Back At It

Back At It: It being the Wild Willow Farm Blog! 

On Wednesday morning, I woke up from a fog of sickness, and went out to do the morning goat chores for the first time in two days. Brandon had been doing them while I wasted away wrapped in blankets inside, sure I was dying of some horrible winter sickness. It was a beautiful morning, cold, but not cripplingly so. Sun was rising, the sky was a clean blanket of blue, and all the trees stood tall blanketed in thick snow. I laid eyes on the closest goat house, and what do I see? A dead goat.

Yeah, it turns out that when everyone in your house is sick in a two week period, and your just plain exhausted, sometimes you miss things. For most people its bills, or you know household chores. For me, it was a goat, (and dishes, lets be real). So here I am, my first morning back to semi-normal and I’m carrying a young, dead goat through a beautiful twenty below morning and I’m thinking, “What the actual f*ck.”

Then I remembered something a friend said as I explained our chicken-pocolypse this past fall. “Why don’t you ever write about that stuff on Instagram?” “Its not really pretty,” is what I think I responded with. I try to put the pretty stuff on social media, I won’t lie about that. I love sharing the gorgeous sunrise over the snow covered peony fields. Or the way the goats look when they greet me as I pour grain. I love to show my daughter being sweet and holding baby chicks and my son helping me weigh newborn goat kids. Those are the moments the grip my heart and remind me why I love to farm, why I love to grow our own food and be a stay at home mom.  With the amount of time people spend flipping through Instagram and Facebook feeds, I want to show them the good that happens on our little farm.

This is all to say: dead goats and the great chicken massacre of 2019 are not fit for Instagram. You know what it is fit for though? Our blog. Yes, this blog! I love to write. I love to write about the good, the bad, and the ugly. I have written about five other posts and I just couldn’t find the right way to fling myself back into writing this blog, but I need to, so here it is. This blog is getting a bit of a recharge over the next month. Along with more regular posts, I’ll be adding pictures, and links to websites and recipes we have used.

Before I get started on all of that, let me fill you all in on the big changes that have happened with the Hoovers this past year or so:

First, while we have welcomed several new animals to our menagerie, we had one huge addition this past June. Brandon and I welcomed our third child, Milo Ray into the world. As my Grandmother says, “Milo came into this world smiling.” That statement couldn’t be more true, and he continuously brings so much joy and love to our family.

Next, I’m excited to officially announce that we moved right next door, into a home that fits our growing family much more comfortably. We all are feeling very spoiled with our two bathrooms and giant front porch. I can’t wait to share more about the house and all the stuff we are doing on the new property. The move over to the house was a little insane, but we have enjoyed a nice cozy winter so far. Now that we have passed to Solstice, and the light is returning, we are starting to plan for the summer. We have so many ideas and dreams, and now we have a place where we hope to have endless summers to execute all of them.

Among the coziness of winter, we have kept nice and busy. Brandon and I have found some amazing books and podcasts about herbs, animal rearing, and more. Brandon has been trying to work through the new shop and unpack to the point of making the space more usable for his projects. I have started a new hobby of caring for a sourdough starter and baking bread regularly. (Am I the only one who considers a sourdough starter to be as involved as having a small pet?) The kids are busy with growing up much too quickly, school, and hockey. The dogs keep themselves busy with long naps by the woodstove. And our insane cat Olive? Well, she keeps busy by slapping our old dog Bella with her paw, then taking off to hide in the linen closet.

Life is good, but not without its faults. In the Fall, during the move, we lost over half our flock to a fox. By the time I realized just how many the fox had taken, we were left with 6 hens and a traumatized rooster.  We found some more hens for the flock mid-winter, but we are going to have to do a lot of building this summer to work towards our goal of having a self sustaining meat and egg flock.

As you know from the beginning of this post, we just lost a goat. Thankfully, it was not one we intended to keep for dairy or breeding purposes. The death was still disappointing. Not just because he will not go to filling our freezer, but because the purposeless loss of any animal on our farm is not something we are comfortable with. Often animals have to be culled for various reasons, and there is a practical purpose to that task. Just randomly losing an animal signals to a problem with the animal, and something we missed. In the past three weeks the temperature has dropped to at least -20, if not -40, every single day. While the highs occasionally have ranged near 0, I can tell you it has not been often. This cold spell is not something we, nor our animals, are used to and it was a hard January for all.  The weather forecast is signaling a wonderful change, and I am so relieved to see some above zero temperatures in the future.

Personally, I like to think of our mistakes as lessons for the future. It turns out that three years is not enough time to learn everything you need to in goat farming, however we intend to keep learning because we love having our own fresh milk, cheese, and farm raised meat. We are surrounded with an awesome community of goat people, friends who lend a hand, and have google at our fingertips making us capable to handle anything.

Spring is going to creep up on us, and we will be busy and full of new life. That being said, I am so excited to write more, and on a particular subject instead of just a general catch up post! If there is anything you want to hear more about, please let us know! We love feedback!

Thanks for stopping by!

Genna