Milo Bahr

Séamus Ó Ceallaigh wrote:Is this thread still being read?

I've been so busy creating a homestead in Pennsylvania, that my feeling of isolation has snuck up on me and driven me from field and forest and before the glowing intimidation of this computer screen. I'm hopeless with computer technology, but I am a hardworking, very homosexual man just trying to figure out how to meet other homesteading gay men. No expectations, I just want to find a community and go from there. I am still strong enough and active enough to fell trees with my axe, build bridges with native rocks, and prepare unruly, teenage cocks (roosters) for a more civilized life in the freezer.

I am also a novelist, artist, and musician, if that means anything.  I have a very full pantry of food I canned myself, and no sane man would resist my cooking. Before homesteading I was a farm-to-table chef. Just seeing if there's anyone out there reading this thread.

Oh, and I might mention: I speak Irish Gaelic, but the auto-corrupt features on computers these days won't let me type "as Gaeilge"

Hello! I don't know if the OP is still here, but there are lgbt folks still around here and posting. I have a similar-ish "how do i find fellow queer homesteaders" problem, tho mine is in part because I am tremendously shy and thus bad at social media. I asked for advice in a queer farmer FB group, and got encouragement to post here on permies more, so I'm trying to do that. Will probably put up my own post here in the singles forum "soon" (maybe this year if I can get over my jitters, ha ha?).  Also western mass is apparently a great area for us, so not far from you depending on where at in PA?

I think they definitely can be! Like others said, just getting out and doing stuff can be beneficial for the mind. Plenty of urban folks have dogs so that they have a reason to stick to a schedule and get some exercise.

Some animals decide they are support animals, too. A couple days ago I realized my billy goat, Flipcup, was reacting to my heart rate and stress level, because my health tracker alarm thing went off at the same time he was doing something that is extremely annoying: grinding his face on my butt. I suddenly connected that he does it whenever I get mad or frustrated working in their pen, and grinding his face on udders is how he soothes the does when they're upset or fighting. Its very sweet that he wants me to calm down, but also he weighs like 70lbs and has a pissbeard so it doesn't help. He's trying, tho.

Gordon Longfoot wrote:Our white goat had triplets today. It took all day, she was having contractions this morning and I spent a couple hours keeping an eye on here. Of course when I go back to working on my other project my wife hears the baby doing it's first little baby goat sounds. This time we got two girls that will stay on the homestead and one boy that will be sold off.

So she was exposed in October and took a few weeks to go into heat.

I'm so glad that kidding went well!! Triplets isn't uncommon for small goats but whew, I wouldn't have wanted my first goat kidding to be triplets. Good work! Glad you got a couple keepers, too!

Hello!  I am pretty new to the site too, and have been making a similar post. Really similar, we've got a ton of demographic overlap; I'm 39, trans, poly, demi, omnivorous, and neurospicy. What you describe of quiet, gentle, kindness, community, inclusion, land stewardship, just makes me go YES THAT, ME TOO. I just uh also am painfully shy so I havent and it took like 5 days for me to get THIS together.

I lived up in Bellingham/Ferndale for about a decade, until my sister's husband got shipped out early in the pandemic and I moved cross-country to Georgia so she wouldn't be alone on her little sheep farm. I'd been essentially a remote farmhand for her before but then I got here and discovered I gotta have dairy goats in my life. I would love to live in that area again, I still have a lot of friends and found-family up there. Once her divorce is finished we're moving and not quite sure where, just getting the heck outta GA.

Cats are great, and dogs are great. I have three: two chinese cresteds and a yakutian laika. Anyway hi, hello. I dunno if the similarities is an obstacle or a bonus but either way, you seem like someone I would like to know.  Uh here is me with my very first lamancha, Cordelia (I'm not THAT short, I'm sitting down).

Those are really cute little bucks! I have a big lamancha wether with a bit of extra horn remaining. I don't know if its just because he got a bit overcooked during the disbudding (he's real dumb) or if other lads would do it too, but he LOVES to scratch his nubbins on things. A couple times when the big one gets 2-3" long, he's cracked it around the base and/or knocked the horn sheath fully off. When it happens, I bluekote it and monitor it, so far its not really been a problem beyond that.

Yep, they look bred to me! I have lamanchas mostly, but have a couple ND crosses. The ND does look like lil blimps like that. You've got kids coming in the next monthish for sure. Have you had goats kid before? If not, watch for them to sudden udder growth, drooping tails, pawing at the ground then laying down. Sometimes experienced does get milk a lot sooner, but I've had first timers fill out less than 24 hours before (that was quite a thing to wake up to in the middle of the night!).