Learning the hard way

Well. I guess I'm going to have to admit that I really did learn the hard way. Darn it. I HATE having to learn the hard way. But I guess the upside to this is that I at least learned. And perhaps anyone at all who is thinking about goats might read this and realize they might not have to learn the hard way. Like I did.

What the heck am I talking about you ask???

Yes, goats. Bucks in particular. We are probably going to have to dispatch our yearling buck. He will not stay out of the girls pen. That is where we made our mistake. We did not realize that we should have separated him out from the start. We got the three goats, two doelings and buckling when they were 2 weeks old. He was adorable. He is still sweet but not so adorable anymore.

I'm not happy about this at all.

But we will try again with another buck and probably a wether to keep him company so we can still have milk and babies next year. These will start out separated from the starting gate.

I'm definitely sad this evening. :-(

Do not ever, ever run your young bucks with your does and think you can separate them at a later date. We did it because we felt sorry for the buck. We figured it would all work itself out in the end. Nope. Goats are herd animals. They need companionship and will go to great lengths or die to get it.

This sucks. :-( We did our sweet boy Jack a great diservice.

A beginning with a little of this and a little of that

I figured I might as well start up another blog. I have so many different things I'm doing it just made sense not to overwhelm my poor art blog - Heather Sky Studio, with all my other stuff. So this is the blog for the other stuff.

That stuff is all about small homesteading. Small because we only have one acre. Homesteading because that is really sort of what this is all about. How to get back to the basics, how to take care of ourselves on this one acre. We chose not to live in the suburbs. In fact, we live way far away from any thing that even resembles suburbs. We are about as far away from that sort of thing as you can get and still not be in Alaska. Hee hee...I couldn't resist that one. I always joke around with my friends back in Colorado that one practically needs a bush plane to get out to where I live. Almost.

Until I can get some new stuff up and get my other site nice and revamped, you can see a little of what I mean and where I live here "Why I Live Here" It should do in the meantime. Actually, it may well do for good as I may never even get back to it LOL

Any way! I shall be sharing a little of this and a little of that as I go along with my endeavors on our little place. We have recently started up raising worms. Red worms and European Nightcrawlers. Both excellent composting worms. We have a whole lotta rabbit poo that needs to be worked through and thought why not!?

Here is a break down initially of our projects:

1. Vermicomposting
2. Rabbits for Meat, Furs, and Raw food for Carnivores (dogs and cats)
3. Chickens
4. Gardening in the Rainy Rainy Rainy Northwest Rainforests
5. Goats - Meat and Dairy
6. Everything else - German Shepherd Dogs, Cats and one Chihuahua named Steve. We are nuts and no one is around to tell us no (LOL)

More musings to come!