Back to Land Louisiana
(Page 2 of 4)
April/May 2004
By Robin Wright
When we made the move to the country, I decided I wanted to spend more time at home, enjoying our new lifestyle. For 20 years I had worked in the family business, but now I wanted to home school my daughter, Danielle, who was 4 years old at the time, so I retired from my job to become my daughter's teacher. I could also study the art of slowing down.
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GOOD GARDENING
Gardening has been the best part of living this lifestyle. My dad has a beautiful garden and orchard next door. We keep separate gardens, but we help each other out when one of us leaves town. Dad has taught me all about gardening, but he's not organic: I learned that style of gardening from reading many organic gardening books and magazines. (MOTHER EARTH NEWS has been such an inspiration.) I've learned about Mulch piles, natural ways to combat insects and how to grow herbs, flowers and vegetables together in my garden.
I spend as much time as possible out mixing compost teas, handpicking slugs and stink bugs, and doing all the other chores involved with raising a healthy garden. This is my fourth year of gardening and it gets easier each year.
Making Milking Easier
My small family of three can only use 2 gallons of goat milk a week, but each nanny goat gives almost a gallon a day. So, I began looking for ways to use the excess and to solve other milking problems, too.
First, milking twice a day gets old. Second, we like to travel, and I hate to ask someone to come and milk for me. By Thanksgiving every year, I have to dry up my goats because the whole family goes out of town, leaving me without any help. My pregnant nannies need some time off, too, but I miss fresh milk for those three months.
Sometimes, though, good things come out of bad situations. When my best nanny became sick and miscarried, I gave her several months to regain her health before breeding her again. She became pregnant in January, and that put my two goats on different schedules, because the other nanny had been bred in September. That nanny gave birth in February, and when one of her twins died, I milked one side and her surviving baby nursed the other side. I didn't mind sharing the extra milk in return for a healthy kid. Eventually the kid discovered the other side, so when we planned to milk, we started penning him up the previous night. Suddenly, I could choose when I wanted to milk, and we could travel and come back without disturbing the milk supply just by leaving the kid with his mother. In June, the second nanny gave birth. When those kids were 2 months old, I dried up the other nanny, and when I wanted milk, I separated the new mother from her babies overnight. Now I only milk two or three times a week: I just have to breed one goat in September, and the other in January. Following this pattern appears to have solved the problem of too much milk, too much time milking, and the need for backup milkers. Time wilt tell!
