My due date

Well, guess what, everybody. Last year my due date was Valentine's Day, and this year it will be Memorial Day. My babies are scheduled to arrive at the very end of May. Blue Marvel (aka Marv) is going to the baby's father. You can read more about him here. So now we can start the kidding countdown...

Winnie's Brown Nose 

Hard Cheese

It is the last day of the year and we are down to our very last milk of the season here at the farm. There is only one little yearling Nubian, Boo, still milking. And according to the farmer, Boo's style of milking is "a long walk on a short pier," whatever that means. I did see Boo kick the milk bucket over a few times but I'm sure it must have been an accident. It is a well-known fact all over the farm that Boo is not a rocket scientist.

For example, one morning the farmer came in to feed us and Boo jumped up yelling in alarm and asked me, "who on Earth is that?" I told her, "doh, Boo, that is the farmer who comes in here ten times a day and gives us all our nice grain and hay and straw and water and sometimes even peanuts or licorice." And Boo said, "oh." I realized later it was because the farmer had a new hat and so Boo thought it was a different person. Nubians.

Anyway, this upcoming milk shortage makes the farmer very grumpy because it means no more jack, no more goat milk fudge, no more honey-rosemary chevre, no more panir, no more goat milk lattes (try one and you won't go back), no more goat milk ice cream, no more nothing. How would you like it if you had fresh goat milk every day and then one day you had to go to the grocery store and buy a cardboard box full of that watery overcooked stuff they call milk? "Yuccch" would be the word that springs to mind, or maybe "barfola". If you would like to read about real milk, you can go to the real milk site.

Today the farmer said, "I will be glad when Winnie comes back in milk."

That's all we hear about, Winnie Winnie Winnie the LaMancha. Just because precious Winnie milked for two years as a first freshener, big deal. "Winnie comes from a lot of milk," the farmer says. "Winnie is so pretty, she is going to the state fair when she comes back in milk." SO WHAT. Who cares about going to the state fair and lying around in a tiny pen all day so a bunch of city people can goggle at you and ask questions like "how old is this cute little lamb?"

When the farmer isn't here we call Winnie "farmer's pet" and "brown nose" - it's true, she does have a brown nose. And then we RUN.

Boxing Day

Some people love Christmas, but we goats love the days after Christmas, because that's when the farmer takes off the tinsel and the ornaments and brings out the Christmas tree for us to eat. Yum! This year we are getting a noble.

The only problem is that it is kind of like the day-after-Christmas sale at the mall. Everyone jockeys for position at the fence when they see the tree coming down, and if you don't have a good spot you don't always get to munch the best needles near the top. Oh well, even so, there is plenty of tree left to go around. Even the bark is good.

Once when I was in the house when I was a baby, I was watching tv with the farmer and I saw a Christmas tree at "The White House." (I don't get it, because our house is white too, and sometimes people say, "they live at "The White House" about a mile down from the post office." But this was a completely different house. Oh well.) This tree was huge, taller than a barn.

Now that was a good tree. That would have lasted us a week, even with the Nubians hogging to the front of the line. They said it was a spruce, though, and we don't have that kind of tree here, so I'm not sure it would have tasted as good as ours.

My Christmas List

All I want for Christmas is:

1. A big bag of Swedish Fish (just the red ones)
2. Some leftover Christmas trees to eat (I prefer the nobles and the doug firs, but I will eat a grand if that's all there is)
3. A chance to visit my boyfriend (His name is Marquee and he is super-handsome)
4. More alfalfa (I know they say I am fat, but this local grass hay is really no picnic)
5. One sunny day so I can go outside without getting my hooves muddy
6. Some backscratching
7. A new cable spool to jump on

There are more things, but I don't want to be greedy, so I will close here.

Merry Christmas everyone! Don't forget your barnyard friends when you are out shopping the holiday sales! Ho ho ho!

Boo "helps" the farmer.... 

Boo the Nubian minds the ladder. Read more about Boo at my web site, Herron Hill (that's the name of the dairy farm where I live.)

Our new web site

We have a new web site and you can see it at http://www.tripletmedia.com/herronhill/index.php.

We are only two months away from the 2006 baby goats - it is hard to believe the time has flown so quickly. The last week has been very cold and clear here, but yesterday our real Northwest weather returned: gray skies, clouds from here to eternity, and rain, rain, rain.

I have moved down to the lower pasture with the big girls because everyone is drying off for the season. Only nutty little Boo the yearling Nubian is still in milk. And of course Brandy, but then Brandy is pretty much a freak of nature: she milks and milks and milks, almost like a cow, even though she isn't very big.

The farmer made a silly mistake once, going up a ladder and leaving Boo to guard the bottom. See if you can guess what happened.

The moral of the story: never have a Nubian hold the ladder for you. Never.

Brrrr...........

We are weather wimps here in the Pacific Northwest, we have to admit that, but still we think it is pretty chilly (30 degrees). We have our first snow of the season on the ground, and we don't usually get snow until January or February. If ever. So maybe that's the reason all of us goaties started growing our thick woolly coats so early. My grandsons Charzan and Orzbit were very surprised when they first had to set foot in the puffy white stuff...

In the meadow we will build a snowgoat...

Thanksgiving is almost here! Can you believe it? We are hunkering down for the winter, and soon we will start the countdown again to the spring babies. That's how it goes on the farm!

Wow! The rain is back!

We have had several mild winters recently, and we sort of forgot what it is like when it rains all day long, and then all night long, and then all day long the next day, and then - well, you get the picture. Everyone is huddled in the barn right now, dreaming of those long-ago days (a month ago? or was it two months?) when we complained about the hot dry summer.

It was 80 degrees here in the Pacific Northwest! The grass was turning brown! Perhaps we shouldn't have wished for "just a few sprinkles..."

Bad Pony!

Does anyone have advice for our pony friend? He is very cute and funny, but unfortunately rather a pig, and he has developed a very bad habit lately. He always wants the grass on the other side of the fence (isn't there some kind of saying about that?), so he sticks his little pony hooves into the fence to try to pull the grass over, and ends up popping his shoes off. It's bad! Bad for his feet, bad for the farmer's pocketbook (new shoes$$!!!), and just plain bad manners. Does anyone have advice for our pony?

We have an electric fence, but in the summer we have to turn off the bottom strand, because the dry grass starts to spark and it can cause a fire. Yipes!

Please write in with your suggestions.

End of Summer

We have had a beautiful summer but now we can begin to feel the autumn coming. I am growing a VERY woolly coat already, so I suspect the winter will be harder than usual. Soon we will be snuggling in the barn when the rain begins.

our friend Marty. 

Marty

One of our dearest kindest friends, Marty the Nubian, died on Wednesday. She was very very special and we won't forget her. If there is a sweeter goat anywhere in the world, we haven't met her.

Goodbye for now, Marty.

May 27, 2000 - August 10, 2005.

National Champions

Well, guess what, the farmer just got back from the National Goat Show in Spokane and BOY was it hot. One day it was 106 degrees. My ancestors are from Nigeria, but even so I don't think I would like it that hot. Anyway, there were some very beautiful goat girls there. You can see the winners here.

The Family Tree

Well, I thought I would just post something on my family tree to bring everyone up to speed. I am two years old now, and I have had three children. Hannah Belle was my first child and she was spoiled rotten. She remains to this day an awful pest and escape artist. This year I had two babies, Jingle and Tinker.

Jingle, my son, went to live with a lovely family. Tinker (who looks exactly like her sister) is not as spoiled as Hannah Belle, although I have to say she carries on the family tradition of exquisite good looks, conformation, dairy character, and of course extreme humility.

Now Hannah Belle has had two sons: Orzbit and Charzan, and something funny happened. While Hannah Belle, Jingle Belle, and Tinker Belle all look exactly alike, Charzan and Orzbit look nothing alike - except they both have blue eyes - and neither of them look anything like their mother. Or me, their grandmother. So all I can say is, go figure.

National Goat Show!

It is almost time for the National Goat Show. We are very excited about it, because it is in Spokane this year. It has never been in Washington state before, so this is very exciting. Thousands of goats from all over the United Sates will come to the Show! None of them will be quite as cute as me, though.

The End of the Season

Well, it's the end of the season. All the babies have been born. My two grandsons are named Orzbit and Charzan. The farmer's nephew Max thought up those names. Max is two. While he was here, he spent a lot of time sitting on a stool with Orzbit on his lap.

Charzan is recovering nicely from a bout of floppy kid syndrome. It is not a joke! You can read about it here. Charzan had to go and live in the house for several days until he got his muscle tone back.

All the milkers are milking, and some of them are REALLY milking. We have one goat named Brandy who is the queen of the herd. She is not very big, but she is the boss of everything, and she milks about two gallons a day. Brandy knows everything and the price, too. If you're going to try to eat any of Brandy's grain, you better be a fast runner.

Orzbit, my other grandson!

Charzan, one of my brand new twin grandsons. Looks, charm, personality plus - that's my boy! Hannah Belle was a champ!