Merry Christmas to All and Thank-you for giving Night Sky Farm another successful Year!
Well, it has been a while since I last posted and this Fall has seen some changes and additions. The first is that Night Sky Farm now has a newsletter which is sent out to those who sign up on a monthly schedule. We also now, accept all major credit cards at all the markets we attend and at home should you wish to come to the farm to make your purchases. There is a new look for our WASH TIME Eco-Friendly Laundry Soap and a new PATTI CAKES! Goat Milk Body Butter in some enticing and exotic scents. I just today replenished our inventory of lip balm in 4 different flavors; Natural, Iced Pineapple & Tangerine, Mango Fusion and Lavender Mint ( my fave to date). If you would like to order any of the products or any of our wonderful cheese just send me an email at jennifer@nightskyfarm.com and now you can pay by credit card, check or PayPal
It has been snowing here and no one truly appreciates it except for perhaps the dogs, who decided to go rambling across the neighbor’s field for over an hour only to come back covered in snowballs and leaving small puddles throughout the house so I could step in them! Then, I needed dry socks, AGAIN! I did not shovel any snow, only the stalls which was bad enough in this cold wind, but everyone is cleaned out, snug and warm inside the barn with full hay feeders. I do hear that next Saturday it will be near 60 degrees! It is time to get to looking through the new seed catalogues that arrived last week.
Our Jersey cow, Emily is dry and due to calve 1 February give or take a week. What an exciting time that will be and at this point I’ll take anything a heifer or a bull. Annabelle Clover turned out not to be pregnant, but she is now!! and bred to a Guernsey bull. She is due on 17 August 2011 which is also my son’s birthday. That will give us a nice rotation for year round milk. Eirinne Cow has been sold and goes to her new home in Green Bay, VA very soon. She is milking still, but once a day and giving me 2 gallons which makes around 4 pounds of cheddar, havarti or cream cheese which I decide at the time of making. We have stopped making butter until Emily freshens and what a great product that butter was! We also tried with much success our hand at making goat butter! Again, it practically flew out of the freezer the minute it cam out of the molds. Many of my does are due to kid in early February alongside Emily because it is her milk that feeds all my goat kids and with her estimated production at 8 -9 gallons per day at peak, she will raise goat kids and supply the dairy with plenty of delicious milk for drinking, cheese and butter. Be on the look out for some baby pictures in the next few weeks of both the bovine and the caprine sorts!
Oh, I almost forgot! We have 3 new Nigerian Dwarf doelings; Java, Dawn and Evening. They are the start of my Nigerian Dwarf herd kept for their very high butterfat milk at 7 to 9 %! Their milk will be used to raise the overall butterfat of the bulk tank milk and can also be diverted for butter making when I need it. I hope to have 6 or more does by the end of next year and be milking them by that time as well. The next post will be some pictures of them. They are little jumping beans though! Three feet is not a problem, I wonder what that means for my fencing? 
A question for another day.
