February: Preparation Month

When I lived in the city February was just another month on the calendar.  Since moving out to the country with the intent of living more off the land, February has become a month of transition.  According to the movement of the earth around the sun it is technically winter.  But this is the southern part of the United States and it often feels more like summer then winter.  Last week it was warm enough for shorts but yesterday’s low was 29f (-1.6c).  On those warm days I am itching to get the spring garden planted, but since temperatures below freezing are still possibly, I must wait. 

  
No matter where one lives, for gardeners’ winter is a time to plan.  Seed catalogs start arriving in the mail with all sorts of tempting choices to choose from.  Seasoned gardeners may ponder trying out new varieties of vegetables or flowers.  I on the other hand am just trying to get started.  My first year here I spent months digging rocks out of 6 inches of soil to form my first vegetable bed.  I also tried planting a few things in a compost pile topped with soil.  Even though we have been in a catastrophic drought since long before I moved out here, that first year’s garden was pretty good.  Not great, but it was much better than anyone else I know who attempted a garden.  I at least had a few cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash to share.  I also brought in a few tomatoes and other crops for personal use.  Last year due to a variety of circumstances, the garden was not fruitful.  But now it is February and I get to plan for a new season.  Last fall I learned about Straw Bale Gardening and after having studied this method, I am eager to get going.  I have high hopes that this year, using straw bales as my medium, I will have a bumper crop.
  
Though I have spent the past month studying a variety of resources from gardening experts in hopes of improving my successes at growing my own food, I have also been studying other topics, such as goat care.  There is an expectancy in the air here as daily we watch the development of Lawn Mower and Bambi, our two pregnant goats.  Until early January the two does lived full time with our young buck.  We never saw the act done but we could tell he was eager to figure out how to do his job and clearly he succeeded.  Goat gestation is around 145 to 155 days.  With that in mind and other evidence I am guessing Lawn Mower will kid in early March.  Bambi does not seem to have progressed as far as Lawn Mower so I am guessing she will kid in late March or early April.
  
Lawn Mower is a Boer crossed with some unknown breed, possibly kiko based on the shape of her horns.  Both Boer’s and Kiko’s are meat goat breeds (though Kiko’s do descend from a combination of a meat and a dairy breed).  Goat meat is eaten by many cultures around the world and is in short supply here in the United States.  There is big money in raising meat goats for ranchers.  When it comes to the commercial meat goat industry, Texas is a major player, producing thousands of pounds of goat meat each year.  Texas has also been hit hard by a multi-year drought which is hurting all the ranchers and farmers in the state.  Without rain, wild grasses can’t grow, and bushes and trees die.  Goats are browsers.  They eat bushes, trees, and the wild grasses.  Due to the drought, ranchers have to buy alfalfa and other sources of food.  I may only have 6 goats right now but I am still affected by this drought.  Not much is growing due to the lack of rain and so I too have to buy alfalfa and grain to feed those goats.  Yesterday I spent $15.65 on each square bale of alfalfa I purchased.  Believe me; six goats can devour a bale of hay in only a few days. 
   
Bambi is a dairy goat.  People more knowledgeable on goat breed characteristics then I am have guessed she is part Nubian, part Alpine, and possibly part pygmy or some type of mini-dwarf breed.  She is a small goat whatever her genealogy.  Meat goats are developed to produce a lot of meat, whereas dairy goats are bred to produce a lot of milk.  Even though Bambi is half the size of Lawn Mower, from her earliest days Bambi had a bigger udder.  Bigger udders are needed to hold more milk.  I have read that dairy goats can easily produce a gallon or more of milk a day. Dairy goats are not common here in my part of Texas but they do exist, usually to provide milk to a rancher’s own children.  Bambi was found in the road and so it is only a guess where she might have come from.
   

We may not know the day the does became pregnant but we know who the daddy is.  Midnight is a Spanish buck.  Like Boer goats, Spanish goats were developed for meat. 
   

Sometime in the next month of two there will be new life running and jumping all over the goat enclosure.  Goats can have anywhere from one to four kids, though twins are most common.  Since Lawn Mower is a meat breed I have no plans to try and milk her.  Bambi on the other hand is a dairy breed and therefore she will be milked.  An elderly neighbor has a milking stand left over from the days he had goats so that is one item I will not have to purchase.  I have never milked a goat or cow, but I am sure there is a YouTube video demonstrating that skill.
   
I also just began an at-home online Meat Goat course through Penn State.  The time spent reading the material and answering the instructor’s questions has already proven worthwhile.  Even though this is the first week and only introductory information was taught, I still learned something.  And even more valuable is I have the ability each week to directly ask the instructor questions.