It is officially official! Indigoat farms has a goat. Her name is Kiah and she is three years old. She's never been kidded but we hope to get her knocked up before she comes down to us on Saturday. She comes from the herd of the goat lady, Colleen, and Colleen is also going to give us another doe. The family that is selling us Kiah has another goat that they decided not to sell to us because they were too attached to her. 

We are all epically excited and I have been thinking of nothing but goats all week. Here are two pictures of Kiah. The third picture is of several of Colleen's other goats (she has fifty of them) and among them is Kiah's mother. The last one... look at the bottom of the fence. 

I was unable to go up to the farm to buy Kiah because I have too much homework. Yes, it's sad. Yes, it's unbelievable. Yes, this farm is EXTREMELY important to me and I wanted to go but the transition into being a junior is hitting me very hard. These past few weekends I have had about fourteen hours of homework. No Joke. 

The chickens are growing, as always. The second batch is now living in the coop 24/7 with the other ones. They seem to be getting along tolerable well, although the big ones don't seem very accepting of the little ones. We'll have to do some chicken peer mediation if this keeps up. They are all going to very happy when the goat enclosure is finally finished because they will be allowed to wander around that whole area freely eating whatever the goats don't demolish. The coop was built for five chickens, not ten, and they seem a little crowded. 

We are dramatically increasing our food production as well. The self-watering containers are working so well and the veggies are growing so fast that we've just been making more and more containers. We're even growing quinoa, for protein. We'd like to be self-sufficient, but it doesn't seem like it would be possible. There are four of us and we eat a lot of vegetables. We'd need to have 10 times the amount of space we have to grow enough to feed us all for a month. I'm thrilled about our purple carrots, and I've been going out to the garden every morning and picking lettuce to make myself a big salad to take to school. I've also been sweetening my tea with the leaves from our stevia plant.

I am in my element right now. I love farming, I love my Dance and Theater classes at school; I can almost do the splits and going back to drama was an exhilarating homecoming. My internship is awesome, and on Monday we're piloting our first phone bank in Oakland, at the First Congregational Church on Harrison St. I'm so excited to be training in Oakland because it means I have two extra hours that I'm not spending on a BART train. I'm also organizing Oakland Tech's Gay-Straight Alliance. We signed up about fifty people today, which means that more than 20 of them will probably come regularly. I've found my calling! Community organizing is definitely my thing and I feel very strongly about the gay rights issue. Yay! As always, if anyone reading this is interested in putting their money where their mouth is and actually fighting for marriage equality, get in touch with Equality CA. There's even stuff you can do that doesn't involve talking to people. 

Construction Zone

Happy Labor Day! I think that everyone agrees with me that three-day weekends are the BEST! Two days just isn't long enough. I'm tired out already and it was just the first week of school. 

There's been a lot of stuff going on at Indigoat this weekend. My dad talked to a woman who breeds Oberhaslis and she's promised us a pregnant goat. Because she might call us up any day now, my dad has been working really hard outside to get the goat pen-and-skyway set up. They're going to have a large open area to hang out in and the a set of stairs up to a walkway over the chicken coop into the treehouse. According to Novella Carpenter, goats like to be up high because they're mountain animals and it makes them feel protected. The neighborhood kids are excited about the skyway too. 

The chickens are still growing at an incredible pace. It's hard to tell them apart any more. The babies have been at Kenda's destroying her yard, so I don't have any pictures of them but here are the big ones demolishing a Kabocha squash. 

My father's also been making self-watering containers to plant vegetables in. So far they're working really well. The soil always looks moist and the seeds are already germinating after two days. Our other beds are full of greens and TJ loves hiding in between the plants. 

It may be a little pretentious calling ourselves a farm at this point, but we're definitely getting there. I can't wait to be able to look outside and see goats and chickens frolicking around together in the enclosure that my dad's working on. I'm also really excited to be able to eat cheese! I eat cheese that I buy every week from this guy at the farmer's market, but only because I've seen pictures of his goats and seen a list of their names. According to my dad, Oberhaslis make really good milk!