Milking tales

My two-year-old Lyla has thrown my tiny netbook computer on the floor one too many times. All of my USB ports finally broke, so no pictures can be uploaded at the moment. Not that I had any free hands to capture this event with my camera anyway, but I guess I felt the need for a valid excuse.

Now that our goat kids are old enough, we have begun the daily morning milking. On the days that Eric is not home or has to leave early for work, I take over the morning shift. Of course, it's cold and rainy this morning and I have to milk. It's May and the low temps are back in the 30's. Nobody is happy about this. At eight months pregnant, I am still battling morning sickness every day and would prefer to not have to spend my nauseous moments wrestling with a goat's rump in order to get milk in the pail. But I do, because let's be honest, I may not love the moment, but I do love my goats and the rich milk they produce! So there I am in the drizzle, sitting on the milk stanchion with one arm wrapped around Jane's rump to keep her still and the other hand working her teat to get the milk out.

Jane doesn't have the most wonderfully placed teats in the world, which makes getting the milk into the pail kind of a challenge. Yesterday it took me several minutes before I looked down and discovered that I had thoroughly coated my jacket with milk and not one drop had landed in the pail at all. This morning I paid slightly more attention to the pail's position and had a good rhythm going until Jane finished the grain in the feeder. At which point she began to bawl and buck her head to get it out of the stanchion. Now, I'm sure that most people have heard a goat bleat, but probably not as many have heard them scream. Let me tell you, this scream is eerily human sounding and extremely loud. I wouldn't care if we were on a farm, but at 7 in the morning in the city with neighbors' windows literally ten feet away, it becomes a bit of an issue.
So of course, Jane starts screaming and I am only halfway done. Still wrestling with her rump to hold her still (with my very pregnant belly getting in the way the entire time), I start on the other side. Frothy rich milk streams into the pail, steaming. Love. I am finally feeling good about this milking session. Jane is still screaming, so I look up and start talking to her to soothe her as I milk. I guess that was her cue.

Now we have milk with goat berries.
Dump the pail, start again.
.......

Finally, I finish. With less than half of what I would have gotten due to the berry issue, at least I have enough milk to bring inside and strain. I gather up my milking supplies and pail to bring inside. And just as I am reaching to open the latch on the gate of the pen, our other mama goat, Claire, jumps up behind me and puts both of her front feet smack into my milk pail. The pail tips. The milk dumps. I shout some mild expletives and aim a swift kick at her (which she pranced away from just in time). I'm covered in milk, Claire's covered in milk, the ground is covered in milk. Jane is following me around and still screaming. It's still raining.

I go into the house and there is Lexi in the mud room, all smiles. "Did you get some milk for us, Mama?!? I'm so excited!"

Nope. No milk. Not even a drop.
Eric is back on duty tomorrow. Can't wait. :-)

City girl, Country heart

Lexi's daily farm chores:

 Gathering eggs

 Hugging and kissing all the chickens (yes, every day). Because of this, she's also the best chicken catcher out of all of us!

Giving lots of love to the baby goats

And being her wonderful, giggling, happy self. :-)

What can I say? This girl loves her life. 

I'm thankful we got into urban farming last year! If we have to live in the big city for a while, we might as well make it awesome!

Spring babies!!

The day finally arrived! Our Nigerian Dwarf Goat, Jane (officially registered as Janelle), was bred this last fall when we purchased her. We moved Jane and Claire to our urban farm in February, with the knowledge that they would both be kidding this spring. After a good month of observing Jane's behaviors, we knew right away that she was in labor yesterday morning. By 3 PM, she was delivering her babies. I went to check on her (for the 100th time that day) and noticed that she had already delivered one kid. I raced to get Eric, and then raced back just in time to clear the mouth and nose of her second kid. The third one came soon after when all of us were in the shed together. I was so excited and blessed to be the one to "midwife" the delivery while Eric and the little girls looked on. The experience was wonderful. Jane kidded two does and a buck.

Above is doeling Penelope on the left with our buckling Patrick on the right.

Hazel, above. Another sweet doe. Not sure if it is a trick of the camera, or if her eyes really are blue. Remains to be seen.

Eric picked up my youngest sister out in the suburbs yesterday so she could share in the experience. Lucky for them, they arrived home less than an hour before Jane gave birth!

And here's a laugh for your weekend. Selfie Saturday, anyone?

Milking for our own consumption begins in about two weeks. Couldn't be more thrilled that we are actually doing this! And while living in the city! Hopefully in 5 to 10 years we will be on a bit more land out in the country, but for now, while we are in the midst of foster parenting kids in Chicago, we are just excited that we can have the city life with a bit of animal husbandry mixed in. ;-)