Looking to Learn More?

Thinking about raising your own flock of chickens for eggs?

Wondering if a goat would make a great lawnmower?

Next month, we'll be teaming up with the people at Brick City Gardens to lead a workshop on raising livestock in an urban setting.  You can learn the in's and out's of caring for and maintaining a variety of animals like chickens, ducks, goats, rabbit and quail.  We'll teach you a myriad of things including what legalities to be aware of, proper ways of slaughter, and tips on how to succeed.

The event will be held at Schlafly Bottleworks, Maplewood on Saturday, April 30th from 9:00am-12:00pm.  Cost is $40.  To pre-register email Sue at brickcitygardens@yahoo.com or call (314) 630-5910.  Learn more here.

Meet the Kids...

We've been on "goat watch" for the last few weeks, as two of the does at our Waterloo location were pregnant.  We spent entire weekends and much of our spare time on weekdays waiting for the girls to give birth, and they finally did just the other day (within days of eachother, too).  We've now got three kids:  Two males and one female.

Summer update

The end of July was a busy time for us. Most notably, we no longer have goats - for several reasons. But we do, however, have about 45 pounds of goat meat in the freezer. We also participated in a couple benefits for Slow Food St. Louis: Earlier in July at a special dinner held at The Crossing where some of our produce was featured on the menu, and also at Slow Food's annual Art of Food benefit toward the end of the month where we donated a basket of produce and a tour of the homestead to a lucky bidder.

Sadly, we lost about 15 of our chickens last week - some we've had for over a year and had grown very attached to, and others that would have just begun to start laying eggs any day. A raccoon had eaten a hole through the wood of our chicken coop, and we awoke one morning to find the hens dead. We are thankful that 5 survived, and we're contemplating what to do about acquiring more birds for our flock.

These days there's always work to do: Various plants are done growing and we're taking them out of the ground, and it's also the time of year when we need to get our fall crop ready to be planted. The popcorn in the front yard has recently come down, and we've been enjoying the delicious sweet corn from our side yard. Our fall corn crop is about 2 inches tall so far, the cucuzza squash is starting to get huge, and we're picking peppers as fast as we can. Gleaning has also become a favorite activity of ours, as we scour St. Louis for unclaimed plums, apples, and pears. In addition to all this, we're expecting the two new litters of bunnies to be born this week.

The animals...

Our goats, Gumby and Gidget, have really come out of their shells lately. We watch them play fight and nuzzle with each other, and get into mischief around the chicken coop. Our neighbors think they're a hoot, too.

The baby rabbits are getting bigger each day. Since we have such an abundance of salad greens, mustard, kale, chard, and cabbage, we try to supplement their feed with a feast of these fresh leaves every day.

Homestead news: Goats

The goats are getting settled in. They're fun to have around and they're certainly more quiet than most of the dogs in the neighborhood!

Got Milk?

We are so excited to announce that we have two Nigerian Dwarf goats reserved from Deborah at: www.nigeriandwarfdairygoats.com - a young doe (pictured) and a small whether to keep her company.

Here are some facts about Nigerian Dwarf goats, and goat milk:

• The goat was the first animal to be domesticated, besides the dog.
• Nigerian Dwarfs are small, and typically aren't taller than 21 inches high.
  
• They're very popular as pets, in part because Nigerian Dwarfs are gentle, easily trainable goats and they do especially well around children.
  
• They require little space and are inexpensive to keep.
  
• More of the world's people consume goat milk than cow milk.
• The breed gives a lot of milk for their size, averaging 2.5 pounds per day.
• Their milk has very high butterfat and protein content. The higher protein means we get more cheese from the milk.
• It also has a much lower bacterial count than cow milk. So you don't have to pasteurize goat milk.

We will be very eager to see how much of our dairy needs can be met by having our own backyard pet goat.

FDA approves use of ‘pharm’ animals

In a measure that spells out trouble for all animals, the Food and Drug Administration approved last Friday the first ever drug made from genetically engineered animals – in this case, a blood thinner derived from goat milk.

According to reports, the drug is produced by first injecting human DNA into goat embryos. These embryos then get implanted into the wombs of surrogate mommy goats. Not long later, baby goats are born that themselves go on to produce milk with special blood-thinning qualities.

This leads us to speculate that not only will domestic animals continue to be housed under horrific conditions for the purposes of meat production, cosmetic testing, or scientific research – but now, the FDA will allow pharmaceutical companies the right to run their very own CAFOs.

New Year, New Beginnings

The two of us at YellowTree Farm are really excited about 2009, and we have some big plans in store for the coming year.

First, I finally quit my day job selling cars right before the holidays so that I can concentrate all my time and energy on gardening and caring for animals. Fortunately, while much of the nation's economy is struggling, Danielle managed to land herself a better job and starts next week. Her new salary will afford the both of us some peace of mind as we dive deeper into the waters of homesteading.

In animal news: We're in the final stages of selecting the various animal breeds we plan on raising this year. We're getting some rabbits in the next few weeks (for food and worms), and we have two Nigerian Dwarf Dairy goats scheduled to be born on the 11th. Unfortunately, hatching eggs of the breeds of geese and chicken we desire won't be available until February, so those will have to wait a little longer. In an effort to maintain peace with our neighbors and keep the noise down, we've decided not to have any roosters. We will focus breeding rabbits, quail, duck, and geese.

Other sustainable excitement: I just got done rehabbing the neighbor's old, abandoned chicken coop. It was a mess at the beginning, but I've spent time cleaning it out and recently finished installing new nesting boxes. It still needs a few more roosts before the girls can move into the coop in the Spring.

We also ran into trouble finding a local source for oil lamps, but luckily we found some people selling them on the internet. Our lamps should be here within the week. We can't wait to see how many ways we can cut down on our energy usage this year.

We're still anticipating our biggest expense to be the compost and soil building components. We need this before we can begin the back breaking process of the double digging method of biointensive gardening. Danielle's working on submitting a proposal to Lowe's sponsorship program to see if the corporation will be willing to donate some of the materials we need. We hope to hear a response from Lowe's before the end of winter.

Keep checking back to see updates on all our happy animals and planting progress.

Happy New Year, and happy homesteading

Justin