Little Farm

We met up with Clara's classmate, Danny, at the Little Farm today. It was fun to find Prima (from our past goat-milking share) and feed her some celery. Clara quickly grew tired of feeding the celery to the animals and just wanted to have Molly & Danny feed the celery to her. Last night we got the sad news that the director of their preschool died unexpectedly, so it was nice to be with another preschool family. 

Goodbye Goats

For a little over a year we went every Saturday morning to milk a goat living about a mile away in the back yard of a lovely family. It was a fun experience to get to know another family, get to know the two goats, and get to really understand where milk (and cheese!) come from. Molly even got pretty good at milking by the end!

This summer the family decided to stop the goat-share/coop, mostly because they found that their new baby was not able to tolerate even goat milk! Next week Prima (the one we milked) will be "retired" to The Little Farm, and Xochi (who they were never able to successfully breed) will be slaughtered. Thanks to the Bolts for letting us enjoy their goats, and thanks to Molly & Clara for all your hard work going to milk the goats!

(these are pictures from May when Nona joined us one morning)

Kids

The goat family took us to visit with this year's kids born at the Berkeley home where Prima & Xochi were born. Urban goats, through and through.

Goats

One of the most exciting development in the past few months is that we've joined a goat-milking co-op. In April we were connected with a family nearby that keeps to dairy goats in their yard. They've set up an informal co-op where each member signs up for a weekly milking shift. Milkers keep 1/2 the milk, and leave the other half for the family. Since dairy goats typically need to be milked twice a day, 12 hours apart this co-op setup makes a lot of sense. So for the past two months we've gone every Saturday morning and fed, groomed, and milked Prima & Xochi (actually, Xochi isn't making milk right now, but we still get her up on the stanchion and groom her). It's a lot of fun and we get some fresh milk to boot! And as if that weren't enough, the family is super sweet and has the cutest 1 year old baby that Molly & Clara like to hang out with (or at least they like hanging out with his toys).

Feeding Animals - on the farm

On Sunday we went down to Ardenwood Farm for a kids 'n' goats program. The kids cracked the corn, fed the goats, and then the naturalists read them some goat-themed stories by the fire. Fun for a rainy Sunday!

Pictures: Molly in raincoat. Clara in red. Goats in fur.