May the Fourth be With You…

When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a teacher when I grew up. Later, the dream turned to writer, then psychologist, then back to teacher, then finally journalist. I could see a lot of things for my future, but I have to admit, moving out of province and becoming a homesteader, was not exactly high on my list of conceivable professions.

I suppose a lot of people, wouldn’t consider homesteader as a profession, anyway.

Yet, here we are.

As part of the homesteader dream, we’d like to be as self sufficient as possible.

Does this mean we are introverts who don’t want to socialize with the outside world?

You betcha!

Just kidding. We simply want to be our own supply for meat, vegetables, cooking supplies, house hold cleaners, … we want to say good bye to the super market, the box stores and the busy shopping malls. We want to be the solutions to our own problems.

To that end, we’ve collected chickens for eggs, we have an order for meat birds coming in later at the end of the month (we’d like to hatch our own meat birds, but – baby steps!), we’ve planted a garden, we’ve lined our driveway with fruit trees; we’re slowly working toward that dream.

And today, we got a little bit closer to being self sufficient.

We travelled into Nova Scotia to pick up a gorgeous Alpine Goat Mommy and her kid. She is in milk, produces a litre to a litre and a half of milk each morning, and one day when baby weens, will most likely do the same at night. 3 litres of goat milk each day.

3 litres of delicious milk, yogurt, cheese, and maybe one day butter.

While they affectionately called her Amber, we decided due to her silky white hair that didn’t really fit. So, since we added her to our family on May the 4th, we thought we’d take a more, … day appropriate name.

Meet Satine and Monty – Newest members of the Red Island Homestead.