Humble Garden

This October surprise snow storm dump 2 feet of wet clingy snow on the northeast and particularly on us. The
Night of the storm our goat shed collapsed and crushed/trapped one of our goats.

We found her weakly crying and slipping away. We pulled her out from under tons of shed and snow – was pushed down into muck. We rolled her onto a bed sheet and slid/pulled/lifted through 2 feet deep snow many yards and then into our dining room onto blankets. We covered her in blankets as well and fed her molasses water until she rehydrated enough to drink on her own. She began to eat grain and hay. She menaces passing cats who she doesnt like. She can not stand on her own – her back leg is not working, might be dislocated.

As you may remember – we milk dairy goats. At the moment we have 9 lamancha dairy goats, 8 in milk. Goat milk is naturally homogenized so it requires an expensive cream separator to get cream. With no cream you can not make butter!

Additionally, the amount of grain and hay and labor that goes into milking these 8 goats (which includes all the work to get them pregnant, help them deliver, etc etc) fails in comparison to the amount of milk we would get from one cow with much much less labor and cost.

(our extremely humble goat shed – we cobble together what we can, we dont Martha Stewart it)

On today’s podcast I cover how we observe and more importantly, interact with our animals in ways to integrate them more tightly into our homestead.

Please take a few minutes to listen and also to give me feedback, comments, or share what you do or how you listen and interact with your animals!

I referred to the following photos.

(This graphic and much related information is found at this link)



Today’s podcast covers some basics of permaculture and begins to explore the 12 principles of permaculture using our homestead as a case study.

Some examples of space appropriate animal/plant/human permaculture systems:

Appropriate use of animals in permaculture