Goats, Carnivores, and Greens

In early May, Peaches delivered two baby boys!  These kids are the third batch since she's been with us, and I'm pretty sure they just keep getting cuter.  

When they were a few weeks old, Brandon and I mustered our courage and cauterized their horn buds with a hot iron.  I almost couldn't bring myself to do it, because I knew they were going to cry. The book said that it would be more traumatic for us than for the goats, which was true.  They did cry for a moment, but then shook their heads and ran to their mother to nurse.  

Following a diagram in the goat book, Brandon built a little box of plywood to hold their bodies with only their little head poking out of a hole.  He let the iron heat up, then held their muzzle with his left hand and applied the iron for five seconds.  Once the iron was heated again, he did the other bud.  They cried.  It smelled like burnt hair and meat.  I closed my eyes and held the box steady.  The horn buds are supposed to fall off and they haven't yet, so I worry that we didn't do it long enough, and they will still get their heads stuck in the fence.  Maybe next time we'll be able to hold it on there for a longer five seconds.  

We built a small fence down by the tree line.  It encompasses a thicket of honeysuckle vines and blackberries.  We don't have a shelter there yet, so I've been leading Little Buck, Donnie, and the River brothers to this area in the evenings, when its dry, so they can browse.  They love the forage, but they don't like the biting deer flies that live in this shady moist area, or the ticks they are picking up on their ears and heads.  I take them back to the barn before dark, and they are always excited to see me coming so they can run back to their cozy barn, where they lounge around and enjoy the hay I dole out.  Why bother to pick your own leaves when Rain will bring them to you, right?  

 

We had another first experience - we butchered one of the goats.  Noobi, Peaches first kid.  She was the scrawniest of the whole herd, and never recovered her good condition following the birth of her set of kids.  It's not possible to keep every goat, I know, and the recommendation is to keep the best and eat the rest.  She wasn't the best.  

We watched many YouTube videos and re-read the butchering chapter in the goat book before we attempted it.  I put a halter on her and lead her to a bowl of treats and retreated with Wendigo.  Brandon did the deed (pow!), and we hoisted her up by her back legs and stripped off the skin and pulled out the guts.  Then we got busy with the bone saw and knives.  I felt like a carnivore, for sure.

The fella whose video instructions we followed was butchering a young boar meat goat, and he made beautiful little steaks and chops.  Our scrawny little Nubian goat didn't really look like the same animal.  We mostly left the meat on the bone in big roasts, and ground up the small bits.  We smoked a leg, shoulder, and a rack of ribs in our backyard smoker, and the meat was tasty but super chewy.  At that point we were doubtful that we were goat meat enthusiasts.  But, I cut the smoked meat off the bones and into chunks, then cooked it with some beans and cabbage in the instapot pressure cooker.  It was really good!  Wendigo got a fair share, and I made some smoked bone stock too.  We haven't tried the ground meat that we made yet.  Since Peaches gave us two more boys this spring, I think we will get even more practice making and eating goat meat in the future.

 

The greens in the greenhouse did wonderfully, and the lettuce that I kept harvesting returned over and over, but now is going bitter and bolting.  We had several batches of cooked radish greens too.  I have baby cabbages in the greenhouse, plus green beans, squash, cucumbers, turnips, and onions in the summer garden.  The rabbits enjoyed the peas and lettuce I planted in the summer garden.  I'm dreaming up a new rabbit proof garden fence.  It's not uncommon to see three or four rabbits in the garden at a time!