Welcome back to another season of farm and homestead tours! We’re always ready for more entries! Please read here for guidelines.
We’re heading down home… to your farms! Urban, suburban, or rural — whatever you’re growing and doing, we want to see it.
Welcome to the Down Home Farm Tours series. To see all the farms and homesteads featured in this series, click here. If you’d like to be featured, please read here for guidelines.
Welcome, Nanny Goat Acres!
Southeast Saskatchewan, Canada is home to Nanny Goat Acres. Cindy, Colin, and their four children tend over one thousand acres of grain as well as a hundred plus acres of pastureland. They raise cattle, goats, chickens, turkeys, and horses.
What is your name and the names of your family members?
My name is Cindy and I am a wife to my wonderful hubby Colin. I am also a mom to four busy munchkins — Emily is 13, Doodle is 8, P is 6 and mini me (or rather my husband’s mini me) is 2.
How long have you been farming/homesteading?
Over 15 years.
Share a brief description of your farm/homestead.
Nanny Goat Acres is located in south east Saskatchewan, Canada.
What are you raising, growing, and doing?
We farm about 1000 acres of grain as well as 100 and some acres of pastureland for 20 cattle, 10 goats, 120 chicken, and 10 turkeys, two horses, and two dogs.
How did you get into farming/homesteading?
We had been farming for about 15 years, while living in town, but roughly 6 months ago that all changed. My father in law had open heart surgery and we moved to the farm. Being here full time I knew that I wanted to be as self sufficient as possible and I read all the blogs and books and articles I could get my hands on.
Another driving force for me is our son. He is two and has horrible horrible eczema and allergies. Cows’ milk would cause major breakouts and so we switched to goats’ milk. We found that finding goats milk to buy was not only expensive but next to impossible because most places stock very little of it. Because of this, our first homestead purchase was goats.
We started with eight meat goats and added in two dairy goats. I began to realize very quickly that two goats produced more milk than we could drink in a day and so we had a fridge FULL of milk. I decided the best thing to do would be to make cheese! Well I was so proud of myself!
Now I had used up the milk and had made cheese and the fridge would have more room right? WRONG! Little did I realize that eight liters of milk turns into about three or so pounds of delicious cheese that you have to find room for but also leaves behind eight liters of very useful whey. Thus began the homemade bread making.
After we were settled with the goats we added chickens and turkeys. I ordered 110 Cornish giants, 20 Rhode Island red, and 10 turkeys. We picked them up and brought them home and I spent the next two weeks running back and forth to the barn to make sure everyone was drinking (did you know you have to teach them how to drink?) and no one was crowded under the heat lamp.
Along with the animals I have a large garden and I just started my orchard.
Any future plans?
We are working on getting our license to sell our milk and cheese. We hope to help give people more local food options and to educate people on the benefits of sustainable living. We also plan to add bees and we will be hatching our own chickens as soon as our incubator arrives. We are learning that every day is an adventure when you are a modern homesteader — but we are loving it.
Let’s Tour Nanny Goat Acres
(Wardee: In the captions below, you’re hearing from Cindy as she tells what is in each picture.)
We brought the dairy girls home. My husband and doodle loving miss Aria — and to think he didn’t want goats. 🙂
The kids and I started our own plants this year for the garden. It was such a fun learning experience for us all.
Fresh from the oven. I now make our own bread every 3 or 4 days. It is so much tastier and I know exactly what’s in it.
The dairy girls love grazing after their morning milking. The taller the grass, the happier they are.
Me rocking the gorgeous hat my friend knit me. Our cattle herd in the background enjoying lunch.
The boys enjoying a little treat and loving the summer sun after a long winter.
One of our meat goats having her breakfast and hamming it up for the camera. Goats all have such personality we love it.
Cindy, thank you for sharing with us! We hope you enjoy your free thank you video, our gift to you. Plus, feel free to display the following graphic on your site. (Right-click and save to your computer, then upload to your site and link to this farm tour post.)
Would you like to be featured?
Are you a homesteader or farmer at any level? You don’t have to live in the country, you don’t have to be doing everything.
Being on the journey is the only qualification. We want to see what you’re doing, no matter how big or small.
Click here for submission guidelines for the Down Home Farm Tours series. We’re excited to hear from you!
If you’re selected, we will share your farm/homestead pictures and stories in a dedicated blog post, plus you can add the featured graphic to your blog or website. And, we’ll give you a free thank you video of your choice!
Please give the Cindy and her family a warm welcome in the comments!
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Beautiful homestead Cindy and best of luck to you hatching your chicks!!! We just did meat birds (jumbo cornish crosses) too. Now we decided to give a heritage meat breed a try but I’m going to try hatching a few first ~ the eggs will be here tomorrow. I’d love to hear how it goes for you. 🙂