Fall is among us

Oh how I love Autumn! The cool crisp air, trees changing to beautiful colors, pumpkin pie and more apples then I know what to do with.

We're busy putting up enough hay to get us through until next spring and planning breedings for our dairy goats. The wethers are almost ready for the butcher and the does are drying up. Soon Christmas will be here and hopefully we will be ready.

We added a new member to our herd, a sweet little Nigerian Dwarf named Macy. Miss Macy is a wonderful addition to our little herd, she has a sweet disposition and puts out a decent amount of milk for being so little. Some changes are coming our way. We are selling one of our Oberhasli does (and butchering her two wethers) and will be moving our breeding program to polled Nigerians, Saanens, and Oberhaslis. We dislike disbudding our kids but we do not keep does with horns, so we think this will be a great move for us. The only goats allowed to have horns on our property are the meat wethers since they are butchered by 6 months old.

We also have some beautiful new kittens ready for their new families. We have flame point Himalayans available now and blue smoke, black smoke, tuxedo, and bi color Himalayans available in the next few weeks. These are being sold for a breeder friend of ours. Please email me if interested. This will be an on going arrangement between us and our friend so stay tuned for more to come.

Enjoy the beautiful fall weather, soon winter will be among us. Time for some hearty root vegetable soup to warm us up.

Taking advantage of late summers harvest

Picked a bushel of apples today and put up apple sauce. Tomorrow apple pie, blackberry jam and cajeta!
Took advantage of the Pacific Northwests abundant wild blackberries and will be putting up some blackberry jam tomorrow.

If you haven't tried cajeta it is like caramel but instead of caramelized sugar it is caramelized milk with only a little sugar. Oh SO YUMMY!! Not hard to make just takes a bit because of the stirring. When you have dairy goats you have to do something with all the milk. So this is a delicious treat and will go great with the apple pie and ice cream tomorrow!

Welcome to our homestead!

Well today is one of those mornings were the chores seem to out weigh the time I have to do them! At our homestead in beautiful Bellingham WA we milk goats, make and sell cheese and  cajeta ( a sort of Mexican caramel  but MUCH better then caramel!) We also sell naturally raised goat meat in spring and summer, sell organic free range chicken eggs, as well as raise Traditional Persian cats. Oh and did I forget our garden?! It supplies organic produce for my family year round, yep even in winter!

On this blog I will share recipes, tips and tricks for animal husbandry, garden tips and more. You will also get a glimps of our busy fun life on our homestead. Our goal for our homestead is to eventually be almost completely self sufficient, to freeze enough milk and eggs and meat to get us through winter and to sell what we don't need to offset our costs. Over the next few years we will be working on making the animals self sufficient as well. Meaning we would grow more then 90% of their foods while they supply our foods. My husband Greg and I decided several years ago that this was a better life for us and our son.

Exciting News! A Persian breeder friend of ours has asked us to sell some kittens for her. We have some beautiful flame point Himalayan kittens arriving next week along with smoke blacks, tuxedos,  blue smokes, bi colors and seal points. These are pet quality kittens that will be looking for wonderful families to take them home. Please contact me for more information on the kittens. Silvercreekpersians@gmail.com