H is for Helping Hands

This post is a tribute to my family. I know it appears that sometimes I run a one woman show around here but that couldn't be farther from the truth. These hands belong to my precious hubby and 3 awesome children and I can say that with out them - CBFNigerians would be non existent. These hands help me build shelters, milk stands, and websites, repair fences, clean pens, feed animals, play with babies, show, water, milk and many other things that I can't even remember. I have the best, most supportive, helpful family there is......though I'm sure many of you feel the same about your families!!!!! So here is a big THANK YOU to the wonderful helping hands that are my support team. This awesome crew is even willing to take on the running of CBF if I am to get my judges license in the summer this year. That will be a huge undertaking I know and they are willing to help me out because they know this is a dream of mine!!!!

G is for GOATEES and GINGER cat

This is the barn cat GINGER, who has a very important job around the farmette - mousing. I do not like the little creepy things and it is her and her sister Minty's job to keep our barn clear of the critters - unfortunatelly Minty has become a wanderer (after 9 years - do you think she's bored?) Ginger cat still sticks around and mouses and in between her job she likes to take LONG cat naps on the front porch bench in the afternoon sun) She was just getting up from her nap for this pictures.

AND the winner of the great GOATEE contest goes to Storm (HOOFS DOWN!) Sorry DH, not quite there yet but then Storm has been growing his for nearly 2 years!

DH was in vacation mode for the past week and decided to grow a goatee - but alas Monday is the end of freedom - bummer for him and ME - so sad as he has been working on my website for most of vacation! - I have two pages up on the WWW

Check it out www.cbfnigeriangoats.com YEEEHAW! Thanks DH!!!!!

F is for FRIENDS and FOUNDATIONS

This post is a bit of a sentimental one - and I couldn't post ALL of the pictures I wanted. This is kind of a tribute to the goats who have laid the foundations of the herd here at CBF Nigerians. This LOVELY doe is Esperanza SJ Patience we bought from a dear lady Katie at Double SunDog Ranch - Patience was everything Katie said she was - and she finished her MCH in record time but she did not like US. Patience is the dam of Nizhoni's DW Tirzah, who I believe wholeheartedly will live up to her mother's example.

El Cerro Wind in the Willows was our first Nigerian. She is a doe with body capacity and a huge udder. We almost earned a star on her but i believe she did not like being away from home. She is a lovely doe who did well in the ring most all of the times she went in earning herself several Reserve Champions and 2 Best Udder in Show. My biggest complaint about her was her teats are too small and she didn't like me. She loved Alyssa and when Alyssa decided to get out of goats we sold Willow to a sweet gal named Janice - who said Willow is great. Willow is the dam of Dixie and CBF Seredipidy's Laikla who resides at Camino Allegre and has done Fantabulous for them - including earning her milking star at 2 years old as a first freshener and producing triplets (2 does/1 wether) this past year.

Nizhonie's Joie de Vivre. This doe is my best/easiest Nigerian Milker and she's a very dairy doe - she does unfortunately lack some udder attachment, a problem we are trying to fix but I must say she is a milker's dream earning her star as a 1yo 2nd Freshener. She is the dam of Twinkle Lil Star (Malina) and Skye who resides at Darkwind Ranch in Colorado. Also her two sons who are wethers are at Laughing Orca Ranch (Moon Pie and Mud Pie). Joie is also here as a representative for her sire: PiddlinAcres Peaceful Voyage. We have two granddaughter's of his here at CBF (Joie and Tirzah) and a grandson (Storm). He has made an impact on our herd and we hope he continues to do so - we just fell in love with him when we saw his daughter Gretel who resides at Double SunDog (who is a daughter of our favorite doe from PiddlinAcres - Fraulin who is also Storm's Paternal Granddam.)

I really wanted to put a picture of Entei but couldn't find it. Entei is the sire of two of our Jr. does - Malina and Dixie. Shalom is Entei's dam and she is a lovely doe who now resides at PrairieWood Ranch. It was so hard to sell this doe but we wanted to keep both Entei and his sister Chickorita and had to make this very hard decision.

The rest of my post is about FRIENDs. I have to say I have made more dear friends through the goats. What a huge blessing this whole adventure has been to us.

When we got into goats we made friends with several folks who really took time to mentor us in the goats: Lora from PrairieWood, Darlene from Nizhoni and Anne from CurrierRockinMinis.

These ladies babied us through the first few years and I can honestly say that we would have quit several times over if it hadn't been for the kindness and support shown by these folks. And I can NOT forget my best friend Tara Joyce who encouraged us and supported us and also bought goats not long after we did. Tara's grandmother gave us our first milk pail and strip cup which we used until Tara needed them when she got her goats and then she gave them back when a move forced her to sell her goats. Miss ya Girl!

In the last few years our circle of goatie friends has expanded GREATLY and includes many 4H buddies as well as buddies who are off across the US. The Sedillos at Camino Allegre who bought our first doeling and have shown her and earned a milking star on her. The Martins at SleepyKid Ranch who own Willow's brother Captain Pellew who have gone to great lengths to get Dairy goats more recognized locally at the County Fair, Kat at Flying Goat who has become a Fiber buddy as well and who blessed us with Flying Goat Jazzy Blues (I so miss him - I can't wait to cash in my free breeding next fall!) Sandy at Twylite Star who sold us Storm. Terri who has Angora's and has become my spinning/knitting mentor, Wendy who bought two Oberhaslis from a lady in AZ after meeting our Miss Priss, Lori - my walking partner and goat buddy whose daughter is also in our 4H club who also fell in love with Miss Priss and bought a Nigerian doe from us and two Oberhasli does from the dairy where Priss came from. Kathy, Doc Z, Joyce, JoDawn, Donna and all the other folks from SouthWest Dairy Goat Club who chose not to judge us because of our love of the little goats and allowed us to join their club! Jeannie Strickland of Darkwind Ranch and the Allen Family of Allen'sMountainView have become VERY good friends of ours and we treasure their friendships a ton!

Last but not least all the wonderful folks I've met through our yahoogroups list - too numerous to even get everyone down but talk about a bunch of folks who have blessed us abundantly with

advice, support, encouragement, prayers, and kudos for accomplishments. Fern, Pam, Kathy, Jaimie, Katie, EVERYONE - you all are counted as blessings to us and we just wanted to give you guys a huge KUDO for just being you. CBF Nigerians thanks and loves each of you!!!!!!

E is for EARS.

I LOVE goat Ears. My kid's(2 legged) say I have a bit of a fetish, I even make sure I like the ears on my bucks (kind of wierd huh?) But, I don't like just any goat ears, I like SWISS goat ears. I have to say, that Nubian KIDS have the cutest ears of any goat alive but all in all - I love these ears. (Sorry, La mancha fanciers, I'm not fond of the La Mancha's "lack" of ears)

These plain black ears belong to my Oberhasli, Miss Priss and I think she has the most elegant expressive ears of anyone in my herd.

And these belong to Dixie - Her and Malina (Twinkle) have frosted ears - TOO CUTE!

These are Narnia's - sort of plain with a darker brown around the edges.

and Storm's plain Chocolate ears. I wish he would have stood still for me since he's got cute ears too but he would not. He either ran from me or challenged me. BRAT!!! I hope he throws his CUTE ears on his babies though. I LOVE the shape of Tirzah's ears but couldn't get the perfect shot of her ears so I won't be able to post hers unless i get a better shot. This reminds me, while i was out taking these photos, I thought of what to do for my next project AFTER I finish the Alphabet challenge (Lisa says I'll get tired later on in the alphabet but to keep going - Thanks for the encouragement Lisa) I want to do a whole series on goat anatamy for those of you readers who want to bone up for the upcoming show year's Showmanship classes.

D is for DIXIE

This pretty little Doe is Dixie - she is out of our Foundation dam El Cerro Wind in the Willows who we parted with this year (that hurt!)to a sweetheart - Janice.
Dixie is only one of two daughters and so far a keeper. She's beautiful!

At 6 weeks Dixie (AKA: CBF Ent's Whistling Dixie) won Jr. Champion at the March Mini Madness Goat show in Albuquerque, NM - my favorite comment by the judge was "sometimes good things really do come in small packages" I knew that when I first saw her precious little impish face when she was born.

See - how could anyone deny that this is the cutest little goat EVER

she just stole my heart. I was only planning on keeping one doe this year and ended up keeping TWO.

This is Miss Dixie now - at almost 11 month old and about 8 weeks into her first pregnancy - she still has the cutest face of all of my goats. Of course we are praying for doe from all of the girls (except the Alpine - we want boys there!)

I am just starting to see a little bit of a baby bump (not that you can tell in this picture since she's eating - haha.

Dixie is the culmanation of several of our breeding decisions (and some rather painful partings as i've had to sell her sire and her sire's dam to make room) We hope that Dixie throws us some fantastic milking babies and that she lives up to her older sister's example - a milking star as a first freshener!

C is for CHEESE

Like many goat owners, we milk our goats and we make Cheese. We make 3 different cheeses around here: Chevre, Ricotta and Mozarella. Occassionally we will make Feta and we rarely make chevre anymore as we can do any chevre recipe with Ricotta and we like the taste better. We bought Mary Jan Toth's book Goat's Produce Too! The Udder Real Thing which has a lot of Cheese, yogurt, ice cream and (not for the faint of heart/vegetarians) Chevon recipes (Chevon is goat meat). This is our Ricotta draining. We like ours drier than some folks and we like to mix it with herbs to spread on crackers. My favorite herbal/cheese mixes are Garlic and Dill and Mediterranian: Sun Dried Tomatoes, Artichokes, Oregano, Kalamata Olives and Garlic. Also we use our Cheese for making Pizzas and Lasagnes. YUMMO! This post is making me hungry for dinner. If you want any of our recipes - feel free to email me and I'll send you our goat cheese mix recipes for free! I do cheesemaking classes for folks but it's not hard, we taught ourselves to make the cheeses we make - it just takes TIME.
Cheese is probably the most common product we make from our goat milk - along with Soap - but you'll have to wait for that post for S!

A is for Alpine, Alfalfa, and Australian Shepherds

So, while checking my post for "B" I realized that my post for "A" was not there - it is lost in CYBERSPACE.... So I have to re-do "A" A is for Australian Shepherds who are the farm guardians around CBF. We don't have much in the way of predators here (except for maybe evil garbage trucks and the late night dog walking neighbor). But these two fearless mutts still alert us when ANYTHING get near the homestead.

A is also for Alpine enjoying her Alfalfa - This is Narnia the newest addition to CBF who is (we hope) carrying 2 Boer/Alpine crosses for the Children to show Market goats this year in 4H. she has great milk genetics (Mom Nivasha, is standing at Harmody Alpines in Colorado is a 3000lb plus milker on 305 day test) Narnia's littermate sister is standing at her breeder's farm still - Pearl Valley Nakuru. Alpine goats are a Swiss Breed originating in Switzerland and are the goat from which we get Oberhaslis (more on that later - when we get to "O") We love our Alpine and are glad she's here but truthfully, not sure what I'm going to do with all that milk from her if she follows in her mom's hoofsteps.