who knew . . .

that goats love banana peels?!

Top dog, errr goat
Charlottes HELLps with the milking
Like mother, like daughter
Can Honey come out and play?

It's official . . .

. . . I am now a person who stops at the side of the road for piles of pine branches. Rebecca thinks I need a bumper sticker "I brake for pine." It made the goats happy though.

Today I'm making yogurt. Can goat's milk yogurt be far behind?

And here's a gratitude quote I like:

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.~Denis Waitley~

in the milking parlor formerly known as the playhouse

So we've converted the kids playhouse, that they've out grown, into our milking parlor.

Bella (the milkee?) and the kids and I (the milkers? milkmaids?) have settled in. It's going much faster now.
Charlotte comes too and plays in the shed while we milk.

Say Cheese!

Checking things off my life list:

Climbed Kathadin, check

Paddled Boundary Waters, check

Had a homebirth, check

Drank straight from a glacier, check

Learned to spin, check

Got published in Hip Mama, check

Learned to belly dance, well sort of . . .

Well I still haven't got a book out there or been to Glacier NP, but today . . .

I made cheese from my own goat's milk, check

It is absolutely yummy, easy and quick. Now we want to make a custard from our own milk, eggs, and maple syrup.

My inspiration for the lifelist idea came from akbushbaby and her blog A Girl and her Dogs http://wannabemusher.blogspot.com/2008/03/loved-everything-more-than-anything.html Great blog, I would love to have a dog team, but I don't know if that'll happen this time around.

therapy dogs in the news

Today is Autism Awareness Day. Here is a you tube link about therapy dogs and Autism. http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=7212210 The dogs in the green jackets are from Northstar, the program Honey (http://sprawlingsonnapkinscrapswithcrayons.blogspot.com/2007/12/by-definition.html) comes from, that Honey will be having puppies for.

Therapy dogs rock. Yesterday we went out to the Neads headquarters (www.neads.org) and saw some adorable puppies in training and one amazing assistance dog named Molly. Sorry no photos.

Ready or not, here we goat!!

When in doubt--celebrate everything! This weekend not only did the goats come home, but the kids both competed with their 4H visual presentations at the state level! Rebecca did hers on maple sugaring and placed 2nd and got invited back to the Big E! She also was one of 4 kids chosen to be photographed and interviewed by UMass extension. This was Sophie's first year competing at state (last year she was a cloverbud and they only do club and county). She did an awesome vp on tacking up a horse!

So naturally my mother baked a cake.
The cake baker. If you know how to rotate her please leave me a comment!
They're here! Mother and baby--mom's name was Beullah, we're calling her Bella. The baby is 2 weeks old and so far has no name. We're considering Charlotte, Shadow, Tiny Miny, and Melissa. It's not a democracy, but if you have an opinion please put it in the comments.

We came out to this this morning:

We milked Bella morning and night on our brand new milking stand. We got 2 cups each time.

Ready to Goat