Ranch Newsletter | July 2023

Originally sent to subscribers on July 31st, 2023

Farm Update: August

Can you believe it's already time to start thinking about fall? I can't. I haven't forgotten about all the snow we had - it still feels like it was winter just a few weeks ago. And pretty soon the trees are going to be changing! At least with all the water we've had, it should be an excellent year for colors.

We've started working on our fall projects and figuring out what needs fixed, updated, built, etc. before winter. Our biggest project this fall will be adding more fenced areas for the goats. We're going to section off two areas. One will be for our future buck, the other will allow us to rotate the goats so we can let the ground recover and grow back in each area.

We're also planning on building a car port alongside our house to keep the weather off some of our equipment until we can build a barn.

Smaller projects include repainting the chicken coop, and reinforcing our compost bin walls.

In goat news... Honey's babies were born July 12th. She had 3, 2 girls and 1 boy. They're adorable and rambunctious and I love them. Craig has been listening to the Hunger Games audiobooks recently and came up with the idea to name the babies after characters from that series. I love naming animals after book and movie characters so I was game!

We settled on Katniss for the eldest girl, Finnick for the boy, and Primrose for the youngest girl. Katniss and Primrose will both be available for purchase when they turn 12 weeks old. If you might be interested in taking one or both of these girls home, check out our website for more information.

Reba's due date is right around August 9th, but she still isn't developing an udder. I've been consulting with goat friends and the consensus is that she is either not pregnant, or she is but only has one kid in there. So I'll guess we'll keep waiting, watching, and hoping.

In chicken news... Our young chicks have finally revealed who is male and who is female. We have 4 roosters and 5 hens. Right now the plan is let all the roosters stay on the ranch as long as they remain nice. If they begin to get aggressive as they get older, they'll get the boot.

The big chickens (our original eight) Are still out in the chicken tractor in the field and seem to be perfectly content out there. We move them once a week, and it looks like they're doing their job well. You can still see where the tractor was from two weeks ago, but from three weeks ago, the alfalfa and grass has grown tall enough that you almost can't tell the tractor was ever there.

In soap news: The big transition is about to start. This week I'm going to start separating the baby goats at night and milking Honey in the morning. And with that milk, I'm going to start making soap.

I'm still working on finalizing the scent for a couple of the new soaps, so I'll probably make those last.

I'm also going to be a vendor at the History Monastery Farmer Market starting August 5th. They'll have vendors in the morning and afternoon and since I have the gardens and animals to tend to in the mornings, I will be at the market during the afternoon. I believe the hours are 2-6pm. I'll be there every Saturday until September 9th. I'm going to be selling all my soaps at a discount there, so if you want to stock up on soaps come see me!

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I realize there might be some confusion with the title of this post, and the heading of this post. My intention was to talk about what was coming up in the next month at the end of the previous month, but I inevitably ended up talking about both the previous month and the upcoming one. I did eventually realize how confusing this was and changed my methods.