On the Up and Up!

Well, after a year of farming, you begin to get used to disappointment. Losing crops. Losing trees. Losing animals. Losing more crops. Losing more animals. Losing crops to animals. Sounds depressing, doesn't it? Now, don't get me wrong. We're having the time of our lives here, It's amazing how wonderful just a simple a 2 acre fenced-in yard can be on my sanity. I don't feel so guilty banishing my little angel outside when she can run more than 10 feet before hitting a fence. And there are neat things to explore, like the 5 million (and counting) gopher holes in the yard. And bugs. And mushrooms. And weeds, lots and lots of weeds.
But, this year has had more successes. We have onions growing. And potatoes (the ones that sprouted in my cabinets are doing very well outside), and seedlings growing on the seed table. No major crop disasters this year so far.
We've also had successes with our animals. We've hatched 9 chicks (well, we hatched 7, mama hen hatched 2). We lost some of the babies, but I'm happy so far that we've had any at all! We have Little Man, our baby goat, whose not so little anymore. He's only 2 weeks old, but he's growing like a weed! It's fun to watch him learn to be a goat, and watch his mama play with him.

Now that he's two weeks old, we've begun to milk Tianna. This morning was our first morning, and we thought we were so clever by penning up Little Man last night so he couldn't eat until after we milked her. Haha. Never underestimate the ingenuity of an engorged mama. She somehow managed to feed that boy through the fence, leaving her half empty, and very lopsided. So, today we're putting up a secondary fence so they can't be so close together and we'll try again tomorrow. But today, we still managed to get over a quart of milk, so I'm excited! We have processed the milk and we'll be trying our first taste of our own goat's milk tonight.
And then, ice cream, cheese, and dairy ramifications are endless!