Preparing for Our First Kidding Season

When I say out loud that we’ve lived here for nearly two years, I can’t quite believe it. Has it really been that long? The time has flown by. But I have the footage to prove it, and when I look back on everything we’ve done so far, it makes a little more sense in my head.

Soon we will have baby goats hopping around and does to milk out each morning. That’s when things will get intense, and we will have to give ourselves the grace to feel overwhelmed and the time to deal with all the inevitable curveballs. Maybe we’ll decide we hate this lifestyle, and that we want to sell all our animals and scale back so things aren’t so busy. We leave ourselves that option, always.

But I think after the initial transition, we’ll settle into what we’re doing with great satisfaction. Most of what we’re producing here on our homestead is for us, but maybe we decide to open a little shop and sell what extra we don’t need. Extra soaps, candles, yarn. I have no intention of growing beyond a small scale operation because I want most of my time and energy right now to go towards my kids, but maybe all of what we’re doing here is to their benefit in ways I haven’t yet fleshed out.

Maybe my kids decide they want some pocket change, so they learn what it takes to sell some of our extra chicken eggs. Maybe they learn to wittle or knit and want to sell their wares in our family shop. Maybe they just grow up having had a childhood spent mostly outside, amongst animals and plants, and can take what they’ve experienced here to the next phase of their life all the more enriched by it.

In any case, we are diligently preparing for kidding season. We aren’t scrambling, thank goodness. The weather has been nice, so we are ahead of schedule.

Want to see the new shelter for the wethers and catch up on what I’ve been knitting? Check out our latest vlog below: