Lindy Haven Farm
Linda has been raising dairy and fiber goats since 2007. She calls it a hobby farm because she only has 1.14 acres but she has a large herd of mixed breed goats.
Linda had always wanted goats and in 2007, she talked her husband into getting 2 Nigerian dwarf does. Linda still has one of them, Mocha who is 13 now.
Scarlet’s grandaughter and Pennylane
She kept adding to her herd (Nubians, Toggenburgs, Nubian/LaManchas). She calls her Nubian/LaManchas “NuManchas” and she has mini versions as well. In 2010, she got an American Saanen. She milks the larger breeds but not the Nigerian dwarf goats because the milk is too sweet for her taste.
One is a mini Toggenburg & the other is a mini NuMancha crossed with mini Toggenburg. They both were sired by Lindy Haven FD Rusty – a Nigerian Dwarf buck with blue eyes.
She just recently added an Angora buck to her herd, so, she is now breeding more Nigora goats (the fuzzy ones).
Isabella
Cajun, Linda’s new Angora buck before being sheared. He runs to get under the hay when she’s throwing it into the pen.
Lindy Haven CJ Silver Sassy Lady, Linda’s favorite Nigora doe kid this year.
Every breed has different tasting milk. Her favorite is the milk from her Nubian x LaMancha does. The mini versions are just slightly sweeter, but the NuMancha milk tastes closest to cow’s milk. Her Nigerian Dwarfs’ milk is very sweet although she isn’t currently milking them.
Snowflakes
She used to do all the milking herself by hand, then she got a hand operated milking machine, and, finally, a few years ago she purchased a milking machine.
Unfortunately, her milking machine doesn’t work with the Nigerian Dwarfs’ small teats. Linda bought the attachment for the milker, but the maker put the wrong size Y coupler on it and, although she finally bought the right sized one, she doesn’t have the strength to replace it.
Linda has had Fibromyalgia since she was a child and now, her hands don’t have the strength to put the milking machine’s hoses on anymore. So, she had a brilliant idea and it is working beautifully – she started a milking group with no cost to join. The members put the machine together, take it apart and wash it, catch the does and help with the milking. In exchange, they get half of the milk (for which they bring their own containers).
They continue milking until all the members’ freezers are full, at which point Linda dries off the does.
Penny
Note: She is looking to add people to her milking group. She particularly needs a person to do the weekend milking and a person to help on days when her other helpers are ill or go on vacation. (If you are interested, she will teach you to make your own chevre.)
Linda first decided to get goats and make cheese when she saw our book – Home Cheese Making at her mail order crafting book club. She thought, “I can do that” and she did.
She primarily makes chevre. She told us that people who normally don’t like goat milk products like hers. She thinks that’s because she has a mixture of goat breeds in her herd.
She drains her chevre longer than usual so it’s dry enough to crumble over a salad. Before she began making it, she had been buying chevre crumbles at her local supermarket and the price was quite high for just a small amount.
She tried to make mozzarella once and it didn’t work the way it was supposed to, but she took it to a party and the people who were there are still asking her to make it again! (She called it Mistake cheese. It was hard and salty, but very good. She’s going to try to make it again someday.)
She also made a hard cheese once with 4 gallons of milk, using the whey from milk kefir as a starter. She got the recipe from watching a video of an Australian man making the cheese, using a bamboo steamer and a brick to press his cheese. (She used her cheese press.)
Linda was kind enough to share a few of her chevre recipes with us:
Flavored Chevre – Add garlic powder, sea salt, & parsley
Fruit & Chevre Spread – Add a can of pie filling to your chevre (she prefers strawberry/rhubarb), and the unsweetened Seven Sundays brand of Modern Muesli with wild blueberries, chia, & buckwheat. Use the muesli to thicken the mixture enough to spread.
Note: She divides her spreading chevre into single serve baggies so she can grab one anytime from her freezer.
Chocolate Cheesecake – Make chevre with 1 gallon of milk and drain it until it is very dry. Add 3 eggs, 3 heaping tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa, 3 T of sugar, 3 T of cinnamon & 3 T of flour (of your choice – she uses whole wheat flour). The flour helps hold your slices together. She uses a crushed cookie crust.
Other hobbies:
Linda has an 8 x 18′ fiberglass greenhouse where she grows various medicinal herbs, trees, shrubs, veggies, and flowering plants. She has other herbs like Tea-Tree oil trees, Eclipta alba, Hyssop, and others. She grows all types of Acacia trees, because her goats love eating them.
She makes many products from her herbs. (Note: Herbal medicines are not meant to treat or diagnose any ailment.)
Ashwagandha tincture – Linda grows and dries Ashwagandha leaves. She starts them in her greenhouse and plants them in the yard when they are big enough.
She told us she makes a tincture from the dried leaves:
An article in Mother Earth Living said it attacks the thing in the brain that causes dementia and my herb book and online research says it eats cancer and tumor cells and leaves the good cells alone. I know it will make skin growths disappear in about 2 weeks treatment, the secret being that it needs to get inside whatever you’re treating.
I had this odd skin growth on my tummy, I went to my doctor and she didn’t even test it – said I was getting to be the age when odd things grow on my skin. I went home and just left it alone. Then, one day, my jeans rubbed a hole in the thing. I decided to give the Ashwagandha leaf tincture I had made the year before a try to treat it. I put a big bandage on it and wet the pad of the bandage down at least 2-3 times a day for 2 weeks.
One day it wasn’t hurting and I took the bandage off and it had disappeared, like it was never there in the first place. That blew my mind!
Ultra-Heal – She also makes a tincture called Ultra-Heal from her herbs and she is hoping to market it someday. She had a dermatologist test it for 6 years and he told her he thought it was a multi-million dollar product. He used it to treat infected wounds, spider bites and to heal odd rashes. It also makes a shingles rash disappear and eases the pain.
She used to make a cream from the tincture but she hurt her hand and the rest of her body in a few falls this year, so she hasn’t been able to mix a new batch. She has, however, learned that she can put her tincture into a bottle of Aveeno lotion and it works to ease her back pain like her cream did.
Cold & Flu Tonic – She makes a tonic from herbs she uses to make a cold/flu tea and some black elderberry syrup. She used to catch a cold every time she went to Costco, but now she takes 5 drops of tonic under her tongue when she gets home from shopping, and she doesn’t catch those colds anymore. Her husband uses it too, to avoid catching colds.
She is thinking of trying to turn her cold & flu tonic tincture into gummy bears, so people can suck on them to sooth their throats.
Plantain Herb Tincture – She adds this to her healing blends and it works to heal wounds on it’s own. The first time she used a fresh plantain plant on a very itchy bug bite, it magically made the itching disappear and healed the bug bite quickly.
Herbal Dosage Balls for Goats – Linda has started giving her goats raspberry leaf mixed herbal dosage balls and it is making all the goats’ colors come out more. Their hair is starting to get soft too. She gives them to her goats by dropping 2-3 of them into their water tubs and that way, the whole herd gets treated. It’s working, because they have nice pink eyelids and bright, shiny, soft coats. She is having her cousin test them out on her rescue wether and then she is thinking about selling them.
The dosage balls have a blend of herbs including raspberry leaves plus some raw minerals, paste vitamins and probiotics. She puts diatomaceous earth in them so they air dry better in front of a fan. She dries them in the oven during the winter months and the smell throughout the house is wonderful.
Other interests:
Kombucha – She cultures her own Kombucha and her SCOBY is over 4 inches thick.
She’s an artist, having gone to school for clay, ceramic sculpture, and ad design. She makes jewelry pendants from mixed media – paint, plastics, gemstones, beads, wire, ribbon, and scrapbook papers. She’s also a beader and she loves making bracelets.
She always wanted to learn how to spin fiber, so she taught herself from books and you-tube videos. Now, she has a new spinning wheel and she’s starting to breed more Nigora goats, so she’ll have lots of fiber to spin.
She has started spinning mohair from her 3 Angora goats and she purchased some Alpaca fiber and Romney wool.
Her beautiful Great Pyrenees, hard at work watching over her herd of goats.
