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.

For Stacy

We have had happy days and sad days at the farm, but usually they don't come so close together. This time they did.

Our friend Stacy kidded on Thursday, February 16 with a set of beautiful triplets, two girls and a boy. Stacy had never had even a single girl before, so we were very excited to see two, and both -- all three of the babies, actually -- were exceptionally pretty.

But it was a very very cold day, about the coldest day we have ever had here, and Stacy had a very hard kidding. In the end she couldn't push the kids out, and the farmer had to go in and pull them.

Stacy did not recover as she should have after having her babies, and despite showing how big her heart was with a heroic effort, she died three days later.

There are smarter goats here than Stacy, and there are prettier goats, and there are better milkers. But there isn't anyone sweeter: Stacy was the queen of the down-below pasture, and she was by far the kindest, gentlest leader at the farm. She never bullied smaller goats, and she always made room at the feeder for her friend Stevie, a tiny Nigerian who only has one eye.

On a warm summer's day, all the down-below girls loved to doze in a big pile, with Stacy at the center as their giant pillow. Stevie and Penrose the nutty Toggenburg stood at the fence and watched as Stacy was buried under the apple trees.

Stacy's three kids are Stacy's Starlight (Lolo), Stacy's Starbright (Betsy) and Stacy's Moonbeam (Moony).

Stacy was four years old.

5/13/2001-2/19/2006.

The Kid Count

The kid count has begun, kicked off by Breezy. Breezy had a set of triplets: their names are General (boy), Harper (girl), and Traveler (boy). April had a single buckling - he doesn't have a name yet. He is very happy go lucky and has a white cap to go with his otherwise traditional LaMancha markings, so if that helps you think of a name, send it in. Stacy had a set of unbelievably beautiful triplets: Lolo (girl), Betsy (girl), and Moony (boy). Moony is covered with moonspots.

Breezy Does it Again

Breezy has done it again, beating everyone to the punch. Yesterday, February 10, she popped out a set of triplets in record time. They are the first babies of the year and just as cute as a button. All healthy and doing well: the little girl weighed 2.75 pounds when she was born, but by the time she was two hours old she weighed 3.25 pounds. How did she do it? Milk milk milk! It does a baby body good!

Encore il pleut...

...la plus la meme chose. Yes, we have that deja view from the barn. Still raining. We can't go out. The tiny creek below the farm has turned into a lake. The farmer is making the pregnant ladies do laps around the tack room, they have been sitting around so long with no exercise.

Not to worry...

...That strange yellow ball has disappeared from the sky. It is raining again, but the weather reports say we will only get an inch or so of rain today. So it's pretty nice.

GO HAWKS! 

How Odd...

Something very strange and peculiar has happened. The rain has stopped falling from the sky. The sky is not completely gray any more. And there is this yellow ball, a big bright round thing, high up there. Weird, weird, weird. I'm sure the farmer will tell us what's going on...

Top Ten Reasons Why Today is a Really Nice Day in the Northwest

10. Right this minute at the farm, it is only raining steadily, rather than pouring

9. Around 9 a.m., we saw a tiny crack of sky that was off-gray instead of completely solid gray. I know, we should have taken a picture, but it passed so quickly there wasn't time

8. We haven't broken the all-time rainy day record yet - heck no, we are only on day 25 in a row

7. The trench the farmer dug yesterday is still carrying some of the rainwater away, so the mud in the barnyard hasn't swallowed any baby goats or sucked anyone's boots off (yet) today

6. The grass will be so green this spring!

5. The horses have left their run-in and are actually grazing. Woops, they went back in. Oh well.

4. The quacking of all the ducks who decided not to go south (why bother, there is a new lake right here) is so soothing.

3. Whatever happens, Mike Brown isn't head of FEMA any more

2. We are still getting room service from the farmer

and the Number One reason why it's a really nice day here in the Puget Sound region:

1. We aren't all standing on the barn roof, waiting for a helicopter!

le deluge at the barnyard

Holy Brother Noah, here comes the rain again. Rain followed by rain, followed by rain, followed by rain, followed by rain. Mudslides all around the Puget Sound, and mud up to our ankles here in the barnyard.

Even the bucks have gone into their shed. When the bucks won't come out to the fenceline to try to meet girls, you know it's raining.

We don't have an ark, but there is a kayak upstairs in the barn. So if worst comes to worst, the farmer and I will paddle on down the road. Too bad, there are only two seats in the kayak. Precious Winnie will have to swim for it.

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.