Happy Spring Equinox!

Milked goat, collected some eggs, sat down to computer to do some work. Bryan is making breakfast with said eggs and we have dueling laptops on the kitchen table.

Welcome to the future.

Goodness on a chilly morning

Another uptick in our late winter bounty: goat milk, nearly one quart, just from the morning.

And yesterday, five (5) gallons of sap, with a lot more to gather today.

So, if the supermarket were to go away tomorrow, I could make an omelet with maple syrup!

We're using scrap wood in the sugaring rig. Soon we'll need a sugar house. In the meantime, I'm donning my summer clothes as the tempurature looks to hit 55F today!

Our milking goat revealed

Her name is Chocolate:

It's funny - one of the other goats now insists on climbing the milking stand.  See, Chocolate gets good treatment!

Milking success!

Ceredwyn led the goat-milking for the first time on Sunday.

We purchased the brown Nubian for a farmer southeast of us, driving to his large barn, then carrying the surprised creature in the back of our Saturn.  She was a bit shocked by the change.

The first milking was a challenge.  The other two goats, Bramble and Ghost, were very curious about the new arrival, which made her uneasy.  Then we had to scramble to get everything in place: new goat tied to milking stand; me holding the older goats back by one's horns, holding a scoop of grain in another hand, soothing them with words; Ceredwyn blocking the newbie ghost's attempts to get away with nearly any part of her body.  Our dog howled and whimpered lustily, nearby, frantic with curiosity and a typically misplaced desire to help.

But the little goat was coaxed to squirt, and we all felt better afterwards:

Yesterday morning was a repeat, but to a lesser extent.  The goats seemed to remember this process.  Then yesterday afternoon was easier still - Ceredwyn was in and out in shorter time, and I didn't need to hold back the other members of our herd.  This morning, even easier.

Herd: I'm impressed by the docility of these beasts.  Personally I'm more used to territorially crazed animals, like cats, or at least maniacal socializers, like dogs.  It's a sweet pleasure to see these goats just... hanging out with each other, chilling.  More like the flock of chickens, I suppose.

I'm even more impressed by Ceredwyn, who led this charge, and rapidly became an expert milker.

One morning's low-tech snapshot

Low-tech scenes from our household, this morning:

• Starting the fire.  I stirred last night's ashes into life, then added a couple of logs hauled up from the basement storage pile.  The iron box heated up pretty quickly, spreading warmth through the house.
• Breakfast: I fired up the coffee percolator on the stove, then fried a few chapatis (simplest food: flour plus water plus salt).  Fried some eggs, fresh from our chickens.
• Inside animals woke up.  That's the dog, yawning vastly, and eager to run outside, and the two cats, thinking hard on the kitchen table.
• To the outside animals: the chickens were up early, as usual, the roosters crowing, while the hens pecked around the enclosure.  Ceredwyn brought feed in scoops for chickens and goats, then wrangled the new goat into position for milking, then ran back inside for milking implements.  I carried out a big bucket of hot water.  Ceredwyn tied the goat to the milking stand.  Then I held back the other two goats, who really wanted in on the action, while Ceredwyn did the work: convincing the goat that having her two udders tugged for milk was a good idea.  Together they ended up with about one cup of milk - hurrah!  We also were gifted by one chicken egg.
• Back to the kitchen: Ceredwyn makes crepe batter from the morning's goat milk and egg.  Terrific crepes, with plenty of batter left over for lunch, dinner, snacks.

Then I went back into my office, to get back to work - Twitter posting, RSS feeds, email, scanning receipts, printing documents, thinking about mobile gaming for teaching and learning.

We'll write about the new goat, and yesterday's first milking, soon.

Back on the blog

This blog is back in business, after a winter hiatus.  Imagine the blog hibernating, deep in a cave, covered by leaves, while snow filled up the field outside.