Laffing Goat Farm and Wetland Preserve

20/08/2025

This is not a factory farm, nor is it a business of any kind.
Also we are not a petting zoo and are not "open to the public", this is our HOME.
It is a hobby farm. It's a somewhat expensive hobby :)
The animals here are all PETS. At any given time I have a couple of dozen chickens and maybe a dozen ducks. I used to keep zebra finches, I loved their sweet soft peeps. They always laid and hatched eggs and I loved watching them grow from hatchlings to birdies, until I learned the hard way that our PNW nights are too cold for keeping them outside on a patio. That was a ghastly discovery for sure. I could not keep them indoors due to my asthma. SO, now I have hardy chickens and ducks that thrive in our climate.
I love watching my birds flock and socialize and set up their own little cliques. I have always preferred animals to people: their rules of engagement are always crystal clear to me, unlike humans.

The byproduct of having any female birds is they lay eggs. What I provide to you are the extra eggs that are, as the Brits put it, "surplus to requirement". I love eggs for dinner with ham, fried in a sandwich, hard boiled as snacks, devilled, scrambled, SSU, or soft boiled with soldiers to dip in them.
On an extremely good day my birds might provide as many as a dozen eggs, on an average day between June and October it is more likely to be between 4-8 eggs. From October to June I'm lucky to get 1-2 if any at all. I can't provide mass quantities as a factory farm with hundreds to thousands of birds can do. And I wouldn't want to. My birds are all individuals, many with names, and are provided with better care and feed than any factory farm can ever do. The quality of their eggs shows it. It's not about money. These are my babies.
The cost to keep and care for these birds far exceeds what I charge for eggs. As best it offsets a small portion of their feed. I sometimes give eggs away when I think someone needs them. Same with the jellies. My way of giving back to my community. I'll likely to keep it up another 5-10 years before I decide it is time to downsize, but that's a ways off I hope.

SO if you're looking for someone to provide you with tens of dozens of super cheap eggs weekly, it ain't us. I post daily what I have available to share in the pinned post above, which is usually anywhere from zero to at most 4-5 dozen chicken eggs and maybe a couple dozen duck eggs. Always dated for freshness and never more than a week old. In the heat of summer I MIGHT have goose eggs as Cordie lays about 3 ginormous eggs a WEEK, but for only a few weeks each year while she is still young.
I appreciate each and every one of you for helping keep this hobby fun and somewhat sustainable. I love showing your kids the giant goldfish in our pond and letting them give the goats a cookie or two, and learning your names (although I have never been good at remembering names, I do try).

19/08/2025

UM, it seems strange and a little scary that I have to explain this at all, apparently this is important to say here:
This is my HOME where I live and sleep. I don't publish this, my HOME address, publicly on Facebook for a good reason. Do you post your home address on social media??
IF someone asks you about eggs or anything else, PLEASE do not just give out my home address to random strangers that I do not know. Even worse if even YOU don't actually know them. Refer them to this page, or to my email [email protected], and allow ME to decide with whom to share my home address or other personal information. People who buy my eggs and hire me for sewing projects are friends or people who have communicated directly with me in email or messenger. I can then check them out before deciding what if any information to give them. It's common courtesy besides being basic safety every teenager is supposed to understand.
MOST people are on the up&up, sure, but I have definitely had several creepers: a whole group of them wandering around in my backyard, opening the goat and chicken enclosures where NO ONE is allowed to go without us, discovered when we came home from shopping, or another one wandering around in our wetland uninvited and then cursing at me for asking them to leave MY property (thank the gods for our cameras and alarms that alert us).
Someone said "there's no other way to find you" -- that is the whole point. If someone needs to "find me" they MUST communicate with me first, I really do not want unknown random strangers showing up at my home uninvited. Would YOU??
I know each and every one of you, I recognize you on sight, your kids, your partner, your car. Some I even have learned to connect your name to your face over time (even the ones I could not pronounce without asking you). But every one of you I have personally communicated with before giving you my address.
I love having a farm, and having enough to be able to share and offset a tiny bit of the cost. I will draw a line at sacrificing safety and privacy. I know you understand.
This also applies to those of you to whom I have given my private landline phone number. It is not a business phone, it is private and I trust you not to share it without asking first.

15/08/2025

Jams are here

13/08/2025

goose vs duck and chicken eggs Goose eggs 3 for $5

13/08/2025

GOOSE EGGS $5 for three (they are huge) and plenty of chicken and duck eggs as well.
Goose eggs are mild tasting. closer to chicken than duck. I tend to scramble these as they are a bit large for soldiers & eggs (and I wouldn't know how to time them, 3 min for chicken eggs, 4 for duck egg and ??? for a goose egg to keep the yolk liquid but warm).

12/08/2025

Canning a small batch of GERMAN plum butter (Pflaumenmus), will be ready this week. It differs from Dutch plum butter in that instead of cloves it has a bit of vanilla. I grew up loving Dutch apple butter and Dutch plum butter, very spicy wit lots of cloves and cinnamon and allspice with brown sugar. Some people however prefer a less spicy plum butter, and that is pflaumenmus (pronounce flow-men-moose, with the "flow" part rhyming with cow). Still sweet and plummy and rich. You will love it!
I have a bunch of halves pitted wild plums I plan to can intact with a light syrup to cover them. They're a sweeter variety than I used for the butter. Maybe in pint jars (jams and butters go in 8oz half pints). Tomorrow likely. Kinda hot today (although it's still cooler in my kitchen than outside).

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10/08/2025

Come and Get 'em! 4 dozens buys one bag of chicken feed, these mooches gotta start supporting themselves.

08/08/2025

Haven't canned it yet but I made, from a bushel of tart yellow shiro plums, 2 batches of dipping sauce: one HOT and sour (left burner) and one same recipe but without the pepper flakes for SWEET and sour for George (some don't like it hot LOL ). No recipe per se as I don't measure, it's all to taste. Cooked down the plums skimmed off the skins (and pits) and cooled it overnight (I can't do it all in one go) then pureed it all smooth. Today I divided it into 2 pots and to each I added a little soy sauce, some fresh minced ginger and minced garlic and Chinese 5-spice powder and some brown sugar (cos these plums are wayyy tart, no vinegar needed for the sour part) and to one pot I added red pepper flakes. Some people add red onion and TBH I never even thought about that till I was done. I love it. The hot is perfect for dipping, just hot enough. The sweet is just sweet enough for George for dipping (there are a few random pepper flakes but you can't taste them in this version). It is of course different than "plum sauce" or duck sauce bc everyone makes it differently. I'll be keeping a few for our own use and offering the others with my jams and jellies for ppl who like them.

07/08/2025

Looking better, east side by the water feature is cleared, just needs fresh mulch. Lots of debris on sidewalk to pick up and dump into compost. Then the west side needs work, won't be as hard I think (no ribbon grass). Lots of hostas to replant. They are resilient so I have a day or three they can wait a bit.

05/08/2025

Decided to spend the past couple days cleaning up around our "water feature" pond and fountain. It had become so overgrown with hostas (that haven't been thinned since I planted them pre-covid), ribbon grass and invasive St John's Wort you couldn't even see it, and even though we had a fence around it to keep the ducks out, we kept finding nests full of duck eggs inside the fencing in the tall grass and shaded under the hostas, so it all finally had to go. It's not completely cleared yet, about half done then we will rearrange the large decorative rocks and spread a thick layer of mulch. Don't think we'll even bother trying to fence it this time since the ducks find their way in anyways. We'll just make it inhospitable to them for nesting purposes.
We also cleared some tall grass along our western fence they were nesting in and hiding eggs and the old strawberry patch in back which was overgrown and also had ineffective fencing around it. I've repurposed the wine barrels those (dead) strawberries were in to replant the thinned hosta plants and spread some other hostas around in places where I can enjoy them. I have a thriving strawberry patch by the kitchen door so the dead ones won't be missed.
And the ducks are laying in their clean nests inside their enclosure once again. :)

04/08/2025

Did some rearranging of my roosters yesterday. Goldie is officially out. We took the young roo we accidentally got in a batch of pullets in March and gave him the year-old Whiting hens for his very own brides and they are settling in perfectly. His name is Splash and he has a cute little crow. Chuckles meanwhile is staying where he was with the new bluebell/whitings (same exact genetics) which have actually started laying this week. And gentle Goliath, the incredibly huge Marans, has his own harem as well.
Nasty boy Goldie is in a separate 5x10 kennel with everything he needs till we take him to the Monroe Co-Op. He even attacked me again this morning as I was bringing him food -- he's not protecting his hens since he hasn't even been with them since yesterday. He's just mean. No room for an animal like that on our farm.
Our gimpy hen, the one that had the broken left femur in March and healed perfectly, has been in hospital kennel for a couple of weeks now with what seems to be a sprained right leg -- no obvious breaks I could identify like before. She has started bearing some weight on it but still limping so she stays in the spa until she is fully recovered. I'll put her in with Chuckles and the young hens when she heals more, he's closer to her size. I think Goliath is just too darn huge for her. He is so gentle and attentive to his ladies, calling them for food and making sure everyone gets their share, but he's the size of a Tom turkey in November. Like a sumo wrestler making love to a tiny geisha.

25/07/2025

Yard Sale is over BUT I still have hand crafted items in the Quonset hut at the entrance to the farm, just LMK if you want jams, jellies, ornaments, or newly upholstered chairs, drive up to the door and ring the bell (knocking is ridiculous as this is a big house and I won't hear you). end of the dead end street across from Bridges Pets.
Jams and Jellies are there as well as hand crafted Christmas ornaments, pencil/cosmetic bags, two sets of newly upholstered chairs and barstools. I will be listing on craigslist this weekend the vintage glass depression glass, crystal and collector items, new meat grinder, flatscreen TV and an older tube TV (working and running in the quonset hut), 2 DVD players and a VCR, DVDs of old TV shows, 2 mini aquariums, some power tools.

I decided to execute my original plan to use the quonset hut as a craft hut on weekends, so I'll plan to be out there weekly either cutting glass or sewing tote bags, and folks can drop by and shop while I make stuff. That way I won't have an excuse for not having time to cut glass.