Month: March 2019

Northern California is having an incredibly wet spring, like a number of other places.

That has most outdoor activities on hold — can’t even get good goat kid videos! (Goats don’t like water, in case you didn’t know that).

There are some up-sides to constant wet — like personal down-time. Time to read and ponder, to explore some new ideas or to engage in a little introspection, or thinking about life.

Inside time instead of outside time, on more than one level.

I recently stumbled upon Scott Barry Kaufman. His work seems like an area worth exploring – especially for those interested in human potential and development. There are even a few online assessments for people to explore a little more about themselves, the Light Triad Scale and the Characteristics of Self-Actualization Scale are just two.

… and now, 19 hours later (we left it in a cool room at 61 degrees overnight because it wasn’t quite ready after 12 hours …

… now waiting for whey to drain out and curds to firm up.

All eight of the new kids got to go out into the pasture while the sun was shining. Two of the ASDs (Anatolian Shepherd Dogs) were in the mix as well.

 

The article linked and discussed below touches on how the American Midwest has been transformed and has (perhaps permanently) lost control over its past, people and future.

The story resonates deeply with me.  The farm shown in the image below is one, surviving family farm I’m deeply rooted in.  The rural communities described in the article linked below were like my own.

 

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Excerpt below from “How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms” – The Guardian, March 10,2019

“Over time, it has extracted wealth and power from communities. We can see how that has impacted rural main streets. You can see the boarded-up storefronts. You can see the lack of economic opportunity.

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But Kalbach fears something bigger than the loss of her own farm. Farmers are ageing and their children either have little interest in working the land or cannot afford the sophisticated equipment needed to compete with corporations.

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Now what you’ve done is you have lost the innate knowledge of how to grow food and raise animals. You’ve lost a whole generation of it, probably two. Now we are going to rely on a few corporations to decide who is going to eat and who isn’t. We’re one generation away from that picture right now.”

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In many ways, what we are doing here at Two Bucks Ranch draws upon Midwestern roots and values.  But it is not kindly rewarded by what capitalism has become in the global economy, by what our republic has become at the hands of lobbyists and citizens who have lost a common purpose.

Little goats everywhere.

Chocolate and her twins didn’t make it into today’s photo shoot — but tomorrow!

… in the corner of stall two for the next 15 minutes

She’s about 1.5 months old, wears a hot-pink halter, and DNA test shows markers for quality milk (Beta Casein A2A2 – high protein and yield) and mono polling (offspring will have no horns).

She still lives with her mom in Shasta County which has endured heavy snow and rain of late. We have no recent pictures, so here’s a look back to a week old. Her full name is Wishing Well Farms Lucy.

Total acidity is .81%, pH is 3.3 and S0₂ was 4 ppm. Added 15 grams of sodium metabisulfite to boost S0₂. Nice color, complexity, tastes and looks very promising … downside — another year in the barrel — it’s too young.

Here’s a look back at the start, and here.