Herman Munster. (Note giant head) 

Penrose and Pilgrim. 

Life

Well, as it says in the song, life ain't always beautiful. But it's a beautiful life.

The last babies of the year are here. My boys, Barbaro and Huckleberry, came a week ago. As usual I did not cause any difficulty or trouble, and I produced two exceedingly fine specimens, who obliged everyone present by getting up immediately and drinking their milk.

Then a couple of days ago, the farmer put Boo the Nubian in a special stall in the barn, because she was getting ready to kid.

Now Boo, being a Nubian, is no Mensa candidate. But she is pretty, very pretty, and has a good personality. Except for sometimes kicking the milk bucket across the barn, which, from the way the farmer responds, is the reason why I guess people say someone has "kicked the bucket," meaning that they are no longer with us. There were certainly a couple of times when I thought Boo would no longer be with us, when I saw that stainless steel bucket, with two gallons of milk in it, go flying into the alfalfa, which, I hate to mention it, costs $175 a ton around here when things are going well. And right now, with the price of gas, things aren't going so well. But see I already got off on a sidetrack.

Anyway, Boo has an excellent personality, and that is her saving grace, and it appears inexplicably that the farmer is very attached to her. So she hasn't kicked any metaphorical buckets, just a few literal ones. There she was in the stall, pushing and straining and rolling and occasionally gasping in horror in a very Nubian-esque way, and the farmer kept saying, "she will be fine, she always does fine."

Now when the farmer says "she will be fine," in my experience that is usually followed by the farmer running to the house to get the truck keys and call the vet. Boo kept pushing for another half hour, and she popped her bubble out, and still no kids, and then finally as I could have told you, the farmer said, "okay, I'm going in."

So the farmer reached inside Boo and fished around for a while and then said, as I could have predicted, "Oh, no." It wasn't "nose-and-toes," which is what the farmer likes to feel on a fishing expedition, it was just toes. Long-leggedy toes reaching back to a big giant, sideways twisted head, nose nowhere in sight.

Well the farmer grimaced and grunted and pushed and rearranged and after the longest time, punctuated by many screams from Boo - not Nubian-esque screams, but real screams - was able to fish out a big baby buckling who is now named Herman Munster, because of his big (but lovable) blockhead. Herman was followed by Bertie (Sister Bertrille), his sister, who seemed tiny by comparison but actually weighed about 9 pounds. Both of them are Nubian-Lamancha crosses, and as you may have surmised, the girl has little Flying Nun ears.

After the birth of the giant twins there was a lot of congratulations and petting, and good snacks for Boo, and the farmer said to everyone and to no one in particular, "well, that's it for another year," because Boo was the last bred doe of the season. And since it was late, everyone went to bed, thanking their stars that the last babies of the season had arrived in one (large) piece.

In the morning, the farmer checked on all the babies and the mothers, then went down to check on the down-below girls, dry does and yearlings in the lower pasture. And who do you think was down there?

Penrose. Stacy's best friend, also known as the baroness, who has been bred umpteen times every year for the last three years. And never kidded. And who do you think was standing next to Penrose, basking in the glow of her utter and complete adoration?

Pilgrim, the teeny tiniest Toggenburg of all time, a teacup Toggenburg and the REAL last baby of the season. Arrived all unannounced, with no help from anybody, and happy as a clam just to be here.

Ah, an unexpected baby goat. It's a beautiful life.

Here's a shot of me with Huckleberry, also known as the Huckleberry King. 

Here's Baby Barbaro, aka BB King. Remind you of anybody? 

Welcome, Babies!

Well, my babies came yesterday - two beautiful blue-eyed boys. One will be named Barbaro (the fast one) and one will be named Huckleberry. Pictures will be coming very soon, after I catch up on my sleep.

Breaking Baby News...

Everyone, stay tuned: today is the day! I am making a nest right now....

And this is Peaches' gorgeous daughter Cammy, aka Herron Hill's Weeping Camel.  

You can't tell it from this photo, but JuneBug's (aka Peaches) son Wrusty is as cute as a button. And one of the sweetest little bucks we have ever met. 

The Living is Easy

 

Eo and her daughter Willa enjoying a lazy spring day in the Northwest. 

Countdown Continues

Well, I didn't have my kids and Barbaro didn't win the Preakness. I guess everyone knows what happened by now. He is a champion, anyway, though, so I think I will name one of my kids Barbaro. Or maybe it will have to be Barbara, if it is a girl? Hmm.

Kidding Countdown '06

It's that time of year again and I am officially entering the kidding countdown. If my babies are born on Preakness Saturday I will name them after winning horses. Otherwise, I will have to think of names on my own. Oh dear.

One of the things I like to do when I am getting ready to start thinking about kidding is to find a good spot where my babies can be born...

...Like Maybe Here?

  

Magnificent Poodle, Part Deux (Note Bandanna)

  

Atticus/Fifi

  

Call Me Fifi

Atticus is our guardian Pyrenees. He tells us all where to go and what to do. He is very bossy. We don't always like him but we love him: he keeps everyone safe and won't even allow crows to land in the pasture.

Atticus is three, and up until last Thursday, he looked very fearsome. He was covered with a shaggy white coat which had acquired an impressive collection of mud mats and magnificent dingleberries over the rainy winter. Whenever the meter man even saw Atticus, he would jump into his truck and start throwing biscuits out the window while he raced backwards down the driveway, spewing gravel. It's kind of funny, because in spite of his size and his intimidating appearance, Atticus is actually very very gentle (as long as he is being obeyed). He lets baby goats jump on him and loves to have his tummy rubbed.

Anyway, last Thursday morning he looked, as usual, like a dirty white lion. Until a big mysterious van came up the driveway and a little lady in a smock got out. She and another lady put a muzzle on Atticus - !!! - and picked him up, despite the fact that he weighs well over a hundred pounds and does NOT like to be picked up, and carried him inside the van.

A long time passed. There was a lot of noise coming out of the van, including a sound like a weedwhacker going.

We wondered what was going on. We heard some swear words, which we are familiar with from the time the farmer had to cut Hannah Belle out of the fence. But mostly we heard that buzzing noise. Over an hour later the door opened and a 4-foot-tall poodle, blindingly white and clean and wearing a green bandanna, stepped sheepishly out of the van. We wondered what had happened to Atticus, and whether we should start cleaning the barn for fear the uber-poodle would dirty its immaculate paws.

The poodle was shaved within an inch of its life, but still it was magnificent, unmistakably the largest poodle ever to walk the Earth. We stood by in amazement as it approached, sashaying in an oddly familiar way. And then we all burst out laughing! It was Atticus!

Holy Cow! Wait until you see the pictures of the Extreme Makeover wrought by the mobile grooming lady!

Just Goats

When you live on the farm you know firsthand that there is a time for every season. And right now we are in the middle of a season of sadness. We know it will pass, but that doesn't help today. Four years ago there was a similar time. Two of our old horses died exactly a month apart: one was 32 and one was 29.

The older one, Mo, just didn't want to go on living when his old friend died. We always try not to have favorites, but Mo was everybody's favorite horse. On the looks scale, he was just about a zero: a scrubby old pink-eyed appaloosa with a tail like a bottle brush. But there was never on this Earth a kinder horse.

Never.

Mo was so kind that he lived an extra two weeks so we could get ready to live without him: when Mo stopped eating, the farmer brought out a bucket of warm mash every morning and every evening and fed him by hand, one handful after another. He was too kind to refuse to eat it, even though he didn't want it.

But even that sadness felt right, in its own way. Mo was 32, after all, and horses don't get much older than that. And he loved almost every minute (he didn't really like the parts where he got wormed) of his long life. And he was ready to go.

This sadness is different. First we lost Stacy, out of the blue. And now my two grandsons, Charzan and Orzbit, have been killed by dogs. A group of dogs, just out killing for fun. Their owners allowed them to run loose.

Charzan and Orzbit were twins. They were ten months old. They were very much beloved. They may have been, as we sometimes hear people say, "just goats," but they were also gentle and silly and fun-loving. They were our friends. We miss them very badly and we feel sick when we think about the way they died.

Don't worry, boys, we won't forget you. Even though you were just goats.

Stacy's Moonbeam does his mama proud.  

Starts with W...

Ok, it is time for a baby round-up.

Born so far: Lolo, Betsy, Moony, Wrenny, Wrusty, The General, Traveler, Harper Lee, Barnaby, Whitman, Willa, Wrong Number, and What Next. And also born: W---, W---, W---, W---, and, finally, W---.

Won't you help? We are running out of W names - all (almost) the purebred babies will be ADGA registered and it is a W year. Please: won't you help?

Our friend Stacy. 5/13/2001-2/19/2006.