My Maternity Photo

 

Do these pants make me look fat?

The Blessed Rain

Thank God for the rain, the blessed rain. That's what the farmer is saying.

The farmer is very tired out by haying, and the rain has put a temporary stop to it. In case you haven't heard, you have to make hay while the sun shines.

When it rains, you can lie around moaning about your tired muscles for a day or two until the haying resumes.

Here are some tips for haying, if you ever have to do it.

1. If you are considering haying, first of all have a dozen or so children, preferably boys or burly girls. Feed them a lot of pancakes and homeschool them so they don't hear a lot of foolish talk about child labor laws. (They will have to be your own children; you won't be able to make anyone else's children hay for you.)

2. When you are picking up hay in the field, use your hay hooks. If you pick up the hay by the strings, you will hurt your hands, and much more importantly, you will mess up the hay bales.

3. Don't pick up messed up hay bales. Just go on to the next bale. The people who don't get to the hayfield on time can have all the messed up smiley bales. These bales won't stack nicely.

4. When you are building your hay stack, make sure all the bales on the bottom are really nice. Iffy bales can go on top.

5. Don't pick up bales in the hayfield when it is 95 degrees.

6. Call up your city friends and tell them you are having a "hay party." It will be so much fun and so quaint! Working like a dog in the hot sun picking up actual hay bales for actual animals to eat! It is just like a reality show, only even more real!

7. Bring a sixpack of nice cold beer for the hay man.

8. Deliver the choicest hay to your favorite goat. (That's me, Baby Belle.)

The Adventures of GoatBoy

Peanut did not get the memo that he is not a normal goat, even though the farmer insists he isn't.

Today he was out climbing the goat tree in the horse pasture while the horses are at summer camp.

He seems to think he is a normal goatboy. In fact he is much more of a hooligan than his big handsome brother Zilla, who bursts into tears whenever he can't see his mama for 15 seconds or longer.

Peanut is the only goat who has been in the sacred cheese room. Anyone else would have been spanked for going in there.

The Hay

The Hay.

The Hay is ready.

It is out in the field in Longbranch and the farmer is going to get it. The Hay is on a heartbreaking hillside overlooking Carr Inlet near Driftwood Point, where it has been enjoying the sunshine and the delicious breezes off the Sound.

The Hay is beautiful this year. But then, I think The Hay is beautiful every year. I love The Hay.

The farmer loves The Hay too, but also hates it. The Hay smells good and makes all the animals happy, but you have to pay for it, either through the nose or through the muscles, and you have to worry about it.

Is The Hay too dry? Is The Hay too wet? Was The Hay cut too soon? Was it cut too late? Is there enough of it? Is there too much of it? Would the Skokomish Valley hay have been better? Will there be enough room for the alfalfa when it comes?

This year The Farmer is paying for The Hay through the muscles, by going out into the field to pick it up, and load it on the trailer, and drive it back to the farm, and unload it from the trailer, and stack it in the barn.

This will be much cheaper than having The Hay delivered.

But it is very exhausting, so the farmer is very grumpy, and Lori is even grumpier, because Lori doesn't love-hate The Hay like the farmer, she just hates it.

As for me, maybe I mentioned it, I love The Hay.

The Hay is beautiful, and sweet. And The Hay smells like Forever. If anyone ever asks you what Forever is like, just tell them Forever is like The Hay.

They will either know what you mean, or they won't, but in any case, The Hay will be here long after they are gone, so it doesn't really matter.

To The Hay: I love you.

The Hay.

Peanut's Progress

When you used to see my grandson Peanut running, you would say to yourself, "run, Forrest, run."

This was because Peanut had a very wooden way of running and not the usual ultra-nimble baby goat caper. The baby goats do not need any half-pipe for their aerial stunts and displays. And they do not need a skateboard either. They just naturally know how to fly.

But Peanut went sort of squeaking along like the Tin Man, like there wasn't enough oil in his joints.

I don't know why but when the visitor humans all saw him, they would say, "Bless his heart." Which I guess is some kind of human insult, because they don't say that when they see the regular baby goats doing 360s off the barn wall. But when they saw Peanut they used to say, "Bless his heart."

Now when the visitor humans come to see Peanut the miracle baby they look at Hannah Belle's triplets for a while and then they say, "which one is he?"

Because it is very hard to tell Peanut from a normal baby now. First of all he has just about tripled in size. And second he walks and runs and capers and tries to jump on his mother's back and chews her beard when he gets a chance and wiggles under the stall boards to go outside with the big babies, which isn't allowed but of course all the little babies do it.

Only the farmer insists that Peanut is not normal. I think this is because the farmer agreed with Lori that Peanut would have to stay here and couldn't ever go to a new home because he wasn't quite normal, in spite of there being a strict rule against wethers here. And so the farmer points Peanut out to the visitors and says, "if you watch him for a while you will see that he is not normal. But you have to watch him for a while."

And so the visitors stare at Peanut. And the farmer says sadly, "Bless his heart."

Cheese Flavors

The farmer has been trying to think of new flavors of soft cheese and I have offered to help but none of my suggestions have been taken. I suggested perhaps a new alfalfa-flavored cheese or possibly a peanut cheese. Another thing that might be good would be a cheese with hints of cob, or a pea-vine cheese, or a banana-peel cheese (this could be marketed to Nubians, they would go crazy for it), or a ginger-snap cheese or a vanilla-wafer cheese with notes of ordinary garden weeds (those spindly ones with the ugly little yellow flowers that nobody knows what they are but they taste good). Then I suggested blackberry-leaf cheese. Blackberry leaves are one of my favorite meals, also salal. None of these suggestions have been taken which puts me at my wits' end. Perhaps you have a better idea.

But I doubt it.

A Giude for Young Muthers

hello this is hannahbelle. I am t6he motehr of goatzilla peanut and boxcaR BETTY. i have some suggestions for those of you entering teh condition of motehrhood.

get a box to stand on or a stool.

you will feel a lot happier.

this way you can look at your kids and make sure they are still alive and everything without them coming up to you and drinking all your milk and making you feel drained when you need a few moments of alone time or just want to think about ginger snaps or something else important. because they can't reach you because you are standing up on a box. but they can see you so they dont cry or make a big fuss.

just a tip frmo me to you. thanks you.

please sned ginger snaps by the way now that I am thinking of it.

Hannah Belle's New Leaf

When my daughter Hannah Belle was a young mother, let's face it, she wasn't very good at it. And she didn't like it much. It was a lot of trouble.

So most of the time what she did was just go do what she wanted, leaving her two sons in the care of the farmer or anybody else who happened to be standing around. To the boys she would say, "Love ya! See you when all the bars close! Bye!"

And then she would be on her merry way, hopping over the stall wall to see if the grain room door was open, feasting on carefully tended rose bushes in the lawn, eating the leaves of expensive pawpaw trees imported from Virginia, kicking at the kitchen door to see if it would open, and so on. All the things any self-respecting goat feels obligated to do.

Well, this was actually fine because her two boys were very lighthearted and spent a lot of time frolicking with the other babies, and they only really noticed that they were essentially orphans when they started wanting milk. Which of course was all the time.

But anyway it wasn't too bad.

But now Hannah Belle is older and wiser and with her second set of kids - beautiful triplets - she has completely turned herself around. She will probably be voted mother of the year, not an honor to which I personally have ever aspired, but then there is no accounting for taste.

To tell you the truth, I think she is overdoing it a little. Go out, have some fun, eat a few blueberry bushes if you can sneak into the garden, that's what I say.

But not the new Hannah Belle. All day she stays with her kids, nuzzling little Peanut, cleaning big little Goatzilla's face, letting little Boxcar Betty use her for a trampoline. It's almost a little much.

Enough About Peanut

In all the brouhaha about adorable little Peanut, who I admit is the cutest thing on four hooves, some people seem to have forgotten that I have TWO new grandsons.

The other one is Goatzilla, aka Zilla, aka the prettiest blue-eyed buckling of all time.

My family of course is known for producing towering geniuses and kindly humble unaffected supermodels, but even by our standards Goatzilla is almost too pretty to look at.

Anyway, I'm sure you will see him on the covers of all the big goat magazines very soon, if you haven't already.

Like Cher, he needs only one name.

Goatzilla.

Peanut Parking Only

Little Peanut has turned a corner. Literally.

For his first few days, Peanut was only able to walk in a straight line. If he came to a wall, he would just stop. Then, like a little wind-up toy, the juice would gradually drain out of him until he just stood in whatever corner he had fetched up in, head down and battery dead.

He couldn't turn his head properly to groom himself, and he couldn't scratch.

Today Peanut can do all these things. He can also jump and hop (very small hops.)

This morning for the first time he went to the baby corner where he sleeps with his brother and sister, and he saw that Boxcar Betty was lying in "his" spot. And he did something that all normal baby goats do, but he had never done before.

He pawed at Betty until she grudgingly moved over an inch or two so he could lie where he wanted.

Yes. That's right, world. It's time to make room for Peanut.

They Call Me MISTER Peanut

My grandson Peanut is doing well.

He still does not have the hang of getting milk from his mother, but he knows how to suck from a bottle pretty well. And he is nothing if not optimistic: if he is hungry and there is no bottle nearby, he just turns his head up and sucks from the air.

Yes, maybe a cloud of milk could be passing by. You don't know if you don't check.

But Peanut is still on Day One of the Nigerian growth chart. While his brother and sister nurse, jump, dance, caper, play, taste test bits of hay and grain, practice jumping up on things, fret their mother by socializing with Wendell, and plan for future trouble they might be able to cause, Peanut only sleeps and eats and walks in a straight line.

So he is a little on the slow side.

But still smarter than any Nubian around here.

And, if I say so myself, probably the cutest little teacup goat ever born.

Peanut and His Brother

This is a picture of Peanut standing next to his big brother, Goatzilla. You can't really tell it from the photo, but Zilla is more than twice as big as Peanut. A lot more.

Peanut's Second Night

This is a picture of my grandson Peanut, just born.

Peanut did very well his second night. He did not have any more seizures, and he drank several small helpings of milk.

But because he isn't yet very good at getting milk from his mother without help, he came into the house to be a bottle baby at night. So for now he is bicoastal: bottle baby by night and Mama's boy by day.

Peanut is the smallest buckling ever born here.

Peanut's First Night

My daughter Hannah Belle, aka Hannah Belle Lecter, went to the kidding stall yesterday. She was as big as a house and let's just say that the farmer was not expecting her to have a single doe kid.

And she didn't.

But before she had any kids she extended her performance to an all-day marathon. She did some things that the farmer did not like, such as standing with her feet up on the ledge and lying with her neck flat along the ground to push. When the farmer sees these things, the farmer checks to make sure that the vet's number is still on speed dial, because often it means that the kids are in the wrong position to come out, and the mama goat is contorting herself to try to reposition them.

Around here it is called Snow Pea Syndrome - named in honor of my fat sister who had to have a c-section. Hannah Belle wasn't fat like Snow Pea, but sure enough she had some kids coming in the wrong direction.

The farmer went in to fish around after Hannah Belle had been in hard labor for a while, but could not find anything to pull out. There wasn't enough room to go all the way in, so Hannah Belle would have to be on her own. In the process, though, the farmer popped the first bubble, which usually speeds things up, and not too long afterward something finally made its way into the birth canal. It wasn't a foot or a nose, though.

It was a tail. Hannah Belle's first kid was breech, coming out butt first, not a good scenario. But before the farmer could try to reposition the kid, he shot out on his own, like a champagne cork.

He was tiny. Teeny tiny. He was the size of a peanut.

Meanwhile another kid was on the way, so Peanut had to wait. This one came out head first but with one leg back. Since his head was out, there was nothing to do but pull. Hannah Belle did some champion yelling, and finally the kid was tugged out, leg back and all.

He was HUGE. The farmer said, "look, it's Goatzilla." And the name stuck. Goatzilla got up and nursed. He was more than twice as big as Peanut, who still had not gotten any milk. And now Peanut would have to wait again, because another kid was coming.

Nobody knows how this one came out, because she arrived while they were all looking the other way. This was a normal-sized little girl, bigger than Peanut but not a monster. Boxcar Betty is her name. Like so many Nigerian doelings, she was drinking milk within a minute of birth.

Meanwhile, Peanut was finally up, and tottering around unsteadily, but he would not nurse. He didn't know how to suck. After a long struggle where Peanut almost had to go and be tubed, he finally took a little bit of colostrum. But not really very much. The farmer decided to take Peanut inside and make him a bottle baby.

And then something we had never seen before happened. Peanut had a seizure. A few minutes passed and Peanut had another seizure. And so on, until he had had eight seizures in two hours.

There was nothing the farmer could do about the seizures, so the farmer decided to bring Peanut back out to his mother. That was because the farmer thought Peanut might die in the night, and that he would probably rather die out in the barn, with Hannah Belle and Goatzilla and Boxcar Betty cuddled up around him.

After a few hours sleep the farmer came back out, looking grim, to see how Peanut was doing. Peanut was still alive. Hannah Belle had taken care of him through the night. The farmer went and got a bottle so Peanut could get extra milk with honey. Peanut gobbled an ounce of milk. The farmer went back in and brought back another ounce of milk with honey. Peanut gobbled it.

The farmer did the milking and feeding, watching Peanut the whole time with one eye. Peanut did not have any seizures. Hannah Belle nudged him and cleaned him and encouraged him. He stretched like a normal baby.

"Well," the farmer said to Peanut. "I guess you made it through the first night."

Now all we can do is wait and see what happens tomorrow. But I guess that's true every day.

Good luck, little Peanut.

Big Orange No More

I received many excellent suggestions for a name for Big Orange. Well, actually, I received many suggestions. Not that many excellent suggestions.

I received some suggestions which did not come from my blog, including Valencia, which isn't that bad (at least it's an orange). From my blog I considered a number of suggestions which were intriguing but not quite right, including Pretty Mogaryround, SunXist, BLOG, and Agent Orange.

In the end I chose Xanthoria Elegans for several reasons, listed below in no particular order.

1. It starts with an X.

2. It is an orange star lichen, and Big Orange's mother's name (on the papers, anyway) is Stacy's Starlight. Also, Big Orange is mostly bred on the awesome Lucky Star lines, a famous LaMancha herd out of Port Angeles.

3. There will not be a bunch of other goats in her kindergarten class with the same name.

4. She seems to like it. She doesn't run off when the farmer yells it out, anyway.

5. Lichen can survive where nothing else can. This will come in handy.

So thank you to the person who suggested Xanthoria.

She Ain't Heavy

Well, there was a ruckus this afternoon. I laughed when I saw it.

The first fresheners in the down-below shack pasture are allowed to go out during the day and eat brush outside the back gate. The first fresheners are Betsy, Wronny, Cammy, Mabel, Peaches, and Mel. Well, Peaches is a second freshener, but for some reason she has it figured out where she gets to stay with the first fresheners. I don't know why. Peaches is always working some kind of angle.

The farmer came out to feed in the afternoon. And everything went okay feeding the horses. Everything went okay feeding Penrose and Hannah Belle and the babies in the barn. Everything went okay putting hay out for the big milkers.

And then all of a sudden the air was filled with a high-pitched screaming. The farmer looked all around and could not figure out where that screaming was coming from. It sounded like far away next door, but the farmer couldn't see anything. The farmer ran all around and climbed the rusty barbed wire fence around the neighbor's pasture to see better. There was a Nubian-esque quality to the screaming, I have to admit, even though all the purebred Nubians were present and accounted for and not doing anything besides their usual sighing and groaning.

After the farmer's pants got ripped on the fence there were a few choice words flung about, and then the farmer disappeared from sight, looking inside the neighbor's falling-down shack. Apparently the farmer did not find anything there because the farmer soon reappeared, to the tune of more high-pitched Nubianesque screaming.

Well along about then Wronny and Xie Xie hove into sight, a way far off behind the blackberry bushes in the neighbor's pasture. They were about a half-mile away from where they started, and they were quite a little bit worse for the wear.

Both of them were hot as the dickens and terribly lost; somehow they had gotten on the wrong side of the fence and they couldn't get back. Their mouths were hanging open and they looked like shipwreck victims.

Wronny is a little classic black-and-tan LaMancha yearling milker and Xie Xie is Betsy's little black daughter, and being a quarter Nubian Xie Xie was the source of the high-pitched screaming. She was in a state of panic. She was yelling for her mother nonstop when she wasn't busy panting her head off. Betsy, being half Nubian, was about a half a mile away, in the pasture she was supposed to be in, chewing her cud and daydreaming about corn chips, and not even raising an eyebrow as little Xie Xie screamed her lungs out.

Well, there were a few more choice words as the farmer scrambled around near Wronny and Xie Xie to try to lead them to the fence so that they could go back out and around to where they were supposed to be. The pants were further ripped and some festive red scratches acquired.

Wronny followed the farmer, and little Xie Xie followed Wronny for about twenty steps, then had a brain attack and raced back into the blackberry briars, which for some reason seemed to her the one and only place from which her Nubian 911 call could be transmitted. She resumed her screaming.

The farmer kept going, then realized Wronny had turned around. The farmer had to go back. Again the same thing was attempted, with the same result. And again. Wronny would not leave little Xie Xie.

Finally the farmer had to go and crawl into the blackberry patch and burrow down through the old burned-down-barn foundation to the spot where there is a gap between the barbed wire and the dry doe pasture.

And finally the two were returned to their rightful home, hot and sweaty and still in a state of near panic, and the farmer patted Wronny on the back and said, "well, you are a good mama, you wouldn't leave your baby."

And then the farmer did a doubletake and realized: Xie Xie may look like a little black LaMancha, but she is not Wronny's daughter. But Wronny wouldn't leave her behind.

Go Figure.

Complaint Dept.

There have been some complaints that my blog has not had enough pictures and posts lately, as if I have nothing else to do. For those who may not know it, the grass tastes very good this year and it does not eat itself. The same goes for the blackberries and the hardhack. If you think it is easy eating blackberry bushes, why don't you go out in your yard and give it a try.

Anyway, today will be a catchup picture day to address the concerns of the complainers, and later in the day we will also address, once and for all, the matter of Big Orange. Yes, Big Orange will finally have a name of her own, chosen from reader submissions. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First there is the matter of Aggie's new babies, two micro-Nubians with batwing ears. Their names are Petey (for Peter) and Vel (for Velveteen) because they both look like bunny rabbits. They are pictured above.

Ask Penrose

Penrose, the farmer's favorite Toggenburg, comes from a long long line of Swiss philosophers. As you can probably tell from this photo, Penrose will give almost any question thoughtful consideration and an enlightened reply.

In fact, through her practice of pure dairy goodness, Penrose has achieved a higher state of consciousness from which she only descends when she tries her best to t-bone that god-a-mighty pest, Wendell.

Each day when she sees him, Penrose sends Wendell a telepathic message: "thank you for helping me grow, my little teacher." And then she tries to kill him.

If not for Wendell, Penrose would probably be the Buddha.

The F-150s

One set of baby goats used the old farm truck as their baby stall this year. They were called the F-150s. In this picture, Sammy and Leo, two of the F-150s, wait patiently for their breakfast service.

The Problem With Baby Goats...

...is that they are so unfriendly and standoffish. You cannot get them to pay any attention to you. It's too bad.