Farm Diary March 2026

Goats: 16

Chickens: 9

Gallons of Black Walnut Sap: 3

Mood: Hungry

Still Meadow Rhythm and Oak Hill Kinders Rhapsody have released their kids! 3 doelings and a buckling. Both did beautifully and are excellent mothers. The buckling actually came out fully enclosed in an unbroken sac, which was pretty cool and I hadn’t seen before.

These girls are quite apprehensive about going more than 50 feet from the barn. I’m trying to determine if they are still fearful of the great unknown, or just being helicopter mamas. They seem to want to go out foraging with the herd, but they will only go so far before they rush back to the barn.

I hope they get with the program soon. My girls know the drill. They get some hay in the morning, then nothing until bedtime. They have to get out there and find their food in the 16 wooded acres.

The sap has rapidly dropped to a drizzle. Spring can get quite warm quite early in Tennessee, so for tapping trees, the local wisdom is to get those taps in by Christmas, which I did not do. I wound up with merely 2 pints of finished black walnut syrup. I’ll aim to get them in earlier and tap more trees next year.

I’m finally finding eggs as the days begin to lengthen! I’ve disrupted their usual laying spot, so they are creatively finding new places where there is a patch of clean straw. These girls are getting up there in age, but they continue to exist without coop or run. They roost in the barn rafters and spend their days scavenging goat grain droppings and whatever they can find on the land.

The big hurrah for March, besides the first kids hitting the ground, was the TN Kinder Bender Show! It was my first time showing my goats, and even travelling with them anywhere. I was full of anxiety since I don’t have a trailer.

I put together a transport cage from some scrap wood I had around the farm, and some leftover cattle panel sections which I cut to size. I reinforced it with several cross pieces, secured it with a ratchet strap - and we were off!

I’m very proud of my girls for their first show experience. None were in milk, so we weren’t able to compete with those that were. But they held their own in the categories where they could compete. And we did leave with a Reserve Grand Champion in the Junior Dry Doe category!

It was so nice to spend the day with other goat enthusiasts and talk goat all day.