First Destination Booked!

So you all have been asking me where I am going to go first and I didn’t have an answer… until now.  Until the condo sells I don’t want to go too far, so I looked into WWOOF farms close to home, and there are a lot of them!  So I have booked two weeks at the Bell Ranch in Mount Aukum, CA, where I will learn all about the care and feeding of goats.  

A little background: I have always loved animals.  I cannot remember a time when I didn’t have at least some form of animal companions in my life.  When I was a kid I would tear out the animal pictures from National Geographic and tape them up on my wall.  I was raised by my grandparents in a semi-country setting where we always had dogs and cats and around the neighborhood there were chickens, geese, horses, to name a few.  We also lived on the edge of Ancil Hoffman Park so we had turkeys, deer, and even the occasional coyote wander through our yard.  When I was 12 I spent the summer at a friend’s horse ranch and when I was in highschool I volunteered at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center cleaning out all the cages from the turtles to the finches to the hawk, and I even got to take the owl for a walk once.  So, my fascination with animals goes back a long way.  As much as I have enjoyed city living these past eight years, I have felt the draw more and more to return to nature, which is part of why I am making this life change.  

According to the website, I will be helping with all aspects of goat care from cleaning and feeding to more hands on care.  They also mention a class on how to make various food products from goat milk, which I am very interested in learning.  Part of my reason for doing this, aside from the fact I think it will be fun, is that if I do end up landing somewhere and living partially or fully off grid, goats are something I am considering keeping.  So I want to learn about them to see if my perceptions are accurate or not.  

I will be leaving on Sunday the 28th which is next week!  I can’t wait!

*Right after I booked this trip, someone from BodyTribe brought a goat to the gym.  What are the odds of that?  This picture is one of our students, Teagan, playing the the goat.  It was pretty cute.