Often as I’m out in the milk room by myself (at least with no other human company) I wonder why it was that I’ve become so connected to dairy animals. It started in 2008 when I had the strong feeling that I had to have a milk goat. It took quite a while for me […]

I wrote last (I think) that we made major changes in the farm. We switched from Saanen and Alpine dairy goats to Oberhasli. It was a good move. They aren’t giving as much milk as the other breeds did but getting the milk out of them is tremendously more pleasant. I can put all the […]

With the dairy goats – production used to be a key factor in whether they stayed on the farm or not. We’ve had a good many Alpines, both French and American and Saanens over the past years. The problem with Alpines are their temperaments – they fight and carry on and can be a PITA. […]

I tried to enter back into the sheepdog trial world. It seemed like a good idea. What well-bred and well-trained Border Collies can do is incredible. It also seemed like a good idea to bite the bullet and pay for a fully-trained dog to manage our small flock of sheep. Wally and I both dreaded […]

We now have three Border Collies living reasonably painlessly in the house. We have Lass, the seven-year-old fully trained dog that Wally and I bit the bullet and decided to purchase (on a payment plan!), Rex, the three year old dog we went to Virginia to get and of course, crazy Jack. We now have […]

Be careful of what you wish for because sometimes you get more than what you wanted. After my mini-meltdown on Sunday missing my former right hand chore helper, Gel, I wrote the girl whom I had sent Rex to over the winter. Wally and I traveled to Virginia to pick up Rex who is an […]

Last year we had the driveway scraped and more asphalt put down. It has done well until we had the past couple of days of storms. That goes to show how long it’s been since we’ve had a “gully washer” type of rain fall. More is forecast for Wednesday. I don’t like that the driveway […]

I think I may just be overtired or something but on Sunday Wally and I ran into someone who brought memories of Gel flooding back. I’ve passed by his grave on several occasions over the past couple of days and his loss stabs me in the stomach. I actually feel physically sick this morning. It’s […]

Coming off a weekend of spending over $700 on animal feed. First – $412 in a whole grain mixture that I feed to the goats, rabbits and sheep (formulated differently for each species) along with six bags of duck food (mixed by the feed mill). Then $150 in Chaffhaye and $120 in organic hay. That’s […]

It’s almost 8 a.m. and I should have been writing a story for work but instead I was updating the Spellcast Farm web site. I’ll pay for that soon. Here’s hoping the severe cold is now over and things can be a little bit more seasonal. The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind of […]