Buzz first arrived on the homestead the same day Reba arrived, last November. Buzz was a Nigerian Dwarf and he was a “wether.” That means, he was a castrated male. We brought him home with Reba as a friend for her; goats are herd animals and very social so they don’t do well by themselves. We told the kids that Buzz would be a temporary part of the homestead because our goal was to have two dairy goats. Well, we sold Reba’s twins a little over a month ago and we found out about a Nigerian/Saanen doeling from the same breeder who sold us Reba. He was very gracious and told us to let him know when we were ready to pick her up. We sold the twins but we kept putting off picking up the doeling because the kids weren’t ready to part with Buzz quite yet. We had many family discussions about our goals at Milligan Hill and how we gave Buzz a good life and it was time for him to give back to us. Everyone was finally on board so last Friday we picked up Lena. She is beauty and slowly adapting to life here.

Today we planned to help a friend process his chickens and he agreed to help us process Buzz. One of our goals all along was to use any extra goats we have for meat but as with any new skill, it seemed overwhelming. After a long morning of processing 11 chickens and bagging the meat, livers, hearts, feet and heads, we were ready to begin with Buzz. It was hot and everyone was tired but the guys pushed through and finished the job. We are excited to try the meat and we are so thankful for this animal and the life he lived and the meat he provided for our family.

After everyone left, we cleaned the kitchen, packaged the meat, took showers and then rested for a few hours. We milk Reba at 5pm, so we headed back out around then to clean up buckets, bury organs and blood and put processing equipment away. I didn’t help process the animals today but I did clean out all the bloody, feather-filled buckets. We will all rest well tonight.