All About The Goats

Our Herd - (from left to right) The Buckling, Bridget, Springbok, Mayday, and SabineThings are moving along at the pace of a spring river and it has become a bit trickier to keep everyone up to date. Every time I talk to my parents, even though it’s only been a few days, I feel like I could go on for hours about everything that’s gone on since we last spoke!

I feel the same way about the blog, so get ready for a hefty read! Like I said, there's so much going on that it would be almost impossible to cover it all, but here’s an update on the goats to get you started…

We’re really beginning to settle into life with a herd and it’s hard to imagine that less than a month ago we didn’t have one! Milking and “goat walks” have become part of our routine, each enjoyable and relaxing (well, when everyone’s behaving, that is). We drink their milk every day and, just this weekend, have been enjoying our very own chévre and ice cream. Ah, life is good!

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Little Seed's Microclimate: Cedar Glades and Wildflowers

We don't have unexpected visitors very often in our neck of the woods, so when a neighbor pulled up the other evening I was sure I'd accidentally done something un-neighborly (Sophie has taken to patroling/barking at 4am every night recently) and was about to get a talking to. Instead, I was asked if he could have permission to take pictures of a flower at the front of our property. He told me that this flower is very rare and only found in our area. In fact, there are quite a few rare and endangered plants that grow in area, referred to as the Cedar Glades. One of these we just happen to have at the front of our property along the road's edge. This was all news to me and pretty exciting news at that! It was already evening, too late to go down and take a look for myself, so I did a bit of googling...

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Kitchen Witchery: Dandelion Salve

Summer seems to have come quite early to Tennessee this year. Everything has greened up and its been in the 80's here for the past few weeks! The sunshine has been lavish and the goats are loving the tender new leaves cropping up everywhere... 

The super warm weather has made us kick into high gear, trying to get the garden and everything else under the sun done before it's "too late" and we starve, or eat more WallMart produce (I think we'd starve). This week, this has meant shoveling lots of gravel (fun!). At some point in time, someone here was much enamoured of gravel, as evidenced by its prolific abundance in every imaginable nook and crany. Covering the patio (why?), embedded in weeds and grass as an abstract walkway accented by truck mud flaps (huh?), piled against one side of the house so that the storm water drains right into our crawl space...  

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