Milk and Honey (and Me!) settle in to New Digs

Milk and Honey has moved into Santa Fe proper. We now span two locations--my home where I live with my kids, keep the bees and make my soaps and lotion bars (and blog from), and the beautiful piece of land being shared with my goats about three miles from my home. It seems I am getting the best of city life, while my goats are still living out in the country with the chickens and the mountains.

This move into town has been a HUGE transition, but one that has brought all kinds of wonderful, new people into my life. My goats' home is on the property of an absolutely lovely woman named Louisa, who has an incredible permaculture plan in-process, one which includes goats. She is loving having them there, is eager to learn how to milk them, and helps me to feed them, saving me an extra daily trip. While we will be building them a larger shelter that will include a "milking parlor", in the meantime, I desperately needed a temporary shelter for the girls, and I was able to connect with a gentle and incredibly competent carpenter, Bill, who happened to have a day off just when I needed him. The result is a great temporary straw-bale shelter, that the goats immediately inhabited.

And before the goats arrived there, they spent two weeks less than a mile from my home, with an urban goat, at my friend Larelei's. She has just acquired two milk goats, and lives on a third of an acre right in town. I could see the Railrunner train going by as I milked, her toddler, Sebastian, fell in love with me, and her property is surrounded by artists' studios, one of which was a two storey--the artists would look down on me as I milked remarking about how cute the goats were!

So we've had some adventures, and we're finally starting to quiet down. Although goats are very sensitive to change, I am amazed at just how adaptable they have been; through it all, our milking routine has continued.

Now we gear up for the holiday season! It's even easier for me to ship my goodies out to you all all over the country, so please visit my website and enjoy!

Goats by Simon Lee-Plunket

My eight year old son has written a brilliant essay (his first) on goats. Must share!

"The goat is a ruminant mammal closely related to the sheep. They're used in many parts of the world for their hair, meat, milk, and leather. Those parts include Asia, India and Iran for their wool. Ruminant means cloven-hooved, cud-chewing animals with four legs.

"Usually with our goats, especially Taza, they smile at me when I come to feed them. The milk tastes very good--and I mean good!--after my mom has strained and cleaned the milk.

"Goat's milk is a lot healthier than cow's milk, since, being closer to human milk than the cows, it provides a rich taste.

"With Nubians, you can usually tell that they are that kind of goat because they have floppy ears and short horns.

The End."

Slow Money Notes

Just attended some of the Slow Money conference here in town and heard some very inspiring entrepreneurs. The theme of the Slow Money movement (in my words) is that money is not the end-all measurement of value, and in fact using money as the only measurement of success for a business or an individual or a society destroys the planet, relationships, cultures, community, etc.

Here are some random notes from what folks said:

Our power comes from protecting what we love.

On "return on investments"--what about a "living return"? We measure this in the benefit of living in a better environment, the quality of our relationships, our connection with the community, the quality of our lives.

Running a business based on appropriate, human scale (as opposed to growing as big as possible as fast as possible), retaining a sense of ownership, and the identity of locality (where are you from?).

There is no such thing as one sustainable business--only sustainable systems.

Business is about relationships. Money is just a tool.

(Those quotes were from Judy Wicks of White Dog Cafe.)

Businesses operating for a "quadruple bottom line":
Environmental
Social Justice
Financial
Human experience--employees, customers, when people encounter your business, do they feel that they are a part of something meaningful? Does it enhance their lives?

Are we practicing trust?

This is how we measure return:
We wake up every morning and say "this is my life!"

Those rough quotes were from Ari Derfel of Terrain ( who was especially cute and inspiring).

Cooking with Kid

Oh Lord, sometimes you have to bring a two-day old goat into the house with you, and wear her in a sling, and then sit in the rocking chair with her and stroke her little soft head. . .

Brain Trust with Baby Goat

Allow me to introduce the Milk and Honey Braintrust: pictured from left to right: Amy Coplen, Chemist, and first UNM student to graduate with a minor in Sustainability; Dr. Cecelia Williams, Microbiologist; and Phil Pohl, Chemical Engineer; all of Sandia Labs in Albuquerque. They have come to me via the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program , which provides we small NM businesses with the assistance of scientific minds to help us solve business challenges that only a scientist can help with. . . It is a free service (!) to businesses that qualify, and I applied and was connected to Phil, who has brought on his colleagues to help as well.
What the heck to I need a brain trust for? I presented them with a challenge that my designer Michelle and I have been considering for the past six months: How to create unique, packaging that fulfills the promise of William McDonough's "Cradle to Cradle" philosophy:

“Cradle-to-cradle design means literally designing waste right out of the lifecycle of the package. Mimicking nature, a package is designed to be either a technical nutrient that can be reused, or truly recycled in a tight, closed-loop process with zero loss in material performance, or a biological nutrient that can safely break down into the soil.”

I suggested the additional challenge that the packaging be sourced from materials unique to New Mexico (green chile? Adobe?) and that the packaging have an integral identity with my products. These great, smart folks came out to the farm on Monday, and it was exciting an inspiring to work with them. Amy is particularly interested in calculating my carbon footprint--a prospect both scary and exciting--and one which will no doubt enlighten me as to improvements I can make in how I run my business and my farm, and that my customers will appreciate knowing about.

In the meantime, I continue to work with Michelle as we create the first generation of packaging for my new soaps and lotion bars. Currently we are looking at using paper from New Leaf, an incredibly progressive company that provides an "eco-audit" for every project that uses their paper.

The world is a very exciting place to be with all these smart, creative people putting their minds to saving our planet and living better. I am so happy that they are helping me fulfill my vision for Milk and Honey.

Welcome Babies

YOU CAN SEE A VIDEO OF THE NEWBORNS AT MY FACEBOOK PAGE! (It's under my name, Daven Lee.)
Currently named "Sassafras" or "Sass" for short (the girl) and "Pigwidgeon" (you know, from Harry Potter, pronounced "Pig-Widgin"), or "Pig" for short (boy), our new babies were born on Monday, easily and beautifully, probably just as I was waking up around 6am. While doing my morning yoga, I heard a little high bleat coming from the barn, and padded down there in my pajamas, to find two wet kids, sitting up, complaining and crying a little, while their proud and very efficient mother licked them off.
Such a sweet site, especially as the Monday before, we had had another birth of a little doe kid that died a few hours after she was born. It was a sad way to start our kidding "season"--but also a good lesson. I've been beating myself up for a week thinking that I could have done something more to save this kid, but I have to say after Sass & Pig were born, the difference between them and that doeling was dramatic. Although I have had goats for about seven years, I only breed them every other year--in fact, this is only my 4th kidding, and so I don't have the experience that I would have if I were breeding 20 goats every single Spring. Incidentally, I breed about every other year because I'm able to continue milking my goats for two years. I don't have a need for high milk production, and it feels less wasteful, and easier on the mama goats not to dry them up every winter and breed them. After all, these babies will need homes.
In the meantime, we are LOVING THEM!

Introducing My Lovely Assistant

Those of you early birds who have been shopping at the Market this season have already met my lovely and incredibly capable assistant, Teresa Davis. She came to me via an ad I placed in Craig's List (that I thought might be impossible to fill), and she is outrageously over qualified. She just graduated from the University of Chicago and is preparing for graduate school. When I asked her for a work reference, she said I could call the Southern Poverty Law Center, where she worked for a summer. ("Um, hi, yes, I was wondering if you thought she would be a good employee for 4 hours a week at my Farmers Market Booth?" I don't think I'll bother them with that. . .) After I met her and said, Yes!, I told a friend she would be working for me during the summer--assuming she didn't meet a Kennedy and go off and get married. As it turns out, she's just finishing up a vacation at Martha's Vineyard, so that could be a very real possibility. . .

Assuming she comes back this Saturday, you can meet her at the Market where she works the early shift for me (it turns out there are some people who really are "morning people")--until 9am Tuesdays and Saturdays. She is cheerful, knowledgeable about my products, and loves the Farmers Market. She is a welcome addition to the growing Milk and Honey team. (Eeee-- I hope you don't mind that I used the word "team"!)