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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] food for thought?

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Norma Sutton <sweetspringfarm@gmail.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] food for thought?
  • Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 00:04:14 -0400

Hi Paul,
I'm not a milk drinker per say, or at least not until I milked my first goat.  Mind you I DID grow up drinking raw cows milk and I loved it, but the stuff from the store, don't like the smell, don't like the taste, it doesn't even LOOK like milk.  When I started with goats I WAS NOT GOING TO MILK . . . no way no were no how . . . I started with Angora goats for the mohair they produce . . . . well . . . . never say never.  One of my does lost twin kids and I had to milk her for a little while for her health.  The first day I milked her into a tiny little cup :) she was a 8 ounce twice a day goat, when I smelled her milk I started drooling.  After a week of milking and drooling I took it in, strained it and chilled it.  Shared that 8 ounces 3 ways.  Total agreement that her milk was wonderful.  From that moment I started looking for a dairy goat.  When my goats aren't in milk I don't drink it, but every spring when I start milking I crave it like mad for several months.  It does seem to be the tonic I need each and every spring. 

IF it was just me, I'd fence in my garden spots and the property perimeter and let them roam in the summer and then put them in the fenced areas in the winter.  What I do is keep them in a pen that I can move.  I move them ever day in early spring, right now it's every other day.  The first thing they eat are the "weeds", especially broom straw in the milk stage.  What we have noticed is in the areas they have been on like this for several years is full of clover now.  We are also seeing a resurgence of dewberries, wild strawberries, and a lot of other wild food stuffs.  My brother over the hill limed his side last summer and dumped chicken waste on it.  I'm seeing the same results, but at a slower rate and I don't have to SMELL that stinky chicken stuff lol.
Norma

On 5/5/10, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

You're correct. I was referring to the way the vast majority of commercial milk is produced today. It's an incredible waste of several scarce resources, not the least of which is fossil fuel inputs. It takes many acres of corn and other grains plus enormous amounts of freshwater to grow a dairy cow, which may produce a couple years and then go to meet their maker.  The day is very near when most resources to grow cattle will be needed to make food for humans, which is many times more efficient use of those resources. By very near I mean roughly 18 months give or take a few.

FYI I grew up fencing cowpasture, sodding and mowing coastal bermuda, and hauling hay, in East TX summers.


paul tradingpost@lobo.net 


 

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