The end of something special

Like a fleeting summer in Alaska, my six month internship at Toluma Farms goat dairy has quickly come to an end.

Towards then end of my internship I felt ready to move back to my fiance in Sacramento, ready to drive less, ready to go on to the next experience. But literally as soon as I arrived back in Sacramento with my car packed full of my most necessary belongings, I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness...a very special and unique life experience was decidedly over.

There are some things that I won't miss much...chickens who wake up at 5am, having only an open air kitchen with frozen pipes in the middle of winter, being so far from my family.

But there are many more things to miss...fresh eggs everyday, almost no noise pollution, beautiful scenery, working with a small crew of tightly knit people, being in the center of an exciting, growing cheese and dairy belt. And, remarkably, the goats.
 
True, I often felt sick of goats, hated goats, despised their very goaty natures. But now that I don't have to chase escaped goats around five days a week or fend off a pointy-horned beast with a hose, I find a warm fondness for them (but no desire to own one). I feel I didn't say a good enough goodbye to the Toluma Farm goats who were often comical, quirky and affectionate, but I have an open invite to visit and find this closure with them, ha! I now realize how much I enjoy working with and learning about animals, it is an essential contribution to my happiness.

So bring on the sheep! This Sunday it is sheep shearing time again with Flying Mule Farm. I helped out one day last year and have the opportunity to do so again, so I will take it! Flying Mule is offering a two day Wool Handling class, which includes on day in the classroom and one day helping with the shearing. If you are interested you can let me know and I will send you the details.

Kidding Log - 5 and then some

With so much going on in real life, it has been difficult to sit myself down and work up a blog in cyberspace. But is it time for an update...

Here at Toluma Farms we can see the light at the end of the kidding season tunnel. As of this moment 106 does have kidded 245 kids (averaging 2.3 kids per doe), with buck and doe kids nearly even. Here's a short video of the little does we are keeping playing queen of the straw stack (requires a turn of the head or the computer).


one minute of pure yay. from nena johnson on Vimeo.

Almost all of our does will have kidded by the end of March. As each doe kids, we add her to the milking line; thus milking twice daily is fast becoming much more time consuming.

Some rain as finally arrived in our neck of the woods, creating a sense of relief and gratitude in the farming community and I finally get to put my rain jacket to some serious use. I have less than two months left at my internship here and have been thinking about my next steps in farming and life quite a lot.

I recently picked up another job, bookkeeping for Soil Born Farms, an urban agriculture education farm in the Sacramento area. Obtaining this position at this time was great as it combines my passion for farming with my skills in accounting and the timing for Soil Born couldn't have worked out better.

And then there is wedding planning...tents and flowers and dresses, oh my! There is such a riduclous amout of details that go into planning an event like this, I'm glad it's a once in a lifetime event! Thankfully I have some very helpful friends and family.

With all this going on at once, I wonder how I will feel in June, when the internship is over, the wedding is over, the excitement has died down...will I feel a great let down? Will I find 15 other pursuits to add to my plate? Or will I be ready for and appreciate a little break?

Kidding Log - 4

So the reality is, people eat goats. Just like people eat cows or chickens. And meat is the fate of many a male goat (and bull calf). We will raise about 40 meat goats this year and sell them mostly to restaurants in the San Francisco area (perhaps have one at my wedding in May?).

We pull the intended boys from their mothers after 3-4 days, when their mother's milk is clean enough to go into the milk tank and sell. The boys then learn to drink from a beer bottle filled with milk from other freshening does. (Freshen means a doe (cow, horse) has babies and starts producing milk.)

Nature's nectar

Then the meat boys graduate to the bucket. The bucket has ten nipples sticking out of it, so it is like a milk buffet free-for-all; easier and faster for the farmer and the kid. These guys get 2 buckets a day and they certainly loudly demand their meals.

It has been a quiet couple days on the kidding front; only one set of twins in three days. Some of the youngest kids finally aren't so much white. This soft little guy's dad is our other herdsire, Sting, who is an alpine buck.

We are resting up for a kidding storm to match our long awaited rain storm - 26 does are due to kid in the next week!

Kidding Log - 3

The playpen

Since my last post 29 kids have been born to 13 does...it is definitely the year of the white goat! Dairy goats are very prolific animals; most of the does have at least two kids, many have had triplets and two have had singles.

It's interesting to compare kidding this year to lambing at Flying Mule Farm last year. Here with the goats at Toluma we usually kid in a barn, then move the moms and babies into their own freshen pens for 24 to 48 hours so they can bond, eat and not get trampled, stressed or mixed up. It is labor and capital intensive. 

Some of our freshen pens, kind of like my cubicle in a past life

When I helped with lambing last February, it was out in a leased field with no structures around. The ewes were expected to make sure their lambs were cleaned off, nursing and ready to go within 20 minutes of hitting the ground. If an ewe wasn't a good mother and her lamb died or had to be bottle raised, she usually didn't get to stay in the flock.

The goats I am working with now have not had selection pressure to be good mothers. We keep replacement does based on the amount of milk their mothers produce as well as the length of the mothers lactation cycle; a good udder, general good health and mild temperament (ie no kicking in the milking parlor) are also important factors.

Two thirds of the kids born this season have been male...we are still hoping for the female tally to catch up!

Breeding Goats Out of Season

This time of year is difficult on a goat dairy, there is very little milk being produced as the goats are at the end of their lactation cycle. Thus there is not much product to sell and not a lot of income. And input costs are still high with alfalfa for the goats to eat, straw for bedding and labor costs. So to produce a consistent stream of milk year round, Toluma Farms is doing some out of season breeding. 

Goats naturally breed seasonally; as the days shorten in the fall, does naturally cycle and can get pregnant. In order to breed out of season it becomes necessary to simulate that shift into shorter days. 

To accomplish this, we have a string of bright lights that we hung in one side of the barn. We rigged up pens held together with twine for the youngest group of does (all born early in 2011) and for two bucks so they would be exposed to the lights. 

The lights are on a timer and are on from 5am to midnight each day, simulating summer-like length of light.  After two and a half months we will turn off the lights completely and totally separate the does and bucks. And within six weeks of removing the lights the does should come into heat. We'll introduce the bucks back in with the does and out of season breeding commences.

The bucks in their own"summer" pen

A lot of our farm is held together with twine

If all goes according to plan, these does will breed in May and kid in October, supplying the farm with a fresh wave of milk for the winter months. While this will make the farm more financially viable, it also means increased labor and no slow down in the winter months.

Toluma Farms bred out of season several years ago and had a 100% conception rate; I am very interested to see if those results will be repeated.

Meet the bucks

Whiney Lars wearing his green chalk

Here at Toluma Farms, the fall breeding season is wrapping up. Like sheep, goats naturally breed as the days get shorter. The females go into heat every 21 days for about 24 hours. You can usually tell who is in heat because they wag their tails, are more vocal and will hang out next to the male goats. The male goats that are used for breeding are called bucks. Bucks come into rut when the does are in heat, which is displayed by curling their upper lip, flapping their tongues and -brace yourself- urinating all over themselves. This creates a pungent goaty musk that the doe's find irresistible; thus breeding commences.

At Toluma we have five bucks of different breeds used for different purposes. A single buck can impregnate a lot of doe's and consequently provides half the genetics of a herd (the other half provided by each doe). Choosing bucks with traits that will benefit your herd (such as coming from milky mothers with quality teats and good parasite resistance), is very important.

So without further ado - the Toluma Farms buck lineup!

Lars (pictured above) is experiencing his first breeding season and by all appearances is doing a great job.  He is Saanen buck and currently ranked the #1 Saanen buck on the American Dairy Goat Association Young Sire list (a statistical ranking for bucks that haven't sired any babies yet).  Lars is wearing a harness with green chalk on it which helps us keep track of who he is breeding.  When he is doing his job well, there should be lots of chalked up doe's.

The does get chalked when the buck breeds them

Sting

Sting is a big Alpine buck who looks kind of scary but is actually a pretty sweet guy, when he is not trying to rub is goat musk on you. He is the father of many of our good milkers.

Kazeem the Lamancha

Neptune the Lamancha

Kazeem and Neptune are Lamancha goats and despite their European sounding name, this minimally eared breed was developed in Oregon. These two bucks will likely be used to breed the yearling does (that were born early 2011) as they tend to sire small babies - with the intent to give the first time mothers an easy kidding experience.

Fred the boer

Fred is a boer goat, which are generally used for meat and are quite a bit smaller than the milking goats. Eric, the farm manager, was interested in having some multipurpose goats by breeding Fred to some doe's but truthfully, Fred was more interested in eating than the ladies this year.

The first babies are due January 7th and the kidding storm will continue on into April. We offer public tours the first Sunday of every month, starting in January...come check out the farm!

Atumnal Aspirations

This weekend my fiance Matt and I were provided a wealth of occasions to enjoy, learn from and consider for the future.

We were invited to visit Toluma Farms, a 200 acre goat dairy in the small coastal town of Tomales (about a 2 hour drive southwest of Sacramento). The drive provides views of sun-baked rolling hills (and pleasant cloud cover), plenty of cows and the smell of eucalyptus to fill our lungs.

Tomales consists of 204 residents, a cute deli and bakery, a couple churches, post office, an inn and general store. Mostly it seems to be a coffee stop for folks traveling through on their Bay Area weekend excursions.

A view of half the town of Tomales

Toluma Farms is another two miles off the Tomales main drag. The Farm offers one internship opportunity about every 6 months; my interest in this internship is the reason we made the visit. There we met Eric, who lives on the farm, is the goat herd manager and general caretaker. He has a BS in Animal Science from UC Davis, so it is no accident that he is the manager of this expanding farm. We also met Anne Marie who was recently hired for her cheese making skills - pending permits from the county, Toluma Farms will produce and sell their own cheese.

Only a small portion of the 200 acres is currently used for the goats; a good amount is rented out for cattle running and dry potato farming. There is a large barn packed with straw for the goats, an outdoor penning area in which the goats commit mischief, a machine milking parlor with a milk storage tank and a building soon to be converted into a creamery. There are approximately 200 milking goats (not all milking at the same time) and the Farm has recently added a flock of ten East Frisian dairy sheep-right up my alley and the same type of sheep I have hand milked (really one of the only kind of dairy sheep available in the United States).

An internship at Toluma Farms appears to be an exceptional opportunity for me to increase and acquire skills in dairying small ruminants and cheese making.

The nearest city to the Farm is Petaluma, a rural, rolling 30 minute drive. We spent some time wandering around their Old Town. One of the neatest businesses we visited is the Seed Bank which sells 1,200 varieties of heirloom seeds out of the historic Sonoma County National Bank building. The Bank is part of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company; I am happy to say we have some heirloom melons grown from their seeds ripening in the garden as I write!

 

Besides these most agreeable tours of farm and city, we also enjoyed a folksy, mellow rock concert by Fleet Foxes at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley - a cool outdoor Acropolis style venue. The stone steps throughout the venue provide good views for the vertically challenged.

All in all, a successful and full weekend...I look forward to whatever opportunities and challenges the future brings.