Ride Wanted (Lakebay to Lagos)

The Key Peninsula Expedition; Day 150.

Dear Diary: Now it is sleeting, with iceballs dancing in the feeders and the wind blowing a gale from all directions at once. I fear it is too late to turn back. Also, I do not know how we got here. Oh wait, I was born here. But someone must know the way back to Nigeria, to the ancestral home of the Dwarfs? Is it on I-5 or further east?

Send In the Lion

Every morning when we wake up it is freezing cold. This morning the fields are carpeted with frost. Today they say don't be surprised by scattered snow. Also don't be surprised by miserable rain and endless mud. It is a little bit like the endless winter of Narnia before the lion comes.

And then on tv Cubby* saw people in shorts walking around in Chicago and Minnesota and New York and all kinds of places where no one would mind if it snowed.

Cubby saw pictures of the cherry blossoms in full bloom along the Tidal Basin, sad news for the Cherry Blossom Festival because the blossoms will be gone by the time the festival starts. Cubby saw schnauzers in puppy cuts skipping along Lake Michigan. Places where it ought to be snowing. Places where if it snowed in the middle of March on the day before the first day of spring it wouldn't be on Page One. It would maybe be down near the bottom of Page Three, next to the news about the man dressed as a giant bunny rabbit who interrupted the city council meeting.

 So anyway ok that's enough. We get it. You made your point. Send in the lion.

 *Cubby has turned into a lap goat and he goes inside to to watch the news

Iota and the Squirrels

Ok here is the whole family. Iota has been developing a magnificent topknot, I must say.

Beautiful Screamers

In these photos Lori tries unsuccessfully to explain the farm's strict "No Screaming" policy to the squirrels.

Iota Be in Pictures

Betty's daughter Iota, a first freshener, took a bipolar approach to labor with the set of chubby boy-girl St. Patrick's Day twins she delivered today, alternating between a Zen state of wide-eyed surreal calm (pictured above) and a state of world-ending earsplitting please-don't-wake-the-dead-oh-sorry-I-already-did horror. The farmer is trying to decide what the twins' names will be, so fine if you have a suggestion. FYI, Patrick and Bridget have already been nixed, along with Sure and Begorrah. I think they look like fat squirrels if that is any help.

Sunny Day

Video: The Betty Family enjoys a stroll around the barnyard. Well for some dratted reason this video doesn't work now. Here is the Braille version: triplets hop around, sproing sproing sproing, Betty observes them with satisfaction. Yes, her expression says, these are the best triplets I have seen in a long time. Sproing sproing sproing, drink a little milk, sproing sproing sproing.

Betty's Girl

Yes It's Me

Betty's Boys

Midget at the Milk Bar

Cubby waits his turn

A Formal Feeling

Well it is a known fact that you can't sit around reading Emily Dickinson poems all day long no matter how gloomy you feel because the fence won't fix itself and what about the gate. And what about Betty's triplets, they need names, real names not just Mouseketeer names (one supposedly is going to be called Midget, just because he is tiny and cute.) What about the half-finished feeder, how long is that going to sit in front of the cottage?

Enough is enough.

Anyway finally the farmer noticed that a few thousand things needed doing and trudged around mechanically not getting much done but at least moving.

Penrose caught sight of the farmer and came racing up to the barn, cantering right through the deathly mud patch at the top of the hill so that she came out the other side wearing two pairs of chocolate brown knee socks.

"What do you want Penrose?" the farmer intoned dully when Penrose poked her head over the stall door expectantly.

Penrose did not say anything but wouldn't go away and finally the farmer went and got her some grain and put it in the dish on the milkstand and let Penrose out of the stall.

And Penrose cantered spryly out of the stall and jumped up on the milkstand and began eating ravenously, only looking around occasionally at the farmer as if to say, "come on, let's get started, I don't have all day."

And after a few minutes of sweeping the farmer looked up and saw that Penrose had come into milk and wanted to be milked. Penrose is 9 years old and she hasn't kidded since 2007 and she hasn't settled since 2006 and once again she was back in milk, probably she heard Midget crying in the barn, most likely about the name he has been given, and that caused the milk to begin flowing into her udder because that is all it really takes for a goat like Penrose who comes from 400 years of purebred Swiss Toggenburgs.

Wendell sat nearby, licking his whiskers and quivering in unseemly milk anticipation.

And the farmer actually smiled and sat down and milked Penrose out and even said "I'll be darned."

It was a miracle.

The loaves, the fishes, the milk. Saint Penrose does it again.

Many Thanks

It was a hard, hard, hard day here yesterday, pretty close to the hardest day ever. So there is no easy way to tell it.

Hannah Belle was not progressing in her labor and suddenly started to go downhill fast. The kids had to come out right away. She was rushed into the hospital for a c-section.

The c-section went well, but the kids - beautiful triplet doelings - could not be saved.

Hannah Belle was discharged immediately with an i.v. and a collection of medicines. It was a rough trip home, but we hoped that she would start to improve once she was settled back in her stall with Betty. That did not happen.

Hannah Belle collapsed and died in the farmer's arms about an hour after getting home. That is hard to write, because once it is written down we have no choice but to believe it. And how could something like that, something so completely impossible, be true.

But it is.

Thanks to everyone who kept sending good thoughts to Hannah Belle.

Thanks to Betty's one-day-old son Cubby, who liked to sleep right next to his grandma, and kept her interested in life even when the going was tough.

Thanks to Hannah Belle for all her beautiful kids. Thanks to Hannah Belle for all the joy she brought us for eight years. Thanks to Hannah Belle for being so completely her mother's daughter. Thanks to Hannah Belle for being Hannah Belle. Nobody else could have done it.

Now she is with her mother, and her daughters.

And we are here without her.

Hannah Belle and her Farmer.

Hurry Up Please It's Time

Still no sign. Waiting and holding. Everyone is worn thin (not Bumbles, obviously) with waiting and worry. The only good sign is Hannah Belle gets up and flees (slowly) when the farmer and Lori appear with the bags of ringer's, the syringes, the tubes, the needles, the vitamin b, etc.

Please keep helping Hannah Belle with your thoughts.

Hannah Belle

The sage continues with Hannah Belle a little bit up and then a little bit down. The vet has her on lactated ringer's now and she has been induced so we can get the kids on the ground asap. Meanwhile just before the vet came Betty laid down in a professional fashion and popped out a cute set of triplets. Hannah Belle perked up immediately, she thought the kids were hers, even though they seemed far too polite to be her children. Anyway now we are just waiting and hoping to get the real kids on the ground tout de suite.

Come on, Hannah Belle. Everyone is waiting for you. Hurry up. Get better.

March On

It is not Leap Day any more thank Goodness and Hannah Belle is feeling a little bit better and she has nibbled a little bit of grass and some huckleberry. She is on round-the-clock care and wearing a brand new Weatherbeeta jacket to keep the chill off.

Leap Day

Today is Leap Day and it feels like an ominous day.

Right now it is raining and snowing and the wind from the west is whipping the fir trees.

Normally we don't like to bother anybody, but please send your good thoughts to Hannah Belle. Hannah Belle is sick. Along with me and Jammies and Winnie and Pebbles and a few others she is the most beloved goat here.

She cannot be replaced, because there are no more where she came from, and there never will be.

Send good thoughts.

T Minus 5

The farmer is going to go ahead and start the kidding countdown because it is guesstimated that Betty and Hannah Belle will both kid on Saturday and the farmer is anxious for Hannah Belle's kids to come because Hannah Belle has grown even more incorrigible as she has gotten older and yesterday when she was supposed to be free-ranging in the barnyard she led an assault on the barn instead, freeing all the small and medium-size goats from the middle pasture so that they could join her in storming the alfalfa.

How she did it was by sashaying down the driveway then cramming her miniature battleship body under the bottom fence board near the gate, then sashaying up the pasture to where the middle pasture goats - normally a placid group - were dozing in the sun around the corner and then instigating them to follow her back down to the limbo hole.

"My fellow goats," she usually starts, "please join me in the barn won't you because there is free alfalfa for everybody, the nice kind not that stemmy rubbish. This way please and form a single line."

This of course was not directed at the bears of little brain (Nubian crosses) nor the tall goats (LaMancha), who can't fit under the bottom fenceboard.

Me, Blue, Rosie, Pebbles, Abby, Sandy, Jammies, Bumbles, Sky, and Bluejay all joined the limbo line and within a few  minutes the assault was complete. Using combined goat power we snapped the bungy holding the alfalfa gate closed and began feasting on the first bale we saw.

When the alfalfa was almost all gone Hannah Belle said, "thank you so much for coming, I appreciate your help, I must be going now," and she disappeared back into the middle pasture which ought to have been a tip-off and within a few minutes the farmer ran up hollering and making unveiled threats and we all scattered outside, some of us running for the limbo hole and some just running, and as we ran we saw Hannah Belle, perched at the top of the hill and chewing her cud thoughtfully, possibly ruminating about building her own Beowulf Cluster.

The Problem of Iota

We are getting pretty close to kidding time and since it is so devilishly muddy it has been decided that Hannah Belle and Boxcar Betty will stay in the barn.

Actually they decided it themselves. When the farmer tried to turn them out - they are supposed to walk around during the day, not just sit around like two blimps in the Goodyear blimp dock -  they just turned back in.

Betty could have been turned out, but Hannah Belle goes where she wants to go. And when she gets there, she stays.

So Hannah Belle and Betty were turned out and then turned themselves back in and then the farmer made the mistake of going off to do something else and when the farmer came back Hannah Belle and Betty were apparently gone.

"I wonder where they went," the farmer thought, because they weren't anywhere in the barnyard, but the farmer is a little weak-minded and went off to do yet something else. When the farmer came back again Betty and Hannah Belle were back in the barn, attempting to break open the tack room door, which is what you would expect any time Hannah Belle is on free range. But it was padlocked so they were not getting anywhere.

By this time presumably they had gotten at least a little bit of exercise and the farmer put them back in their kidding stall and went upstairs to the hay loft to throw down some hay and then discovered where their previous journey had taken them, because there were telltale berries scattered among the new alfalfa bales which arrived on the weekend.

"Oh well," said the farmer, sweeping. But it would have been a good video, a scene of the two orcas navigating the steep, narrow staircase up to the loft. The video on the way down would have been even better, though probably somewhat harrowing, and the farmer made a mental note to close the hayloft door.

This mental note went off into the cloud with the rest of the farmer's mental notes - "fix gate," "buy 4 sheets of plywood," "try to understand Facebook," "take boxes to Goodwill"  etc - never to be seen again, because then the farmer began puzzling over the problem of Iota.

Iota is Betty's daughter and she is going to kid right after Betty and Hannah Belle but when the farmer tried to add her to the kidding stall Hannah Belle took serious offense and she had to be removed for fear of bodily harm.

"Hmm, Iota," puzzled the farmer, looking at Iota.

The farmer is highly superstitious and never says anything good about any of us for fear of causing a disaster. For example, right before Pebbles went to the fair, the farmer finally blurted "I do not expect her to come in last," which caused everyone to gasp, it was such high praise.

But anyway Iota is getting her first freshener udder and while as a kid she was never considered the prettiest, the farmer is now looking at her with a totally blank expression which can only mean one thing and sure enough this morning the farmer finally said, to Wendell who couldn't care less, " you know, she really doesn't look too bad." 

Everyone gasped.

Our Motto

If you have a farm it is good to have a farm motto. This is our motto, we have it framed. It is a good motto to remember at this time of year since kidding season is almost upon us. Whatever happens, just keep calm. And carry on.

WAAA WAAA WAAA

There have been a lot of stories lately about how goats develop accents. Woop, big news flash, I could have told you that two years ago when Moldy moved here from Oregon and we could not understand a word she said except WAAA WAAA WAAA.

Wronny would say to her, "will you please be quiet please,"

And Moldy would say, as if she didn't know that Wronny is the herdqueen, "WAAA WAAA WAAA!"

Hannah Belle would say to her, "Do not make me ask you again to step away from the feeder. I am the boss of the Nigerians."

And Moldy would say, as if she thought this was a free love commune and she could just do as she pleased, "WAAA WAAA WAAA!"

I would say to her, "I hope you know I am Baby Belle Jr. and I will not put you in my blog until you speak properly like the rest of us are doing."

And Moldy would say "WAAA WAAA WAAA."

Eo and Penrose are from Southeast Washington and they could understand her a little bit but Eo would not interpret anything Moldy said so it was up to Penrose.

"She hasn't said anything worth mentioning," Eo would shrug bitterly.

"I think she is saying that it is nothing like Oregon here," Penrose would explain.

"She is saying that this is not how they do it in Oregon."

"She is saying in Oregon the food is better. And also the climate."

Etc etc etc. Then gradually Moldy managed to enunciate intelligibly. And now sometimes we even forget she is from Oregon, where I guess everyone feasts on third cutting alfalfa and bon bons so they can't speak properly.

Then Fred the baby buck moved here from Oregon.

WAAA WAAA WAAA.

Deja vu all over again.

Make Mine Milk

The die is cast. Yesterday Pebbles was bred to the devilishly handsome Tiny Giant, a milk-loving Mama's Boy. Here is his baby picture.

Happy Birthday and BOF

Today is Valentine's Day and fyi I am still accepting small gifts of candy and pretzels and swedish fish and gingersnaps and so on. I have not stopped accepting gifts. Actually, they do not have to be small gifts. Large gifts are fine too.

Valentine's Day has always been a big day around here because it is not unusual for babies to be born on Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is Cora Belle's birthday, and Filbert's, and Harley's. I can accept gifts for them as well, just send them here and I will be sure to deliver them since Cora Belle and Filbert and Harley don't live here any more. Send them care of me, Baby Belle Jr. Or you can also address them to Millie, or to Herron Hill's Million Belles.

Unfortunately Pebbles cannot accept any more gifts because she has gotten quite fat but you can send her gifts to me as well and I will be sure she gets them as soon as she has lost some weight.

Hannah Belle likes to have her kids early in the season and she is right now in the kidding stall even though her kids aren't due until March. She is in there with her daughter Betty, whose kids are also due in March. Betty went in there because something happened to Betty's leg and she couldn't be rushed to the vet because Wendell was being rushed to the vet instead.

But she is getting around better so she may go back out but in the meantime you have never seen two more pleased goats, Betty and her mother, nestled up in the barn away from the dreadful late winter mud. Iota may go in there with them too, she is Betty's daughter, and then they will have a dam-and-daughter-and-daughter's-daughter kidding stall.

I have another entry in my first freshener column, or actually this works with any freshener, remember if you want milk you have to feed right and don't forget these three ingredients: oats, brewer's yeast, and flaxseed. Even humans are smart enough to know that these are your milkmaking foods, and you don't have to buy expensive cookies to get some, just go to the feed store.

BREWER'S YEAST, OATS,  FLAXSEED (BOF).