Check out this article in Well + Good NYC

The old and young ladies of Darlin' Doe Farm

We will be taking orders for goat sausage in the coming weeks. Please contact us if you are interested in a little goat meat in your life.

Dana of Darlin' Doe Farm and two new kids

Some of our does are starting to have kids. We have 6 kids and counting… 

Check out this video of Hearty Roots CSA. This is the CSA I helped form in Greenwood Heights section of Brooklyn.   I am on this video at the end talking about working on the the HR CSA Farm and starting my new goat farm!

When we purchased the 25 female goats, or does, the first thing we had to do was tag them all.  Basically we give them earrings–it’s painful only for a quick second. We tagged each goat twice, one tag is white with a number for identification and the other tag is an orange circle. The reason for having two tags is that sometimes the tags can come out if the goat gets her head stuck in the bushes or a fence.  Between the color and the number we will know that these are our goats. We had some challenges last week with the tagging process, though.  The white number tags were really hard to read from a distance and the orange button tags were hard to apply.  It will be important for me to know which goats are which and to take note of their health on a daily or weekly basis.  For this it would be great to be able to read their number from a distance and not to disturb them while looking over their body condition and wellbeing.

Orange circle button tag

Today Simon, Ronny (both are AMA Farm Managers) and I went through the tagging process again.  This time I purchased bright yellow tags with large numbers on them.  They come in a pack of 25.  Perfect, Right?  No. Of course some did not go in perfectly and broke so I was only able to give 21 goats new bright yellow beautiful ID tags. The 4 other goats will still have the old system with the orange and white tags.  I was annoyed with the tag company because they really do not give you any room for error. I guess next time I know to have back up numbers or to buy the next 25 tags now just in case.  This is all a learning process and I am happily learning with these beautiful Darlin’ Does.

This goat (#1) has a bright yellow beautiful ID tag and also one more tag from a previous farm. That top tag on the left needs to go

Can’t wait to show you all the Darlin’ Doe Farm!

Tracy and Mikee brushing bees off the honeycomb

another honeycomb

honeycombs

This old fruit press was used to press the honey out of the combs.

Honey! This honey tasted so delicious.

Thanks Tracy and Mikee!

On Monday, August 10, 2009 I slaughtered a goat for the first time. Not only a goat but this is the first time that I selected an animal that I would kill for food. I was confident that I could kill this animal in the most humane way but when I was holding the goat between my legs with the knife to his throat I had to think if this was the right thing to do.

I paused before doing this and I seriously looked at the goat and wanted to know if I should do this. I was shaking with nerves (what would happen if I do something wrong? What if the cut was not deep enough?) the goat could feel me shaking and he was really calm. The goat was about 3 months old and was calm and ready for me to do this. His stance was firm to the ground and his body language was as if he just wanted it to happen already. So I did it…. I slaughtered this goat.

After I made the cut across the neck there was this sound of the breath stopping. It was beautiful and sad. I could not believe I just did that.

It was a strange feeling to know that I was the reason this animal was dead. However, as I thought about all the people this one animal would feed I started to feel better and was ready for the next step.

Slicing down the center of the belly to allow access to the internal organs. It is important to not puncture the organs under the skin.

Evan, Tracy, and Devin were my team for the slaughter. Here Tracy is working on removing the skin and fur from the meat.

We are currently tanning and preserving the hide to keep for future use.

The next step is to butcher the carcass. Evan had experience with deer meat so he was very helpful and taught me about the cuts of meat. As I was cutting the meat, I realize that I might have been a butcher in a previous life. It was so easy to make the cuts off the carcass.

It was great working as a team. It was amazing to see that most of this animal will be food. The only body parts we could not use was some of the internal organs and the lower leg/hoof. Everything else will be consumed or preserved. I am even going to taxidermy the head to use in an art piece

After the meat was cut and packaged we called it a night. The next evening Devin and I made a farm lunch with some of the meat. Cabrito tacos (kid goat tacos) was on the menu for our farm lunch program. We fed about 13 people for lunch. It was so delicious. Thursday evening I made goat liver pate for our weekly pinochle night. That too was delicious. The tenderloins = delicious. Can’t wait to bring some of the goat meat back to Brooklyn to cook up with Abbi.

I am excited to become a goat farmer and I look forward to making meat that is healthy, delicious, and humane.

Omar is the guard llama at Awesome Farm. Here he is relaxing in a cool patch of dirt.

These sheep were grazing in a line. One sheep has a bird on her back.

Born this morning.

Hi babies!