Overwork continues to be a main stressor of farmers.  Urban farmers are no less inoculated.   Last year was difficult, with bike accident and a broken neck and sickness in babies, it was difficult to share hard lessons.  Not to mention COVID complications. We are currently on a break visiting our son, and away from our seven day work week.  Rest reminds me to me to seek the beauty of the moments we live at GlennArt Farm.

My first thought is gratitude for Volunteers and Workers.  We simply were not able to do ANYTHING new without the volunteers that help us.  This year we are seeing results at the Waller street Pasture and on our small plot of land at Midway Park because of volunteers.  We also have a lovely crew of kids ages 12 to 14 that we hire for evening chores.  Last year and this year we have hired a weekend helpers to keep us going.  Life becomes a bit more wild as I learn to manage time of others and how to communicate needs appropriately.
Here is a slide show of  many 2020 to 2021 volunteers and workers.   I hope to continue to recognize their support by adding more photos of others. 

Time to sleep and rest also provides me with time to look back at the kidding season which cranked up 2021 to a blur of activity.  March 6 was our big day.  Emma gave birth to twin boys. We continued to have kidding season every two days until March 14.  Every kid arrived safely and all are growing well.  We were flooded with appointments to play with goats, and weekends were booked through Augustl. Weekdays from 10 am to 6pm remain available.  Remarkably people come to chill with goats even in the cool March temps, wet days of rain and hot temperatures of early spring. 

Still interested?  Contact David at glennartyoga@gmail.com to come on weekdays.  We also work with an app called FEVER at the link listed below this text
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Our other service is providing raw unpasteurized goat milk.  Milk began slowly.  We waited for milk quality samples from the laboratory  to begin selling milk in late March.  With a new source for alfalfa hay, we have increased our production and watch carefully for illness.  Cleaning the goat area daily is a hard chore to maintain; however it is our main defense against infection.  Our production has been amazing this year with nearly 3 gallons per day.  Customers continue to arrive looking for this rare product in the Chicago area.  If interested please contact us by clicking on this button. 

 Photo 1:  Starry Night becomes a much better mom this year caring for her twins.
Photo 2:  Our first quart sold this year the end of March.
Photo 3:  Goats lounging at the Waller Street pasture waiting for friends to visit.

Monday October 5 was a date of  many transitions for our tiny farm. The main change for us is the arrival of Kevin. David and I  traveled 300 miles to retrieve him from Happy Hallow Farm in East Moline.

Kevin has arrived at our farm to service our girls. He comes with great credentials, musky smell, and a beautiful black beard. He is a 5 year old Alpine buck with good genetic lines who has a lot of experience with breeding.  With our small spaces, his lack of horns is very important. Surprisingly he has a very nice personality with the public, appreciating nose scratches.

GlennArt holds goat chills daily, where groups come to enjoy the pasture with baby goats and mommies.  At 4 pm on Monday, Kevin spiced it up with the two young ladies who were at the pasture when he pulled up.  The mommy goats smelled him through the enclosed van,  immediately running to the fence. Our visitors  sat on the other side of the fence separation with the baby goats and watched a scene from Animal Planet Kevin entered his new kingdom and reviewed the goat mommies immediately.  We kept the baby girls separate, as they are to young for breeding.  Maybe they were out of reach, but not out of smell as he snorted at them through the fence.

Kevin knows what to do, so much so that he woke me up this early morning  with his tap dancing paces on the plastic pallets in the garage. I have heard of other bucks making loud noises, hollering in the process. Not our Kevin he was silent but insistent. He was trying to get through the fence to Betty who looked quite happy to accommodate him, though she is not on the list for breeding.  He was peeing and snorting and pushing the separating fence which I reinforced at 4am.  He continued to check the other four mommy goats in his area to see if they are ready.  Impressive.  He will be here for 45 days, through two esterus cycles to make certain the girls are bred for 2021. 

After a dry and hot August and early September, the appearance of our last nectar flow of Asters, Golden Rod and Wild Garlic creates a glamorous prelude to fall colors.  Yesterday's rain has helped.  It is the last hurrah for bees to find pollen and nectar before the estimated frost of October. 

After finding a bumble queen in fall 2019, much to my surprise I found another Bumble Queen.  She was  obvious as she appeared over 1 inch large.  I estimated her to be a 'bombus bimaculatus,' based on her markings and wings.  There are 9 bumble varieties in the state of Illinois and I have seen the queens of two of them.  Here is a link to learn about bumble lifestyles and details.
​https://www.greatsunflower.org/sites/default/files/imce/Eastern_Bumble_Bee.pdf
 
Enjoy the beauty ​around you today , it comes in small doses along the street, in the crevasses of the gutter, behind the bushes in your yard.  

The year 2020 required all of the country and world to change how to live differently. Schools closed, people became ill and died, and providers of families lost jobs. Meanwhile our society closed into a lockdown.  For us on the farm we continued to offer our raw unpasteurized goat milk to customers and offer time with goats.  Yet it has been a crazy year living with the pandemic and protests in Chicago. The pandemic quarantine created a different  environment on the West Side causing  more time with neighbors, and learning to live together in peace.  I plan to write more details about our neighborhood reactions to protest in another article.

Our milking season started in June with the last arrival of our goat babies. Leani showed up on time and healthy.  She is different from the other kids and has a fun personality.  With white ears and black spots we call her the Prada Girl, as she looks sharp in her prada collar and leash.  These goat kids attracted attention not only in the community but also with families in Chicago.  

When we began to schedule chills in May, we did not realize that we were providing a service to families in lockdown.  In pre-pandemic years, typical Goat Yoga classes were held with 20-25 people.  Goat Chills became a small family group activity with fun outdoors while fulfilling health restrictions.  Families came and hung out with goats and amazingly it continues to be a popular activity all summer till even now in September.   As June and July continued, we continued to call the Mayor's office to review options. In July we offered Goat Yoga only through private groups.  Parties of 12 or less only.

The Goat Chills consisted of spending an hour with baby goats at the Root Riot Community Garden pasture on Waller street, and sometimes on Huron Street.  People come and sit on chairs in the pasture while goats play jump and visit with them.  I even enjoyed moments to relax with goats. 

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​During this year we have learned to live more intentionally  with our neighbors. We have a gathering spot on Midway Park, which is across from the Root Riot Garden and Pasture.  More people gather daily to drink and smoke and chat.  More people are out of work these days and the hot weather drives them to a cooler space.  Mothers need to have a place to sit with their children.  So people I have not met before come to this place in cars or walking. We have offered families to come into the pasture when we were there, and a number of families walking by took our offer.   ​The trees planted last fall occupy the sidewalk in front of the pasture on Waller Street. They were were stripped of all branches three times because more people were outdoors and wanted to feed the goats branches.  We continue to put up signs asking not to tear tender trees.

A number of children are outside and unsupervised.  They come to the fountain at the end of Midway Park, which is across the street from Root Riot and play in the water.  The Chicago water parks two blocks away have been closed all summer. With this summer being the hottest on record,  these cooling activities happen regularly.  Human kids also released our baby goats onto the street.  Praise God for good neighbors who called me.  This has happened in years before and the kids and I had a talk about goats and why they are in a fenced area.  After nine years, we have another group of young kids to educate.  I hope to hire a few of these kids to care for our herd. 

Our Garfield Park agreement was cancelled this year, so we have one less place to graze our animals. We made heavy use of moving our goats to different lots within six blocks of the house.  All of our herd from goat kids to milking mammas,  are trained to jump into the van to find a nice place to eat forage.  We learned to move the goats daily in July , August and now September. 

Every year this urban farm expects one Great Escape of goats.  In 2020,  it came on the Long Street Property.  Kids pulled the gate open to pet the babies  and the big goats pushed their way out.  We had twelve goats running up and down on Long Street before we could arrive.  Praise God for our neighbors who corralled them into another lot.  We arrived five minutes after the neighborhood community moved the animals.  We cannot operate on the West Side without the kind help of our neighbors. 

A group of landowners  have an agreement for GlennArt Farm to use their lots for agriculture.  We clean the garbage, mow the lots  and provide the owners with manure for gardening.  This year the owners' gardening efforts and the goats did not mix well.  The property on Superior had a small plot of corn, potatoes and beans, so we attempted to fence the girls out.  With nothing else to do but look longingly at the corn, the fence was pushed down and the garden destroyed.  We made payment for some of the owner's loss.  In our accounting recoreds, we called it expensive "goat feed."  So fencing a garden from goats does not mix. We hope to be more considerate to our supporting friends in the future. 

We are not able to start goat yoga classes in May and June, in order to keep safe with the world wide pandemic of COVID 19.  So far we have four babies, expecting more in the coming days.  Family groups now living a life of  'shelter in place' are invited to meet baby goats in our pasture spaces.  One mom stated "This is good for the soul," after the 45 minutes of quiet with grazing goat mamas and baby goats napping in the grass.

Contact David at our glennartyoga@gmail.com email address for more information.  Weekly we set up times that jive with the occasional good weather we are experiencing in May. Come enjoy a few minutes of the spring with baby goats. 

While Root Riot Community Garden has undergone a significant renovation, GlennArt is working on the pasture portion of the property. This process clears parasite in the grasses as well as allows us to plant other cover crop species that have higher nutrition value for the goats.
The chicks arrived almost two weeks ago, and they are happily eating grass and grain. As we move the tractor across the field, the chicks eat down the plant life. We then sow annual alfalfas, clovers, and millets for goats to eat in July.   The chicks have survived a lot of rainy and cold weather.  Stay tuned as we continue remediation of the field. 

Life continues this spring as Root Riot Community Garden and GlennArt Farm  renovate the Waller Street property.  Our biggest project is to create a pasture mediation process that allows us to clear parasites from the grasses.  These parasites consist mostly of barber pole worms(Haemonchus contortus), a primary cause of anemia in our animals. 

I had a choice of buying a cow (!!!!), a donkey, sheep or to obtain a chicken tractor. While all those other ideas seem fun and permanent, we opted for the chicken tractor. We have built a mobile chicken coop on wheels. Raising chickens for four weeks seemed like a shorter commitment.

Today our Wwoofer volunteers Miles Weber and Andria Ahrens worked with our local carpenter Nairobi Anderson to cover the frame of the tractor.  Half of the 'box' is covered with hardware wire, and half with roofing.  Because of our April snow earlier this week we go to Carlock to pickup the chicks on Saturday.  

​Looking forward to attaching the wheels tomorrow after yet another snow tonight.