My Milking Parlor

Milking is finally smoothing out a bit, as Latte and I have gotten into a rhythm. She's giving me about a pound of milk each morning, give or take, which isn't great, but I'm hopeful that it's on the increase.

She's a first freshener Nigerian Dwarf Goat, and we've left her baby with her, both of which account for the low milk numbers. Once he's weaned and we go to twice a day milking, we should get more. What we do currently is separate them at night, and I take the first morning's milk while Dragon gets to nurse throughout the day. He's growing well, and it beats bottle feeding. I have enough to do around the farm, and my motto is let mamas be mamas because they'll do it better than we do.

So, I bought the canopy above, optimistically thinking it would enable me to milk even when it was raining. Well, we haven't had a single drop of rain (well, we've had drops, but that's about it) since we bought it, and our last best hope for July rolled on outta here last night without even wetting the bottom of the rain gage. It did, however, at least leave a pattern on the pavement, which is more than any of the other systems have done.

And here's a photo of my matching Delux Solar Dryer, Farm edition. Look how dry and crunchy our grass is—it's so sad. But my cow poles make me smile each time I look at them. The girls and I painted the spots last weekend, as it was finally cool enough to paint in the morning. We've had them white for a while, just waiting for the weather to give us a break.