Cornball

Acorn, aka Cornball, guards the alfalfa as Bumbles looks on in dismay.

Winter Wear

The Weather Goat

Up in the mountains of Southern Oregon the Old Wives are saying it is going to be a long, dry, warm fall. This is something to do with the orange belly bands on the woolly caterpillars, and the coats on the horses. But we don't live in Southern Oregon. And we don't go by the Old Wives.

We go by Jammies, and Jammies right now has the undercoat of a Great Pyrenees living on the Glacier of the Pico de Aneto so we are telling you if you didn't do it already, get your extra hay in right away because the cold weather is coming and fast.

Not Any More

Everyone got home from the Fair and immediately got the sniffles as usual. Then of course it started to rain. Terra Belle's nose was running and so was Blue Jaye's. Clementine had an upset stomach and went on baking soda. Abby gave a few feeble coughs, trying to get more food.

"You're fine," the farmer said crisply.

Rosie sneezed into the hay feeder.

"Turn your head!" yelled the farmer.

Then Pebbles gave a tiny sniff, possibly not even a sniff. She may have been clearing alfalfa stems from her throat. She was whisked into the house immediately to get warmed up. While she was in there she ate hand-picked blackberry leaves and Kashi Go-Lean, along with a few bites of warm oatmeal with brown sugar.

When she came out she was wearing a two-tone waterproof parka with a hood and fur (faux, of course) fringing. Wendell did one of his goggle-eyed doubletakes when he saw her. His body language said, "isn't that my jacket?"

"Not any more," said Abby.

"That's right," said Pebbles.

That's Right

The Nigerian show was about to start and all the Nigerians were called out to the show ring.

Oh, wait a minute, we better go back a couple of days. The farmer had an excellent helper named Seth. He helped get everybody ready for the Fair and load everybody and unload everybody and set everything up and did practice walking with Clementine because he was going to show her in the recorded grade show. Then since that was done he passed the time going on the Extreme Scream, the roller coaster, that big sickening slingshot looking thing, and many more rides including the Giant Slide, which he got kicked off for catching too much air. 

And then right before the Nigerian show he got sick and couldn't come back to the Fair. So even though the plan had been to walk to the show ring with imperious elegance like the Lucky Star LaManchas at the last minute there was a change and it was decided that everybody would be dragged out kicking and screaming, which lent an air of festive jollity to the proceedings. Then everybody got shoved into a new set of pens at the side of the show ring, while the Farmer scrabbled around with imperious elegance looking for the shiny show collars to replace the grubby dollar store dog collars everyone was wearing. 

The farmer from Minter Bay finally took pity and loaned out some nice show collars because otherwise it seemed hopeless.

Pebbles was the first to go out since the youngest always go first. 

"Remember to come in third," said Abby. "If they put you up too far just roach your back like Terra Belle is doing or hunch up into an S-shape like Blue Jaye." Blue Jaye looked like a somber hopeless centipede inching up a twig.

"That's right," said Pebbles. Unfortunately Pebbles had been enjoying two days at the Fair, and she had been held up in the aisle many times as an example of a cute baby goat and she had already learned to pose for pictures, turning her head graciously from side to side to allow profile shots from every angle.

Anyway she went out in the ring and everything went fine for a while. The judge started a lineup and she had Pebbles in third.

"Good job," yelled Abby.

"Let's see them walk now," said the judge, and the line of doelings started walking around the ring, and unfortunately there was a lady on the other side of the ring with a camera and Pebbles automatically starting preening and posing and the judge immediately moved her up into first place. 

"Hunch up!" yelled Abby. "Before it's too late!"

Pebbles hunched but unfortunately the judge didn't see it. She came in first. Then they did the other classes, and Blue Jaye came in third, and Terra Belle managed to come in fifth, and a very pretty senior kid won the senior kid class and a beautiful Poppy Patch dry yearling won that class, and then the judge called for the first and second place winners to come back out to choose the grand champion and the reserve grand champion.

"Don't worry," said Abby, "the dry yearling always wins. But hop on your back legs a few times just in case."

Pebbles went out and hopped on her back legs like a kangaroo but then wouldn't you know it she saw three people with cameras and she couldn't help herself she struck a pose and held perfectly still, adopting an expression of imperious elegance. Right away the judge said, "well there is a doeling here who really catches my eye and that is our junior kid and she will be my grand champion today." and there was a burst of applause and Pebbles shrugged with imperious elegance.

"That's right," she said.

No one had really expected this to happen except maybe Seth, who said on the first day as he was looking at Pebbles in her fair pen, "Look at her. How could she not win?"

Go For the Bronze

The farmer got back from the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup last night. Six unlucky goats were chosen to go to the Fair.

Acorn was going to go, and Clementine, and Pebbles and Abby and Blue Jaye and Terra Belle. Well at the last minute Acorn's papers didn't come and someone else had to subsitute and the farmer looked around wild-eyed and realized there was only one goat the same breed and age as Acorn, and that was Maple Hollow - we call her Rosie - who is smart as a whip, wild as a March hare, and fast as a jackrabbit.

"They can't take Rosie," I was thinking. "She is wild as a March hare and fast as a jackrabbit."

"Put Rosie in the truck," the farmer said grimly, and off went the six goats, all looking horrified except Abby and Pebbles, who were born here and lived here their whole lives but still come from Oregon which gives them eccentric ideas.

Abby and Pebbles looked oddly pleased. Abby stood on the wheel well and peered out the window of the truck canopy, chewing her cud.

"Oh good," she told the others, "we are finally going somewhere."

"That's right," said Pebbles.

Clementine closed her eyes in order to make herself disappear. She is part Nubian.

At the Fair they got shoved into a pen next to some of our Nigerian cousins from Minter Bay and across the aisle from the magnificent LaManchas from Lucky Star, who each milk about 10,000 pounds of milk a day.

"So what," said Abby, "I could milk that much if I felt like it." She snubbed the LaManchas and made a beeline to the free alfalfa provided by the Fair.

"That's right," said Pebbles, joining her mother at the hay feeder.

Clementine saw what was going on and temporarily made herself visible again so that she could also begin gorging on alfalfa. Rosie peered all around the barn running the odds. If she jumped out of the pen and cut through the food pavilion she figured that she could make it out onto Meridian then head for River Road, turn south and canter along the banks of the river to Tacoma, hang a right and take the side streets over to the Narrows Bridge, cross over the Sound in the bike lane, camp out for the night in the delicious blackberry bushes by the driving range near the freeway in Gig Harbor, then make it back to the farm by Wednesday afternoon.

But then she realized she didn't have enough money for the bridge toll.*

So she shut off her brain and turned herself into a statue. Blue Jaye did the same thing. Terra Belle, drawn by a strange but powerful magnet, headed for the alfalfa, muttering to herself as she ate rhythmically: "this can't be happening, this can't be happening."

The next day the shows started and the magnificent LaManchas came back with reams and reams of ribbons and rosettes. Even Abby was awed to silence when the immense, gleaming, impeccably groomed Lucky Star's LOT Xhibit, the top milker in the country, walked by nonchalantly carrying 20,000 gallons of milk.

"Listen Pebbles," said Abby, eyeing the Lucky Star ribbons. "When we have our show be sure to come in third. First and second have to come back out for the championship round. Come in third and you are done for the day. I don't think we will be able to do any worse than third, though, since we are so beautiful. And we come from Oregon, where the goats look a lot better."

"That's right," said Pebbles.

...Stay tuned for Part Two.

*she didn't know that the toll is only collected eastbound

The Repairman

We have a LaMancha buck named Xcellanti. Nobody would know how to pronounce that name even if we ever said it. But it doesn't matter because he is called Junior.

Junior loves his work and he is very handsome.

Junior never says anything but if he did it would be, "I can fix that."

Some of the does here are not beauty queens. A lot of them, actually. They have things like droopy udders and bad feet and they're too small and they don't milk enough. And so on.

It doesn't matter what's wrong. Junior can fix it. 

Every year the farmer takes Big Orange to see Junior and says, "Junior, I do not have time to explain everything that is wrong with this doe. Just fix it."

Junior says nothing. He just starts right in fixing.

Disaster Looms

It has gotten very boring here with relentless good weather and no mishaps to speak of since the well. There is plenty to eat and the apples are falling off the trees. The tractor is running fine and the barn is stacked to the rafters with hay. A boatload of carrots came in.

The living is easy, very easy, a monkey could do it.

 This can only mean one thing: catastrophe approaching, from the East probably, on little cat's feet.

From the Police Blotter.

Sheesh, can't you take your goat for a walk at midnight in your jammies any more?

Fair Warning

Good news, my enemy Abby's twin won the Kitsap County Fair. This means Abby will go to the state fair instead of me. Pinky is going to the fair as well. Terra is the prettiest dry yearling but since she got her hair shaved she has been walking around in a state of clenchment, with her legs shut tight together and her back roached and overall she looks like a poster for bad posture or possibly even rickets.

So Iota will go instead, unless she clenches after her fair haircut. She's not much of a clencher though, the Betty daughters are almost as relaxed as the Pinky family, so I think she will get stuffed in the trailer with the rest of the 'volunteers'.

Pinky of course doesn't care about anything, she could be sent to substitute teach at the state prison tomorrow and she wouldn't care, as long as there was enough alfalfa there. She's like the honey badger.

Blue is looking SO pretty (as the farmer repeats ad nauseam) but she has done the same magic trick as Betty and Hannah Belle and somehow shut her milk off as soon as she got her fair haircut. She only dribbles out enough to keep the farmer trying to milk her up, it's very cunning the way she does it, I made a mental note of it for future reference. She still gets full service dinners on the milkstand twice a day, but every time the farmer threatens her - "you will not be going to the fair if you do not get your milk back up."

Blue looks around in fake dismay, oh dear, say it isn't so, it can't be true, and keeps gobbling.

Here Comes the Bride

She is kind of pretty. For a Nubian.

Jiggety-Jog

The things that happen are strange. But the things that don't happen are even stranger.

Jammies was supposed to have her kids in the spring. But she wasn't bred so she didn't have any kids. She was just fat.

Blue's daughter Lainey went to Minter Bay to live and she didn't fit in there. She is a born misfit. First of all she is about the cutest thing you have ever seen, she looks like a blue-eyed hood ornament, but she is a midget and she is polite and shy and that always puts her at the end of the line where there is never any food and certainly no friends. She has never had an underling. You cannot get anywhere in the herd without at least one underling.

So the farmer thought, uh oh, if she can't hold her own at Minter Bay where the goats have such lovely manners what is she going to do here on the Island with Lord of the Flies goats like Tangy. So the farmer thought it could be a world class disaster, but after all this is her home, and so the farmer went and got Lainey and brought her back, worrying all the while what might happen to such a little goat in such a big world.

And Lainey did catch Hell for several weeks, even from her own mother who wanted nothing to do with her since she had new kids. But Lainey was used to that. And she went with the flow. She started following me around and admiring me, so I could see at the least that she had good taste, so I let her sleep with me sometimes.

And then Blue looked at her one day and said oh wait a second I remember you. And Blue stopped t-boning her.

And Wronny our herd queen has funny ideas and like any good ruler she doesn't just concern herself with the predicaments of the high and mighty, but also intervenes in the squabbles of the low and inconsequential. For example she stopped everyone from picking on Moldy and Abby, who knows why. She won't even let me enjoy a nice fight with Abby, as you know.

And when Tangy backed up one day in preparation for steamrolling Lainey whom she most likely never would have caught up with anyway, Wronny brought the hammer down and rolled Tangy down the hill, literally, in a cloud of dust. Tangy got up shaking her head, and everyone turned away politely, chewing their respective cuds, and made a mental note to leave Lainey alone.

And before you know it, we looked out one day and saw Lainey head-butting her little half-sister Blue Jay, who got her name because she is a terrible pest. It almost looked like she might have an underling.

So don't listen to what they say. You can go home again.

Pumped Up

Yesterday there was a big celebration because the well pump went out and the whole thing had to be pulled out of the ground and the pump and all the piping and the check valves and the bleedbacks and every other gold-plated thing on it had to be replaced and it cost the farmer an arm and a leg.

We were all dancing in the streets because just two days before that our ship had come in and it was loaded with alfalfa from Eastern Washington and we all knew good and well that if our ship had come in three days later it would have been cancelled and that money would have gone down the well. But you can't return hay so it is here to stay.

And we were dancing in the streets but trying to be polite about it because there was a somber air about the farm as Welly the well pump was fished up from 175 feet under and laid to rest. Goodbye Welly and thank you for holding on an extra day, and I'm sure the farmer did not mean any of the curses that were raining down on your head or perhaps meant them in a friendly way the same as when Hannah Belle got stuck in the panel gate (the second time, not the first.)

RIP.

The Buttinskys

The public is very cynical and several members have inquired whether I 'thought' I really won my fight with Abby the duck-footed Oregonian. I tihnk it is pretty apparent who won the fight even though only a few excerpts of it have been shown since it was a three-hour battle that I won. Or in any case I would have won if Wronny the self-proclaimed herdqueen hadn't made me stop fighting for no apparent reason except I guess she was probably afraid that the little duckfoot would be injured as you can see in this video. Wronny and her henchgoat Pinky think they are a big slice of pie and they go around telling other people what to do. What kind of fight is it when a big 175 pound bossy-boots has to come in and help you and go two against one and then three against one when her nitwit henchgoat lumbers onto the scene. So as far as who won the so-called fight which was really a stroll in the park from my point of view I think anyone would say the one who won was the one who did not need help from the henchgoats and herdqueens of the world. Thank you.

Also ps don't worry Wronny can't read. As far as Pinky she can barely walk and chew cud at the same time.

Fight Club

Baby Belle Jr. vs the Web-Footed Oregonian.

Today and Every Day

It was a year ago today we lost our great friend Atticus. A lady stopped by a little while ago and asked if the farmer still thinks about Atticus sometimes.

"Yes," the farmer said. That was all.

Every day.

Preheated

It got hot everywhere else this summer but it never really got hot here. I don't mind the heat but it's just as well because the heat wilts our farmer really quickly. Our farmer starts spritzing and misting and calling for otter pops at about 76 degrees Fahrenheit. So you could imagine what the service was like around here a couple of years ago when the temperature got over 100.

Anyway the point is it never really got hot here this summer and that's part of the reason some of the milkers have started going into pre-heat. They don't really go into heat, but they go into pre-heat, and then they go around and start fights with each other. Or when they don't start fights through a lack of gumption or sheer shiftlessness in the case of Pinky who can't be bothered to start her own squabbles they join in the fights that are already started by the more ambitious.

On a side note Cherry went actually into heat and then realized it was too soon to be in heat but by that time she had jumped into the buck pen where three smelly swains immediately began vying for her favor. Luckily she was able to excuse herself unnoticed as the vying reached a crescendo. As she tiptoed back to the barn, they all continued vying without her. Why not, they had already started.

Anyway this morning I started thinking about some annoying things that have been happening lately. The main one is when people come over and say, "Oh my Gosh! Look at Millie! She is all grown up now! She is adorable!"

That's fine but they are looking at Abby when they say it.

"That's Abby," the farmer explains, "Millie is over there."

"She's cute too!" they say.

The more I thought about this the more infuriating it seemed.

So I went over to Abby and started a fight. The fight lasted for three hours. Even when Wronny wanted me to stop I kept fighting. Even when Jammies the pacifist tried to come between us, we kept fighting. Even when Wendell the Pest circled us yipping like a French ninny we kept fighting.

It was a good one. We both enjoyed it. We were preheated.

(Video from fight coming soon....)

Three Flies and a Velvet Glove

It took only seven years but finally it happened, like the return of the locusts. Hannah Belle as you may remember has never been properly milked out because she is exceedingly shrewd. But she has two flies in her ointment. One is she is a terrible pig and loves any kind of food. Two she loves scratches and petting. Also she is quite vain. I guess that makes three flies.

The farmer switched from iron hand which hadn't worked for seven years to velvet glove. Hannah Belle would not get any grain except on the milkstand. The farmer made sure she was good and hungry before she went on the milkstand. No more all-day snacking, just grass hay between meals.

When she got on the milkstand the farmer would begin praising her to the skies. Such a beautiful goat and so intelligent. Such lovely children and grandchildren. Such a pretty face and a long neck and my goodness, the topline, the chine, the hips, the pins, the thurls. Was there ever a more magnificent goat? And by the way, that time she got out of the locked horse trailer - how did she do that? Did she call someone to come and let her out?

More snacks? How about a pretzel with PEANUT BUTTER inside it? From Trader Joe's, not from the convenience store. The farmer showed Hannah Belle the label.

Then the petting and scratching. On the chest. That itchy spot behind the shoulder. More food.

And then the farmer would start milking very casually, still complimenting Hannah Belle and admiring her every little action and movement - the most transparent fawning, really - and stopping frequently so that it hardly seemed the milking had even really begun and before you know it, only seven years later, Hannah Belle was milked ALL THE WAY OUT and there were no hard feelings.

In the end, even Achilles had heels.

Hi Mom

Hannah Belle's kids Charlie and Little Belle went to a new home. We just got this postcard from them. It's always nice when kids write.

Still Undefeated

The farmer set up the milkstand in the middle of the barn aisle for purposes of milking Hannah Belle ALL THE WAY OUT.

Onlookers looked on.

Hannah Belle jumped right on the stand and began eating as fast as she could.

"That's nice," said the farmer. "How nice."

The farmer started milking at top speed.

Things went very well for two minutes, then Hannah Belle began performing milk evading maneuvers which drew oohs and ahs of appreciation from the spectators. Not since Scouty's udder was bitten by a spider have we seen this type of Cirque du Soleil performance.

I was frankly expecting a better showing but in fairly short order the farmer looked into the bucket dreamily, where there was two minutes worth of beautiful Nigerian milk, and said, "this will be enough for several lattes."

And that was that.

7 to 0.