This weekend is going to be a super exciting weekend at Rosewood Farm: we’re getting goats!!! And Trevor and I are doing a 20 km walk for charity (want to support me by the way? Read about why I’m walking and make a donation here: http://support.cancercarefdn.mb.ca/site/TR/Challenge4Life/ChallengeForLife2018?px=1497517&pg=personal&fr_id=1210).
So it’s quite possible I’ll die before we bring the goats home, especially since Environment Canada is saying Saturday will be hot and sunny and I haven’t trained nearly enough!
The addition of new animals seems like a good time to launch our Facebook page & Twitter and Instagram accounts as well, so Sunday watch for a post about our goats and we’ll have links to everything there! And I promise, there will be lots of adorable photos, videos and selfies!
Anyways, a lot of people have asked why we’re getting goats so I thought a good lead up to their homecoming on Sunday would be to write about why we’re getting them.
- They’re cute. Especially the babies. And yes, this is number 1 for a reason. The two that we’re bringing home on Sunday are grown ups, but we’re also getting a baby later in the year once she’s old enough to be weaned from mama. And we’ll be breeding our females possibly next year, so we will have babies on the farm! I mean how can you resist this little face!?! This is Jessica Rabbit, the brown and white goat on the left, by the way. She’s the female goat we’re picking up on the weekend. We’re renaming her Brandy though. (More about why we picked that name in another post next week!)
- They’re funny Who hasn’t seen those viral videos of goats sleeping on the back of a horse, or doing parkour or running around in pyjamas? And who wouldn’t want that in your back yard all the time? And yes, even though Trevor is against it, at some point I will likely dress the baby goats in pj’s and take a video of them. Because why not?
- Milk Dairy is one of our biggest expenses. Cheese is expensive in Canada! And I love cheese! Trevor drinks a lot of milk, and we both love ice cream. Plus we’re kind of fans of knowing where our food came from. We’re not ready to go out and buy a cow, but goats are small and cute, so we figured we’d try that out.
- Bush Clearing We have a lot of bush. I joke that we bought 13.34 acres of land and 13 of it is bush. Not entirely true, but close. Horses need more pasture than that so I’m hoping that the goats will help clear some of it. Although I’m not gonna lie, I was loving the shoulder muscles Trevor developed last summer clearing bush! They also eat poison ivy, something we have a lot of, and Trevor is really susceptible to it. Ever since we moved he’s had poison ivy almost all summer. We’re hoping to stake the goats out on our trails during the day when we’re home to help get rid of some of it!
- Soap Have you ever used goat milk soap? It’s so amazing! I took a 4 days class at Aurora Farm last summer and was completely inspired with everything I learned there, including soap making. My skin is super soft, and making soap at home means I can put whatever fragrances I want into it. And there’s a HUGE demand for goat milk soap so I’m hoping to make and sell it. With dairy laws in Canada being what they are, it’s one of the few milk products you can legally sell, so I’m hoping that it will eventually become one revenue stream for the farm. That’s a few years off though, but we can at least get it started! Aurora Farm has workshops all the time, and you can check them out here: http://aurorafarm.ca/workshops/ Louise is so informative and an amazing instructor. I’m so glad to have taken a couple of her workshops! I want to be just like her when I grow up!
- Conversation Starter and Bragging Rights A conversation that Trevor had with someone actually helped inspire this blog. They were asking him about his plans for the weekend and he told them he was going to look at some goats to possibly buy and he was told that his life sounds so interesting and exciting and that he should start a blog or a Facebook page or something. Well here we are! And it’s not like just anyone can go around saying “oh yeah I played with my goats this weekend, it was pretty cool.”
- I love animals Like pretty much all animals. Unless they have too many legs (ticks, bugs, spiders ICK!) or don’t have enough legs (I’m looking at you snakes). Trust me, if you ask Trevor he’ll confirm that I have a list of animals I want that’s long enough to fill a book. A lot of them are completely unrealistic. You know like I would LOVE to have a pet dolphin. But I hear the upkeep on those is kind of expensive. Plus I’m not sure how they’d do over winter in -40 temperatures. And yes, I’m aware that dolphins have no legs, but they have fins, and that’s sort of the same thing.Or a pet penguin, but I’m not sure how they’d do in +30 temperatures in summer. Plus their upkeep is expensive too. And I don’t think our permit that allows us to have livestock includes dolphins and penguins, so that would make them illegal. But goats? Totally allowed.
- Goats seem like a good next step We’re pretty new to this whole livestock thing. Chickens seemed like a good first step, pretty low maintenance, and they poop breakfast, so that seemed like a logical first step. Horses are HUGE and need a lot of care, so it seemed like goats would be a good next step since they need a little more care than chickens, but not quite as much as goats. So it seemed like a good idea to see how the whole goat ownership thing goes before investing a crap ton of money into horses. I mean you know what they say about becoming a millionaire from horses, right? You have to start out as a billionaire.
So there you have it, a few of the reasons we’re getting goats!
Tanya
Rosewood Farm 