Young Liflin

Note: If you’d like to learn more about how and why I keep dairy goats, I’ve had a couple of guest posts published recently on Practical Self Reliance, and Nourishing Days. These blogs have a lot of other good stuff to read about too.

Liflin was born here, he’s the son of Snowy and Ned, and the cute baby goat you can see in my midsummer post. Last year we had high hopes for him, and he certainly tried his best, but he was probably too small or young to get our does pregnant.

This year he is bigger and stinkier, and there’s no mistaking that he is no longer a cute little goat kid, but a big stinky billy goat. I don’t find the smell that bad – there is something endearing about it, as I affectionately give him a scratch between the horns while calling him big stinky billy goat. Spending a lot of time with goats, I don’t really mind it, but when I first smelled a buck, it definitely was very strong!

Towards the end of April I noticed muddy hoof prints on Sunshine’s back. Soon after, other does began to go into heat, and all of a sudden it seems as though they were all covered with hoof prints.

These days Liflin is still stinky, and a bit frustrated, as none of the does are interested in him anymore. I hope it is for the right reason, and that we’ll see lots of babies and milk in the springtime.

I look for every sign of pregnancy, and am hopeful, but still nervous. Only two does are in milk now, and their supply has really slowed down. Geraldine will pick back up in springtime, whether she’s pregnant or not, but the others may not.

I dream of a summer and autumn ahead where I make one or two hard cheeses a week and store them away for the winter and spring. I dream of regularly making pizza from my own cheese, of having chévre for barter and gifts. I dream of my six does being in milk during the winter, and giving us enough milk to drink, and make yoghurt, and the odd batch of chévre. The thought of this abundance from our land is beautiful, but Liflin is untested, I don’t know whether it will happen or not…

I wonder when in homesteading things become ‘real’. I visit museums and historical sites about our pioneer ancestors and imagine what life was like for them – dropped off on our strange island with limited supplies, and no choice but to survive on the land and make the best of it that they could. There was no option of looking on Gumtree for another goat in milk, no option of buying someone else’s cheese, they had to make do with what they had.

I wonder if this was a source of worry for them, or if they just faced challenges, accepted their situation, and made the best of it, maybe drinking less milk some years, more milk other years, and finding other sources of food. It’s hard to know the answer to this. Everyone I speak to from older generations seems to avoid the idea of working to directly produce their own food as if it were a bad thing, while viewing a sedentary life in an office as an interchangable cog as something worthwhile to do in life. Yes, it can be hard to worry about the animals and our staple foods for the year ahead, but I find fulfilment in being connected to this.