About the only thing that takes the sting out of having to sell animals for us is that all of the animals we have thus far sold have moved on to great situations and caring, hopeful people. The same is true for our little herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats.
As I posted earlier about the family conference we had on Thanksgiving Day, we realized that on our small property we had to pick and choose very carefully what we grow and husband and that we need something more in our homegrown diets than milk and milk products. So we decided to sell our goats and plant vegetable gardens in their pens (most of which had been used as gardens in the first place by previous owners).
Well, a most earnest and hopeful young man came and picked up our herd last weekend. He is bringing back into productivity a good sized old farm in West Virginia and very wisely he is beginning his efforts with getting goats. The goats will eat the weeds out of the old hay fields and clean up the woods and give him a start on a handsome income stream. Very wise indeed.
It was hard to see our goats go, however. It is very quiet around here without them. Peaceful, my husband says. Goats have such a playful, mental sort of energy compared to cows say. I always miss the bit of the spectrum of consciousness that each animal fills. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else. Yes, I miss their milk. I love feta cheese and would otherwise happily keep goats for no other reason but than to have flavorful feta cheese. But it wasn’t their milk I initially missed after they left. It was their “beingness,” their qualities, their ways of thinking and interacting with the world. Each creature (and plant too) has its own intelligence, its own way of contributing. Put the many intelligences together and you have Nature, I guess, so I am aware of any piece that suddenly goes missing. However, Maggie May and Iris and Ivy and Ramone are doing good work in a new place that needs them with fine young people to care for them so a new fabric of natural intelligence will be woven up there in West Virginia.
Meanwhile it is past time for us to get going with planning our gardens and ordering seeds. I have read in many places in the blogosphere that heirloom and open pollinated seeds are already in short supply for this upcoming growing season. Ahem. I guess I had better hurry it up. These are the catalogs I am receiving and studying:
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange - emphasizes heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, flower, and herb seeds that grow well in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Fedco - cold hardy selections for the Northeast. I don’t know if our mountain location qualifies our otherwise mid-Atlantic region location enough to use their seeds or not. A very neat co-op worth checking into in any case.
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - offers heirloom seeds from over 70 countries. People rave about them and also talk about attending interesting homesteading type events at their place in Missouri.
Amishland Heirloom Seeds - You have to go to this site and read about this woman. She is a one woman show of traveling and saving precious seeds. Incredible. She comes highly recommended by Rob at Wildcraft. Read his comments on his Seed Sources page.
Heirloom Acres Seeds - I have also seen this company highly recommended. I think Scott at Homesteader Life uses this company. They have over 1000 varieties of seed as well as seed potatoes and organic herb plants. We are in the market for all of those things and so will be studying their catalog closely.
Seed Savers Exchange - This organization is well known but I don’t think I have ever gotten their catalog. Maybe once when I was gardening back in Denver almost 20 years ago now. In any case, being a part of a non-profit organization of gardeners who are sharing and preserving rare seeds can only be a good thing. I really look forward to it.
I used to use so many other catalogs back in my gardening days like Territorial Seeds (I know a number of people who get their sprouting seeds from them these days), The Cook’s Garden, and Seeds of Change. I will have to check them out again this time around but to start with, I am going to focus on Southern Exposure because they are located so close to us.
So this is the latest development here on the homestead. It is a good development - a necessary one - but it is also one that has required and definitely will require a good deal of adjustment and more hard work and slow but sure knowledge and skill building. There is always more, isn’t there? But we are taught in Sahaj Marg that the natural reward for work well done is more work, so I guess we are on the right track!
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
