Goat Knoll Diary

Goat Knoll - Cashmere goats and cashmere fiber from an Oregon farm

What's Happening at Goat Knoll

A chatty little diary of more than you probably want to know...

April 15, 2008 - The kids are all here! Finally! The last kid and last lamb were born last Tuesday. Our final count for the year is 11 kids and 7 lambs. All are thriving and enjoying the sunshine outside (between the frequent rain showers). The book Shear Spirit was released today. We quickly read our advance copy last weekend. It is a wonderful book full of fascinating stories of fiber farms, beautiful photographs and intriguing knitting patterns - and we're not just saying this because we're in it. If you have an interest in such things, you will definitely want to check it out!


The book is out!	New kids - 3 days old

March 26, 2008 - We've been lambing! There are six lambs so far with one ewe left to lamb at any moment. We are hoping the lambs will finish up before the goat kids start to arrive. The lambs are cute, healthy and bouncy. We have only 7 bred cashmere does this year, so the kid crop will be small. We expect that there will be 10 - 15 kids born during the first part of April.

June 2, 2007- You'd think as little as we update this that we don't do much. NOT! We had 27 cashmere kids this year with the first arriving on January 31st. All but two of the rest of them were born in the two weeks following. One straggler was born mid-March (Friday, a silver doe) and the last (Luna, a spunky light brown doe) was born mid-April. All kids except the last two have been weaned. We've received our 2006 cashmere harvest back from the processing mills and now have a full color line of cashmere rovings available for sale again. Our 2007 harvest has been sent to a new mill in Montana to be made into laceweight yarn. We had 5 new lambs (4 of them ewes!) to add to our Shetland lamb flock. Our newfound weaving "habit" consumes a lot of yarn, so an added supply of wool for yarn will be nice. Our biggest event of the spring was the completion of a new greenhouse. Just goes to prove, you don't need carpentry skills if you have good instructions (and lots of persistence!) We are getting ready to attend Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene where we will share a vendor booth with Foxmoor Farm.

April 2007 - The highlight of April (besides the birth of Luna) was the visit of photographer Gale Zucker and her son Leo. Gale is the photographer for a new book, Shear Spirit that will be coming out in April 2008. The author is Joan Tapper and the book will feature 10 fiber farms including Goat Knoll. The book is a collection of stories about fiber farms and knitting patterns created by the fiber producers using their fiber.

September 16, 2006 - It's been a busy summer, but we are finally starting to wind down for the winter. We had our first garden in years and spent time weeding, watering, harvesting and canning/freezing the bounty. You might wonder what a garden has to do with goats. Our soil is clay here and it is an effort to get any plant to survive, let alone thrive. When we cleaned our our barn last fall, we hauled it all to our designated garden spot. We dug the "barn produce" into our soil this spring and planted a garden. It thrived! We realize now that our goats were not just making a mess in the barn all winter, they were manufacturing garden soil. We put our breeding groups together September 2nd, a month earlier than usual. We decided to try kidding earlier in the year so our kids would be available for sale earlier in the spring. It eems that customers always want kids before they are available. Not wanting to make impatient customers wait any longer than necessary, we've decided to move things up a month. We've read articles on lambing that suggest an advantage of early lambing is to encourage ewes to lamb in the barn (to avoid the nasty weather) rather than in the far corner of the back 40. We are breeding a total of 22 does, using 3 different bucks, so we expect around 40 kids in February 2007. Two of the bucks used are silver and one is red. We are anxious to see the results of these matings We are still waiting for our 2006 harvest to be returned from two different processing mills. We are anxious to see the quality produced by these new mills.

Thunderbolt and Ronin - the two "main men" for 2006. Thunderbolt got 6 does and Ronin got 15 (but who's counting?). We used our older buck Quinn for one more breeding before he leaves for Tennessee. That dark shadow in the lower left is the professional photographer.

June 20, 2006 - We've been busy since the last entry. The kids are all here and due to be weaned this week and next. Our final count was 41 kids and 2 lambs. Of the 41 kids, only 13 were doe kids. We wethered all but two of the buck kids. Needless to say, we have lots of wethers for sale. :-) We've sent off this year's fiber harvest to two different processing mills to be made into rovings for spinning.

March 13, 2006 - The kids are here! The kids are here! Finally, our first kids have arrived. So far we have four. Spirit, a black doe, had two strapping boys early Monday morning. Mini Pearl also had twins late Monday evening. All kids are thriving under the care of good mothers. We eagerly await more...Most should be here by the end of March.

Mini Pearls' brand new twins.

January 15-16, 2006 - We sheared the goats! This was a couple of weeks earlier than normal, but they were shedding. Before we sheared, we took "before" photographs of the goats and graded their cashmere. They also got a hoof trim and a visual appraisal. This is a time we make notes of who we want to keep, who we want to sell, and who needs to be culled. We put down more straw in the barn for them to snuggle in to. They will be cold for a couple of weeks, but we will give them extra food and make sure they have plenty of barn space to hang out in. We have a nice stack of fleeces that will need to be sorted, the grading checked and shipped off for processing into rovings and yarn.


Toosh before shearing	Buffy gets a haircut	Wonnut looking bald and spiffy

November 20, 2005 - We disbanded our breeding groups and settled everyone in their designated spots for the winter. It's good to have the bucks back in their winter pasture - less pressure on our fences.

October 22-23, 2005 - We put together the last of our breeding groups this weekend. We have two breeding groups this year. 17 does are with Quinn, an awesome silver buck we have used in past years. The other group (8 does) have "dates" with Martok, a promising younger buck. We used him once last year with good results so we are anxious to see what the results will be with a larger group of does. Our kids in 2006 will arrive during the month of March, some possibly as early as the first of the month, with most near the end of March.

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