How do you do it?

We are asked a lot of questions on a daily basis. Some are easily answered- for example, Is that goat pregnant? How much milk do they make? Do they try to escape? What kind of chickens are those?

And those that are not as simple. How do you kill animals you raised? How do you keep the pastures healthy? How do you decide which goats to keep?

And the million dollar question, the one we are asked above all others- How do you do it? Meaning how do we find the energy to feed and water the hundred plus mouths here while working off farm jobs and attempting to maintain some semblance of order in the household. The answer is two-fold - We make time. And we don't.

Huh?

First off, when we bring in an animal, whether it be as a pet or a short lived guest being raised for the purpose of producing meat, we make a commitment to provide care, food and shelter for that animal for as long as necessary. Most days the animals eat before we do in the morning and they require all of the above in beautiful sunny weather, rain, snow, wind, monsoons, blizzards and so on. Its never optional. An animal who is ill, sick or born prematurely or weak will have even more frequent needs including feedings, walks, medications or other treatments. This is priority number one and is non-negotiable. Sure, there's an hour leeway here and there, noone's perfect but there is no such thing as sleeping until noon, staying away overnight without prior arrangements or taking a day off for no good reason.

Secondly, safety is a prime concern. Safe functioning fences, safe pastures without standing water or mud hazards, safe buildings and shelter from weather are all necessary every day to not only keep our animals where they belong but to keep them away from roads, neighbors and protected from predatory pests that call the nearby woods home. And so repairs and maintenance are quite high on the list.

Equipment maintenance is also a must. Higher on the priority list dependent on the time of year. Most notably being the milking machine, vacuum and hoses which gets an awful lot of use around here. Maintenance of the milking machine is also essential for a healthy marriage as I'm certain we would kill one another without it, or else have a lot fewer goats.

Speaking of equipment, making hay requires a lot of it. We still haven't won the lottery so much of that equipment is old. Old equipment + many hungry mouths relying on said hay equals many late, frustrating and challenging nights.

So back to the priority list. We have to keep the animals fed and housed and safe. As well as ourselves. One of us gets very 'hangry' if he is not fed on time and for good reason, he works his tail off. We do all these things to produce quality food and goods, so we do our best to enjoy the fruits of our labor as much as possible. Every hour of feeding, poop scooping, baling, weeding, etc instills a desire to waste as little as possible- there is immeasurable effort behind each gallon of milk, each tomato, each pound of cheese we create. Our garden is wild, weedy and inefficient but productive and offers accompaniments to many pretty fantastic meals. It provides enough to preserve hundreds of pounds for winter and to supplement the hogs and chickens well in to late fall. 

Confession: the kitchen is always full of dirty dishes. On this day, many of them are clean but we haven't quite found the time to put them away. The island is cluttered with the remnants of yesterdays canning session and last weeks mail. We have company frequently and thank goodness we do! It's a whirlwind of windex and murphys oil soap to ready the house when we are expecting friends or family, hopefully none realize we live like savages from Monday through Thursday. 

I killed a couple of epiphytes. That's a challenge you know. One hangs in the window above the sink at eye level, its not too much of a chore to water it every month or so. These, however, are across the room. Very, very low on the priority list. As soon as I can get my hands on some realistic looking plastic ones they'll head to the trash. 

And laundry? Sheesh. I know people (mom) who panic when there are two dirty towels in the laundry hamper. Laundry hampers are for sissies - we have a laundry tub! As in a bathtub. Its full. Always. Sometimes we make a big rush to catch up then bam, its another day and we are dirty and stinky again. And then all the clean piles of laundry build up in our closet and when we are out of empty baskets we fight over who gets to put it away. Yes, that's our sad reality. 

Another confession: sometimes we just give up. Nearly every Friday. Even the thought of boiling water sounds like too much of a chore and we call in the reserves. Namely our local dominos pizza guy. The crust isn't fresh, the tomatoes aren't organic, the cheese isn't goat and the veggies probably came from a sweat shop on the west coast but dang it, it arrives hot at our home after a few swipes of the iphone just like magic. And that's ok.

So we do it all. Yet we don't. We work hard, then we come home and work some more. That's the life we've chosen. . . for now. We have acres of fertile productive ground and scores of healthy, somewhat spoiled animals.  We don't sleep enough and we aren't getting any younger. One of us errs towards clumsy and aches and pains abound. One of us yearns for more 'fun' time yet cannot turn down just one more project. One of us thinks about expanding and in the next breath dreams of spending more time at the beach. One of us wants to do more, more, more and is disappointed by our limitations, namely time. Two of us decided it was a good idea to breed 14 goats in 7 days.

Yes, that does mean that they will all give birth within 7 days as well. Come March 1st-ish our inner pessimists will rule. The questions will become, like every year, "Why do we do this?" "We need to cut back." "This is crazy I need to get some sleep." "We need to re-evaluate things."

And like every year we'll keep going. And keep trying to do it all. Because we are a special kind of crazy. . . 

Autumn

" And all at once, summer collapsed into fall...".  Oscar Wilde

The cooler nights bring out the spunky in these guys - well, as spunky as a couple of senior horses get... We're wondering if the early appearance of winter fluff is a harbinger of winter weather to come? 

These rainbow rangers have a few weeks to go - our second attempt at raising some meat for the year after the first batch was lost. There are a lot of roosters in the bunch and they have a strange crow that they like to practice...often...and early. 

It's almost time for the great fig harvest of 2017. Ok, there's like 10. But 10 more than last year. This particular tree is growing like mad, considering we thought it was dead this spring it bounced back extremely well. I had already bought 2 more to replace it and now I'm not quite sure where to plant them. Having too many figs is never a bad thing.

The bacon seeds have grown incredibly fast. They've been dining on apples, beets, peppers, corn and milk. Lots of milk. They slam the trough down every chance they get to let us know when the milk is gone and just stare at us when we dare give them water instead.

The girls are coming in to heat, a little later than normal given the crazy unpredictable weather we've had. 4 bred, several to go. We did appraise the herd this fall and overall it was a positive experience, several of the girls raised their scores and our herd average was higher than anticipated. 

Yes, love is in the air. . . or is that urine? The boys are raring to go, fighting, stinking and difficult to handle. 

Even though the weather has been pretty fantastic this fall so far, all around us there are signs of the impending winter. Annie-cat is fattening up. Well, she has always been fat. She's also really fluffy but she does like to sample the milk before we feed the pigs every day. 

And we're stocking up on and stacking up wood to feed the fireplace. It's coming. . . 

So for the next few weeks we're going to focus on sunshine, sunsets and porch time. Soon the changing leaves will be gone and the drear will return for another long windy winter.