We love our vegetarian farm! The animals that live with us have a purpose on the farm and must carry out their responsibilities to work on the farm. Duties include eating the pasture, trim back the brush, provide fertilizer for the coffee plants, milk etc. They will not however, suffer the fate of being eaten by us! Last year, we had don Roberto’s cows on our farm:
Don Roberto’s cows helped keep the pasture down and provided fertilizer for the coffee plants last year. He had 15 cows on our farm.
Don Roberto took his cows back this year and built a new corral for them on his farm. They are happy there! I went by for a visit and I also bought two cows from don Roberto. Here’s a short film of don Roberto’s cows. Our faithful friend and partner on the farm Ricardo, is with me making the cow deal to purchase two cows for our vegetarian farm:
A cow deal goin’ down! from biolleybuzz on Vimeo.
Ling Ling is on the left and Shi Shia is on the right. Those are the two cows I purchased from Roberto! Ling Ling is pregnant and will soon have her baby.
Ricardo brought his cow onto the farm and Rigo, another guy who works on the farm, brought his 6 cows over. So now we have 9 cows living on the farm and Ricardo is building our corral! We are excited to have our new cows! We are starting our small herd! Nuestro “ganado” in Spanish. (our herd).
Our small herd is happy on the farm! The girls will eat grass, provide fertilizer, milk, cheese and yogurt on the farm!
We started out with two goats and now have five! “Micha” aka Laverne, the adult nanny goat on top of the rock, is an old girl. Ricardo wanted to trade her in for another goat! She is part of the family and will stay with us and eat good food and help cut back the brush. The fertilizer that comes from her is just as useful as the other goats! Besides….. she’s part of the family!!! Working with a vegetarian farmer is a very new thing for Ricardo! We might not prosper so much in our livestock, but they are working for us and have a great function on the farm!
“Nieve” aka Shirley, is my girl! Well all the goats are family, but Shirley and I have a special bonding. Shirley is famous around these parts. She puts out quite a daily load of milk everyday!
The milk is fantastic! On our last trip to the farm, we drank Shirley’s milk daily! She is on a good diet. Green bananas, grain mixed with honey, vitamins and minerals along with the tropical brush around the area makes Shirley’s milk delicious! We use her milk in our cereal. We strain her milk first. Then we boil it and strain it again. We then skim any fat that remains off the top and ta-da….. there you have it! Can’t wait to get to making goat cheese, feta and the like!
The kids are eating bananas now and are pretty much weaned off of their mothers. We have a billy problem in that one of the kids is a billy. Billys are not easy to deal with and we cannot keep our billy with us. We cannot mix our strain of goats …. our friend who is the welder in Biolley may take the billy, he has goats too.
Ricardo has settled into the duplex with his family and he brought his dogs with him. He has a new addition a puppy named Hunter. Ricardo informed me that Hunter is part my dog too. That was all he needed to say….. Hunter is my dog too???? That did it! I am head over heals for Hunter!
Hunter is a Rottweiler and he is such a loving boy! He just had a bath in this photo. Rottweilers make great farm dogs! They herd cattle and protect the family! At the moment, Hunter is afraid of the cows but he’ll soon rise to the occasion! He needs to grow more!
It took me awhile to become friends with another new addition to the farm only because he is noisy and that can be a bother when you are trying to sleep! “The Boy”, that’s what I call him, and I have a understanding now and I am able to sleep on the first round of his alarm. I can actually snooze through it now! The second round comes at just the right time because it is truly time to get up. The Boy hangs out right outside my window and as soon as I am up he’s done sounding the alarm for the day. The Boy and I have similar interests because The Boy likes bananas so he’s okay in my book. In the afternoon, the boy comes around for a treat. I usually have some bird food and dry corn kernels for him. He likes that.
The boy is eating a banana! We all love bananas! Actually,the cows, the goats, the dogs, the rooster and a guest horse who was on the farm for a few days, all love bananas!
Here’s a photo of the guest horse on the farm. The cows loved having him!
Having a guest horse on the farm was nice. I am convinced now that we should have a few horses. The horses in Biolley are nice! We would only have the horses for guests who want to walk around on the horse and for us to do the same. We do not want to run or gallop or even trot on the horses we have, just walk. A great thing about being in the tropics is that food is abundant year-round for the animals.
We are looking to get a few sheep too. We want the sheep to work the coffee fields where the grass grows up rather tall between the rows. We use weed eater like machines now that take up a lot of gas. But hey, at least we don’t use round up! So, we are on to the next step, which is getting sheep to eat the grass between the coffee rows. We also want to try the sheep out in the pasture to see how well they mow the lawn. We have heard the sheep will maintain the pasture better than the cows. We’ll trade off parts of the farm for both types of grazers to share.
My old friend Lucky still comes by for a visit on the farm now and then and of course he’s greeted by me with his usual treat!
My buddy Lucky just loves bananas. Lucky is a true friend! Whenever I walk by his house which is up the street, he always greets me and escorts me if my journey is short. He doesn’t come around the farm like he used to because of the other dogs, but once in awhile he does make it down to see me.
Our farm is organic now since we purchased it in 2008. We are happy to have the animals be a part of the farm and live peacefully side by side with us! We will continue our organic practices and to preserve the 1/3 of the property that is natural forest and river water. We appreciate the balance of natural wonder around us too. We are also happy with the fact that we are helping our two workers Ricardo and Rigo to grow and prosper from our land.
That’s it for the animal update on the farm! Next entry, we’ll show you around the pueblo of Biolley!
Pura vida and green, fertile pastures to all!
