Just a simple country girl enjoying a good chew.


Hey! Mind your own bid-ness. I'm having a moment here.


The girls in their pasture enjoy the vegetation that grows at the creek's edge. Taking a drink of the water now and then.

Happy Goats

Ginger in her ninja pose looks ready to give Clover What For.


Starts out serious looking, but then they gently touch heads.


Clovers response. Take that!

Juniper (in back) and Tulip say hello to their friends.

Ginger seems to be more sensitive to the heat than the other goats. Sometimes I notice that she is panting on a warm day, when the others are not. She is always the first one to begin panting; then Clover. The Nubians, I've never seen pant. I got some advice after posting a question on one of my favorite goat message boards, Homesteading Today (they have a separate goat subject forum), and there are some people who hose down their panting goats on a warm day to cool them off. So I tried that. Ginger was not too cool about that at first, but then she seemed to warm up to the idea. She did stop panting after that, so that'll be my new response to a panting goat.

Yeah, she looks a little annoyed, but she's not panting.


Please, someone let me out. Some crazy lady keeps spraying me with a hose.

dang humidity

Earlier this week as I was beginning to prepare the goats' grain meals, I noticed on the outside of the bag was mold. I dish the medicated grain out of it's bag, which I keep just inside the mill/barn. I figured that as long as I rolled the opening up real tight, that would keep the humidity from affecting the grain. It seemed that that was working fine. I do keep the regular grain in a metal lidded bin to keep critters out, but with the medicated stuff, I just kept it in it's bag because I assumed that mice wouldn't want that. It looks totally processed with no sign of a real grain to me. I don't know - I guess that I was being lazy. I used the same logic with the alfalfa pellets. I serve that right out of the bag as well. I've never had any sign of critters trying to get to it, so I didn't worry about it.

It's been such a rainy summer, and since the end of June, it's been crazy-humid. Well, I guess that those conditions have finally caught up with me and my bags of grain. I had to throw out a practically new bag of medicated grain and a 1/3-used bag of alfalfa pellets. Both bags covered with mold spores and all the grain touching any part of the bag was completely molded as well.

I bought two new metal storage bins and new bags of feed. Another lesson learned first-hand as a "farmer". Strangely, I get a good feeling when something like this happens. Despite a loss, I feel I've come a bit closer to being a good farmer.

Clover and Tulip eating alfalfa pellets. You can see the dirt floor; and in the corner I keep the floor covered with straw/hay. Right now you can hear a wet squooshie sound as you walk on the bedding. I guess that I need to either put more straw down, or muck it out and put down another thick layer of "Stall Dry" then cover that with fresh straw/hay.

one fence issue resolved...

John put up an extention of hog panel to the end of the field fencing; now it extends pretty much into the creek. This spot was a favorite place for Clover, and sometimes Ginger, to get out of their field and into the lush hillside for a special snack. The addition of the hog-panel has resolved this fencing issue.

However, the very next day, a new fence issue came into existence:

Ginger-and-the-accordian-style-field-fencing.

This is completely our fault... we got the fencing up, and instead of finishing the job, we figured: "That'll do... for now". I was even just telling a fellow-blogger how our goats never get out of the field fencing by going over. Later that same day - Ginger got out of the field fencing by going over.

To take care of this probelm we need to put up additional posts and then tighten the fence. Then it would probably help further to trim all the vegetation that grows along that fence that the goats are constantly reaching over and through the fence for. So, this is our newest goat project. When that's complete - I am sure that the fence will be absolutely goat proof! -Famous Last Words

Ginger being gently returned to her rightful place with the other goats. Hi Asa.

great find

$1 at a yard sale. My size exactly. Score!

Muh-haaa Muhhh

Juniper and Tulip (two months old) coming after me for their milk!
"We know you've got it somewhere, lady. Hand it over and nobody gets hurt."


Juniper, one of two Nubians. She reminds me of a Goldie Hawn... Really cute, really lovable, always having fun, but not the smartest gal of the bunch. Sorry if I offended any Goldie Hawn fans out there...


Clover, the Toggenburg (five and a half months old). Sweet. Gentle. Slowest eater on the planet.


Ginger. Saanen. Seven months old. Herd Queen. Kid Butt-er. Don't let her smile fool you... she'll roll you for one morsel of grain.

The Running of the Goats

The goats love to run, so if I run - they will too. This usually gets them from their pasture from across the street, into and through our yard, then ending in their yard.

Hay Day

Today I've got to go buy some more hay bales at a feed store in New Freedom. They cost about $4 each. I'll buy four bales. I don't like to buy too many at one time - maybe next time I go buy some, it'll be better quality or a little different. I wish that I could take a hay class. I have no idea what a good-quality hay looks like. The stuff I have seen looks just like the bales of straw that I buy. I guess that I'm hoping that one of these days when I buy one of these bales it'll look like "good-quality hay"; I'll say to myself, "Now that is good hay, Jeanne!"

I have decided not to buy straw anymore. I empty out the hay feeder each day and spread it over their sleeping area. Just using that gives me plenty of bedding to use. I kill two birds with one stone that way! I muck out the bedding about once a week and will use that hay as a mulch in my garden beds. The goat berries that I sweep up daily are taken to be sprinkled around my plants. This process makes me feel more like a sustainable liver.

Got three instead... I took the van so had to get what would fit. Available to me is this Timothy orchard grass mix. I have been able to get alfalfa hay, but that is only available in those gigantic round bales. The one I bought was dusty and parts were moldy. The goats didn't seem too keen on it. I don't think that I'll buy more alfalfa hay unless I can get the small square bales like these. Instead of the alfalfa hay, the girls get alfalfa pellets as a great source of protein in their diet.

Close-up of the hay. After the last bales that I got from a different place, this bale looks greener, more grass-like, and smells better. Maybe I'm learning more than I thought...

Bye, Bye Boxwood

Not long after Ginger and Clover arrived here at Seven Valleys Goat Farm, we were still not completely finished with the fencing of the goat's yard. One morning our family arrived home after a sleepover at Grammy and Granddads (who live an hour away in Maryland) to find Ginger and Clover relaxing on our back porch just outside the kitchen door. Bleating hello to us as we drove up. I was immediately worried that the girls may have eaten some of the many toxic plants (to goats) that populate our back yard. Yew, Boxwood, Rhododendron, Azalea. We have all of those bushes in abundance - it's as though the previous residents had a dastardly plan for any unsuspecting goats of the future... Ginger and Tulip seemed fine, and thus we led them back to their yard and forgot all about the event. The next morning when I walked into the barn, it was a very disturbing scene. Ginger was vomiting and yelling in obvious pain; she had no interest in her breakfast (this in itself indicating an extremely serious situation). I rushed her to the vet where her stomach was pumped (Dr. Lukacs showed me a boxwood leaf he found in her regurgitation) and she was given charcoal; her condition was very delicate and was given a 50/50 chance of survival. We brought her home hoping that she'd make it. She did. Two days later she was able to eat again, and slowly became herself again. Clover never showed any signs of poisoning. After that we fixed the fence, and we attempt to keep them far from those dastardly bushes on each trek to and from their pasture (they have to pass through our yard, then cross the street to get there).

I am finally getting around to just removing those bushes. The baby girls always seem to head right for the bad bushes and take the biggest bites possible, gulping them down! It's as if they know they shouldn't have it but cannot resist! It's difficult for me to herd four goats such a great distance through the gamut of poisons. So I will slowly but surely rid our property of the hazards. I'm telling you, we have a lot, and some are gigantic and grotesquely overgrown!

sawing down one of the Boxwoods

Goats do Roam

My husband, John, bought this bottle of wine for us to celebrate our new life with dairy goats. 'Twas delicious. I do believe that I'll save the label and frame it.

It's Hot Out Here!

The girls go out to the pasture in the morning around 8 am, go back to their barn around 10:30 or so, then after 4 pm, go back out again; and back to the barn for the night at 7 or 8pm. All this back and forth is because they lose their shady spot by the gate and get pretty hot. John came up with a temporary idea of a canvas tarp for shade - so we can keep them out there for the day - until he can get around to the nine-gazillionth thing on his farm list of building a lean-to building to guard against the elements.

She's a bit on the ugly side, but she works. I'm talking about the tarp.

The goats needed some coaxing to get under there, but after standing with them for a while, they figured it out. I brought them a bale of straw to spread out, but they began to eat it, so I left it for them to snack on. Funny how they are just as interested in eating the straw as they are the hay! I don't get it.