Goat Lady Speaks: Why We Raise So Many Animals, Part One

We now possess 3 goats, 1 lamb, 7 hens, 12 chicks (future hens), 4 guineas, 4 pekin ducklings, 13 muscovy ducklings, 1 dog, and 2 cats. It’s great fun having all of these animals around. I enjoy my time doing chores in the morning, even though they take more of my time than I would like. The important thing is that we have fresh milk and fresh eggs every day. This fall we will have home-grown lamb chops, and this summer we will enjoy the outdoors in the evenings with hopefully fewer mosquitoes pestering us as we walk around the pond. Live is really good.

Some people see this little experiment in home-grown food raising as a lot of work for something that you could get for $2.50/gallon (or whatever milk costs nowadays - I wouldn’t know), or a dollar a dozen (for eggs) at Super Wal-Mart. I’ll go out on a limb and say that cost is highly irrelevant to the food we eat. Not completely irrelevant, because obviously we cannot spend 100% of our income on food, just highly irrelevant to a reasonable extent. There is a value beyond cost in raising your own food. This applies to gardening as well, naturally; however, we were unable to have a garden this year, so that is why I am talking about animals.

I'm starting a little series here on my blog about why we are doing this farm stuff. I hope you enjoy it. More to come...