Remember when we would share pictures on Instagram simply for sharing’s sake? When we could express an opinion or way of doing something without the keyboard warriors coming out of the woodwork? When 50% of social media accounts weren’t bots?

A full udder tells you there's volume. An udder that milks down to almost nothing tells you that volume was milk, not just tissue — and that's the trait you're actually paying for.

A livestock guardian dog isn't trained the way a herding dog is — it's raised. You bond the dog to the stock and the land, then give it time, boundaries, and supervision while its instincts mature. Start small and earn the range: contained first, off-leash for chores, then longer days, then full freedom — and not a day sooner than the dog is ready. Let your experienced guardians do the teaching. And expect the long game: a ten-month-old is a teenager, not a finished animal.

Up front, the two tractors: the May Olive Eggers — our dragon-egg hatchlings — and the seven-week kits, both putting on size and getting moved across fresh grass. Out on the mulch mound, the ducks have claimed their spot and are running it like they pay rent. Back along the fence, the mature layers are doing what mature layers do — quietly out-earning everybody.

There's a microscope on my kitchen table this week, and I've spent more time looking at goat poop under it than I'd like to admit to dinner guests. I ran a sample on every animal in the herd — does, bucks, the whole roster — slid each one under the lens, and counted eggs against the little identification chart until my eyes crossed. It is not glamorous work. It is, however, the single most useful thing I've done for this herd all spring. Because here's what the microscope mad

Breeding dairy goats well is a design problem, not a gamble. Start with the udder — it's the entire job of a dairy doe, so it's where you judge first. Trace the traits you admire back through the pedigree to learn which lines actually throw them. Screen for the genetics that matter before you pair anything — knowing where polled meets polled so nothing surprises you.

If you stood at the edge of my garden this week, the first thing you'd notice isn't the zucchini or the basil or the dill going feathery in the morning sun. It's the black. Long runs of landscape fabric stretched down every bed, plants poking up through neat little slits like they were placed by someone who has their life together.

In a meat-rabbit program, you don't need many bucks. Keeping every male you raise just to feel kind isn't actually kindness — it's a slow drain on space, feed, and the quality of your herd. The cleaner, more respectful path is to decide early: cull the surplus bucks young, keep the doe kits to grow out and evaluate for breeding, and use what you cull to feed the working animals that earn their keep. Around here, that's the dogs. We opt to use a system called the Buck Bop.

We raise meat rabbits and process them at home at 12–14 weeks — the standard time frame where a rabbit has put on good meat but hasn't started eating into its own feed efficiency. The meat becomes raw food for our working dogs. We currently eat very little of it ourselves, because our table is covered by other stock — but a rabbit is also a meal if we ever need one, which is part of why we keep them.