First Goat Birth on the Farm! (Video bonus, too)

 Sandia, Little Seed's first official goat baby :)

On Tuesday we had our first goat birth on the farm! She was born to one of our Nubian first fresheners, Tijeras. (A first freshener is a goat that has not previously kidded). We weren't expecting her arrival until today so you can imagine our surprise when we found a perfectly dry and fuzzy baby goat in the pasture next to Tijeras when we went to check on the herd in the afternoon! Izzy our LGD was right there with her, protecting the baby and mama and giving the little baby a few licks here and there. 

We named her Sandia, which is the name of the mountain range behind James' childhood home in New Mexico. Tijeras is also a name that finds its roots in New Mexico. To make life easier on the naming of animals front, we have certain lines for certain goats and Tijeras is the "Grande Dame" of the New Mexican line. We also have a Tennessean line (beginning with our goat Blackstrap), a Vermont line (where Eileen grew up), and, last but not least, a Bad NYC Nightclub line (beginning with our goat TenJune).

Here's little Sandia at only 2 days old hopping around like a jumping bean:

 

She weighed in at 7 pounds and looks just like her dad, our Nubian buck, Gozer. Since she's our only goat kid at the moment and we don't want her to be cold and lonely by herself, she gets to stay in the house at night until another goat kid is born! (ok, she'd probably be fine by herself, we just enjoy having a little goat running around).

Out runnin' around, wreaking havoc, as baby goats do best

Hello, We're James and Eileen

After over 1.5 years of writing blog posts under our offal pseudonyms we finally came to the conclusion that it's time to use our own names. Hell, it's almost Spring, why not start it off with a bang?

Back when we had jobs in the city and no one knew our true aspiration to become farmers (gasp!) it seemed more prudent to keep our names under wraps. We didn't want to cause any trouble for (or with) our employers, as many of you can understand. But at the same time we wanted to share our experience and thus came the monikers of Scrapple and Sweetbreads.

It's been a wonderful experience and we've met so many incredible people through the blog. We're looking forward to continuing down that road and now, finally, also having the opportunity to form some face-to-face friendships with our local customers this coming year! 

It's been a joy writing the blog and interacting with so many wonderful readers on a daily basis. We look forward to continuing the story under our real names.

And now back to our regularly scheduled farm posts...

 

The Year of the Farm - A Recap of 2012


Our most popular Facebook photo, little Joplin!

2012 was an incredible year for us. One blog post can't do the whole thing justice, but I'll take a stab at a quick summary.

Clearly, the biggest event was MOVING TO THE FARM! Leaving NYC in a 26 ft. Penske truck seems like it happened years ago. Hard to imagine it was only 10 months ago.

We packed up all our stuff and the day before we left we got our first animal. Sophie! One of our farmer friends gave her to us and she has since turned into a wonderful livestock guardian dog.

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