Animals at TP

Here's our dog Cassidy, thwarted by the Cadillac of Compost Bins. The old compost pile was still there when the bins were first made. A pile needs to be at least four or five feet tall in the center when it is first built in order to have enough mass to hear up properly. It can be any length, and is always tuned in one direction: towards the garden. New material is added at the end away from the garden and finished material is removed at the end closest to the garden. Handy that way. But the dogs tended to dig up tasty scraps and made a mess of things, so the new bins were built.

About ten years ago a Mennonite family moved to TP and brought milk goats and chickens. Although they have since moved on, the goats and chooks remain.

There are now separate co-ops for each. A few families take care of the chickens and gather eggs. We like to let the chickens run in the goat pen, as we get a lot fewer flies when they can scratch around and eat the larvae.

Our goats are sable Saanens, the largest dairy goat and heaviest producer. These are our second generation, born here, and around seven years old. We love the milk! The co-op for the goats is made up of a mixture of TP residents and neighbors. These goats happen, by an odd coincidence, to be descendants from the herd we used to get milk from in the Santa Cruz mountains when we lived there! This is Becca, looking expectantly for a treat.

Here is Kat with the three kids she had this spring. As you can see, they love tree leaves and bark more than anything, making them useful in controlling the very invasive Siberian elms that were introduced to Santa Fe before they knew better. More on these elms later. Anyway, I have to give the goats credit. We have a nicely self-contained system thanks to them. We get loads of milk and cheese and yogurt, and a handy source of manure for the garden to boot!