Gotes with Totes - Available for Hire!

If you have to breed milk goats every year to keep them milking, what do you do with all those baby goats? Around 1990, all of our friends and acquaintances had all the pet goats they could possibly need. We were not ready to make goat sausage when we read an article in Sierra Magazine about back packing with goats. John Mionczynski worked in Wyoming with the task of observing and recording a band of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. He had a good deal of equipment to carry into the high mountains, including a big radio receiver to follow the radio collared sheep. He tried horses and then mules to follow the sheep into the high wild terrain. He could not get near the area where the sheep lived. Stuck with this dilemma, he trained his pet wether (castrated male goat) to wear a modified mule cross buck and off into the rugged slippery upper reaches they went; the goat’s presence did not alarm the wild sheep. He ultimately wrote a book called The Pack Goat and is considered the father of American goat packing.

Feeding our Animals

The Mangel Wurtzel crop this year grew well and has been fed out to pigs, goats, and chickens.  This is year number 2 of growing these fodder beets; they’re a high carbohydrate BIG beet, (like sugar beets, but NOT GMO!) and we’re trying to grow some more of our own animal food.  The goats and pigs eat the beets and the goats and chickens eat the tops…great nutrition for all the animals.  We can’t grow grain or hay, but we can grow beets and kale!  This year went well with keeping critters out, a better watering system and good soil prep.  We produced about twice as much as in 2012; the deer and nibbly rodents took a toll that year.  We would like to end the season in 2014 with double the 2013 harvest, and we may be onto the path for home-grown winter feed for our pregnant sows and milking goats.

Farm Stays, Rentals and Campground

We have renamed the “new” house on the land to Meadow House and will be renting it daily (or weekly) for retreats and farm stays.  It faces the South Meadow and is wood heated in winter and beautifully shaded in summer; the design results in temperature comfort year round.