Being a farmer is becoming more and more the ultimate dream for people. "I would love to have a piece of land to farm." Having heard this over and over again I may be the luckiest human on the planet. About 25 years ago my parents aquired a beautiful farm in Ky. We lived in the suburbs and it was/is more of a hobby farm. My parents along with a partner tried cattle for a long while but eventually the cost was too much and they sold the herd. When I turned 30 I asked if I could build a little house on the farm and they were happy to let me do it. We finished my house in 2002, my incredibly cool cat and I moved in and I promptly went to the humane society and came home with Gatlin. My beautiful boxer/lab mix. I was starting my photography busines so I took a job at Home Depot in the paint department to help ends meet until my business took off which was about 6 months. Farming was not on my agenda. Blah blah blah fast forward 3 years and My busines is great, I've met the love of my life and couple years later we got married, adopted 3 more dogs and then had a little boy. Life was/is wonderful and both of us were selfemployeed. We decided with a little person we needed great insurance so my amazing husband shuts his business down and goes to work for a company. I wanted to just give a little background because the purpose of writing this is because we both want to be farmers. We want to live off the land, eat our bounty, have a CSA, milk goats, cut our own hay so on and so on. REALITY!!! You really have to tone it down a bit. So we start with growing vegetables. My husband reads constantly, the right way, what to plant, where to plant, what's the best soil ph, and I'm more along the lines of chuck the seed in and see what happens WRONG... As it turns out you really have to be a bit of a perfectionist and I am the total opposite and may put the husband into an early grave from frustration. :O Slowly but surely I am getting the hang of it and I am really trying hard to listen to his advise and not do the "I am woman hear me roar" thing because it really doesn't benefit anyone to not be a team player when farming. My other handicap is that I, AM A WEENIE. I have actually had a 1 ton cow put on an I.V. I cry when one of our chickens die and I would gladly bring our goats in to the house when it gets too cold or hot. These qualities a farmer does not make. :O) After 10 years of of talking about farming this is where we are (10 years of talking and about 4 years of actually putting plan together). Our sweet "pet cow" Sarah that we raised in the back yard with our dogs had a baby which gave us 2 but then our friend had a bull that needed more room so he came over to our farm for a very long visit and now we have 5 cows. We have been raising chickens for about 6 years and that really has been wonderful. I will follow up with what's going on with our chicks later. Last summer we purchased 2 goats to help with underbrush and possibly milk. I've always wanted goats. My Aunt raised goats up North and made cheese and sold to restaraunts years ago and I've always thought it sounded wonderful. KEY... SOUNDS WONDERFUL. When I told her I wanted to start raising dairy goats for a living she had a nice chuckle. SO we are starting very small. Another weenie moment came last fall when I decide to not breed the goats because I didn't want a nastly ole Billy Goat on my girls. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME. So this fall IT WILL HAPPEN and hopefully in April we will have some baby goats. Which are the cutest things on the planet.