Neighbors

In a rural community your “neighbors” aren’t necessarily next door.  These are some of the neighbors and friends we’ve come in contact with on our adventure.

• Muddy Meadow Farm Duvall, WA – Chris and Christl have been very kind to a couple of newbies like us.  They invited us over to scavenge raspberries from their garden during our first summer after only a few exchanges on a local mailing list.  Chris inadvertently helped us find our registered nubian dairy goat, Obsidian.
• Broad Acres Farm Carnation, WA – Joe, or as we call him “Farmer Joe” (to distinguish him from our non-farmer friend Joe), “loaned” us our first oberhasli goat, Molly.  We use the term “loaned” loosely since we are quite certain Joe knew how smitten we would become with her.
• Dog Mountain Farm Carnation, WA – Shortly after moving to the area we started looking for local farm events to attend to get to know our community a little better.  We happened upon a small event at Dog Mountain and were treated to a tour and much advice from both Cindy and David.  They’ve greatly inspired our own aspirations for what can be achieved in the area with a small cultivated space.
• The Goat Lady Duvall, WA – Perhaps serendipitously I got in contact with Jill while freecycling some items we no longer needed after our move.  Through our conversations we realized we lived down the road from each other.  Jill and Josh gave us our first opportunity to try out milking goats when we offered to goat-sit one of their diary goats and two rejected 3 week old kids.  If you’ve been around goat kids you know that almost everyone falls in love with goats after the experience.
• F3 Duvall, WA – F3 is the new hobby farm of friends of our’s.  They recently found their way from Kent to 3.5 acres in Duvall to start their hobby farm dream.
• Misty Eyed Goat Farm Duvall, WA – I met Gordon over a gardening mailing list and then realized he was also on the same mailing list that I met Joe and Chris on.  We struck up a conversation about goats and chickens and arranged to exchange farm visits.  We knew we’d found kindred spirits when the time flew by and we’d ended up talking for hours on our visit.  We’ve got a standing agreement that we can call on each other for “farm sitting” services which is really hard to find (and probably a true testament to farm friendships).