My visit to Connemara Farm

Danny and I took a great little day trip yesterday to Flat Rock, NC to visit Connemara Farm, the farm that was owned by the late Carl Sandburg and has been donated to the National Historical Society. The goats are still being raised on the farm but they are no longer milking. The goats that are there are direct descendents of Lillian Sandburgs original herd. After Carl died, she sold the last 24 goats, then she turned around and donated the home. With her help they went and bought back her original herd! You can read more about her goat dairy here.

If you remember from my previous years blogging that I owned a buck named Durango who was from the Connemara bloodlines. I purchased him from a nice farm just a few miles down the road from Connemara. We have been searching for a herd sire locally and had no luck with that search so on Saturday I decided to give these same great folks a call and inquire as to whether they may for some slim chance have a buck for sale or know of one around their area. We were so happy with Durango and knew that they would never steer us wrong. So imagine my surprise when she said "As a matter of fact we do have a nice young Connemara buck for sale!" GIGGLES GIGGLES!!!!
So off we tread as fast as that Chevy pickup would get us there to snag him up! Afterall I wanted another one of Mrs. Sandburgs' Champion Goats!
Click on the picture to enlarge.


We got there early enough to take in a quickie tour of Connemara and their goat dairy before our appt with the Burton's. We had to walk up a huge hill to get to the farm and house. It was way so worth it when we got there! This is being used like a garage now but I am imagining this was the Sandburgs tractor shed at one time.

LOVE the red corn crib! I want one!

The goat barn was awesome!

They had a couple chickens pecking around outside but I could never get a good picture.
I also have a tub like this that we decided we need as a watering trough for my goats too!

That prize winning goat is kin to my goats!

The buck lot.

Fabulous milking parlor.....I also want!

I have one of Durango's daughters here but she did not get these spots. A friend of ours used Durango and they have a daughter of his which looks just like this one!

Mrs. Sandburg raised the 3 breeds shown above and had as many as 200 milking at one time.

The goat in the forground is a half sister of the buck I bought yesterday. She is on loan back to the farm at this time. The Burton's work very closely with the farm and they switch around as necessary.

The Toggenburgs all lounging around enjoying the warm sun......it was COLD in the

Pisgah National Forest!

Not sure what this building was but it was beautiful.

Danny has already said that we WILL go back for another visit to the farm when we can stay longer and take in a guided tour.

Check out this building above the garden.

OMG!! It's a greenhouse/ cheese room!

We both really liked this one. You know how we just love outbuildings too!

White outbuildings are the bestest!!

The basement cheese room.

There are so many little white houses/ outbuildings. This just made me break out in goosebumps all over. Look at that bamboo! I have bamboo here and this trip made me grow to love it even more!

Love this village like setting with the gravel pathways up to the main house. I even have some white picket fencing just like this!

Thru the pathway above up to the side of the house.

Side view of the front porch.

The home sits high on a hill and overlooks a gorgeous pond!

The main house!

Lots and lots of ivy!

Lots and lots of trails.

That's enough show and tell for now! I have to get out there and play goat farmer now!

I will be back with some pics of my newest boy, Sawyer Brown!
Hope you enjoyed your tour!

Billie and Billy

Here is an older picture of the horse that I rode yesterday, Billie.

(She is the mare shown here.)

Of course we got NO pictures of me on horseback.....urgh!

After our ride we had to go down the rode and try out a couple new goats that I found on none other than Craigslist. A 5 month old registered (very spotted) Nubian Buck, named Billy!
Ironic?
Billy comes with a yearling Alpine doe thrown in as a companion.
She is white and her name is Snowy.
Billy comes from the same stock and same farm as my first Nubian, Saphira. He is rather small right now at 5 months old but he really knows his way around a doe already!
We go to pick them up this morning and I can't wait to get some new babies on the ground!

Some have spots, some have not!

My new baby goat Karo has lots of spots!
Even tho it took Danny a while to see them!
Maybe he should wear his glasses?
She is my first of the season, single birth to Belle who is my BEST!
I really have high hopes for this young lady.



She is the sweetest and friendliest baby ever born here on my farm.
I think she thinks that I am her mother the way she wants to cuddle with me!
She is still being raised by her mother and I am getting almost a gallon of milk a day from Belle on top of the baby!
I couldn't be happier unless I had 10 like her mother!






Then there is my other baby Lillie!
Need I say more?
Do you see that precious little mouth and chin?
Well that's our kissy spot!







She likes me too!
She was here for a few days Easter weekend.
She is coming back tomorrow for a whole week with Granny Becky kissing her chin!
I could just lick her!
Nuf said!

They're going to take my farm license away......

I can raise baby goats, sometimes, that turn out pretty good, grow up into beautiful young lady goats and then turn out to be good mother goats.

(Ellie Mae, my yearling, is pregnant!)
I really have high hopes for Miss Daisy!
I am still in love with all those spots and those long ears never grow old!

She is quite the bully on top of the mountain.

"What you doing in there Mr Big?

You rascally rooster!"

"Whaaaaat?
You say whaaaaat??

You like my curly ears?

I know everyone does."

Duke is a studdly little fella and I have high hopes for him being a herd sire for another farm next year! His face is just beautiful!!!!

Daisy wins again!

These are my very best, sweetest babies that have ever been dropped here on the farm.

(I like Thunder's offspring)

They are so quiet and docile!

I think that means they are happy!

They haven't caught wind of what a bad farmer I am yet.

They don't know how hard it is for me to raise chickens.

If they knew what "I" did to my baby chicks they would head for the mountains.

I will tell you and you will not mutter a word to anyone. OK?

Do I have your word? OK then, here goes........

I

drowned

2

baby

chicks

in

a

water

bucket

.

.

.

I

said

you

can't

tell

anyone

or

the

officials

will

come

and

take

my

license.

s

h

h

h

h

h

!

I don't ever want it to brought up in conversation ever again.

My guilt is overwhelming enough.......

Need I say more?

ps. the picture above is Mr Big as he prepared to leave his coop
this morning to go to work protecting Sunny Morning Farm!

Now if he would just be able to warn me of the safety hazards spotted...........

Finally, the baby elephants are here....

While he was doing this in the pond......
and I was playing with my new swim toy....
(when I was a little girl and my family lived in Fla we would go to Cocoa Beach and all the little rich girls had really cool floats just like this and I would show my dad and ask for one for myself and he always said no, I have been in love with those floats all my life!! Now I have one just like the rich kids! Does this mean that I have made it?)

she was born!!

we checked on her prior to going for a swim and not a sign of labor at all....

came back and glanced thru the field and there they were!

The lightest is a doeling with SPOTS!!!!!

The other is a buckling but he sure is handsome too.

He was just born as we found them.

I kept asking Saphira when WHEN WHEN she would show me her little brown spotted baby girls. I knew what they would look like! I just knew!!

I just did NOT know when they were due!

She got so big so early on and this went on for ever and ever that I had finally decided that she was carrying a baby elephant!!!

Whew glad that is over!!

Homemade Country Butter

We used to call homemade butter "Country" Butter when I was a child.

We (my family) were wanderers and moved back and forth many times from the country in Va to the cities in Florida, Vero Beach, Kississimme and Orlando. Of course they weren't as big a cities as they are now but it wasn't much country butter being made there at that time either.

Who would have ever thought that my parents would settle back down in their hometown of Callaway Va????

When we lived in Fla we would visit Callaway and my dad had to stock up on country butter, buttermilk and eggs from a neighbor lady, Nannie. He just loved her butter because she would let her cream get sour before she made butter and it had that strong "country" butter taste. I did not like that taste and found that I really liked margarine!! Didn't know for years that you could actually buy sweet cream butter in the grocery store, I thought all butter was sour!! I still loved to go to her house to buy the butter anyway. It was usually the highlight of my trips back to Va. She had the shiniest wood floors in her house that I had ever seen!! If I was really lucky I would be able to catch her milking her cow. OMG!!! That was always a dream of mine, to have my own milk cow and milk her myself!! Then I visited a huge dairy farm in Fla on a school field trip and they milked about 200 cows. OMG!! That kicked my dreams up a few levels. I talked to the milker after he was finished milking and I told him I was going to own a dairy farm one day when I grew up!!!!!!!!

Well I never owned my own dairy farm til this one. Not 200 cows to milk twice a day but a few little ole goats will suffice!!

I spent years of my adult life. however, milking cows, or testing milk and working the fields on some big cow dairies. I sorta got my fill of the dairy farm bug.

I am very content right here on my 2 1/2 acres with my 9 little goats!!!

When my family purchased land and built a home right beside of Danny's family dairy farm.......(that's when the trouble really began, I couldn't keep my hands off him ;-))).............

my dad would go out and buy butter from Danny's mother, Carrie. Sometimes when I was a good girl and they would let me hook up my pony to the iron wheeled wagon and go out the dirt road to get eggs and butter, that usually ended up taking me the entire day too!!!!!!!!

(After Carrie passed away Danny's father Raymond carried on the tradition and made butter for many more years before selling all his cows. They both sold butter and eggs all over the place. Folks would drive for miles and miles to buy from them cause they knew how good their butter was!)

Now let me tell you she made "Country" butter that even this whimpy little ole gal could eat!!!

Took me years to find out why hers was so much better than our neighbors (Nannie) up the road. I mean Carrie's bull would sometimes jump the fence and breed Nannie's cow for her or vice versa!! I can't remember the whole story there. Anyway I knew that the cows were raised on almost the same grass as their fields were side by side, so what gives with sour verses sweet country butter???

Ah ha!! I finally understood it. Carrie's butter was made with sweet cream and it was sooooooo good! I thought it was just that she was such a good cook and could even make an eggplant taste good!! So I knew that I could make sweet country butter just like Carrie's with my goats milk cream and I did just that yesterday!! The only difference is that mine is snow white and hers was sunflower yellow!!! It has almost the same taste and just a little softer texture. The goats butter has a lower melting temperature than cows milk butter does.

I can say that we were very happy with a generous pat of this stuff slathered on a hot homemade cat head biscuit last evening!!

I think Carrie, Raymond, Nannie and my dad would all be proud to taste my butter!

Not to brag or anything like that, I am just saying!!!

(Yes I married that neighbor boy that I couldn't keep my hands off of.

I thought I was going to get to own my big dairy farm one day if I married him!! Hahaha)

Miss Minnie is a Maxi Milker!

After a very stressful evening yesterday an even more stressful night in her new home, Minnie gave me just shy of a half gallon of milk again this morning!! She came into the barn streaming milk. We had milked her at 5:30 last evening and I milked at 6 this morning but she was still pouring milk from her udder!!! I have seen a lot of cows do that but I have never had a goat do that!!

Guess what else amazes me with Miss Minnie??? She does not kick! She stood quiet as a mouse, raised her right leg up and held it there for a few seconds and then she put it back down. I did not wear milk back to the house this morning like I did so many days when trying to get Saphira broke to the milking stand. I am soooooooo happy with her!!! Thank You Danny!!

I can't wait to see what she can really do when she has not been under so much stress. I am sure that Saphira is very jealous of her and she probably whispered bad threats in her ears last night. They were a little segregated this morning. Minnie out in the field hollering at the top of her lungs for me, and Saphira in the barn to herself. I am sure they will bond soon enough though!

Now I am lying on the sofa resting a bum knee that I twisted last night and reading my cheesemaking book. Researching goats milk soap recipes and dreaming!!!! I am so happy!!

Check out these tahtah's...ssshhh!!

All you goat farmers out there will understand my excitement here!

I have had goats for several years now but I seem to have trouble raising them, I think I have that little problem all figured out finally though, but I haven't had the very best stock. I didn't want to put a slew of money into really good stock for fear of letting them die as several have in the past.

Until last year when I started investing a little more energy

into trying to pick out better stock so I could gain strength in my herd.

I have some babies that are coming along nicely now.

Saphira may not be the best girl out there but we go way back.

She is a keeper!

She gives only a fair amount of milk but it is great stuff. So sweet and creamy.

This is a bad picture of her taken just before dark tonight.

She is upset with me cause I brought another goat into her territory!

Meet "Sunrise Valley Martas Minx"!!!

Danny said she cannot be called Minx, said she was a "Minnie"!!

I think it fits her!!

Hey, he paid for her so I can let him name her right??

Even though she is far from a mini goat!!

I will have to learn how to milk all over again!

Saphira's teats are very small and therefor are hard to milk.

Of course I have milked her so much that I am used to it.

With Minnie's nice long teats I can actually grab hold and milk the way you are supposed to milk a goat!!! Woohoo!!!!!

I have only dreamed of having a goat with a nice udder!!!!

hahahaha

You girls dream about udders?

I do!! LOL!!

I bought her from the lady that I had mentioned before that was going to sell me one of her 6 that freshened this season. This nice lady has had a terrible time as of lately, her mother passed away 2 weeks ago and she is also on crutches because of a knee injury. Poor husband of hers having to man the farm all by himself too!! He's a trooper like my Danny though!!

Anyway she picked out Minnie out of the 6 because of breeding purposes with my buck Thunder who also came from her farm. They will be a really good cross and should throw me some spotted babies!! Minnie is a two year old first freshener and delivered without difficulty a great big doeling kid that has spots!! Her was purtty too!! Of course I didn't get her.

I could have brought all those long ears home with me and I don't think Danny would have had a problem with that either ;-)))

He likes those long ears too!!

Of course he likes good udders and feels that just maybe he can learn how to milk her!!

Now I finally feel that I am heading in the right direction to get some good blood in my stock!

I am so excited to get some sweet creamy milk in my pail tomorrow morning too!!

I milked her tonight at their farm and it was just lovely. A full half gallon from one milking too!! I'll soon have milk coming out my ears! Made my hands sore but I'll get them toughened up soon enough!

He told me that she kicks occasionally....Whaaaa? I wouldn't know how to milk a goat that doesn't try to kick my teeth out!! Saphira and I have it all figured out by now and I think Minnie and I will have a great relationship too!!

Aaawwwhhh the cheese, soap, butter, ice cream.......................

dreaming bout udders full of milk again here!!

ps. she also gave me 30 more Buckeye chicken eggs to try my luck again at hatching them. She said that her husband reminded her that theirs didn't hatch til the 23rd day and they were all fine. I think I will leave these in there for about 35 days this time.....just kidding!!

Wish me luck on this hatch turning out better.

Hello World!

Our names are Ruby and Diamond
Ruby and Diamonds are Robin and Leslie's birthstones.
I have always been able to keep the fine gemstone names going for Opal's babies.

Diamond has some peculiar markings such as this big gray patch on the top of her head.

Miss Clairol at such an early age?

Her father has spots in his bloodline and she got some of them!!

Ellie Mae's father was spotted and Thunder's sister so we are sure hoping for some spotted girls from her too!!

Ruby is just too darned cute and she is so sweet and quiet!!

She does have a moustache though!

I'm just saying!

My little Virginia farmgirl sure does like baby goats!!!

We had to go pick her up right after school so she could come over here and get some loving time in!!

Let me know when you get tired of baby goat pictures and I'll stop....well maybe!!