The News From Home

Well my grandson Peanut went to his new home and I am not surprised to learn that he has already taken up pen and ink to begin his literary career. You can read Peanut's first musings here. He is living with a goat philosopher named Marigold and a sleuthing fainting goat named Watson, so hopefully he won't get too smart for his own good. There is a full-blown Nubian there, though, so that should bring the I.Q. level back down toward the mean.

Meanwhile, Peanut's mother Hannah Belle (aka Lecter) has returned to her willful ways and is now spending part of every day inside the horse trailer. According to the farmer, she is "thinking about what she did" in there, but as far as I can tell she is catching up on her naps and enjoying some very pleasant alone time.

Because thinking is not something she does in order to make herself a better goat. Thinking is something she does in order to figure out new ways to get into the grain room. So far she has thought up about seven hundred ways to do that. Her little anarchist daughter Boxcar Betty has taken to following her around on some of her excursions, too.

Wendell the boston terrier pest had been lying around in a sleep coma recovering from the departure of his friend Max until today. Today he unfortunately started feeling better and chased Boxcar Betty all around the pasture until he got a good yelling-at from the farmer.

On another matter, Winnie came back into the big milker pasture acting all high and mighty. That lasted about 15 seconds until she got taken down several pegs by an unlikely gang-up consortium of Boo the Ocean Liner Nubian, Scouty the Winnebago Nubian, and little modest yearling milker Ronny, who is actually Winnie's sister. Together they showed Winnie who was not boss.

Then the three of them shook hands, gave each other courtesy head bumps, and went back about their business - hogging as much food as possible.

Oh Look, a Dandelion!

Well my grandson the little black-eyed Peanut has gone to his new home out in the Sequim Banana Belt, and the farmer is moping around.

Peanut's mother, on the other hand, did not notice that he is gone. I am not an expert but I think this may ruin her chances for the Mother-of-the-Year Award. After all you cannot very well stand at the podium accepting your crystal vase and say, "and I would like to thank my wonderful children, I had two or maybe three of them this year, and they are all just wonderful kids, etc etc, however many of them there were."

Even so she is better than some of the Nubians. One of our Nubians, Stacy, had triplets one year and she was terribly attached to them but when two of them went to a new home she simply shook her head a couple of times to adjust to the new reality. You could see a little glimmer of an idea scrolling across her forehead: "didn't I use to have a couple more of these darling little things? No, no, I guess not...oh, look, a dandelion!"

Hannah Belle's Old Leaf

Well, my daughter Hannah Belle as you may know used to be quite a troublemaker. In fact, she was certainly the top troublemaker at the farm for quite a while, and was voted Most Likely to Give the Farmer a Stroke with her incorrigible escape artistry. But Hannah Belle turned over a new leaf when her triplets were born in June.

Feeding and cleaning and nudging and coddling them, that's all she did. One, Goatzilla, is such a mama's boy as a result that he practically bursts into tears if he can't see her. If you left the gate open to her stall, she wouldn't leave, that's how bad it was for a while. Personally I thought it was a little smarmy. Luckily the baby, Peanut, was raised on the bottle so he is strong-minded and independent.

Well, one day last week Hannah Belle shook the cobwebs from her head and got the old sparkle back in her eye.

After three months in the milker stall without even so much as an attempted escape, she looked up and said to herself, hey, wait a minute, this wall is only five feet high!

Over she went in a blink and off to ransack the barn looking for grain, leaving cosseted little Zilla bawling in distress.

Then out to the pasture to scarf up the fallen apples. Then on to the porch to investigate a bucket that looked suspiciously capable of containing cob.

And before you know it, she was apprehended and frogmarched to the horse trailer for a punishment timeout, her first in over a year. I heard the angry yelling echoing eerily off the trailer's metal walls - it went on for hours - and my heart swelled with pride.

THAT'S MY GIRL!

Vive la Reine!

Return of the Queen

Well isn't it funny.

I don't know if you remember but Brandy was always our leader. She was the herdqueen and everyone agreed she was the herdqueen, so there was no Balkanization of the herd. The herd all agreed that Brandy was the queen.

Sure, some would mutter that they would be a better queen, and if they were the queen they would do things a lot differently, and there would be more cake, and earmarks for the queen's special friends, and bread and circuses and no new taxes.

And some would say why do we always have a LaMancha queen, why shouldn't we have a Nigerian queen or possibly a miniature queen.

And some of the long-eared-bears-of-little-brain even suggested a Nubian queen, since after all the Nubians are the biggest and the loudest. But this was widely considered laughable. Even some of the Nubians themselves would laugh when they said it. At least I think they were laughing. Who knows.

Anyway, ok, I got a little off track, but Brandy was always our leader. In spite of being small, and often terribly skinny because she was such a tremendous milker, Brandy was the queen, and ruled by consensus. She was firm but fair, and she was an excellent goat trainer because she was unfailingly consistent.

Brandy would always explain that she was going to eat first and she would insist upon it and she brooked no disagreement. And if you thought you were going to get in line ahead of Brandy - which for the most part you didn't think - you knew the price you were going to pay. Expert t-boning in the ribs, followed by ear-biting (if you had ears) and an ignominous bum's rush out the door. You did not get away with queue-jumping. Ever.

But if you were polite and waited your turn, you need fear nothing from Brandy. And if you stayed out of her way, she had no quarrel with you.

This was completely the opposite of, say, Boo. In Boo's ill-fated attempt at politics, she would one day insist that she was going to eat first and fight to the death over it. The next day she would run screaming to the end of the line after a sideways look from someone else.

Brandy had an unfortunate occurrence in the spring: she lost a set of beautiful triplets and was kept in isolation for several weeks because she was under the weather, and while she was out of circulation turmoil raged in the ensuing power vacuum and finally, unbelievably, Clipper emerged as the sort-of leader, ruling completely by terror.

Clipper turned into Attila the mini-Togg. You might be dozing in the sun and chewing your cud and out of the blue she would steamroller you into the dust for no apparent reason. She went mad with power. Anyone who looked at her cross-eyed might be t-boned against a locust tree. She was a pillager through and through.

And since she was always punishing everyone randomly, there emerged an idea that you could get away with things, small crimes and misdemeanors, if only you kept one eye on her. You could quietly sneak snacks out of turn from the feeder, for example, while she was burning and sacking a village of nearby innocents. This contributed to the chaos.

Well Clipper didn't have kids this year and she was eventually moved out to the pasture of fat girls and dry yearlings, where her iron-fisted regime of seething anarchy continues. Meanwhile, up at the main barn, Brandy endured her demotion with serene dignity, never scrabbling for anything or kowtowing to anybody. Just waiting patiently.

Slowly she fattened and regained her strength, and one day a couple of weeks ago she got a certain look in her eye when Scouty came clipclopping to the door to be fed first.

And that look said, "I don't think so."

And Brandy explained to Scouty that she was going to eat first and she insisted on it. And she brooked no disagreement.

And within a couple of days the fog of amnesia lifted and everyone remembered, oh yeah, that's right, you ARE the boss of me.

And Brandy returned to her rightful throne.

And I say, after surviving the Clipperish Inquisition, Long Live the Queen.

Getting The Picture

When we took this picture we thought we knew what we were doing. This isn't always the case. But sometimes, a lot of the time, actually, you are doing something you don't know you are doing. And that isn't always a bad thing.

Anyway, this picture - we thought - was a picture of Sammy, one of our favorite bottle babies of the year. Sammy went to a very nice new home and we hear that he is doing well. The farmer was very glad when he was born, because his mother is one of the best and prettiest does and she hadn't been able to have kids for three years and the farmer was worried. So Sammy was a welcome addition, just for that reason, but on top of that he had a funny personality and was a very endearing character (obviously not as endearing as my triplets, but you have to start somewhere.)

And we thought this was a nice picture of little Sammy when we took it, and we were glad to have a nice picture of him.

But the farmer was just looking through the photos of this year's kids and stopped in surprise at this picture. In the background is our cat Julius, an orange tabby.

Julius disappeared this spring and we don't know what happened to him. But we don't think he is coming back, since he has been gone for several months now. If you look very closely, you will see him. This is the last picture we have of Julius.

Julius first belonged to the farmer's sister, but he stayed here when the farmer's sister moved to the East Coast. Julius was a very good cat, and he was also very good at being a farm cat. He was friendly and sweet and never lost his good nature even when he was having problems with runny eyes and ears, which he had his whole life and no vet could ever do anything for. Julius was well traveled and confident, a real cat's cat, and he would stray and stroll much further than our other cat, Harry, who pretty much stays right around the barn.

For a while Julius had a habit of waiting at the end of the driveway for the farmer or Lori to come home. Lori always worried that he would get run over, but he was much too smart for that. Julius also made friends around the neighborhood, and for a couple of months one time, his attendance at the farm was very spotty, and the farmer was surprised to discover that he had a side family next door - where the food must have been better - and was spending a lot of time there. But pretty soon he came back.

Anyway, we haven't seen Julius in a long time, and we hope maybe he moved somewhere with someone who thought he was their cat. That could have happened. And that would be fine.

But we do want them to know, if they are reading this, that Julius was our cat. And we will be waiting if he comes home.

The Farmer's Amazing Car

The farmer's car is a little black vw station wagon.

Lately the farmer has been driving all over. Down to Longbranch to feed and ride the horses every day because they are at summer camp while their pasture is reseeded. Up to Gig Harbor to fetch paint and supplies for the barn remodeling.

Over to Jerry's feed store in Vaughn to get grain, grain, grain for the piggish milkers.

Anyway, all the time we would see the farmer putting things in the car and never taking them out, saying things like, "I might need that."

So I knew there were a lot of things in the car but I was surprised when the farmer's friend had to drive separately from the farmer instead of riding in the station wagon - because there was only room for one person.

But anyway today the farmer took most of the things out of the station wagon - not all, don't be silly - and even I was surprised to see what was in there. It was like watching the clown car at the circus.

This is not a complete list, just a small sampling.

1. A red metal tack box that says "Elvis" - no one knows why - and contains electric sheep shears, clipper blades, clipper oil, clipper grease, fitting accoutrements for show sheep (which we don't have any of thank Goodness. If there is anything dumber than a Nubian, it is a sheep. Bless their hearts, I say).

2. A cordura breastcollar and other tack for a cheap western saddle.

3. A Buena Vista style leather saddle for a Tennessee Walker.

4. A pair of posthole diggers.

5. A can of rustoleum paint.

6. A border collie.

7. Assorted lumber, including pieces of cedar siding and a 3-foot length of treated 6x8.

8. Several bits, including a copper mouth snaffle, a Tom Thumb, and a Kimberwick. A lunging whip, a horse tack box (not the Elvis box) full of combs, brushes, hoofpicks, neatsfoot oil, fly spray, wormer.

9. A bag of green apples.

10. A cheap cordura western saddle.

11. A boston terrier.

12. Assorted paperwork needed to complete an extension-to-file 2007 income tax return.

13. A clay birdhouse.

14. A saddle pad. A plaid wool blanket. A rug. A heavy winter Carhartt jacket. A frisbee. Several dog leashes. A phone book.

15. An extra-large rubbermaid tub full of Tammy's Special Mix. (horse grain.)

16. An old iron double tree (for two horses to pull farm equipment).

17. Assorted reading material including books, newspapers, maps, magazines and flyers.

18. Sixteen charcoal gray Holland paving bricks.

"This will never happen again," the farmer said soberly, examining each item with dismay. Then the farmer got ready to go down to Longbranch.

"Well, I will definitely need these," the farmer said, and put the cheap western saddle and the horse tack box back in the station wagon.

"And probably these," and the bits went back in.

"And I wouldn't go anywhere without this," and in went the border collie, very pleased at the roomy new accommodations.