Surprises can be a lot of fun, and a headache all rolled into one! The headache part comes when four girls want to ask you one thousand questions each as they try to figure out what the surprise is. Oy! We had been on the look out for a couple of small 'things' to add to our farm. Unfortunately the price tag on these small things is quite high. So it came as a shock to Jeremiah as he was perusing Craigslist to find these small things at a MUCH cheaper price. He called right away, just to make sure there wasn't any strings attached, or something was defective. The add was as it said it was, and we were delighted to have come across this find. So we thought it would be fun to keep it a secret from the girls, and let them see these small things for themselves when we got there. It was a good hour ride, or more to get there to check out these small things. They were getting close to guessing, as they thought it had to do with animals. The funny things was that when we pulled up to the person's house, the first thing you saw were llamas! No, we were not there for the llamas. I told the girls that when they saw 'them' they would *know*. It didn't take too long after getting out of the van, as we were led across the yard for them to lay eyes on the small things. Nigerian dwarf goats!! Baby ones at that! Can we say, "cute"? Oh my! There were eight babies, but only two of them were females, which was what we were looking for. One was mostly white, longer hair, with a few black spots and blue eyes. The other was mostly black with a few white spots and brown eyes. They are only about 3 weeks old at the moment. We won't be able to take them home until around Christmas. The girls really wanted one of their own, but we are not in the market for male goats. They will just have to share the two.
From my reading, Nigerian goats eat less then our Alpine/Nubian mix but give just about the same amount of milk! Plus they have a higher fat content, which makes their milk better suited for cheeses. Not that I've tried my hand at cheese yet. We were hoping to be able to freeze half our milk supply with our current goats so that we would have raw milk over the winter. No such luck! I have ONE gallon of milk in the freezer, and the goats are dried up! That will last half of a day. The good thing about Nigerians is that they can breed any time of the year, as opposed to our Alpines, which only have a breeding season of Sept.-Nov., or possibly into Dec. Which means each fall they will start to dry up, leaving us milkless over the winter. With the Nigerians we can time their breeding so that they kid in the fall, leaving us a milk supply all winter long. This means we won't be taking up all our freezer space with a supply of milk for the winter. We are hoping that the freezer space will be used for beef from half a cow.
Talking of freezer space, I need to be filling up our freezer with meals for when the baby comes. I will start the cooking process next week sometime. I can start with grain items, since I have a new load of grains that we just got in a couple of weeks ago. I just made up a list of freezer meal ideas, pretty much the same ones I used last time around when I was due with Jonah. This is not the time to try a bunch of new recipes. Nothing like a new baby, the chaos that comes with that, and a dinner that nobody likes. So I'll stick to the tried and true. This also means we will be starting the GAPS diet later than I had hoped to, but this will insure that my sanity stays intact. Or at least that it would have a higher likelihood of doing so :-)
I will be at trying to go low carb for the next six weeks or so, as I am afraid this baby seems to be on the big side. We've been eating a TON of carbs, most of which have not been soaked. I am in the process of sprouting some wheat so that I can add some sprouted tortillas to my menu. Sprouting grain is supposed to leave the grains acting as a vegetable as opposed to a carb/startch. Something along those lines. So I spent some of our driving time yesterday making up my freezer meal plan and a menu for low carb eating.
Today and tomorrow we will be doing our usual, school/speech/ cleaning. We will be having Thanksgiving here, with just the eight of us. I don't think we've ever not had anyone to celebrate with, but this year that will be the case, and probably Christmas as well. The girls are looking forward to Friday when we will pull out the Christmas tree. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!!
No comments:
Post a Comment