Time Away From Our Empire

We are away for a few weeks visiting family. But of course things back home at our "Empire" have to keep going. We stopped milking the goats before we left and let them dry up so there would be less work while we are gone.  Now we will have to wait for next litter. Once the new kids are born we will be able to start milking again. Initially we get a small amount until the kids are weaned. And our kids are hopefully taking care of everything else. That is what they tell us.

And even though we are away are hearts are still there so we have spent a lot of time this vacation looking at farms around here, seeing what people are growing and learning about new fruits, vegetables, and birds. 

We are in Florida now. We wanted to find someone with jack fruit. Jack fruit is a large fruit that tastes like banana and pineapple. 

We have limited phone and data connections. Since we do not have GPS in the car, before we went out, we mapped a route and wrote down the directions. Somehow things got all mixed up and we ended up driving down a sand road in a very rural area. We kept doing that "let's just go a little further" thing although we were getting worried about the conditition of the road and the ability of our rental car to continue.

As we are driving we noticed some peacocks walking around. Then as we approached the next farm, we saw emus. When we saw the entranceway to that farm we turned hoping to get a peak and see what else they had.

As we turned a woman on a large 4X4 pulled up and asked if she could help us. We told her we were looking for jack fruit and she asked us where we from and what we wanted to do with it. We hesitantly told her we were from Israel and wanted the seeds.

We waited for her reaction and she answered that she would call her husband. She was still blocking the entrance and our car was still running. 

While we were standing, waiting and wondering what she was thinking, her daughter came out. At the  same time Harry and I noticed a Star of David around the daughter's neck.

I asked the big question, "Are you Jewish?" Her mother smiled when she told us, yes she is Jewish and her father is Israeli. Then her mother handed Harry the phone and he spoke to her father in Hebrew.

They told us a little about what they do, raising birds. They also told us that they started raising goats recently. We could not believe we had found an almost mirror version of our Empire somewhere down a sandy road in Florida and that it was owned by an Israeli. 

They let us in and showed us around a little.

The Birds

We are adding more birds. Awhile ago, Harry and a friend of his purchased an incubator. It is pretty impressive. It monitors the temperature and moves the eggs around. It must be working because we have chicks.

Incubator

New chicks

We also did an exchange. We exchanged four male goats for several birds. We visited a farm not too far from here where they raise pheasants, ducks, geese, chicken and ....

We let them know what we wanted. Then they came and checked out the goats and somehow a calculation was made.

Most of the birds will be beautiful when the are grown. We are hoping we have males and females and can start to also sell. There seems to be a pretty good market. 

Getting ready for the exhange

Some of our new birds