an additional supply of milk.  At a later date, I would love to draw up a comparison between milking goats and milking a cow.  There are many things we have learned about milking cows and goats.  Many differences, but both provide great raw milk for the family. 

Having fresh milk has been one of the most rewarding farm experiences over this last year.  We started last year with milking our cow, Bonnie.   We also have several dairy goats.  One of the business ideas my daughter is pursuing is raising milk goats and selling them to other families who would like to have their own supply of fresh milk.  So far, she is just starting her hand at it, but is loving working with these milk goats. 

With baby goats, comes milking mommas.   Our 9 year old daughter has plunged into milking duties and is loving it.  She and Mally (one of our alpine mommas) are great friends.  In fact, Mally can’t stand to be away from the children when she sees them outside.  She makes all kinds of noise and tries to open the gate so she can come be near them. 

Except for a few bumps in the road – kicked over milk pails, stepping and putting her hind feet in the milk bucket, escaping and sitting down when trying to lead her back to the pasture –She has been a wonderful goat for a 9 year old to learn how to handle and milk.  We have been very pleased as she is providing some very rich and delicious milk that we have been enjoying very much.  We never would have imagined goat milk could be so good!

The only problem is that when Mally does get out of the pasture and makes her way to the house, returning her to the pasture can be quite a chore! 

Miss Docie is the newest goat baby here on the farm.  We were so excited that she was a girl!  This means that we will have the opportunity to raise her up and train her to be a fine milking goat!  This week, we will learn how to disbud her so she will not grow horns.  It is another one of those “operations” one must learn when living on a farm, however, not near as disgusting as those pig operations!

We have been spending lots of time with Miss Docie.  The children have enjoyed playing with her and she provides lots of entertainment for them. 

So now that we have both sheep and goats we have the proverbial discussions among the “owners” of said animals as to which one is better to have.

We arrived home from a wonderful fellowship time at Church and started to settle in for the evening.  Dad and the children ran out to do the chores quickly before supper.  At supper, one of the children brought up the fact that they didn’t see our expecting milk goat when the cow was being milked.  In fact, no one had seen her at all since we had been home. 

After supper, my husband goes out to the pasture in the pouring down rain to locate the missing goat.  (..Who we later found out went through two fences to the back woods.)  We awaited anxiously as he searched the pasture.  It was taking too long and my daughter was starting to worry that something was wrong. 

The 10 year old offers his insight on the situation, “Well, maybe she died in goat birth?”    He seems to have a way with words and offering blunt opinions at just the right time

It was taking a long time.  It was now nearing 10:30 pm and I yelled out the back door to see if he needed any help.  He hollered back in the distance that we could come up and see…  to see what, we had an idea but weren’t for sure… but we hurried to get our boots and coats on and ran out the back door and up the hill…..in the dark…in the rain.

We arrived seeing a beautiful little, newborn alpine doeling.  The children were so elated and I was in disbelief as I didn’t even really believe the momma was even pregnant.  However, she was and kidded exactly when the breeder told us she would. 

We relocated the momma and baby to a covered area for the night and returned back to the house with a happy crew awaiting daylight to show the rest of their siblings the newborn kid in the morning. 

This week we have posted a lot of farm related material…that would be because it’s early spring (as of today) and there are a ton of things to do around a farm during “planting season”.  As one of my younger children recently lamented, “If only we had more children…we could have more help…” 

Today was a beyond gorgeous day.  I sat in a lawn chair out by the garden and gave directions on what I wanted done. We had cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, potatoes and onions to get in the ground.  By the days end, they had the garden planted with plants and had posted the poultry netting around the garden.   The garden would have been gone by morning if we didn’t do something quick because the chickens spotted the fresh young plants and started eating them. 

The boys also repaired the disconnected spring pipe.  Water was gushing out of the pipe into the creek (it is supposed to be connected to another pipe running into our spring tank).  The pipe was disconnected because of the amount of water and debris that rushed through the creek yesterday with all of our rain.  The boys cleared the debris and reconnected the pipe.  All is well. 

The cows and goats were also moved over into a different section of the pasture.  They enjoyed having fresh green grass as they had been grazing in another section for several weeks. 

So far the mother hen hatched out 3 chicks:  one died, two are doing great.  We aren’t sure why the other eggs have not hatched. 

This week, my husband and the boys also started taking out one of the driveways so we can run a fence across the front of the house.  They worked on clearing brush, filling in other parts of the land with fill dirt, leveling out other parts.  This is a huge project in the works. 

That’s all the farm updates.

I caught myself thinking a very agrarian thought today as I looked out into the field and watched our cows munching on some fresh hay in the middle of a frigid January winter.  The happy thought hit me, “Look, our milk and meat eating hay!” 

I never use to see cows as anything else but a cow.  However, the agrarian life has opened up an entire wing of thought and introspection like never before. 

Not only that, but it has greatly expanded the subjects of conversation at the supper table. 

In other farm news, our goats are ready to be picked up from the breeder.  However, we have to wait until the weather warms up a bit or we might end up with goats that get pneumonia??  It is strange to think that not too many months ago, it was 100 degrees hotter than it is tonight. The 2 super baby chicks are doing great out in the milk barn in their warming box.  We are still unsure if the milk cow was bred successfully, however, we should know in a few days.  Our hens are laying up a storm thanks to the boys focused efforts in separating them from the roosters, giving them a light and lots of kitchen scraps for food.  Our barn cat catches squirrels and the boys built a “plow” out of an old bicycle.  Now they are just anxious for the ground to thaw so they can ”plow” in the garden and finish their paying job of hauling dirt for mom.   

We have made some huge leaps in regards to animal management here at the farm.  While getting the milk cow bred is still on our list, we have managed to move forward in other areas. 

We have a registered Alpine milk goat who had twins last February.  We recently took them over to a local farm for all 3 goats to be bred back to a very nice Alpine buck.  In May, we expect our first baby Alpines to land on the Vaughnshire pasture.  We are intending on milking some of the Alpines as well as offering registered Alpine milk goats for sale. 

In addition, we brought home two Pyrenees puppies.  Since we do have goats and smaller animals in need of protection, we decided the farm needed some Pyre’s to work the farm. 

The local farm gave us as many chickens as we could catch…so we brought home some chickens to put in with the cows for the purpose of pasture sanitation.  Today, for some homeschool-hands-on-learning, my husband handed the boys a pair of scissors and a printed out info sheet and told them to go clip the chickens’ wings so they would stop flying out of the coop.  They figured it out.

Also, new to the farm, by a strange work of Providence for our son as my husband has assured me, we have acquired a Walker Coon Hound…… who trees coons…among other things currently.  Remember the story, Where the Red Fern Grows???  Evidently, that wasn’t just a made up story.  Stay tuned for that exciting turn of events. 

We extended the electric wire from paddock 1 up and around the garden to block out the garden from paddock 2 and through the fence into the main pasture to use on our cross fencing.

The young boys helped me run the eletric ribbon across the pasture to carve off a nice square acre paddock, which will be paddock 4.  The goats which remain in the main pasture have tested it and verified it works!  We hope to keep the animals of this paddock as we decide what kind of winter forage to seed.