Chevisance Farm is not a name that we just came up with
right away when we decided to name our farm. Choosing a name was a very long process for us, because our family is what
some might call obsessive about thinking of names.
We actually started with a logo. The
shield with the four goats on it was my mom's idea, and it started with a little scratched out mock-up on a piece of scratch
paper. I took it to the computer, and did a little research on the symbolism of colors and pictures in coats of arms.
After this, I found photographs of goats online. The photos were of goats that were related to our starting stock, and
a couple were pictures of our actual animals. I chose one for each breed that showed good breed character, and was a
good profile.
Then, I proceeded to tediously trace the photo in the Paint application that comes
standard on most PCs. Yes, I said Paint - no fancy graphics editing software. What I mean by tedious is I enlarged
the photo until I could see each dot in the picture, and colored in the outline block-by-block. Next, I slowly filled
in the goat itself, being careful not to go outside of the lines, and I filled in the background with a different color.
After this was done, I went back to each silhouette, and altered it to make it look more like what I wanted. Now, just
to clarify, I didn't alter the picture to make it look like a perfect animal, or anything like that. I altered it
because when you see something in color, you can tell if one of the legs is behind another, or if an ear is flipped up on
top of the nose, but when it's a silhouette, it can be very difficult to determine what you're seeing.
I took the silhouettes, put each one on a symbolic color, put a cross over the top to separate all of them, and drafted a
shield shape for the outline. When it was finished, we had our logo.
The logo limited
our search for names by providing us with a medieval theme. So, we started focusing on names that could go with our
logo. We searched other languages, historical events, and stories, but we couldn't find something that everyone
liked. Most of the names we came up with were already taken by other goat farms, and we wanted to be original.
We also added another element to what we hoped would be included in our name, that element was "Chev", because Chevre
is goat cheese, and Chevon is goat meat. Finally, I was searching on the Internet one night, and I found a word
that none of us had ever heard of before: chevisance. It sounded medieval, and it had "chev" in it, so we
wrote it down and talked it over. A couple of us thought it would be too hard to spell, but we agreed that the easy-to-spell
names were mostly taken - the ones that fit our criteria, anyway.
Here are the definitions/meanings
of "chevisance" and our coat of arms...
|
Element
|
Description
|
|
Chevisance
|
An achievement, deed, or performance.
|
|
Orange
|
Worthy ambition; one of Dad's favorite colors.
|
|
Blue
|
Truth and loyalty; Jacob's favorite color.
|
|
Green
|
Hope, joy, and loyalty in love; Kelsie's favorite color.
|
|
Yellow/Gold
|
Generosity and elevation of the mind; Logan's favorite color.
|
|
Cross
|
Faith; Christianity.
|
|
Goat
|
One who wins through politics; the animals we raise.
|
|
Shield
|
Defense; the shape used is a kite shield with a truncated top.
|
