The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Goat screams

Goat segregation

So, the good news is that I realized on weaning day two that one of our goat pastures had chicken wire around the base that could keep Punkin in. Once our buckling was able to nose his mother through the fence, he calmed down quite a bit. He still wouldn't take a bottle or drink out of a pan, but I'm putting him in with Artemesia some nights after his sister gets locked in the kennel so his gut doesn't have to completely change over from milk to grass cold turkey. I figure within two or three weeks, he'll be thoroughly and safely weaned.

Working with goats

The bad news? Between Punkin calling "Mama!" and Artemesia hollering "My baby!" relentlessly on day one, our mile-distant neighbor became convinced Mark was guilty of spousal abuse. The neighbor in question came over on his four-wheeler with a pistol at his hip the next day to check on us...which was actually pretty sweet, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to run over to check on the visitor the way I usually do because I was knee deep in the bee hives, so I left the guys talking for about ten minutes before showing up. I
hope our neighbor believed that no one was being murdered over here and we simply have a couple of unruly goats...but I guess we'll see if Mark's been kicked out of the good-old-boy network or not.

(Yes, this is the equivalent of calling the cops when you live in the country.)



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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