It has been busy on the farm, some projects went well, but a lot of other projects didn’t really work and I have to regroup and decide what to do next. I will break the updates up by enterprise to make them easier to read.

Goats

The goat herd continues to be difficult to increase in size. Last kidding season I got up to 42 goats, sold 7 of the kids, and kept 4. However, I continue to lose old goats to worms and some of the young doelings, especially after the year mark. Johne’s disease testing will be required to make sure that the symptoms that I am seeing and assuming are worms are not actually something worse. The buck seems to be doing fine and I have plenty of does that require minimal worming but I still have to cull more proactively. Yearly I have been averaging about 25-30 does before the kidding season, far behind my target of 50 does and one buck for the herd.

Sheep

I made a big mistake with this herd this year. The ram was very aggressive so I sold him too early in the summer and was not able to get another ram until October. Lambing will be late this year because of my mismanagement. I lost fewer sheep to worms than the goat herd so that’s positive. This herd is for internal consumption so the output has been able to keep up with our demand for lamb meat. There are 10 ewes and one ram in the herd.

High Tunnels

Growing crops has been easy, but marketing and selling them have not been. Peppers, Okra, cucumbers, and squash all are very easy to grow in the tunnels. I have yet to find a buyer for anything other than peppers and even this has been sporadic.

Overall I have had some successes on the farm over the last year but a lot of failures. I learn from those though so I can’t complain.