Lovely Rita

They say your not supposed to show favoritism with kids.  

I just can't help it 

& Ian can't either.  

It's just that Rita is the best lap goat we've ever had. She is our earliest convert to the "friendly goat" category, and we are quite pleased with our new compadre. Our fearless little friend of humans has fast become our favorite --- for better or worse.

Rita, circus goat.

It's true, she was our first kid of 2012.  Big sister to Tiny Smalls.  

Tiny Smalls got his name because he was so very tiny and small compared to Rita when he was born (not to mention his affinity for hip-hop music). 

Sibling sweetness.

As depicted in the family portrait below, Rita has a very hearty appetite.  One name consideration for her was Food Hog.  She didn't think it was very flattering, even though I told her that, "A healthy goat needs to be a food hog in order to stay healthy".  It's Survival 101. 

Family portrait.

In the end, Rita just stuck.  Some names are perfect, and then there others that just can be undone, and yet others that'll hafftado.  In my book, Rita is just perfect --- my naming skills at their best*.

  

Healthy, happy, lovely Rita.

*I could write a whole other post on all the names that might fall into my "worst" category.  Let's just say we have a few sorry goats with names which Ian begrudgingly likens to the Seven Dwarves of Snow White.  

Red Sky at Night

My delight.  

No sailors in sight.

It's a Wonderful Tuesday . . .

Look what I came home to this evening!

Fresh picked friends from the field, gathered by my favorite Farmer . . .

The shy white flower in the middle is actually a Zulu Prince Daisy which is a long way from it's homeland on the African plains.  Apparently, my Zulus are either homesick, bashful, or catching up on their beauty sleep, but pre-bouquet, the fair flowers would have looked more like this:

 

For some all-to-obvious reason, the site of the Zulu's delicate petals reminds me of "Zuzu's petals" from It's A Wonderful Life, and yes, I have to agree, it most certainly is. 

C. A. T.

C

Meet Cat.  If she has a name, I've yet to uncover it, but truthfully I haven't tried very hard because "Cat" simply suits her.  She is CAT, hear her MEOW.  

Cat own's this house and we are her resident feeders.  She is who-knows-how-old and rather legendary around these parts for surviving coyotes and cat-lovin' dogs.  She has her own built-in perch on the back porch.  A porch perch.  We should all be so lucky.

The best part is she's sugary sweet.  She loves pats so much it makes her drool like crazy.  The second best part is that she keeps an outdoor human-free litter box and is a vigilant rodent control specialist --- all for the meager salary of kitty kibble. 

Thanks, Cat, for welcoming us to our new home!

Ladder-ally the Best View in Town

Farm Friends

My sweet dog, Pasha, and her cluster o' companions.  

This is the new flock of sheep. They are part of a project that Ian and Lisen (farm owner) are working on --- raising grass fed lamb to sell locally.  There's about fifteen pregnant mama's in that cluster, and Pasha's doing her best to keep them safe.  Her pal Koda, our newly adopted Great Pyrenees, has been helping out as well 

--- he's just a bit camera shy.

The World Outside My Window

We've been fortunate enough to house our animals on this beautiful land over the past year during the off-season for our side business, Goatscape. Now we get to call this glorious place "home". Come visit!

A Labor of Love

It's been a long time in coming . . . this itchy idea of mine to write and share tidbits of my life with the faraway people whose lives I only can wish intersected with my own on a more regular basis.

Life has a way of getting SO full, and moments and memories seem to get lost along the way.  This is my means of savoring and sharing those moments.

It is Valentine's Day, so it seems fitting to kick-start this project with the support of Cupid and Hallmark and hearts the world over.  It is, after all, a story about love . . .

The name of my blog is simply a word that I've come to fancy.  It's a marriage of "farm" and "homestead", and it seems fitting for the new life my Farmer and I are embarking on.  It begins on a picturesque, dare I say bucolic, farm in the "Happiest Town in America".

It is, and will be, a labor of love --- this "Farmstead" of ours.  Ian and I are in the throes of it - knee deep in drywall dust and the remnants of popcorn ceiling texture, circa 1987.

Currently, we're working on the new place while sleeping, showering, and keeping our sanity in the old place.  And, for the few transitional weeks that we will have two residences in our keep, I'm proudly declaring that I have two houses --- an urban penthouse in the thriving metropolis of San Luis Obispo and a bucolicly* idyllic  ranch house in the Valley of the Bears.

So . . . if you haven't all ready figured, we've undertaken a bit of a renovation project to spruce up the new digs, and we are are giddy with ideas.

Over the next who-knows-how-long, my intention is to post pictures of projects and life on the farm. It is a bit of an adventure for me, and I hope you will join me.

Happy LOVE day!
xoxo

*I have a chronic word abuse problem, wherein I misuse and overuse certain words.  I've also been known to make up unintelligible words to suit my mood or meaning.  Please take no offense.