Happenings at Swede Farm

1)We are going to a new farmers market! We will be at Grogans Mill in the Woodlands...check out the website for more information.

2)He's here!!! I fell in love with this doe when I saw her online and it was confirmed when I saw her while on a trip to Colorado...we bought a son of hers back in 2006. Bandit was all I hoped for (even being named a Qualifying Young Sire by the American Dairy Goat Association) and promptly bred a goodly handful of his does that first year. Before his first kids were born, he died, one of those odd flukes that you hope never to have to deal with. Necropsy (an animal autopsy) was unable to explain why he died so we just held our breath and waited to see his kids. They were wonderful, but still...

So we were thrilled when we had the chance to buy his half brother! Alamo arrived safe and sound via Continental Airlines on Wednesday at exactly one month of age. He was introduced to the pen of girls his own age but they tried to beat him up so now he is in with the older guy on the block, Ulysses, who is a much more laid back and mellow kinda guy than those girls! Sheesh! You'd think they never saw a boy before! Like some bad movie about an all-girl's school! (and I know whereof I speak, having graduated from one!)


Alamo is the handsome goat withOUT ears or spots. Ulysses is the dashing guy with ears and spots.

3)We are getting ready to celebrate birthdays this weekend! Seth turned one on the 7th, Emma turns eleven on the 15th so we are having a joint shindig for both on Saturday the 11th. Not that we are gluttons for punishment, or anything, we only have two farmers market in the morning followed by the party. I would say that we kept it small, but truth be told even if we don't invite anyone from outside the family it can't be "small"!

Chocolate Passion

Just the title is yummy!

I love living out here. There are many interesting and intriguing places to eat and shop in Houston...after all, it IS the fourth largest city in the United States and it does boast a large international population. It seems, sometimes, that in Houston, though, the forest gets lost for the trees and the neat places are either commonplace or easy to miss.

That is not always so out here in the hinterlands.

So, I decided that I would periodically share some of my favorite places.

Chocolate Passion is a new one. A friend introduced me to this wonderful coffee and chocolate shop on our way to Bordens to pick up the plastic milk jugs that we use to bottle our milk. (so far they haven't seemed to mind that goat milk is going in their cow milk bottles. All they care is that they get a check for their bottles. Oh and they seem to get a kick out of the "GOAT MILK" sign on the van.) Anyway, we were having a frustrating and stressful time at Swede farm, so my sweet friend took me out to let me drown my cash flow concerns in the best place possible (besides to God in prayer)--a cup of hot chocolate! Specifically, Venezuelan Spiced hot chocolate. Yum beyond description! Lunch was good also, muffaletta and soup. Dessert was incredible, a cake named "chocolate explosion" and dark chocolate covered baklava. Topped it off with a small box full of hand crafted chocolates for Tim (that miraculously made it home) and it was a trip worth remembering...for the wow factor of the food as well as for the heart melting kindness of my friend.

I took Tim by there last week to share it with him and he agreed. Chocolate Passion makes going to Conroe for bottles something to look forward to.

We have babies!

Tim and I went to buy animal feed on Wednesday, like always. (Nothing like buying a ton of feed every week to get your juices flowing!) When we drove down our street we saw Kate, Grace and Linnea across the street at our neighbor's fenceline with two feed buckets.

"Berry picking?" Tim wondered...

"Too early for that" I commented as my eternal worry gene started trying to figure out what could possibly have gone wrong that could be fixed with feed buckets.

The girls saw us and started waving toward the bushes "We have turkey babies!"

A few days ago I realized that I hadn't seen our second turkey hen in a while. I had concluded that it wandered off, got lost, and became some dog's turkey dinner. (That worry gene thing again. I am working on it, but it is pretty firmly entrenched by now.) Apparently rather than serving herself up as dinner she had been sitting on a nest made in the bushes along the neighbor's fenceline. She now had herself a nice batch of poults (turkey babies) that kept running away from the girls into the neighbor's pasture--not a good thing as his anatolian shepherd dogs would have seen them as hors d'oeuvres, I am sure. It wasn't a good idea to leave the chicks and their momma where they were because on one side of their nest was the neighbor's pasture with the dogs, on the other side is the road. The girls waited patiently and the babies followed momma back towards the girls (thankfully she was our friendly turkey hen) where they were able to scoop them up and move them to a recently vacated chicken tractor (a portable chicken shelter).

So now we have nineteen Bourbon Red babies! They are so cute!