Libby kidded early on a Friday morning. Sound asleep was I with the baby monitor turned down to the sweet spot, not so loud that you can hear every sound that the critters in the barn are making but enough to hear any big noises. Suddenly I was awake, and could hear the goat pushing, it’s so funny how you can listen for a specific noise while you sleep. I threw on my grungy clothes and trotted swiftly out to find a baby in the floor already, and Libby laying in the middle of the floor on the edge of a little hill unable to push the next baby out, because she kept rolling backwards. She always sleeps in a particular corner, which had nice clean fresh straw, but she decides to have her babies in the middle of the floor on a hill. Goats are crazy. We moved her to the kidding pen and after she settled down, out popped another baby. We waited and waited, but no more babies came. It was a little hard to believe that there were only two mid-sized babies in that fat tummy. One was a boy, one was a girl.
Libby is milking quite well. Last year she was off to a slow start, but was very consistent in the amount. She’s doubled what she did last year, and is milking off some of that excess that she built up. She’s been one cup short of a gallon a time or two and has settled into a pretty steady 14 cups a day. What she lacks in major quantity she makes up for by having rich creamy milk. I’ll probably be selling her so that I can keep one of my babies.
We’re flying through the milk at the moment with all of the babies to feed. I keep hoping to have a chance to make some cheese but every time I get enough milk hoarded up it disappears. My two legged kids felt rather milk deprived the last couple of months. They got milk picky and didn’t like the milk from the freezer, which tasted a little freezer burnt, and weren’t crazy about the few gallons of store milk I picked up to fill in, which tasted old, like plastic, and bleach. Milk tasting is quite a hobby around here. We put it into little cups and talk about sweetness and acidity and finish.
Right now it feels like we’re spending a lot of time feeding babies. We’ve split up into three teams and we each just take one feeding a day. Guess who gets the 5am feeding? Not that the 5am feeding actually every happens at 5am, but anytime before 6am is 5am when you’re not exactly a morning person.
Do you like the idea of the simple life, but wonder what it should look like in the modern age? Join me on the journey of trying to figure out how to keep the barn, the kitchen, and home education all in balance. 
northwindmenagerie 