Rutland Market

This will be a short post because I want to go to sleep...

Today was Saturday, which means market day.  I woke up early to milk the goats, and then got dressed in my Blue Ledge Farm shirt and squeezed into the truck.  It's about a 30 minute drive to Rutland, but the views were gorgeous, so it seemed to take no time at all.  The morning was very misty and damp, and the mountains were just blue-grey silhouettes in the distance.  I think it's actually more lovely when it's rainy than when it's sunny.  We were worried that the market would be slow because of the bad weather, but it was bustling!  We sold all the cheese except for a camembrie and an herbal chévre and I got to keep them, which is freakin' awesome.  The Rutland market is a lot bigger and busier than the Middlebury one.  The Middlebury market generally is more about quality than quantity...Rutland had it's share of vendors offering crappy t-shirts and generic jewelry.  However, the best bread in the state, according to Hannah, is available at this market.  It's called Bear Mountain Bread and, although I have not tried every loaf in the state, I would not be surprised if this was the best.  It has a crackly crust and a chewy interior and it's absolutely delicious.  And the guy selling it is probably the most adorable old man I've ever seen.  Hannah told me he's a former Jesuit priest but he fell in love with a nun and they left and got married.  

I got paid!  Even though I spilled milk all over the floor, they paid me $60 dollars.  I got a raise!!  Now I'll be able to buy food and possibly gas!  Wowie zowie.  

There was a little festival hosted by co-op on the green in Middlebury tonight, and I went with Greg and the kids.  They had asked us to bring a goat with us, so we loaded up a tiny kid (baby goat) along with the kids (baby humans) in back seat of the truck.  This goat was the cutest thing ever...you could just pick her up and carry her around.  Livia named her Sarah.  Once we got back to the farm and put her back with the other goats, she kept trying to follow us around and wagged her tail like a dog.  I wanted to put her in my bed and pretend she was a teddy bear.

Now I'm tired and it's late...I have pictures of the bread and the goat but I'll put them up tomorrow. 

Night night.  

Stupidity

Picture 1 My Blue Ledge Farm shirt...they come in also sorts of really adorable colors...this lovely rust/orange is my other favorite.

Picture 2 Vegetables from the co-op!

Picture 3 YUMMY SOUP

Picture 4 A Barn Swallow (I did not take this picture...I give credit to www.wildphotosphotographry.com)

So guess what?  I'm getting tan!  Working in the garden and eating most of my meals outside is starting to turn me a shade browner.  Excitement!  I never get tan.

What I decided today is that I'm going to pretend that my blahg is like a daily newspaper.  And it will have columns, or maybe sections, like a newspaper.  The cute animal story (if I happen to have one) will be called "A ____'s Tail" (insert species).    I'll always have an overview of my day, but I can't think of what that should be called.  I could just call it the Daily Summary, but that's boring.  Or maybe "A Summer-y Day."  Anyway, the food section will be called "Barn Swallows" (that's my favorite).  If I ever wrote a farm cookbook, I'd call it Barn Swallows, and have a picture of a barn swallow on the cover.

A Summer-y Day

My scheduled hours today were from 8-12 in the cheese house and PM milking (4:30ish-6:30ish).  Third day in a row that I could get up late!  The day started out well enough; I worked in the cheese house salting camembrie and wrapped cheese for the farmer's market tomorrow.  Then I went to the co-op to get some vegetables for dinner...god I love the coop so much.  Spinach was on sale!  Joyous day.  I got back from the coop and got ready for evening milking.  The goats were being so obnoxious!  You have to open this little door and let in 10 goats, but sometimes they just refuse to come through and it's so frustrating.  So that put me in a really bad mood.  And then when I was done, I wasn't concentrating, and I turned off the machine without pumping the last batch of milk into the tank, so it all spilled on the floor.  Probably like, $50 worth of milk or something.  Who knows.  I felt so terrible...I'm probably the worst intern ever.  I can't believe they pay me.  I should ask them not to pay me this week.

Ok, and the angst is over.

A Pig's Tail:  This isn't really a story, I just wanted to use the title.  I fed the pigs today!  That's it.  I guess I can say more...there's nothing that makes you feel more like a farmer than feeding the pigs.  Something about climbing over fences carrying buckets of grain and pouring it into a feeding bin while 3 pigs and 10 piglets are squealing and fighting to get the food and then carrying six full buckets of whey and pouring it over the pigs heads because their faces are still buried in the grain in the bin makes you feel like you're really in touch with those colonial farmer roots.  The whole thing is a frightening experience, however, because while I'm feeding them, all I can think of is Princess Mononoke and those huge boars with those worm things coming out of them....that movie was scary.  Amazing, but scary.  

To comfort myself after the milking mishap, I made myself some soup.  Soup is the most soothing food ever.

Barn Swallows: Vegetable Quinoa Soup

Vegetable broth

Asparagus

Spinach

Mushroom

(Potatoes would be good but I didn't have any)

Peas, fresh or frozen (at the co-op they sell local organic frozen peas)

Quinoa, cooked

Flavorings (I am the queen of spice so I used ginger, red pepper, curry powder, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and sesame oil)

Put vegetable broth in a pot, add asparagus, bring to boil, add mushrooms, boil for a minute, lower to simmer, add spinach and quinoa, simmer until spinach is wilted, and turn off heat.  Pour into bowl, add flavorings, and eat!  But don't burn your tongue.

So, if anyone has any ideas about what my Daily Overview should be called, post them here.  Or email them to me, if posting is not an option for you.  Or any ideas for other sections would be good.

Thursdays

So I know that I said Tuesdays were the crazy day, but Thursdays are even crazier!  The problem is, we are producing so much milk right now and making so much cheese that there's nowhere to put it.  Greg is trying to make all these cheeses that require all these different moulds (it's funny, because cheese deals with both molds and moulds...moulds are the containers that the curds are ladled into), but there isn't enough space.  We're trying to make chévre and camembrie in the same day...it's so complicated that I can't really write it down without boring people to death...sorry if I already have.  What it comes down to is that today I washed moulds from 9AM-3PM (6 hours).  With a 15 minute break for lunch.  

So it's this absolutely insane day and it turns out that there's another tour!  It's a group of 40 older people from an assisted living place.  Greg was saying how when you get old, it's just like college again (he once worked in an assisted living home)...you're put in one place with people who are the same age as you and they have all these activities set up for you, field trips and classes and such.  Anyway, we're trying to wash all these moulds before we have to pour camembrie, but we have to give these old people a tour around the cheese house while we're doing it.  Story: Greg HATES flies...understandably, because they bring contamination into his perfectly clean cheese house.  So he is this master fly killer.  He can just catch them in his hand.  It's crazy.  And he's giving the tour, and the whole time he's talking his eyes are just following this fly around, and the fly lands right over this tiny old lady's head, and he stops talking and just suddenly slaps the wall over this woman's head and kills the fly.  She was scared to death.  Thankfully, this incident did not stop them from buying about 200 dollars worth of cheese and shirts.

After I was freed from the house of cheese, I gardened a little bit and made dinner.  Dinner tonight was a quinoa salad.

Rainbow Quinoa Salad

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup vegetable broth (or water + salt)

Tomato (red)

Carrot (orange)

Yellow bell pepper (yellow)(duh)

Avocado (green)

Onion

Sunflower seeds (or any sort of seed/nut)

Balsamic Vinegar (or any acidic liquid)

Olive Oil (or any other oil)

Maple Syrup (optional, but yummy)

Combine quinoa and broth in pot, bring to boil, let simmer for 15 minutes/until liquid is absorbed.  Chop vegetables into bite sized pieces.  Mix balsamic vinegar and oil in a 1:3 ish ratio and add some maple syrup, if you like (I like).  Mix everything together, add sunflower seeds, and I added nutritional yeast because I put it on everything.  YAY

I didn't take any pictures today because I was so busy : (

Deal with it.

My Day Off

Picture 1  Lake Dunmore from Branbury Beach 

Picture 2 The school bus that came to tour today

Picture 3 The bracelet I made today

I set no alarm, but I woke up at 5:45 this morning.  I am just programmed now, after only a week.  So I forced myself to go back to sleep until 7:30, and then I got up.  It was so cold this morning!  I bundled up and refused to go downstairs until about 10.  

I heard this weird, completely out of context noise this morning.  It was the sound of a school bus stopping right below my window.  I looked out the window and found, to my relief, that I was not absolutely insane, and there was a big yellow school bus outside the barn.  It turns out that a class from a school in Brandon (a town about 15 minutes away) was taking a field trip to our farm!  I creepily opened the window and watched.  After I ate lunch outside (mmmm...salad) (i'm like Homer Simpson, but healthier), I saw in the distance and long line of mini vans and SUVs coming down the road towards us.  It was weird because the road we're on doesn't really get any traffic and it's mostly trucks.  And then they all turned into our driveway and Hannah was like, "Oh, there's the other tour!"  It was a large group of adults from Boston who were taking a class about cheese, and they'd come all the way up here to tour Blue Ledge Farm.  I thought it odd that Hannah hadn't told me about the tours coming, but it turned out that she hadn't told Greg either...which was funny/unfortunate because he actually had to show them all around the cheese house.  

Can't think of a way to segue gracefully into my next topic, but whatever...

I brought lots of embroidery floss with me to Vermont in hopes that I would make bracelets and then sell them at the farmer's market, but so far I hadn't felt motivated to make any.  Today, my lack of anything else to do inspired me to pick up my scissors and thread.  I watched "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (remember that movie?  it's still really good) and made a bracelet (see picture above).  (Wow, I use parentheses to a ridiculous extent.)  At this point, I was like, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE I'M IN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE EVER AND I AM TOTALLY FREE AND YET I'M SITTING AROUND WATCHING MOVIES ABOUT CRAZY GREEK PEOPLE AND MAKING BRACELETS!  

So I asked Hannah and Greg where I should go and they suggested Branbury Beach.  It's on Lake Dunmore, in Branbury State Park.  It's in between Brandon and Salisbury, so they named in Branbury...clever.  It's actually quite close, maybe 15 minutes, although it took me about 30 to get there because I went north instead of south on Rt. 7...silly me.  I got there and it was soooo beautiful.  It's right at the foot of the mountains, and it's not really a beach, just a grassy park with benches and then the water starts.  The best part is that there's a swing set.  That sounds like a non sequitur, but it's not.  Imagine that you have this spectacular view.  And then you can SWING while looking at it!  It makes it twice a good.

Cute story about the kittens:  At some point this morning, I decided to go and play with the kittens.  A mother and daughter pair of cats had kittens at the same time, and they're co-parenting!  They have two different little nooks, one at either end of the barn.  I went to go sit with one mother and four of the five kittens at one end of the barn, and while I'm there, the other mother comes up, grabs a little black kitten by the scruff of its neck, and starts dragging her off to the other end of the barn.  By the time I leave, there are only two kittens left with me.  They're so cute though!  4 of them are mainly black, but one is excitingly orange.  And they all have blue eyes, just like human babies.  

Tuesdays

Picture #1 Nola's Secret Gardens!  (If you have faith like a mustard seed, miracles can happen)  Picture #2 Isn't he a cutie?

In the recent years of my life, Tuesdays have always been insane.  On Tuesdays during senior year, I took a coaching job that required me to be at or driving to Philadelphia Gymnastics Center from 3:45 to 9:30.  This past year, I would leave my room at 8:30 in the morning and not get back until 4:00 in the afternoon.  And it continues, with Tuesday being the day that the wholesale orders must be shipped.  We have to wrap, label, and pack all these orders and have them to the post office before 4.  

I woke up and milked, which happened to be a rather stressful experience in itself...while I was milking, Livia comes out of the barn and says, "A goat's out!"  Those are the dreaded words...I have visions of myself running up the road in my polka-dotted barn boots shouting, "C'mere girl!  C'mere," and then I hear a car coming and the goat darts into the middle of the street...

Anyway, it really isn't all that serious.  First of all, I just have to shut the door and she can't run away.  Then I have to corner her, grab her by the collar, and drag her back into the holding area.  You know the term "stubborn as a mule?"  It would more accurately be "stubborn as a goat."  Goats are so obstinate that sometimes you have to pull them backwards to make them go forwards.  It's ridiculous.  So this process took quite a while, but I succeeded eventually.  Ten minutes later, however, Livia comes in and says, "Two goats are out!"  AHHHHHH!  I want to punch these goats in the udders.  

Once I finished milking, I worked in the cheese cave from 9 until 3:30.  I wrapped cheese and put cute little labels on them, filled out invoices, added up totals, and got a general lesson in how to run a small business.  It's amazing that their entire income comes in $100 and $200 dollar sales.  Somehow it all adds up to pay the bills.  

After that, I was free!  And then I realized I had nothing to eat.  So I drove to the co-op and bought lots of food, including my favorite thing about Vermont so far, Nola's Secret Garden greens.  It's a product from this woman who packages the most interesting mix of lettuces, some mild, some spicy, some lemony...all yummy.  She even includes edible flowers and some herbs.  Each bag is tied with a colorful ribbon.  It's pretty expensive, but it's local and organic and such high quality that I don't mind at all.  

Guess what?  Tomorrow is my day off!  I don't have to wake up at any particular time!  I can go on a hike or watch a movie or read or play with the kittens or...well, those are really my only options.  Still exciting though.  Watch me end up volunteering to milk the goats out of boredom.  No, I wouldn't do that.

Memorial Day

  

Pictures:  Fun fact about the house...they don't burn any oil!  They burn wood in this little contraption.  The other pic is in Weybridge, trying to show the view of the mountains and the stormy sky...but it kinda failed a little bit.

I have a schedule now, and on Mondays I don't have to milk in the morning!  So I got to sleep in...UNTIL 7:30!!!  How luxurious.  I worked in the cheese house making a cheese called "Lake's Edge."  It's named for the stones on the banks of Lake Champlain, which are striped, like this cheese.  We had poured the curds into moulds yesterday, and today the whey had drained out so they were firm enough to work with.  The process went thusly:  Pack down the curds until they are compressed and flat, sprinkle a light layer of ASH (imported from Canada, made from pine), then add another layer of curds and compress again, then sprinkle ash to coat the outside.  And that's it!  Then they age for some amount of time and grow a white mold.  I've sampled all the cheeses and this is probably my favorite...it's got a kind of pungent, blue cheese type flavor.  My second favorite, in case you were wondering, it the herbal chévre.  

Memorial Day means very little on the farm, although when I went to the co-op to buy food for dinner and found it closed, it meant quite a bit.  Since I was already out driving, though, I decided to go explore.  I went through Middlebury, Weybridge, Cornwall, Whiting, Salisbury, and Leicester.  They were all very quaint and had beautiful views of the mountains, especially Weybridge and Cornwall...I stopped a few times to take some pictures but wasn't really able to capture it.  

Did I mention I got paid?  $40!  Enough to buy food.  I am told it might go up once I'm fully trained, but I'm not worried.  I'm here to learn, not to make money.  Which is good, because I'm making less than a dollar an hour.  

So I'm really liking the comments that people are leaving me.  I'm a fan of those.  Please continue, or I will stop writing.  Yeah, whatcha gonna do now?  Bet you're going to write something.

Sunday on the Farm

Sunday on the farm is the same as every other day because there really is no weekend on the farm.  They milk the goats twice a day, every day.  Even on Christmas and Thanksgiving...the goats are like time, and they wait for no man.  

This Sunday morning I woke up and expected to meet Hannah in the barn, but she slept in because she was up coughing all night : (  So I was left to milk, udderly alone (wow...puns are actually NEVER funny).  But I didn't have any problems, and the goats were behaving quite nicely, so it was fine.  It was fun, even.  You know when you're alone and you are bored so you talk/sing to yourself?  Or that could just be me...

Anyway, today I was singing to myself, and I adapted "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" into "Do Your Teats Hang Low?"  I think the goats were pleased by my rendition.  

After milking I worked in the cheese house, pouring curds to make crottina.  I have to lift this pitcher full of heavy coagulated milk for long periods of time.  My arm muscles are going to be ridonculous.  Especially being short, because I have to hold this pitcher over high tables and pour steadily.  It's funny because the whole farm was designed by two six-foot-tall people, and consequently I have to stand either on a stool or my toes for half of the day.

Once I was done in the cheese house, I had to deliver an order of cheese to Cafe Provence, a restaurant reputed to be one of the best in the state (Parents, when you visit, that is where we are going).  It was cool know that the cheese from my farm is being used in this highly rated restaurant.

And then I had the rest of the day off!  

My day was spent taking pictures with Livia, and admiring her expert photography (the goat picture is hers), and making dinner.

I made something kinda ridiculous and complicated for dinner and I'm not going to post a recipe because it was probably not worth the time it took to make.  However, I am putting a picture of it on here because it LOOKED really good.  It was an Indian spiced lentil stew with chick peas, tomatoes, and kale over brown rice.  

Farmer's Market!

I took some pictures when I woke up this morning...the first is the moon at 4:30 AM, and the second is the Old Barn...I was trying to capture the fog and the mountains.  In the morning, everything in wreathed in great swaths of mist.  (Wreathed in great swaths of mist?  Really?)

Today was many things.  It was exciting, fun, exhausting, and stressful.  It's Saturday, which means farmer's market day.  The market was on a field in Middlebury across from a picturesque waterfall.  I was so busy that I sadly did not have time to take any pictures, but it was beautiful, take my word for it.  I'll take pictures when I go back in two weeks (next week we go to a market in Rutland).  

I woke up at 4:30 (earlier and earlier, every day) and milked, and then we packed up the truck and headed off to the market.  When I wasn't selling, I walked around and bought things.  I got some lavender oatmeal goat's milk soap (it smells SO GOOD), award winning Vermont maple syrup (obviously), and a samosa from the samosa man (yum).  It was so fun to sell the cheese and watch people's faces as they tasted it...because it really is very good.  We sold all the cheese and eggs we brought with us, amazingly.  We even sold some goat meat.  Yes, they sell goat meat...it makes me a little sad.  Except not so much, because after dealing with these goats everyday I kind of want to kill them myself.  Just kidding...

For those of you who know Molly Smith (from Conn), she stopped by to see me at the market, which was nice because it's been a while since I've seen anyone I know or even anyone my age.  I also met an intern who is working down the road who seems really cool...her name is Laura and she goes to UVM.  And she knows Molly, actually.

My favorite thing about Hayden, the 3-year-old, is that he cannot pronounce most words correctly.  When he says my name, it sounds very much like "Saweesha."  I would like everyone to refer to me as Saweesha from now on...I think it has a nice ring.  

I am being an awful vegan...I eat cheese every day.  It's kinda hard to avoid, not that I'm trying or anything.  I mean, I'm making cheese.  That's what I'm doing for three months, and it's not like I'm not going eat it.  It's so good too.  I'm still not eating milk, butter, or eggs...just cheese.  For dinner Greg made burritos that were SO AMAZING...it was refried beans and peppers and onions and a little eggplant in whole wheat tortillas topped with cheese and baked.  I usually eat dinner  by myself but I had made rice and Greg asked if I wanted to share my rice and share their dinner.  That reminds me:

Cute fact about the farmer's market...other venders come over and ask if we want to trade!  THEY BARTER.  IT'S SO ADORABLE.  They just trade equally valued goods.  One of the bread vendors came over and was like, "Would you like to trade some cheese for some bread?"  Why aren't all transactions so simple?

I think I'm getting this now...

Pictured above:  Organic shelling peas from the co-op and some of the cheeses we make aging in the cheese cave underground.

I feel like I am easing my way slowly into the routine now.  I woke up at 5 today and milked and then worked in the cheese house salting the camembrie from yesterday.  At about 10:45 I was done for the morning!  I went to the co-op, bought some produce, and made some brown rice in my rice cooker (it turned out really well, and involved almost no work) until it was time for afternoon milking around 4:00.  After I milked and swept up, Hannah, Greg, Livia, and Hayden went to Livia's t-ball game.  It was cool being on the farm by myself.  I spent some time with the barn cats (who now follow me around like shadows because I gave them some attention) and the goats.  All the goats have names and Hannah knows every one.  Some are normal, like Molly and Dawn and Angelica...but some of them are weird, like LT, short for "Left Teat," because her left teat takes longer to milk than her right one.  

Tomorrow I volunteered to wake up at 4:30 and milk.  It's a Saturday, so I am going to the farmer's market!!  Hannah and I take turns selling cheese and watching the kids.  It's Middlebury College's graduation weekend, so it's going to be crazy crowded.  I'm excited though, because I can walk around and buy food...kinda my favorite thing to do.  Ever.

Tonight's Recipe (it was quite good.  I recommend it, Laura):

Brown Rice with Kale and Arame 

Cooked brown rice

Kale of any kind

Arame (cooked)

Garlic

Sesame Seeds

Sesame Oil

Soy Sauce

Ground Ginger

Nutritional Yeast

Steam kale for a few minutes until it tastes good to you.  Saute garlic and sesame seeds in sesame oil.  Add kale and arame, saute, then add brown rice.  Add soy sauce, ground ginger, and nutritional yeast to taste.  YAY!

Day 2

Today was a really cool day.  I spent the majority of it in the cheese house.  I started working at around 8:00, took a break for lunch, and then worked until about 4:30.  Greg had gotten a delivery of a lot of cow's milk from a cow farmer friend of his, and we used it to start making their one cow's milk cheese.  The cheese is a cross between a camembert and a brie, so they call it a "Camembrie."  Cute, huh?

The milk had come right from the cow and was still warm when we poured it into the vat to pasteurize it (awesomeness to the max).  The metal containers that the milk came in were large and heavy and Greg and I lifted them together and poured them into the big bulk tank...he said I was the best lifter they had had yet, so I guess my gymnast muscles are still somewhat intact.  Yay!  It was really amazing to watch the entire process...we pasteurized the cheese, added the cultures (bacteria) and rennet, cut the curds, and then started to pour the curds into moulds.  This whole process took all day, and it's not even close to done.  I ended up wet, aching, and covered in whey, but happy.  

I just made dinner for myself...for Laura's sake, I will include the recipe.  I ate soba two days in a row...but it's yummy and has good protein so I don't mind.

Sesame Soba Noodles with Arame (seaweed)

Soba Noodles

Arame

Sesame Seeds

Garlic

Soy Sauce

Ginger

Nutritional Yeast

Toasted Sesame Oil

Cook arame and soba according to package directions.  Saute garlic and sesame seeds with sesame oil.  Add arame and soba, and soy sauce, ginger, and nutritional yeast to taste.  Eat!

Exciting fact:  There is going to be another intern here starting June 2nd whose name is Tucker...he lives in Weybridge, which is very close by, so he's living at home.  Another intern is working at the cow dairy that we got our cow milk from, down the road.  I think her name is Laura.  So there are other people here!  Maybe I will actually have some sort of life!  Doubtful.

First Day of Work

Today was my first day of goat farming.  In the morning I helped Hannah milk.  This involved letting in exactly 10 goats, sanitizing their udders and hooking them up to mechanical milking machines, waiting until they were dry, and letting them out again.  And repeat.  They were milking 66 girls today and it took about 2 hours to finish.  After that, I fed the goats that aren't being milked and the pigs.  The pigs are a sort of natural disposal system because they eat the whey (a byproduct of cheesemaking).  When I finished those chores, I helped Greg in the cheese house.  My jobs included flipping cheeses, wrapping cheeses, and washing everything in sight.  Especially my hands...I'd better get some good moisturizer.  

When I was done working for the morning, I baked some bread and made lunch.  It was really yummy.

Soba Noodles With Almond Sauce:

Soba noodles

Almond butter

Soy Sauce

Sesame Oil

Sesame Seeds

Cook soba noodles according to package directions.  Mix other ingredients in a separate bowl in proportions that seem right to you, and then mix into soba noodles and enjoy!

I realized after lunch that I had nothing to eat for dinner and that no one was going to provide it for me (an interesting notion) and then got in my car and drove to the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op.  It's like Whole Foods, but way better because most things are locally grown and they really support small farms.  I was obviously in heaven and could have spent all day there but I had to get back to work.  I bought a tomato, and avocado, and some locally grown organic salad greens.

In the afternoon I gardened for a couple hours, planting tomatoes and broccoli and parsley.  Then I made myself a salad (I have no clue why I'm telling you my life story, here.  I hope no one is bored to tears reading this) and now I am writing this!  

I'm Here!

        
I made it!  It took me 7 hours to get here with only 2 stops.  But I was pretty impressed with myself...I mean, the longest I've ever driven on the highway was from Philly to Allentown and that's only an hour.  I kept myself occupied with my iPod...I am pretty sure I did not stop singing for the entire time, even when I stopped to pee.  I sang in the bathroom.  Not lying.

I took some pictures on the way up, but I don't have any of the goats yet.  I did meet them, but I didn't have my camera on me, unfortunately.  They all have names and they are very cute.  And they do go "baahhhhh," in case you were wondering.  Besides the goats, animals living on the farm include a multitude of chickens, a few pigs, 2 sheep, a dog named Connelly, and a cat who just had kittens.

In addition to meeting the goats, I met the farmers, Hannah and Greg!  They are both 30 and very awesome and sweet.  They have two kids (children, I mean, not baby goats) named Livia (5) and Hayden (3).  They are a little crazy, but not nearly as crazy as my nieces and nephews.  

Tomorrow I am getting up at 6 (they are letting me sleep in a bit on my first day) to start to learn how to milk.  I'm kinda nervous! I'll keep you posted...the rest of the posts hopefully won't be this long.  

First Time Bloggin

So I decided to create a blog for my summer adventure.  For those of you who don't know, I'm working on a goat farm in Vermont for three months.  I have to give Susanna some of the credit for the name of this blog, although she thought it should be a "baaaahhhhhg."  I decided to go with Blaaaaaahhg though.  Do goats go baaah?  I hope so.  I do so hate being inaccurate.