Continued from yesterday

Today I made mozzarella and ricotta cheeses again and I think, how cool is it that I can go out in my yard, get some milk and then make cheese?  Then I think about how expensive that cheese is.  I keep receipts in a notebook so I can see how much I spend on food and other stuff for the goats.  They're certainly not paying their way, unless you consider how much joy they bring to my life and maybe, just maybe, if I didn't have them I'd be sad and depressed and have to take depression medications, and think how expensive that could be.  So I'm probably saving us lots of money having goats.  You may say that's quite a stretch since I didn't take antidepressants before I got goats but you just never know about the future.  Recently I've checked out several library books on farming.  When I feel guilty about James working so hard to make a living for us while I'm out frolicking with the animals I think I should be able to find a way to earn some money from our "farm".  I'm good at raising animals, building barns and things, making cheese etc.  The problem is I know nothing about marketing.  Our sophomore-in-college-son said recently that he just now realized that he's going to have to start working harder at school because things weren't going to just fall in his lap like they always have.  He's always felt like things would always work out for him and that he'd just get lucky.  Well, I've felt the same way.  I've always been lucky and lived a pretty charmed life.  When I started my business in NC as a personal trainer I got one client and then all it took was word of mouth and things took off.  I wish it could be like that with farming.  It would be nice if I could tell one person I was raising turkeys to sell and they'd tell 2 friends and so on, and so on until there was more demand than I expected.  I don't think it works that way when you live in a rural area.  Not enough people.

In the past 2 or 3 weeks two young women in their 20's have shown an interest in my raising goats and making cheese.  They both said the same thing, "I want to do what you're doing".  One of them just recently graduated from college and the other graduates in 4 months.  I'm sure their parents would be a little disappointed, after paying tuition all those years, if their daughters wanted to play with goats and chickens and cook.  Hopefully they took some business and marketing classes and are more assertive than I.

I'm not giving up though.  I'm still a wannabe farmer.  Would anyone like to buy a turkey?