Collecting Cashmere & Spinning Yarn

Homesteading has its seasons, and early spring always feels like an intense jump in productivity after the last few stagnant winter weeks. In addition to starting seeds and garden planning, this is also our season for collecting cashmere and keeping an eye out for incoming baby goats.

This spring in particular is about learning new skills that we can continue to build off of in years to come, such as good practices for collecting and processing fiber, and learning how to spin that fiber into yarn. I’ve also been teaching myself how to milk goats, process and store that milk, and how to make cheese and soaps later down the road once our baby goats are weaned. Eventually, this will all feel like part of a normal seasonal routine for us, but for now it’s a whole lot of learning through research, trial and error, and talking to mentors.

Click the video below to see our new goat babies, and some of my first attempts at spinning yarn:

First Goat Births on the Farm

We reached a major milestone earlier this month with our first Nigerian Dwarf goats born on the farm.

Fig and Fern, the first two goats we ever brought home with us after moving here in 2020, were bred last fall to our buck Thomas, and were due to kid within about four days of each other in late February/Early March. Fig was the first of the two to deliver. She was due February 28th, but didn’t give birth until three days later on March 3rd, right in time for morning chores. It was a fairly quick, straightforward birth with no complications, and although mama was exhausted from pushing, she bonded with her baby right away.

Like Fig, Fern would wait three more days beyond her due date to actually give birth (March 7th). It was trickier to spot labor signs with her because she seemed so uncomfortable. Her belly was much larger than Fig’s and she seemed to need more rest, so us newbies had a hard time discerning between discomfort and signs of early labor like pawing, nesting, staring off into space, getting up and down, and so on.

As it would turn out, her belly was larger because her baby was about twice the size of Fig’s 3.5-pound doeling. She delivered a healthy 6lb buckling, and although it didn’t go as quickly as Fig’s delivery, it was still a very smooth birth experience for all of us.

We named the kids Olive and Otis. They are both beautiful, and look exactly how you might imagine a split down the middle in appearance between their respective dams and our buck Thomas would be. It’s been a lot of fun to watch them play and grow.

We’ve opted to dam raise our kids, so because both mamas only had one baby this time, we are already milking the does in the morning and evening to help keep their milk supply on par with how it might have been if there had been multiples. As a result, we’ve had a chance to taste Fig’s milk and compare it to the raw milk we buy from our local dairy (From the Field Farm in Oregon City), and it’s incredible. Sweet and creamy and so, so good.

Fern’s milk still tastes a bit like colostrum, so we’ll get back to you on her in a few more days. In the meantime, if you’d like to see the footage we were able to capture of our first goat births on the farm, watch our YouTube video below here:

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:

January Catch-Up

Kidding season is coming soon, so we’ve been organizing our outbuildings and getting ready to move our wethers to a different sheltered area. This will give our pregnant does space to give birth, and plenty of room for their babies once they’re born.

Unfortunately, before we can start building the shelter for the wethers, we need to backtrack a little and disassemble the buck house we built last summer.

Why? Because almost as soon as it was built, we realized the space it occupied would be better utilized with a lean-to off the big barn. We hemmed and hawed over this decision for awhile, but ultimately decided that we could very easily incorporate a stall under the lean-to, which be more beneficial than the little buck shelter for all kinds of reasons.

First, It would be more spacious, which means we could easily house more animals there if needed. Second, it’s easier to access and much easier to clean. And third, its new location meant we could easily create a gravel path just outside the stall for human folk and goat friends alike, which I’m hoping will help prevent hoof rot and overly muddy conditions.

Granted, winter is not the most ideal time to be working on big outdoor projects like this, but Matt and his dad got to work on it sometime mid-December. They had to pause for a few weeks due to inclement weather, but then the sun broke through again and they were able to finish the job by early January. This gave us plenty of time to put up the stall for our Buck.

Next: the shelter for our wethers, and a huge cleanout of our barn in preparation for the kidding to begin. We may decide to install some birthing pens in the main barn now that we have the space for it. We’ll see.

To see our new setup and to catch up on what I’ve been knitting + some of my goals for 2022, check the video below:

Willow and Aspen

A few weeks ago, I was perusing Craigslist when I came across a listing for a sweet Nigerian Dwarf mama and baby duo from a farm nearby. The mama was a bit over-conditioned, as was outlined in the listing, but I felt hopeful she would do well here at our farm. Plus, both she and her baby were listed as registered ADGA purebreds with solid milking lines, so Matt and I jumped at the chance to bring them home with us.

It’s a funny thing, when Matt and I first decided we wanted goats, we weren’t at all concerned with their registration status. In fact, I’d read about how folks often get lucky with unregistered goats, and find nice animals of good quality without the steep price tag. This very much appealed to me. Besides, we figured the ADGA (American Dairy Goat Association) was something we could always explore in the future, but we had a long road ahead of us before we even had to think about breeding our animals, much less daily milking and everything that’s involved with that. So when we purchased our first two Nigerian dwarf goats (Fig and Fern) last year as 3-month-old doelings, the seller told us their mamas were good milkers, and that was good enough for us. After all, our primary concern back then was blackberry bramble control.

Let me be clear, I don’t regret bringing home Fern and Fig. I’m very fond of them, but the fact of the matter is they aren’t registered and could never be. And as for whether or not they will be good milkers with sound, healthy bodies? It remains to be seen.

What I do know is the closer we get to breeding our own animals, the more I can see the value in investing our time and energy wisely, doing justice to the animal, and getting back what we put in. I’m a practical person, and although I don’t just think of our animals here as commodities, I do find myself making calculations in my head about which things are worth my time, because for me this lifestyle is less about money and more about enriching our experiences together as a family. What we consume, where it comes from, how we spend our time together…

All of this to say, I think we’ll be sticking to ADGA registered goats from here on out. Not just because we want good milkers, but because I can see us diving deep into the world of goats, and it’s all happening a lot sooner than I thought it would.

Would you like to meet Willow and Aspen? If so, check out the video below: