GOATS !!!

Dear Everybody,

The past few weeks have been full of activities for us, not only camp activities but personal family ones as well. I would like in the next few blog posts catch you up on these activities but I will start with the most interesting and fun for our family: Purchasing goats!

One of the young couples in our church in Conaripe was selling some of their goats. This gave Dan an idea. Goats are relatively easy to care for and reproduce like rabbits, which is to say, very quickly. We thought long and hard about it and decided to buy a few goats.

Here are a few of our reasons:

- Meat producers for our family= Goats can have up to 2 kids a year (and most of the time they have twins)

- Brush clearers= Goats can eat just about anything and are great brush clearers. We are overwhelmed with brush on camp.

- Easy to care for= Our kids can lead the goats out on a leash to pasture during the day. they are very docile animals.

- The start of a petting zoo = we would like to have a mini petting zoo for the kids who come during family camp to enjoy.

- New responsibilities for Micah, Matthias and Morgan= they are learning what it means to care for our new "pets".

Dan, with the help of another young man, built a nice pen and shed for the goats and last week, we went and picked them up.

It was out in the country, about an hour away from our house. It was pouring down rain that day and the goats were nowhere to be found when we got there. Dan and the boys climbed the hills all over the property looking for them. They got soaked in the process and enjoyed getting warmed up by the stove for a bit.

Finally, in the afternoon, the goats came down the hill and we were able to take four of them home with us. That was a fun process.

The goats are enjoying their new pen, and today we were took them to pasture. They are getting used to their new surroundings very quickly. We are discovering each one of their personalities and qwirks.

Liz