Tag: farm

Dairy Goats: Alpine vs Nigerian Dwarf

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

Beginner Herd

We added goats to our farm about two months ago. The first additions were a small starter herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats, which included two does already in milk, two yearling does not in milk, a month-old buckling, and a month-old wether. When we first brought them home we also brought home five gallons of frozen milk so we could try our own goat milk without worrying about feeding the bottle babies. Right away we fell in love with the fresh milk. Nigerian Dwarf milk is very creamy and not really goaty. There can sometimes be a slight aftertaste, but for the most part, it has no flavor at all. Once you have fresh milk it’s really hard to go back to anything else.

We Need Another

Out of our two milking Nigerians, we get almost exactly four cups of milk every milking. Four cups of milk per milking (twice daily) adds up to a half gallon of milk each day. Originally this was plenty of milk for our family. However, when you want to start making yogurt or other things with goat milk you end up needing a little bit more. My son alone drinks almost a quart a day. Then we ran out of frozen milk and had to start feeding our babies our fresh milk. Obviously, they need the milk and we gave it to them, but when you just got your own dairy goats it’s a bit frustrating to give every ounce back to the babies. Between the two babies, they drink a half gallon a day, so everything we got was theirs.

Originally I was looking into adding another Nigerian Dwarf to help solve this problem but she would only give us a quart of milk a day on her own. I really didn’t want to add multiple goats and have to milk four or five, twice a day. When I reached out to the lady we got our goats from she ended up not having another Nigerian anyway, but her mom had an Alpine. Her mom has been raising Alpines for about 30 years and has really nice stock. She asked if we would consider one since she would give us a lot more milk, and I agreed.

Butterfat and Volume

If you look into the different goat breeds you will find that Nigerian Dwarfs give the most butterfat in their milk. This is what makes their milk creamy. Alpines are on the lower end of the butterfat content, but they are a larger goat and therefore give a lot more volume. I think most people who want larger dairy goats tend to go with Nubians or LaManchas, but I was having a hard time finding quality goats, already in milk, within a reasonable distance from me. For those reasons, I went ahead and decided to purchase the Alpine and bring her home.

It took a few days for her to settle in, but now that she’s been here for almost a month we love her. She is one of the sweetest goats we have and she is so easy to handle. She is also giving us five cups of milk per milking, which is over a half gallon of milk a day. Currently, most of her milk is going to our bottle babies. This has been the big advantage of bringing her home. She produces enough milk on her own to feed both bottle babies and have some leftover. This allows us to keep all the Nigerian milk for drinking or for making yogurt and cheese. We have plenty of milk now! Between the three goats, we get a little over a gallon of milk a day. The bottle babies are coming up on three months old and will be weaned soonish. I’ve heard you wean them between two and three months old, but some also say to wait until they are eating solid food well. Ours are eating hay but I don’t think they are eating enough yet to be fully weaned. Once they are weaned we are going to be overflowing with goat milk.

Alpine Milk

As I mentioned Alpines have a lower butterfat content than Nigerians. On top of that Alpine milk does carry a bit of the goat flavor, and I am not sure why that is. I don’t know if it’s because they are larger goats, or if it has to do with the fat content, but it is definitely a goatier-flavored milk. It is still not bad and we don’t mind it but it is something to keep in mind when picking out a dairy goat.

Our Alpine is only a year old and on her first freshening. She is currently at around 10 cups of milk a day and I assume she will only give more as time goes on and she gets older and freshens again. When you research Alpine goat production it says they can produce 1-2 gallons a day. There was an Alpine at the place we got ours from that was the biggest goat I have ever seen. She was massive and her udder was huge. I would assume she’s closer to the two gallon a day mark. If you are looking for volume, I would think an Alpine would be a good consideration.

Another benefit that I have read is you can keep an Alpine in milk longer than you can a Nigerian. I have seen many posts saying you can keep an Alpine in milk for a few years even, while Nigerians tend to dry themselves off by ten months. So, if you don’t want to breed every year an Alpine might be what you need to look for. They do take up more room being a larger goat, but they are pretty easy to handle. At least our girl is easy to handle. She is also easier to keep fenced in. Yes, she requires more space, but she doesn’t try and squeeze under the fence like the Nigerians do. I have been surprised by how small a hole the Nigerians can manage to squeeze through. We have had quite a few escapes but the Alpine has never been the culprit.

Yogurt, Cheese, and More

There are many uses for goat milk. Basically any dairy product can be made from goat milk just like cow milk, with maybe a few adaptations.

  • Our first use for goat milk is fresh drinking. My son uses it in his cereal, we put it in our tea and coffee, and we drink it from the glass. It was an easy transition for our family to switch over completely. I was worried that they wouldn’t like it, but I think having the Nigerians first really helped with the transition to only goat milk.
  • My next favorite way to use the milk is homemade yogurt. I had never made yogurt before and it was much easier than I expected. I make it and strain it so that it is closer to a Greek yogurt and it’s fantastic. My husband has even brought some to a friend and he loved it. He has asked for more and downs it as soon as he gets it. You can make homemade yogurt with store-bought milk and if it’s anything like the yogurt we made I would highly recommend trying it.
  • The third would be a simple quick cheese. I’ve seen people call it a farmer’s cheese, or a Chevre cheese. You need an acid, (vinegar or lemon juice) and milk. It’s a pretty quick and easy process. You end up with a cheese similar in consistency to a feta. You can flavor it however you want and it’s great to add to salads or even eggs for breakfast. I would like to try and make more of a mozzarella cheese, I think this would be a bigger hit with the whole family, as the kids don’t care too much for the simple cheese.
  • Lastly, I made Cajeta. It’s a Mexican caramel typically made from goat milk. It was so good, but very very sweet. It also has a cinnamon stick added to the boiling process and I don’t know if I would add that next time. My daughter did say it reminded her of Christmas and I have to agree, there was something about it that was very much reminiscent of Christmas-time flavors. If I make it again I will not cook it as long. It turned out pretty thick and while great, was a little hard to use. I think I would like a more pourable consistency to put on ice cream.

So far I have not been able to make butter or even just heavy cream. Goat milk is naturally homogenized, meaning the fat doesn’t separate the same way cow’s milk does. From what I have read it will separate if you let it sit long enough, but the flavor of the milk will also change if it sits so I haven’t tried. For goat’s milk, it is most recommended that you buy a milk separator. I would love to have one someday, but they can be pricey so we will have to wait a little while to work that into the budget. Once we add that to our gadgets I hope to make butter, ice cream, sour cream, and heavy cream. For now, most of our excess milk is being made into yogurt.

How to Handle Goat Milk

The goaty flavor is what we are all trying to avoid in our milk. While a little goaty flavor can’t be helped sometimes the way you handle fresh milk can really make a difference. First and foremost everything has to be clean. From what you are milking into, to the goat itself, it’s very important that you make sure everything is really clean. You should avoid plastic whenever you can as it can hold onto flavors and leech those into your milk. I like to use stainless steel or we have a big glass batter bowl that I milk into, and then I store all our milk in glass half gallon or quart size mason jars. Next, you want to strain and get your milk cold as quickly as possible. The faster you get it cold, the longer the milk will keep fresh. I like to bring my milk in as soon as I’m done milking, strain it, and then I stick it in the freezer for about an hour or so. Be careful because I often forget the milk in the freezer and end up freezing it.

Milk will stay fresh in the fridge for a couple of days. After a few days the milk is still good, but the flavor will start to change. Fresh milk doesn’t go bad the same way store bought milk does, but the flavor changes quite a bit as it sits. I like to use our milk for fresh drinking within about two days, and then if I have any leftover I will turn that into yogurt. Everything is better when it’s made with fresh milk, but don’t be afraid to make yogurt or cheese with the older milk.

Finally, keep an eye on your goats and make sure they are healthy. You don’t want to use milk from a goat that is sick in any way. When our Alpine first got here she was stressed and had runny poop so we didn’t keep her milk. Once she settled in and returned to normal, her milk was fine to use.

If during milking the milk gets dirty for any reason consider tossing it. Straining the milk is essential because goat hairs and some dust will fall in the milk while you are milking, but anything else really shouldn’t be kept. It was pretty muddy here recently and somehow we kept getting dirt in the milk during milking. I gave that to the bottle babies or the chickens. If you drink your milk raw it’s best to err on the side of caution.

If drinking your milk raw scares you go ahead and pasteurize it. I may get a lot of grief for saying this but I think pasteurized milk is fine. There is a chance that heating the milk up might bring a bit of the goat flavor out, but sometimes it’s better safe than sorry. From what I have researched pasteurization doesn’t kill as much of the nutrients and benefits as we are led to believe. I personally think even pasteurized, your own fresh milk is better than anything you can buy. We all have to do what we are comfortable with and not what social media platforms are telling us.

For our family, I make sure to keep everything very clean, and we use our milk raw. However, if I think for any reason the milk has been contaminated we don’t drink it. If it’s not bad I will turn it into cheese or yogurt as you cook both of those, or it goes to the babies since they would drink straight from the udder anyway. Chickens will also help you dispose of your unwanted milk, or even yogurt that didn’t quite work out. So far, we have all drank our raw milk and been completely fine.

Who Wins? Alpine or ND

Both! That didn’t really answer anything, but we love all our girls. Each breed brings something the other doesn’t have and therefore I like having them both. Taste wise, the Nigerians win hands down, but the Alpine is still a good choice and you get so much more per goat. Maybe a mixed herd is the best option.

For future breeding plans I plan on trying out the mini Alpines. Mini goats are simply a large goat bred to a Nigerian Dwarf Buck. You don’t want to breed the other way around because it could cause issues for the doe to have a larger kid than she should but a smaller buck to a larger doe works just fine. I am curious to see if the Nigerian Buck brings any more fat content to the Alpine milk. A mini Alpine will still produce more milk than the Nigerian Dwarf, so I am really hoping it is the best of both breeds. I can’t find a ton of information on the internet about Mini Alpines so I guess we will wait and see. Our buck is still too young to breed and I am in no hurry. Once we find out I will let you all know. Until then research your goat breeds, make a choice, and jump. I do not regret our goats for one second. They have been such an awesome addition to our home and the fresh milk is everything I dreamed it would be.

Dreams Fulfilled

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

I recently sat down with my phone and started scrolling garden plans on Pinterest. I saved a few ideas here and there and thought nothing of it. That is until I went back to my board to clean up a few pins I knew I no longer wanted. It was then that I realized I had saved pins to a board named “Future Farm”. I was so struck at that moment with the realization that I was no longer living in “future farm” dreaming but in current farm reality. This dream that I’ve been hanging onto for years has finally come to fruition. I took a moment to say a prayer of thanks and once again marvel at how quickly life can change. Sometimes it changes for the worse, but sometimes we get lucky and it changes for the better. I still have a hard time believing we made this dream come true, but here we are.

My job now is to love this property and use it as best I can. I have big plans and I have to catch myself sometimes and remember to take it slow. Not everything has to be done right away. The garden for example will stay small this year. I have plans to expand the space by quite a bit, but we decided for this first year it was better to use what we already had. My husband and I have moved around quite a bit and have never been somewhere before that we could put roots down. It’s such an odd concept for me to think about putting together a five-year plan for example. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I have time. God willing, we plan to stay here for quite a while. So, for now, I will be grateful for the space I have, learn what I can, and look forward to really making this space our own. Always thankful that sometimes dreams do come true.

First month on the farm

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Wow! I can’t believe we’ve been on this property for a month now. It’s been an incredibly busy month. I knew moving onto a new property was going to be busy, but I did not know it was going to be this busy. I will take the blame for a lot of the craziness though, because I went ahead and moved full speed with my farm plans. We’ve gotten a lot done, but there is still so much to do. Let’s start with talking about the animals.

Chickens

The first animal we added to the farm was chickens. In fact, if you read any of the earlier posts you would know we got hatching eggs before we even closed on this property. We only ended up with three chicks from that hatch, so of course we stopped by our local feed store and grabbed a few more. When we had been here for about a week I picked up some hens that were already laying. We wanted eggs right away and our chicks weren’t going to start laying for a while. Next thing I know people are asking if we have eggs so of course, I had to get a few more chickens. Currently, we have 10 laying hens all about a year or two old, and 10 chicks. I wanted to focus on just a couple of breeds so I could hatch my own chickens, but like you tend to do we ended up with a barnyard mix. The chickens have pretty much been my favorite addition. They are easy to care for and going out to the coop and bringing in eggs feels very rewarding. Plus they are just plain fun to sit around and watch.

My one complaint about the chickens is they don’t go out into our “pasture” area. I have tried to get them to go out to the 1.5 acres we are calling the pasture but they seem to prefer the backyard or their coop area. I want them to go out into the pasture because we have had a few ticks show up. I cannot stand ticks, they gross me out so much. I was hoping to have the chickens roam the pasture area and eat the ticks, but it looks like I may need to find another solution. I have read about guineas, which I am considering, however I have also heard they are very loud. We may do a chicken tractor in the future so the chickens have to be out in the pasture, but I haven’t made a final decision. However, some form of tick control will need to be decided upon soon. Despite that the chickens have been a very easy and fun addition to the farm.

Dairy Goats

One of my main goals for our farm is to improve the quality of our food. As part of that plan finding a dairy animal was high on my priority list. I have been researching which type we wanted for years now. I would love to have a milk cow, but decided we didn’t have the room. On top of needing more room cows are harder to breed and the vet costs are much higher. Not to mention I don’t really need gallons of milk a day. So once I decided on goats, I started the research process to find the right breed. I really wanted Nubians but I couldn’t find any quality breeders in my local area, and for right now I was unwilling to drive six or more hours to pick up goats. So, instead, I found a good Nigerian Dwarf goat breeder who was only an hour away. I feel pretty lucky to have found her, as she shows her goats. This typically means more care is put into the goats as well as better genetics. We ended up purchasing two does that were already in milk, and two yearling does who have not been bred. I also picked up a buckling and a wether, both were born on April 2nd of this year. It will be a few months until the Buck is old enough to breed, but that gives us time to get used to the does we already have in milk and get our routine down.

Having does in milk has been wonderful but also very challenging. First, the milk is delicious. Nigerian Dwarfs have some of the highest butterfat content which makes their milk creamy and delicious. I won’t lie and say it’s exactly like cow’s milk, but it’s pretty close and maybe even better. The flavor of goat’s milk is very dependent on how you handle it. Other than being really clean, one of the most important factors is how fast you get the milk cooled down. I like to bring the milk into the house, filter it, and then get it into the freezer as soon as possible. I tend to let the milk hang out in the freezer for about an hour to get it cooled down and then I put it in the fridge. There are bacteria in the raw milk that will start to eat the sugars as soon as it is out of the udder. Cooling it down stops the bacteria from eating the sugar as fast and changing the flavor of the milk. Everyone who has tried the milk so far has been really impressed with how good it is. The part that is a little bit goaty is that sometimes there is a tiny bit of an aftertaste. It’s not bad at all and I do not feel like it ruins the milk but it is something to know about if you plan to have goats for milk.

My absolutely favorite thing to do with the milk is turn it into yogurt. I have made goat milk yogurt twice now and it’s the best yogurt I’ve ever had. I am currently a little sad that we have just enough milk to drink because I can’t wait to make more yogurt. We like to make it extra thick almost like a Greek yogurt, but it’s not near as sour as a Greek yogurt can sometimes be. I just top it with some honey and I’m in heaven. I have also made a quick, almost feta-like, cheese. I really enjoyed that as well, and it seems that when the milk is made into other things the goat flavor is completely gone. Not that the flavor is strong to begin with. It’s a very barely there flavor but it disappears completely in homemade goat cheese and yogurt.

Another pro to the Nigerian Dwarf goat breed is their size. I am 5’1″ and the goats come up to about my knee. They are about the size of a medium to large dog. This makes fencing and housing much easier than larger breeds. Also, when bringing them home they rode in the back of the truck. We have a topper on the truck and that’s where they went, no trailer is needed. Their smaller size makes them easy to handle, house, and transport. The con to their size is less milk. I know over time we can work on their udder size and milk capacity, but out of our two does, we are currently getting about four cups of milk each time we milk. This does add up to about half a gallon of milk a day, which sounds like a lot, but when you want to have milk to drink and make cheese/yogurt it isn’t quite enough. We also have two bottle babies still, so if I forget to thaw the frozen milk, almost all of our fresh milk goes to them. They are drinking around a half gallon a day, but they are absolutely adorable so I don’t complain.

All in all, I am very pleased with our goats. I will say one more thing that I learned along the way. If at all possible try and start out with quality stock. You can find cheaper goats from people selling off their backyard farms, but it isn’t always the best option over time. Look for goats that have been bred with milking quality in mind and from someone who has taken very good care of their goats. Starting with registered stock is not required but it may be something to consider. It will make your offspring more valuable since you can register them as well. Like I mentioned I found someone who does 4-H and other goat shows and really tried to focus on quality traits. They are all registered and healthy. They also test their herd every year since they travel and have to make sure they don’t take anything to the shows or pick something up while out. This gave me peace that even though it was more money upfront, we would be better off over the long haul. Plus the woman I bought them from has been very helpful and willing to be more of a mentor. Sometimes what you start out with really does matter.

For milking purposes on a small-scale homestead/farm Nigerian Dwarf goats are a great option. If you are thinking about a dairy animal I would highly suggest looking into these adorable troublemakers.

Challenges

It hasn’t all been fun and games. As I said, I moved pretty quickly when we first closed on the property. Chickens were added right away but we already had a coop and a fenced area so that was no big deal. I did however rush the goats. I had found the goats I wanted and they were ready to go, so I jumped. I don’t think this was the smartest way to do it, but sometimes when you find what you want you have to make it happen. We ended up bringing them home when their fencing wasn’t even finished. They hung out in our backyard while my husband and I finished fencing their pen. We also didn’t have a housing structure, but luckily there was something already here that we ended up using and it worked out great. It’s not perfect and will need some work in the future but it’s been exactly what we needed to get them here and safe right away. Our first night milking was quite a disaster since I also didn’t have a milking stand. We ended up milking them on the deck. We were slow and they were annoyed and it was a total disaster that ended with us all frustrated. A milking stand is expensive and shipping one would have taken time that we didn’t really have, so my husband converted an old bunk bed frame into a milking stand. Sometimes you have to use what you have. It has been serving us well ever since. As you would guess milking is a skill that takes a little while to get down. In the beginning, we took extra bowls out with us. We would milk into one bowl and then dump it into the other every so often, just in case one of the goats decided to step in the milk. Which they did, OFTEN. Even a few weeks in we are still learning. Last night I ended up with a lap full of milk because my daughter, who was helping, moved her hand and the goat thought we were done and kicked the bowl right over. Of course, this time I hadn’t poured it into another bowl so we lost the whole thing. The saying ” no crying over spilled milk”, does not apply here. It is so frustrating to lose all that milk.

The other most challenging part of the goats is keeping them in the fencing. A quick tip, make sure your gate opens inward. Our gate opens out and it gives the goats enough space to try and head-butt their way out of the gate. Quite often we have had to wrangle goats after they all pushed their way out of the pen when we were trying to put one back. You can also throw treats into the pen to distract the other goats while you get the one you wanted for milking. Goats will take advantage of any hole left in fencing or gap left in a gate. They have wormed their way into the chicken area when we cut what we thought was a chicken-sized hole in the fence. We wanted to give the chickens easy access to the pasture, that hole is now closed. Once, we had a goat in the chicken coop. It was so funny. I kept hearing a goat cry but couldn’t find her. It sounded like she was behind the chicken coop, but there was no goat to be found. I thought, “No way she’s in the coop”. She was! She had climbed up the chicken ramp and somehow had knocked the door closed behind her and was stuck inside crying for someone to help. So, if a chicken can fit, so can a goat. Who knew?

Other challenges we can’t do anything about. Where we live the wind is absolutely insane. It’s no fun trying to milk goats when the doors to the shed are rattling on their hinges and you feel like you are going to blow away walking them back to the pen. That is unfortunately something we will have to get used to. I do believe the animals will get easier as we get more experience, but the weather is something we will just have to suck it up and deal with.

This last month has been wonderful and I am so happy that we have been able to make this dream happen. I have loved adding the chickens and the goats and I can’t wait for garden season to start. However, even a month in I can tell you it’s not like what you see on the internet. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to be a lot of work. I always to try and keep my why in mind. Why is this what I wanted? What do I hope to accomplish? It helps me when things get hard, to remember why I started all this in the first place. To remember my goals. To remember that this is what I have dreamed about for years. I am now living in it and I don’t want to forget that and ever become ungrateful. There have been hard days and I know there will be more, but I hope to never look at this with less than thankful eyes, challenges and all.

Chicken Rescue

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A few days ago while on the phone with my sister I glanced out the window and saw something white floating in the pond. It took me a second to realize what I was seeing. A chicken had fallen into our pond and was floating on the surface. At first glance, it looked dead, but then I saw the tiniest bit of movement from its head. I threw my phone down on the bed, yelling at my sister to hold on, then ran outside to grab this hen. She was absolutely soaked through, hypothermic, and barely alive. I knocked on my son’s window yelling “Bring me a towel quick!”. I wrapped her up and brought her inside and we started the process of trying to get her warmed back up and praying that she made it.

I have never had to save an animal like this before, but we at least knew we needed to dry her off and warm her up. The first thing we did was towel her off as best we could. Then we brought out the blow dryer and started drying her feathers and warming her body. I have heard you don’t want to heat them back up too quickly, and of course, we didn’t want to burn her with the hot air, so we ran the blow dryer on the low setting. The whole time we were drying her she just twitched. She didn’t fight us, she didn’t complain, she just twitched her legs almost like a shock response. When she finally started shivering again I was so happy. I felt like we were at least making progress and her body was fighting. Once her feathers were pretty dry we grabbed our brooder heat plate, wrapped her up, and let her lay on the heat. We also tucked a sock full of rice, which we microwaved for 1 minute, and a bottle of hot water under the blanket with her to give her immediate heat.

I don’t know how long she sat there and warmed up, maybe an hour or two, but she finally pulled through and started trying to stand up. Eventually, I was able to take her back out to her flock and she went about her day as if nothing had happened.

I am unsure exactly what happened since I didn’t see it, but I have a theory. We have a small fish pond in the back yard and the chickens like to perch on the side and drink out of it. They have their own water, but they seem to prefer to do this anyway. This particular day was very windy and I assume while she was drinking on the side she slipped or the wind pushed her in. Our weather has not heated up yet so when she couldn’t get out she sat there and got cold. Even her comb had started to turn colors almost like frostbite. I told the kids I think she was pretty close to not making it. I am so very thankful I happened to catch her in time and we were able to save her.

If your animal ever gets wet and cold, dry them off and then slowly warm them up. I have heard from many sources to not feed the animal anything or try to get them to drink until they are fully warmed back up. For us in this situation a hair dryer and then some sort of heat pad were what worked really well. A heat source like a heat pad, or a heat plate might be something worth investing into if you plan to keep livestock. We never know what emergency is awaiting us around the corner.

Tomorrow we close!

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We close on our new house tomorrow! Some of the family say it feels like it went quick but to me it feels like we’ve been waiting forever. The final walkthrough was last night and it was good to walk back through the house and see it again. That is one of the hard parts about buying a home, you tour a house, fall in love, and then can’t see it again in person until the end. It was nice to reassure ourselves we still liked it after all.

The house is smaller than we are already in but, the new property has just over 3 acres. The man who owned it before us did a lot of work so it comes with a bunch of small trees already planted, a chicken coop, a small pond, a garden area, and a storage shed. Not to mention most of the property is already fenced, including a backyard area for the dogs. Knowing we don’t have to start everything from scratch is so good.

Homestead Plans

Getting ready to move in early spring put a bit of a damper on my seed-starting plans. I already don’t have a good seed starting set-up so I decided to skip seeds this year. My plans for this year’s garden are to start seeds in the ground that are ok with that, and then buy plant starts from the local greenhouse. I won’t plant a large garden this time as we need to get used to the new property and figure out where we want everything to go. Containers will be used to grow a few items like herbs that spread while we figure out their permanent place. I am hoping to get a few fruit trees planted this year and maybe a few berry bushes. What I would really like to do is jump straight in and go crazy but I have to rein it back and have patience.

In total, we now have eight chicks. One of the ones we got from the store was sick and passed a few days later, and then we hatched three from our own eggs. I am still playing around with the idea of adding a few layers, but we have friends who we get eggs from so it’s not a huge issue if we wait for the chicks to grow. Our three Swedish Flower babies are what I am most excited about at the moment. I am hoping they are not all three roosters, but I would like one to be. I can’t wait to see them grow and have that question answered.

Lastly, I have found a local source for Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats and hope to add them quickly. We are not set up quite yet but that is at the top of my list to get done. I think chickens and a few goats is probably enough for a first-time homesteader like me. This last year was my first with a real garden and it went well so I am confident I can handle that with time, but I am a little nervous about having livestock.

All in all, we can’t wait for Friday and the beginning of this new chapter.