Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year!

The New Year is here and it's going to be a good one!

Here are my resolutions:

1. Have fun.

2. Eat more.

Since I am Goat-of-the-Year, I am on the cover of the farm calendar. Many of my friends and some of my enemies are on the inside. The calendar goes from February 2007 to January 2008. You can see it here.

We will start the year with some good advice for a rainy day from Paula Sandburg. Paula Sandburg was the wife of the famous poet Carl Sandburg and the sister of the famous photographer Edward Steichen. More importantly, she was perhaps the premiere goat breeder of her time, and remains a legend in the dairy goat world today.

Paula and Carl lived their later years on a beautiful farm called Connemara in Western North Carolina. If you are in the area, you can visit it - it is a National Park now, and has been preserved just as it was. Even a few descendants of the original champion goats remain.

Anyway, Paula wrote to a friend once with some good advice for what to do if you are feeling down or gloomy:

"When blue, there is nothing like working with the goats to make one forget. It is impossible to be blue in the kid yard - utterly impossible!"

We guarantee you that this is still true today. Just go and sit with some baby goats if you get to feeling down.