The First Farm Animals

By Bridget Moore

June 27th, 2022 was a very special day and huge milestone towards our dream and goal. We picked up our first goats, Holly & Prince, in our small SUV and shortly after my dear friend delivered five additional goats, RaeRae, NaeNae, Mary, Cypress and Ginko!

I was over the moon! We finally had goats! Only a year after moving in! I was in awe and extremely happy.

Holly came with her son, Prince, and he was only weeks old! He was adorable and loved hiding by his momma! It took him some time but he warmed up to us pretty quickly especially because we started to bottle feed him fairly soon after getting him. Once he figured out the bottle he would follow us around and nibble on anything he thought was a bottle, silly boy.

Then there was RaeRae and NaeNae who are sisters. RaeRae loved to jump on me and get scratches as much as possible and would nudge me gently with her horns when I stopped. NaeNae was sweet and gentle and would lean in anytime she got attention. Mary was a “trouble” goat and always has been but I fell in love with her for her sass and she fell in love with me. The herd wasn’t a fan of Mary but they learned to adapt and Mary stayed away for the most part.

Cypress and Ginko are half bothers and they were inseparable. Both were scared of me at first and could tell they were not socialized too much yet but they were still little guys. So I slowly started to gain their trust. It took some time but eventually Cypress figured out that I just wanted to give him scratches and snuggles and now he is one of the first at the gate! He sure loves attention.

Ginko still is skittish and tries to stay away but I am okay with that. It is much better than him being aggressive. Although, it would be nice if he were a little friendlier so it was easier to catch him when we need to trim hooves or tend to any additional care needed. But Ginko sure is turning into a handsome fella.

Then after all the goats were situated in their outside barn yards with water, hay, and calf huts (for shelters), another surprise came. Well, it was a surprise for our daughters. My husband, Jake, and I had already planned it. Jake came home with two kittens. They were from two different friends. Our daughter, Twilah, named our light orange female, Snow. Our other daughter, Ojah, named our tiger stripped female, Tigress. They were thrilled to have barn cats! And Jake and I were excited to have “mousers.”

We situated the cats in the barn in a kennel with food and water. They stayed in the kennel when we were not out there and then would let them out to run around multiple times a day. We only did this until they were use to the barn and each other. Then we left the kennel door open until we made them a little “house.”

At first Snow was not friendly with Tigress. But in only a couple of days in the kennel together they were playing and snuggling when they slept. It is fun to look back because the cats were in the barn before we did anything with it! It was just a HUGE pole barn with nothing inside. So the cats got to watch it go from nothing to having pens, hay, a loft and we continue to add to it. We will be having a lot more blogs about all these additions to the barn as well.

It was amazing to go from no farm animals to 7 goats and 2 barn cats in the same day! It still blows my mind to think about how it all came to fruition. All the years we talked about it and dreamed about it. It finally happened! The start of the farm animals! (We of course had already started working on the garden before that which is another huge dream for our farm. More blogs about this to come.)

When someone says to you “dream big,” do you? Well, we dreamed big and sometimes it feels like it is impossible but then when something happens it blows your mind! God is good and we definitely feel Him leading us on this journey and many of these things have all happened faster than we imagined!

So, DREAM BIG, and take a leap of faith. Go for your dreams because you never know just how amazing it will feel! We can play excuses or what ifs in our heads all day long. But what if you are called to do something BIG?

Trust me, I know it is scary. But trust that you have this feeling to follow your dream for a reason! It may bless someone else’s life or maybe MANY people’s lives! All I know is June 2022 was a HUGE milestone to our journey and I will never forget it! It took us taking a leap of faith to take this journey and fly by God’s timing not ours! It is turning out to be a pretty incredible journey if I’d say so myself.

Now go do something you’ve always wanted or been called to do! You will LOVE it! Especially when it comes to fruition!