More news from the (frozen) farm

The weather has been incredibly odd for us in Texas, in fact it has been averaging thirty degrees colder than normal this time of year! Thankfully this has been during the week. The last two weekends the weather has warmed up enough to give us sunny and clear (if a bit on the cool side) markets.

Normally this time of year our life is consumed with caring for baby goats as in the picture above. Not this year. This year we decided that we really did not need to keep many of the babies born here as replacement milkers as our herd is relatively young. Thankfully we usually have a waiting list for most of our baby goats. The people who buy from us usually prefer that they be hand raised by people rather than their mothers, partially because dairy goats will be handled and worked with at least twice daily for milking for at least a decade and hand raising them means that they will be people oriented and easier to train to being milked. It's a theory, anyway.

We are continuing to struggle with the amount of product that we can bring to market due to the fact that many of the goats did not get bred when I wanted them to. We should be drowning in milk by mid-April but right now we are still suffering from scarcity. I have learned that farming is an extended lesson in realizing that I am not the one in control, biology is. Or God is. Of the biology that God fashioned is. At any rate, I am not.

We are deep in chocolate right now, as we have decided to bring back our holiday chevre truffles for Valentines day. As I write this it is not even nine in the morning and we have already rolled fifteen dozen little balls of chocolate wonder with more to come.

The seeds started for the garden are growing wonderfully--it simply has been too cold for Linnea (our resident gardener) to get the baby plants in the ground. This is our first year to try to grow a majority of our veggies that our family will use. This is a huge undertaking, not only because we have a large family but also because we have a family that loves vegetables! Well, mom and children love vegetables. Tim looks with suspicion on anything green that isn't guacamole. We are working on that...

All in all, although we are cold and things look fairly bleak outside, farm life never slows down and we are already seeing signs (from baby goats to baby plants) that Spring is right around the corner--and it cannot come fast enough for us!