Tomorrow Is Coming!

"I am doing an optimistic collection, because things are going badly."

-- Coco Chanel

Well, here we are on the first Monday in November, on the doorstep of winter, and the endless gray rains have started, the economy is in ruins, the mud is already ankle-deep, the farm dog died, the pox lives on, the leaves turned, the cheese in the cheese room got invaded by wild props (more on that later), the furnace broke down, the roof started leaking, and Viceroy the Lamancha buck somehow broke out of his pen and went on an unseemly rampage of goat passion, the details of which are far too frank for the tender ears of the general public.

The creek, you can bet on it, will almost certainly rise.

And how does that make me feel?

OPTIMISTIC!

Come on, tomorrow!

The Pox, The Loaves, The Fishes, The Fat Girls

I do not like to complain but we have had a tough row to hoe lately, what with the goat pox, which eventually spread almost everywhere and struck down almost everyone, including me (how unfair!) and most of my Nigerian relatives.

Most of us really couldn't care too much about it except it is kind of a pain. The Nubians didn't notice it, I don't think, and the LaManchas only had very mild cases. But a few of the goats were miserable, including Cammy who had a nasty pox blister right under her eye, but especially all of the Toggs and Togg crosses.

For some reason they were hit very hard. Penrose was miserable and got lots of sympathy until her daughter Lucy got the pox, then she was shunted aside because Lucy had the worst case of all, much worse than Penrose. But even Eo was under the weather.

The only ones who didn't get it were the fat girls. The fat girls have their own separate shed where they are served a complete bread and water diet. Just kidding about that, they don't get any bread. It is a maximum security facility with no outside contact or grain-smuggling visitors, and that's why it remained pox-free. They just get little dry twigs of grass hay, like something you would throw in the bottom of a hamster cage. Every day they stare at the feeder in disbelief - is this a joke?

Then they gobble the dry sticks like mad, like the old Catskill Mountains vaudeville routine - the food here is so terrible! And such small portions! If it is their birthday they get a leaf of chard as a special treat. You think that is a joke but food is so scarce in there that they fight over the chard when they see it coming. The ground shakes, believe me. If you have never seen a chard riot, it is really something.

The fat girls are Breezy, Tubster, and Snow Pea. Not to say there aren't other fat girls, but these three are the ones who have gone beyond the pale. Tubster in particular from a very young age has been remarkably spherical. No amount of dieting reduces her; somehow she is able to skip the step of digesting and gain weight just by thinking about food. It is kind of a miracle, like the loaves and fishes, only in reverse.

Or something like that.

Anyway, now that we are starting to come out of the end of the pox tunnel, everyone looks a little brighter. I don't want to jinx anything but still - STILL - there are three goats who have never gotten the pox, in spite of living right at the center of the outbreak. Two of them are mother and daughter. The other is probably just too dumb to catch anything. I won't say who they are, but you probably know.

Don't worry, unless I decide to do another one, this will be my last post on the tiresome subject of the pox.

What About Moony?

There have been complaints, as there always are, regarding the current election (see below) for the cutest kid of all time. This is always a problem in a democracy, especially if the democracy is rigged. Anyway, some people have intimated that Peanut might be cheating.

"So what?" I said, when I heard this allegation.

Then there were some sour-grape complaints from some of the unnominated goats and their mothers. The minis in particular were complaining. Peaches asked everyone - what about my kids? What about Ginger Jones? What about Augie and Hermy and Julius? Why weren't they nominated? Because of mini prejudice, she implied.

"So what?" I said.

Being extremely polite I didn't mention that Peaches should go take a look in the mirror. I noticed and you probably did too that she didn't mention her daughter Tubster. Tubster is no beauty queen, and minis in general just aren't as cute as Nigerians. That's the way it is.

If anyone should be complaining, it's me. What about my adorable son Bobby? What about Huckleberry? What about my other supermodel grandson Goatzilla? Or Harley or Cora Belle? Or Betty for goodness' sake? The list goes on and on.

Well the farmer ignored all the grumbling because who has time for the complainers of the world. But then Betsy came up, and since she hardly ever complains, she was allowed to speak her mind, which in my opinion is a big mistake, because she is part Nubian.

"What about Moony?" Betsy wanted to know. Moony is Betsy's brother.

Everyone shrugged in a very French way. "What about him?"

"He was really really cute."

"So what?" I said again, because get over it, Moony wasn't nominated.

"Yes, but he was an orphan," said Betsy.

Well, that's true. He was an orphan.

What about Moony?

The polls will close in one hour or whenever the farmer finishes milking, whichever comes first.

Smackdown

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Smidgen, the tiniest doeling ever born at Herron Hill, dares to challenge kid-of-the-year Peanut, the tiniest buckling ever born here, to a cutest baby of all time (so far) contest.

Betty has not protested, even though she was very cute when she was born, and neither has Goatzilla. So the fight is on.

Good luck Smidgen. You will need it.

Th Poll has ended. Peanut "Mayor Daley" The Kid won. Smidgen came in second. For a while she was ahead. Then she was behind. Good try, Smidge.

Final Score:
Peanut: 328
Smidgen: 198

The 7% Solution

My daughter Blue Umbrella, aka Baby Blue, aka Blue, is certainly the prettiest of the regular milkers and obviously the smartest, and her milk tastes the best. The farmer uses Blue's milk as the daily latte milk, since it is the sweetest. But the farmer didn't want to put her on regular milk test since she is a first freshener and only had a single kid, so she is just milking once a day. On test everyone is milked twice a day.

So the farmer decided to do a one-time test on Blue's milk just out of curiosity. All the other milkers average between 3.5 and 4.5% with their butterfat. They do go up some in the winter, to give them credit for their mediocre efforts, but usually they average around 4% for the year. The butterfat is what makes the milk taste good, and it is what the cheesemakers want to make beautiful cheese.

Sheep have high butterfat, maybe starting around 6%, and this is why people milk sheep, because why else would anyone milk sheep? No offense to the sheep of the world, but if you think the Nubians are low on the IQ totem pole, what until you see the sheep.

There are sheep out there that make Boo look like Stephen Hawking. And that isn't easy.

Anyway, the test came back and of course Blue had the highest butterfat of anyone, and almost double some of the big girls. That's right, 7%. One of her great-grandmothers milked 11%, so we will see what happens in the winter, she may go up even higher.

But anyway, ha. Meanwhile the big large bossy girls fill the pail with water. Yum, delicious, tomme de l'eau, save me a piece, I bet it goes good with gruel.

One of a Kind

Our New Goat of the Month

As of this morning Binky has the goat chicken pox. She has been fired from Goat of the Month. Willen is our new Goat of the Month. Congratulations to Willen.

Our New Goat of the Month

Little Jessie the LaMancha kid was the goat of the month last month. She was already quite full of herself before being made goat of the month. Afterward she was plain and simply prideful. And you know, or you ought to know, what pride goeth before.

That's right. Little Jessie has gone from her embroidered satin cushion right into the doghouse. Lo how the mighty are fallen.

The problem is this. Jessie went to the fair, which I don't believe in going to because it is ridiculous. When they have a people fair where you can go pet the accountants and insurance salesmen sitting in little pens for three days, let me know about it and maybe I will go. If it isn't raining and I don't have to have all my beautiful hair shaved off first.

But anyway Jessie went to the fair. And she came back with a blue ribbon, big deal. AND, we discovered a couple of weeks later, the goat chicken pox. First just Jessie had it, and she was locked into a quarantine stall all by herself, where she passed the time by yelling. The farmer gave up and threw Binky to the wolves - Binky went in with Jessie so she would shut up.

"Sorry, Binky," said the farmer, "but someone has to take one for the team."

Then Winnie, Jr., who also went to the fair, got it. She got thrown in a stall with Tanjy and Bugsy, who also went to the fair. Then Bugsy got it.

Then Bertie got it. Then Betsy. And by this time there were no more stalls to throw anybody in so the farmer decided to just let it burn itself out since the quarantine hadn't worked anyway. The farmer looked around and took stock: almost all the goats who had gone to the fair had gotten the goat chicken pox.

Except the Nigerians, we never get anything.

And Binky.

Binky is our goat of the month for October. Congratulations, Binky.

Goat of the Month

We haven't had goat of the month for a long time so today we are having goat of the month.

The goat of the month is Herron Hill's XJ Yes I Know.

But really her name is Jessie.

Jessie won a first place ribbon at the fair, which was good. Even better was the farmer's idea to have Shannon Stangeland from Poppy Patch Farm show Jessie, since the farmer is possibly the worst showman ever to enter the ring. Shannon on the other hand is one of the best, and she kindly agreed to do it. In this picture taken by Wendy Webster the famous goat photographer, Jessie is posing in the champion lineup with all the other blue ribbon goats.

Jessie was the first LaMancha goat born here this spring. She is Wronny's daughter. It was a cold day when she was born so the babies were getting started inside the house in rubbermaid tubs. Usually a rubbermaid tub will hold a kid for two or three days. After that they are big and strong enough to climb out of the tub.

Anyway, Jessie was born first but her sister Bugsy was coming fast right behind her, so the farmer grabbed her and ran to the house, rubbing her off with a towel on the way. Jessie was already mad as a hornet, and hollered the whole time.

The farmer ran through the kitchen and through the living room and into the bathroom where the rubbermaid tub was set up next to the heating vent and full of nice clean straw. In about the time it takes to read this, the farmer plunked Jessie in the tub and ran back out through the living room and the kitchen and across the yard to the kidding stall in the barn where yes, just as expected, Bugsy slid out right on cue just in time to be caught by the farmer.

The farmer turned around, puffing and rubbing Bugsy dry with a clean towel, and ran back to the house.

The farmer opened the kitchen door to find Jessie, as mad as a two-minute-old goat can get, screaming bloody murder next to the washing machine, and ready to march on Stalingrad if the need arose.

She had knocked over the rubbermaid tub, walked through the bathroom, through the living room, and through the kitchen when most baby goats, even Nigerians, are looking around themselves and saying, "didn't it used to be pitch dark in here? Can I get some sunglasses, please?"

So Jessie is goat of the month.

Because of Jessie the baby goats have an all-new nursery system and the rubbermaids are being used to store milk bottles.

In the artful photo below, Jessie shows off the whiskers that should have been trimmed before she went in the ring.

The News from Home

Hello everyone.

It is fall now, and time for an update, after a sketchy summer of haphazard reporting.

The farmer says I am not going to have any kids again this year and I am very angry about it. I am just almost angry enough to go on a hunger strike. Almost.

But not quite.

To placate me, the farmer says that my Dairy Princess Cookbook is finally going to come out.

If you have any recipes you would like to have considered this would be the time to submit them before it is too late. Your recipes must be good and they must have DAIRY ingredients.

Dairy ingredients are cheese, milk, ice cream, yogurt, panir, butter, cream, etc. Everything tastes good with cheese, so if you have a good recipe but there aren't any dairy ingredients, just add cheese and send it in. If you have a recipe that isn't good, why not add cheese and see if that helps? Obviously I mean GOAT cheese, milk, cream, butter.

My daughter Blue Umbrella, aka Baby Blue, has inherited my throne as the farmer's personal milker. Baby Blue has the most delicious milk in the herd and she loves the milkstand.

She is also the smartest milker - big surprise - and has been squirted with the water bottle several times for hiding around the corner on the down ramp after she has been milked so that she can rush back IN to the milk parlor when the door opens to try to be milked twice.

Up the down staircase is definitely not allowed. She knows that but it's hard not to take advantage sometimes when you are competing against Nubians.

By the way Boo and Scouty did really well when we first switched to the milk bench but now they have post-traumatic-stress-disorder and can't stand still in the milk parlor. When they are halfway milked they start to dance and jiggle, both of them exactly the same way, even though they are never in the milk parlor at the same time.

The farmer has worked the problem out on paper by developing a special theory of dairy bucket flight probability: 1 Nubian in the milk parlor + 1 Nubian in the milk parlor at the same time = 2 many Nubians in the milk parlor.

In other news, the dairy was finally approved as a Grade A Washington dairy and this morning the inspector came out to take the first milk sample. We will have our grand opening in the spring and spend the winter experimenting, since right about now everyone is starting to peter out of milk. And maybe by then we will be able to get a pasteurizer.

So that's all for now. The big girls are all in heat so I can't hear myself think. Must go in case more apples have fallen from the tree.

Ribbons Shmibbons

We have a little yearling named Xie Xie (pronounced shay shay) and she is very good-natured. She has a little good-natured daughter named Binky and a good-natured son named Buddy. Being one-quarter Nubian she does occasionally let out a bellow of indignation for no apparent reason, but we think that is just as a courtesy to her fellow Nubians. In reality she is very easygoing and doesn't mind much of anything.

In the photo above by official goat photographer Wendy Webster Xie Xie is being used as a display table to show off some of the ribbons the girls won at the fair. She doesn't care.

In the photo below Xie Xie displays the rosette she won herself. It is a pretty good ribbon for a little skinny yearling to win. She doesn't care.

In All Fairness...

Well the farmer got back from the state fair almost at midnight last night. The goats streamed out of the trailer like they were heading for the lifeboats on the Titanic. They didn't care that it was pitch dark and the flatbed was parked in front of the barn door, or that there was a big pile of delicious hay between them and their destination. They just ran like scalded cats down the aisle and into their stalls.

Bertie in particular was cantering hard and shaking her head to try to dislodge the last three days. When she was at the Fair she spent almost the whole time gazing blankly into the middle distance, hoping hopelessly to be beamed back magically somehow to her home planet.

The Fair is like a beautiful nightmare that passes in a hot sweaty blur. The people all have to wear white to do their silly shows where they parade around in a circle. Some of these people if not all don't look so great in white, which is not a slimming color in the least, and many of these people could benefit from some slimming. And of course not even the slimmest looks good in white once the white has gotten covered with smudges and little goat hoofprints, which takes usually about five minutes.

I guess in their show Boxcar Betty and Belle Pepper didn't do too well - one got third and one got fifth - which I find incredibly hard to believe knowing how closely related they are to me, Baby Belle, the most beautiful goat in the world. But the beautiful Poppy Patch herd was there, looking even more magnificent than ever, so the competition was swept downriver as Poppy Patch rightfully won all the big awards.

"I told you you were too fat, Betty," the farmer murmured darkly to Betty as they headed back to the barn. Betty pretended not to hear and went right back into her little pen with Belle Pepper, where they got back to the important business of eating beautiful free hay supplied by the Fair.

The farmer put on a fake smile as courtesy requires and pretended to be tickled pink with the third place ribbon, even putting it out on display for about five minutes.

All was forgiven within a few hours when Xie Xie and bratty little Tangy, who had to be pretty much dragged around the ring, both won first place and then Reserve Champion in the Recorded Grade show, while the rest of the Betsy family also picked up scads of ribbons.

The LaManchas did well too against some impressive competition.

Meanwhile everyone sat in their pens listening to reams of questions from the inquiring public, excerpted in the list below.

1. What kind of sheep is this (indicating Betty)?
2. Where are the pigs?
3. Are there any other animals here (from a disappointed looking lady)?
4. What is his name (indicating Winnie, as she is being milked on the milkstand)?
5. Where are the chickens?
6. Where are the horses?
7. Where is the bathroom?
8. Do you work here (indicating the farmer)?
9. What happened to their ears (indicating one of the LaManchas)?
10. Why did you cut off their ears (indicating one of the LaManchas)?
11. Can they hear with no ears (indicating one of the LaManchas)?
12. Why do you crop their ears (indicating one of the LaManchas)?
13. Did something happen to their ears (indicating one of the LaManchas)?
14. 9,999,999 variations on the preceding 5 questions.

She's Back....

It is fair time again. My goodness the summer shoots by.

Anyway a batch of fat milkers are going off to Puyallup to sit around in tiny little stalls being ogled. One of my daughters is going, so at least there will be one pretty goat there.

Two years ago little orphan Betsy made her debut at the Fair and got her picture on the front page of the paper, and they are still using that picture as part of their official Fair icon.

This year Betsy will go as a milker, along with two of her daughters and two of her granddaughters. She is older now but don't worry, she is still crazy as a bedbug. If I had known this picture would be on the front page of the paper every day of the fair for two years running, I might have tried to teach her a more intelligent expression.

Oh well. Lipstick on a pig.

Blast From the Past #4

Big Orange, back when she was just a little tangerine.

Blast From the Past #3

Lucy and Leo climb Mt. Atticus, the highest peak in Home, Washington.

Blast From the Past #2

Sammy hangs ten in the F-150, spring '07.

Blast From the Past #1

Peanut's first day outside, 2007.

You Think You've Got Problems

There have been some complaints about the lack of news. Well actually there has been so much news that there just wasn't any time to report it. Anyway, here is some of the news, most of it having to do with various problems.

1. The pea hay got baled and had to be picked up down in the field in Chehalis. The pea hay is just down the road from the Black Sheep Creamery and the farmer was very happy to see all the Black Sheep sheep (most of them are white) lying in contented bundles in their grassy fields. There was a terrible flood last winter in Chehalis, and most of the Black Sheep sheep drowned. But just to show the power of life, the Creamery is back in business and going strong. The first three lambs born there this year were named Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. You can see them here.

Anyway, what is the problem with the pea hay? Well, we now officially have too much hay, and there isn't really enough space for it. So it is creeping into all the aisles and passageways.

2. The big girls were supposed to be learning to go up the new ramp into the new milk parlor, a daring attempt at caprine education which was proving very difficult to accomplish, especially on the days when there was only one person - the farmer - to 'encourage' the big girls to go up the ramp, then open the hatch, then shove them into the milk parlor, then close the hatch, then race around through the back door to get into the milk parlor to catch them and clip their collars to the milk rail before they decided to jump from the milk bench onto the floor, wall, door, etc in an attempt to flee. In truth, only three goats really took to the ramp: Wronny (a genius LaMancha), Xie Xie (a nitwit yearling who is very hungry), and Big Orange (Xie Xie's twin.) Boo, Scout, Bertie, Betsy, and Winnie would rather have spent eternity eating shards of broken glass than go up the ramp.

Anyway, after several curse-filled days, lots of threats and bribes and gallons of milk being kicked (in a bucket) across the new bench, the big girls learned to go up the ramp.

And now there is a new problem.

3. The New Problem: Everyone wants to go up the ramp at the same time. Worse, everyone sometimes succeeds in doing this, leading to a huge bottleneck of exceedingly fat goats (you know who you are) at the top of the ramp. So many goats that no one can fit through the hatch, even if it were possible to open it.

4. Conclusion.

In summary, it is very useful to have an understanding of problem theory if you are going to try to run a goat farm. The first thing that you must understand about problems is that problems are like pi or the speed of light - a constant. So that even if you can fix one problem, a new problem will arise in its place, leaving you with a zero sum.

But does this mean that you shouldn't bother trying to fix your problems? No indeed, because the underlying premise of successful farming is that one day you will have a better set of problems than you have today. And as it turns out, the farmer is very pleased with the new set of problems: 1) too much hay; 2) milkers too eager to obey.

Good problems. Nice Problems. Better Problems.

That'll Do

Two baby goats, herding a border collie.