Big changes really. The goats have gone to live with my friend at Meadowkeep in Northern Alberta.
While I miss them, I don't long for them like I thought I would. Right now life is so busy and so full, I felt like they didn't get what they wanted out of things here and knew they would there. And she was looking for some more girls so... The worst part? I didn't get a pic of them filling up the car that drove them to their new home! Need goats? Get in touch with Ester. She is a truly amazing human being who has great breeding stock and is passionate about her animals I had given up on goat breeding. It was too much work/stress/hassle. And then, one knit night, I was speaking with a farmer friend I respect immensely. She told me they have been selling cows and horses their way. Not to people who would be unsafe (as much for the horse as for the person), not having made any alterations or adjustments to the animal that they feel aren't in the animals' best interests. In short, they don't do anything that to sell the animal that they wouldn't do to one they were keeping. She got me thinking - that and spring and missing babies hopping around. She inspired me to continue on (with apologies to the Reluctant Goatherd).
I love my goats in spite of the sorrow the losses brought out of the last breeding. After a year of research consulting with vets across the province and beyond, and studying lineages, we think we've figured out the baby problem. If we're right, we should have a different experience next time. The only way to be sure if to breed them this year and see, which is a bit of a daunting way to go about it. Through all of this soul searching, I've realized that I have some really strong values about how I raise my animals and I can't comfortably compromise those principles for sales. One of those principles I hold dear is around the controversial issue of horns. Now, first of all, let me say I think we all need to do what we need to for our animals. As someone who has had horned animals up until my most recent goats, I've grown into my farminess with a horn related comfort. In fact, I think I'd go so far as to say I have a preference for horns. I've come to rely on them as a handle and for something to catch the goats in the headgate. I also like the fact that they can scratch their backs with them and hopefully, it helps give them a bit of extra protection in the event of predation. As I live in a cougar/wolf/coyote/etc area, any extra little bit of protection is a good thing. Yes, I have bent over and nearly poked myself - I think that says more about me and how mindfully I am dealing with my goats than it does about the horns because, ahem, I've done that with fruit trees and shrubs and fences too. I'm not cutting off every single thing that sticks out and could poke me but I am trying to pay better attention. After a lot of research and soul searching, I've decided I will be selling horned goats, with a twist. If you want to have your babies disbudded, (and 4Hers have to) I have no problem with that. In order to hold a baby for anyone, I require a $100 non-refundable deposit. If you would like disbudding to happen, I will just add on a $25 fee which is far from the full cost of the disbudding. I actually stole the idea from a few breeders in the US who are doing the same thing, for the same reason. I think we all know there are some people who feel strongly about having disbudded animals, or they're showing and have no choice, so this was the best compromise I could come up with to accommodate all of those views. Also - horned goats look just awesome. I love the primitiveness of them. Seriously - how can you look at this and not think "yes!" I have so appreciated the notes sent through the contact us page but there are two themes emerging that I would like to address. Conveniently, they relate to each other. The first is: I think you're advocating for simpler, sustainble living but it's such hard work. The answer is: yes, it is. I am so tired of blogs and webpages that promote this lifestyle as a "grow the flour to have your cake and eat it too" kind of lifestyle. It's just not that. What's happening because so many resources are making it look simple is people jump in with both feet and not looking, buy goats, and chickens, and land with the plan to live off it. That's great, if it works. More and more and more people I know are doing this rapid fire downshift in an upsizing way and it's actually hurting them. I think it's got some big implications for the planet as well, and I know it's got implications for the animals they're purchasing. So yes, this lifestyle is hard work. You have to be up to feed goats whether or not you feel like, chickens also need to be fed, coops need to be cleaned, gardens weeded. It really doesn't stop. For some of us, it's like a vocation. It's not that we walk around the farm with our halo firmly intact, we bitch and moan and grumble but if you've drunk the Kool Aid (as it were) chores aren't 'Chores'. I think the work aspect is the thing that people comment on the most - that and the cuteness of the goats. It's like somehow they think I don't know this is hard work. The hardness of it is also the thing I have started commenting on the most too. It's not that I want to discourage people because I think if we all adopted a bit of this lifestyle, we could manage a lot of change; it's just that I think the repercussions of people leaping in are too high. I used to tell people about the jobs - like kidding/lambing season where you wake up and there are babies running around playing. I didn’t really get into the three sleepless weeks when I still had to parent and go to work and be able to make good decisions. I also didn’t tell them about the heart ache of losing babies, especially when you think maybe it was something that could have been prevented if you’d just… I didn’t tell them about the times when your whole family is down with the pukey flu and you still have to drag your butt out of bed to feed and secure animals. Or the ‘OMG, how I am paying for this vet bill. Thank Dog I still have an ‘off the farm’ job’ moments. Or the nights when a cougar steals one of your goats because you forgot you no longer have a Pyr to keep them safe so you don’t lock them up… and you’re supposed to be travelling an hour and a half away to a family birthday supper. Your Reluctant Goatherd spends the day building building building and when you all get home, at midnight, he’s building, building, building some more. Or when you’re running late to get to work and fling open the door to the coop only to find that the reason your dog kept you up with barking (that you wished would stop but instead of letting him out to do his work, you kept telling him to shut up and went back to sleep because you were so tired) was because a bob cat managed to sneak into a hole in the coop and have a duck party. Now you have about a dozen dead and dying ducks, as well as a few chickens to deal with. And you were already running late. So, your teen aged son deals with the euthanasia while you finish sobbing/getting ready for work. And then your husband is home that night when it manages to be both wet and -20*C and is redoing the soffits (or facia, I never know) of the coop so there will be no more bobcat predation. On when you’ve just rung in New Years with friends and family and you spend the next evening trying to keep a dying goat alive. And then you spend the next day packaging up the body to send to the Provincial et because no one can figure out why he (or his brother) died but sister is fine. It’s not that I want to talk you off this path, if I did, I wouldn’t bother with this blog. It’s just that while the Lamb Olympics and Gambolling Goats and Cute Chicks are such a a wonderful reality, so are these things. And these are the things that seem to catch people by surprise. That and the hauling of hay (and water, unless you’re super fancy which I am not) and so on and so on.
I think those of us who write about and advocate for this style of living are partly to blame. We’ve sheltered far too many of you from the flip side of it all because we were SO EXCITED and SO COMMITTED but it’s not the right way to go about it. When I read articles like this one I am seriously surprised. You were shocked that doing things you've previously outsourced would take time and effort? Really? There is a reason that the whole agrofood complex has been able to suck most of us in. Because growing and preserving your own food is damn hard work. But the pay offs are huge too and every time I think I’m going to throw in the towel (and my husband starts doing the happy dance -he tries not too but…) I just can’t. That leads me to the second theme emerging from the “contact us” notes. How do you do it? Where do I start? What do I do? I do not recommend that you read a few books or blogs and go from an urban environment never having raised your own food in any real way to opt out and come to a rural area to "live off the land". Can it be done? I think it could but not by just anyone. I have had more phone calls and emails over the years from people who did just that and couldn't I take their goats/chickens/ducks/rabbits/cows/whatever because it turns out you need money to live (especially if you've made no changes to your lifestyle) and animals really get in the way of taking holidays and and and. I don’t recommend starting off with chickens or goats or livestock guardian dogs or any of those other things that can seem like a super cute and awesome idea (and it is) until you’re stuck with the reality. I do recommend that you give some thought to what is drawing you to the lifestyle and work back from there but start off small. Maybe start off making your own jam one year and maybe plant a very small garden with stuff you would like (like a salad pot with greens and cherry tomatoes). Make your own laundry soap (yep, instructions to follow), just start cooking a meal entirely from scratch one or two nights per week. There are so many ways to get started and I hope you do it in a way that works for you. It’s no good to try to be sustainable in a way that’s not sustainable for you. This will be our 12th (I think) Spring in this house and it’s the first one where we won’t have any babies. It’s a strange thing to wrap my head around. From the first year in this house where a puppy literally wandered out of the forest to ducklings, goslings, chicks, lambs,and kids, there have been babies of one kind or another. And this year, none (unless a hen or duck on a secret nest surprises us). I have to say I’m mixed on the whole thing. On the one hand, the reduction in stress and worry and busy-ness is a great thing. Chores are simple and haven’t changed. No specialized foods needed. I don’t need to sleep with one ear and one eye open in case babies arrive on the same day as snow. On the other hand, those long nights and early mornings have fond memories for me. The time we watched from our bedroom window with our then little son as one of our ewes gave birth to twins (one of whom would become a bottle baby affectionately referred to as Super Lamb). Here is a pic with her and Paks (our Pyr, also gone) found online (my photos of them are archived) J and I watched a goodly amount of BSG while either waiting for labouring ewes or keeping ridiculously late hours because what’s the point of going to bed when you’re getting up in two hours to bottle feed anyway? of course there comes a point when you have to call it and just go to bed, with your phone tucked under your pillow so the alarm wakes you without waking everyone else. Or last year when the boys were away from home during kidding and my poor, cold Gita had to come in the house to warm up. It was just her and I and the dog. She tipped the scales at just over a pound when she was born so, I would bring her in every two hours, after being nursed, so as not to inadvertently weaken her or interfere with the bonding process. I think it was the goats that did me in this year. To lose two brothers, one at three months old and the other at seven months , and not know why. They were healthy enough at birth but Freyr went downhill quickly. Bern not as fast but he died late on New Year’s Day this year. Rough start to the year. With their deaths and the accompanying unanswered questions, in spite of the investigations that were done, I decided that I wouldn’t be doing any breeding this year and paired my livestock right down.
Now we have three goats, chickens, and ducks. That’s it. And while it’s meant a reduction in stress and work, it’s also reduced other things. No more waking up with all of the anticipation of a kid at Christmas, looking outside to see if babies arrived in the night, no lamb Olympics around the house, no fresh milk, no peepers hopping on your hand and pecking a bit of food out of it (ok, that still happens but the chickens are no longer small and cute when they do it). It’s a well needed break but a trade off too. I suppose that’s smallholding in a nutshell. It’s rarely easy, it’s exhausting, and so full of emotion. But it’s real. It’s a kind of reality you cannot experience in any other way. I think that’s part of what makes the joys so full and the lows so deep. It’s a tough one to explain to people who either aren’t doing it or who don’t get it, especially when you work outside of the home in addition to keeping a smallholding. Why on earth would you want to deal with kidding or lambing and still have to be at work at 8:30 the next morning? I don’t know that there is a way to put that feeling into words. I suppose for those of us inclined to it, the nearest thing would be to call it a vocation, a calling. There are just some things that you do that aren’t about how much money you make or making your life easier, they’re just what has to be. For me, smallholding is very much like that. So, some of these ideas weren't right up my alley but this one seemed worth trying.
It's garden season everyone! So, there was a post before this one - and I don't mean a duck peeking in my window. Yes, that really happened. Anyway, I posted it and then... it was gone. My theory is that it was such a great post, such an award winning post that the interwebs couldn't handle it and, to protect itself, the interwebs hid it. So, here is my attempt to recapture perfection. It's a funny thing, this web page. You wouldn't know it but have been talking to all of you for years. I've wanted to do this and started a few times but it's never stuck. Why is that? Well, I've always been a big fan of go big or go home. It turns out that if you go too big, the project is too much and it just can't get off the ground. So, instead of starting with a huge webpage, full of completely developed resources, articles by guest authors, and all of that kind of stuff, I've decided to start in a smaller, though much more logical place; the beginning. That sentiment always puts this song in my head: And now it can be in your head too.
Kidding aside, there is something to be said for starting at the beginning. My hope is that I can share enough information to make that beginning a little less challenging, a little lighter and more fun, a little more hopeful. Here we'll share information on everything from gardening in the forest to living with goats and various philosophical matters. I'm looking forward to hanging out with you. |
AuthorI'm a 40-something writer and smallholder living in the wilds of BC with my family, our small herd of Nigerian Dwarf Goats, chickens, ducks, dogs, and cats. Archives
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