No pigs, though. They can be nasty and I don't want to wind up possibly being their dinner or watch them cannibalize their kids. And I just want one dairy cow — either Swiss brown or one of those miniature cows, maybe a water buffalo and work a hillside rice paddy with her, make mozzarella di buffala and sell it at farmer's market. Have my horse and thinking of getting a mini to be his pasture buddy. Tagie loves the lil' guys and they're so cute. I saw someone selling a mini-Andalusian cross baby for $500 the other day and thought, "Oooh, can't afford it yet!"
I've tried quail and turkey eggs, love 'em. I want to get some turkey eggs and make turkey egg omelettes for Christmas brunch when my mom comes up.We had a big victory garden in our back yard when I was growing up. Some of our relatives had a big farm in Watsonville and one of Dad's friends was the stereotypical Italian gardener. He'd always show up at our house with a big crate of everything: carrots, squash, corn, cucumbers, tomatoes. We had a big back yard and had an apple tree that was riotously fertile, we had apple pie every weekend in the summer and gave them away by the bucketfuls to neighbours. Our neighbour had a similarly-fecund apricot tree and if it wasn't apple pie, it was apricot pie. It was even worse when our across-the-street neighbours' 20-foot cherry trees popped their crop...Mom grew corn and rhubard all the time and the creepers we got capers from are still trying to take over the back yard. TONS of blackberry brambles right up the hill. We never had to buy fruit and veggies, we just had this wonderful produce exchange in our neighbourhood.
I only have a couple guns, an SKS and an Ithaca 12-guage shotgun. I want to get that three-in-one gun — shotgun, rifle, small game — that they're advertising in North American Hunter. I also want to get a carbon barrel for the 12-guage and keep it for salt load, non-lethal home defense and use the three-in-one for pheasant and duck and partridge. I used to go pheasant hunting around Stockton and Merced when I was living in the Bay Area, those were very well-spent days and you couldn't beat the dinners afterwards
I like to say "Game meat is free-range organic!" when people ask why I like game meat so much.The hunting here is just phenomenal! We have pretty much everything except moose and caribou and those are only a day's travel away. Deer are everywhere, so are turkeys and bear. We used to have a bear in the hollow over the hill from where I used to keep my horse. We'd get deer and elk in the lower pastures at night but I'm not a great fan of elk meat. I keep telling myself I gotta save up to go back down to Texas and get another axis doe or mouflon. I like their meat better than elk.
Getting year-to-year NAHC memberships can be a drag, I plonked down the $200 for the life membership about fifteen years ago and there's a lot more bennies for life members (of course). It's really a good value and you can get it on installments over a year. Pays for itself after 3 or 4 years. I haven't gone on any of the life member hunts, though
I keep telling myself, "Get through the cancer first!" 
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