dustdevilwoman

I have no idea why I picked goats.

I know that my goat obsession seems to have coincided with the realization that I wanted to own land, out in the middle of nowhere, with vegetables and fruit trees and proper, farm-sized dogs. For some reason, the image of a goat on the farm came to epitomize the dream. I spent 5 years searching for land, buying and reading goat books (mostly in-depth veterinary manuals which were far too detailed to give me any real idea of what goatkeeping would be like and which fed my tendency towards anxiety and paranoia) and learning the basics of soil composition as my first steps in agricultural education.

I try to approach my dreams in an informed, logical manner. I adore researching, spreadsheeting, making lists, basing decisions on the practical-on-paper facts. I spend plenty of time just dreaming too; brushing aside troublesome matters of logistics and physical strength and just running wild in my mind with the possibilities. I sometimes get myself in trouble with that part; deciding in a departure of process that the details will take care of themselves.

Because I do pride myself on this (mostly) methodical approach to what many disregard as whimsical pipe-dreams, I find it particularly bothersome that I cannot for the life of me remember HOW or WHY I decided I must own goats. It probably had something to do with my mad love affair with cheese and food in general. Isolated, rural living leaves something to be desired in terms of culinary options and it is likely that in one of the early stages of list making, the "Potentially Impossible to Overcome" column had "NO GOOD CHEESE" listed. Being slightly biased, in that I desperately wanted to be able to find solutions to all of the problems on this list, I may have decided, "I'll just have a goat and make my own cheese," checked that problem off the list and added "Goat" to the "Required Components of the Dream" list.

The truth is, I have no idea how it happened that "Goat" became a requirement, but I know that it came after "land" and before "dwelling" on the list (several times over the 5 years of dreaming before the land was purchased, I convinced myself that I could live on bare land with a year-round spring and a tipi with a good cast iron dutch oven and a goat).

So, as much as it pains me to admit it, I can trace the decision making tree of my goatkeeping only back to the first limbs of decision making rather than to first sapling of the idea. The first branch was the "Breed" branch: Dairy, Fiber or Meat?

10 days of dairy goat sitting convinced me that I was not ready to commit myself to milking at 6am and 6pm, every day, 365 days a week, rain, shine, blizzard and heat-stroke notwithstanding, despite invitations to afternoon/evening events or the desire to occasionally sleep until 9am-- forever. Milk goats were eliminated from the list.

Fiber goats were the obvious next choice. I crochet, and my friend Sara is a knitting FOOL and I know what good fiber sells for in the hard-core artistic knitting community. Add a little story about a city girl and a dream on the label and a picture of happily frolicking goatlings and I would have those 20 to 30-something, urban knitaholics in the palm of my profitable hand.

Then I read about how the fiber is harvested. Unlike sheep, which you shear once a year (in the climate I was considering at least), goats are COMBED to harvest their most valuable fibers (cashmere). Combed. By hand, unless you are a large scale fiber goat producer, which I did not expect to be. I find combing my own hair a terribly tedious task and give myself a fair amount of trouble in terms of squirming and complaining about snarls. I had a vividly unpleasant image of myself straddling a 150 pound, pissed-off goat in 90 degree weather, covered in tiny bits of sweaty cashmere, dirt, straw and poop as I attempted to comb out a year's worth of neglect. Fiber goats were marked firmly off the list, unless someone wanted to partner with me in the business and handle the harvesting side of things. Nobody jumped at the chance so, off the list they went.

This left me with meat goat breeds.

My PaPa (my maternal grandfather) is a hero of mine. His parents and their parents before them were from Northeast Tennessee--Appalachia. As with most Appalachians in the late 1800's and early 1900's, they scrapped and scraped a living and they eventually moved to Saskatchewan, Canada in the early part of the 1900's where they made (and lost, thanks to the Dust Bowl), a fortune in wheat. They raised teams of gorgeous work horses to work the wheat (this was before combines and non-horse harvesters were readily available) and when they moved to Boise, Idaho, they continued raising horses despite economic hardships. My PaPa and my Great Uncle David created Ellis Brothers Quarter Horses and bred and trained some of the best Quarter Horses in the West (at least, that is how I see it).

It was in Northeast Tennessee on a three month escape from my life, that I looked around my brain and realized I didn't want to be a downtown condo kind of girl, but that I wanted to live like my PaPa and his parents and grandparents. I wanted to scrape and scrap a living, sustaining myself with the faith that hard work and a tight family unit could face the storms of life and come out on the other side stronger and closer to what I was created for. I wanted gardens and canning and livestock. It is at this point in my story that I must confess--I never knew a garden (aside from flowers) my entire life. By the time I was born, my branch of the Ellis clan had thrown off their hoes and tillers and run to the grocery store with glee at the convenience of store bought fruits and vegetables. My PaPa and Uncle David bought a meat packing plant and turned their love of animals into a more profitable business than quarter horses were (and are). They raised cattle and pigs out on pasture and made high quality meat products that I had the privilege of eating until we moved to Seattle when I was 10.

PaPa strongly resisted my exposure to any of the seedier sides of livestock (breeding, birth and slaughtering). Some of my fondest memories of childhood took place in his old blue truck, driving around the pasture checking out the cows, looking at the horses (I almost never got to ride them and had to stay well outside the corrals and inside the truck to ensure my safety) I chafed to get out and TOUCH the animals and to help feed, water and doctor them. PaPa would never let me. He knew how unpredictable both animals and children were and he was not taking any chances with my well-being.

I had my moments, mostly in my early teen years, of thinking that a meat packing plant was a brutal business but as I grew up and embraced the fact that both my body and palate were very happy with some meat in my diet, I came to appreciate the fact that my PaPa raised his animals in a healthy, grass and stream-filled environment. I knew, without a doubt, that my PaPa loved his animals and that their health and well-being was his primary concern. I believe it was his commitment to these values that resulted in "The Plant" as we knew it, to not be more profitable and to close in the early 1990's. If it had been 15 years later, he could have catered to a niche market of meat eaters who demand humane treatment of the flesh they put on their plate, but as it was, the plant closed and the land that it used to occupy is now home to an elaborate business complex complete with un-natural water fountains, granite facades and a Thai restaurant.

So. When faced with meat goats as the last breed of goats on my list, I thought of my PaPa who loves animals and still managed to raise cattle for the purpose of turning them into meat. If he could do it, surely I could too.

This was a logical decision. Dairy goat kids are unbearably cute and most of the pictures I had seen of "Boer" Goats (the meat goat breed du jour) were of full grown bucks with their roman noses and stodgy, bulky bodies. Decidedly not cute or cuddly or loveable. They are also notoriously self-sufficient. They are hardy in cold and heat, they usually kid without assistance (or so I read) and they are not neurotic as many milk goat breeds are. I cannot abide a neurotic animal. Neurotic people I have a soft spot for but neurotic animals test my patience. It seemed perfect. I skimmed the sections of the books focused on marketing and slaughtering meat goats, figuring I had PLENTY of time to worry about that and I focused on the housing, feeding and birthing sections of the books.

We bought 5 pregnant Boer does, none of which were terribly friendly, and they perfectly fit my dream of low-maintenance, mellow livestock. I sometimes wished that they would love me a LITTLE, but I had Joseph and the dogs and cats to love and to be loved by, so I was okay.

Then came the kidding season. The full responsibility of being a rancher hit me like a 5 gallon bucket of ice and rocks and I fell, quickly and with great force, into livestock panic. The images from the internet of prolapsed uterus' and stillborn kids invaded my dreams like a fresh, young, passionate army. The pages of instructions in my many goat manuals which described the signs of labor, ("The laboring doe will be more friendly, or possibly more stand-offish when she enters early labor. She may be more vocal or less vocal than normal. She may have visible signs of labor up to 24 hours before delivery, or within an hour of delivery") and the drawings of kids in the wrong position ("Proper presentation is with front feet forward and nose shortly following. The following pages show kids in dangerous presentation (back feet forward, nose forward, one back and one front leg forward, etc) which you may need to identify and correct") became quickly dogeared and filled my days and nights with the deep, firm belief that I was in WAY over my head and that there was no way that Joseph and I were going to be able to identify normal or abnormal behavior and that all of the goats and all of their kids were going to end up dead and WHAT DELUSIONAL ARROGANCE led me to believe that we were remotely qualified for this?!?!

I tried to look back at my lists and spreadsheets to find some shred of a reason that I may be forgetting in my panic which made me thing that I was going to be able to handle all of the possible disasters that could result in the decimation of my herd (maybe in my moment of panic, I was forgetting some childhood cow or mare or even CAT birth that I had attended which may have given me some level of experience to call upon) and I found nothing. I had never experienced the birth of ANYTHING. Not a kitten, not a Monarch butterfly emerging from a cocoon--nothing. I was completely unprepared for the task that lay in front of me.

We entered a month of Tricia-panic. No sleeping, no proper cooking, no movie watching without constant interruptions. We survived Ashley's birth (two boys, two girls), Gracie's birth, our littlest momma who kidded out in the field with the soundtrack of her hollering for HOURS beforehand...I was sure something was wrong, but out came two big healthy babies, a boy and a girl, which she tended to lovingly and devotedly from the moment they hit the ground. Llama Ethel (the llama formerly known as Daisy) was next to Gracie within moments of her first kid being born (a boy that I named Sampson due to his huge size and buck-like bearing and which Joseph named Milky because he was almost completely white except for two jack russell terrier like markings around his eyes) sniffing him and terrifying me that she was going to stomp him to death. On the contrary, Ethel seemed to suffer from intense mother-envy and decided that ALL of the kids born were in some way, her kids and she would nurture and love them forever. After Gracie, we had several long days and nights of waiting for the next shoe, er...kid, to drop.





My parents came to visit and waited anxiously for the next kidding. They observed the red, swollen, sleep-deprived state of my eyes and my new found habits of leaping from near unconsciousness to the bookshelf to re-re-read the chapters on what can go wrong with a goat birth, laughing maniacally or laying my head on the counter in despair and tears over my ignorance and they sent me to bed for 8 hours. My Mother solemnly vowed to wake me if ANYTHING was happening that they may need me for and I went to bed with earplugs and an eye mask (my lucky red bandana tied triple thickness around my eyes which I wore for most of my Tennessee summer on my head if you must know) and the knowledge that my Mom really would wake me up if there was anything happening, and I SLEPT. The next morning I woke and received reports of Pamela, our second oldest goat, who had been displaying mild signs of labor all night. Nervous after the experience with Ashley (mild, early labor signs and then NOTHING until we intervened) I waited a few hours and finally decided I needed to "go in" and see what was going on. My midwifery training came in helpful and I determined that she was a couple of centimeters dilated but not in distress. A few hours later, she had, with some assistance from me, the resident expert at goat birth (How did THAT happen in one week!?!?), 2 girls, Havilah, the sweetest lap goat ever, Patch, who has, expectedly, a big brown patch on her chest, and a boy who is still simply known as "Pamela's boy."

The next day Dorie went into labor. That morning, I had called the vet as Ashley seemed to have a uterine infection (not surprising since we had to pull all four kids in a less than sterile environment) and Pamela had a retained placenta (I was sure that this was somehow my fault for checking her dilation too early and messing things up, but my subsequent reading and the vet blame it on selenium deficiency). She'd not dropped the placenta after 24 hours which by all accounts was a very, very bad sign and not something I could deal with myself. The vet, who had very little experience with goats--less, even, than I had at that point, arrived just before I had to go to my computer to attend an expensive training session that I had been signed up for by my company. I set up my computer by the goat cam TV so I could half watch what was happening. He doctored Ashley and Pamela while I watched and the screen kept switching to Dorie on the other side of the barn. I could tell that she was straining too much; something was wrong. Finally I texted my Mom's cell phone, hoping she had it with her in the barn, that they needed to check on Dorie. She says she never got the message, but a few minutes later, they went and checked on Dorie and moved her into a position so Dr. Robinson could reach in and see what was up.

Watching all of this on the goat cam while trying to participate in a horribly presented training on a new Contact Resolution Management software program was surreal. I have never before or since felt so conflicted between my life and my job. Just 100 feet away, my favorite, half-witted goat was in trouble, and I couldn't be there to help. I also couldn't be there to learn. Our vet is wonderful. He is always willing to talk to me about the process of diagnosing, treating and monitoring an animal and despite my vast ignorance, treats my questions and ideas with respect. I wanted to be out there learning how to treat Ashley and Pamela and helping with Dorie. I felt horribly guilty that, though I was the one with the brilliant idea of raising goats, Joseph and my Mom were out in the cold barn dealing with illness and stress.

It should have been me out there, but I had to sit on the phone, at my computer, participating in a worthless training session so I could pay the mortgage on the farm and save to buy a tractor and pay the vet bill for having Dr. Robinson travel 30 miles each way to come and care for my goats. I have a great job and I was the one who made the decision to sit at the computer and not tell them, "so sorry, I have an emergency---I'll have to be trained later." The fact was, Mom and Joseph had things under control. I needed to be working. I'm fine with it. Mostly.

My Mom sat at Dorie's head and stroked her and Joseph sat next to Dr. Robinson as he reached in and tried to identify what he was feeling. After a lot of work and what looked like bellowing from Dorie (the goat cam has no sound), he pulled a baby boy who did not move. He rubbed him and tried to stimulate him. Joseph grabbed him and spun him around like Sue had done with one of Ashley's kids but he didn't respond. I watched the TV monitor and watched Joseph drop to the ground and start giving mouth to mouth and I knew that he was doing everything that I would have done and more. I also realized, I think before Joseph did, that it was all in vain. That little goat had been mis-positioned and had died before he was pulled. Joseph did everything that could be done and eventually, he buried him in a corner of the field. I never even saw him except through the goat cam.

Meanwhile, my Mom kept stroking Dorie's head while Dr. Robinson reached in to see if there was anyone else waiting to be born. There was, but his head was bent all the way back so he had to be repositioned before being pulled. When he was pulled, he was very weak and couldn't hold his little bent head up. They put him in front of Dorie and she licked him off ecstatically, frequently stopping to lick my Mom as if to thank her for her compassion and assistance. Dr. Robinson left, warning us that this boy was very weak and would likely not live. My Mom disagreed and kept him in the sunshine and close to his Mother for the next day.

My Mom had to go back home the next day and leave us and Moby (Dorie's little boy) with one doe left to kid. Moby did not perk up as well as we had hoped. He seemed to have a very hard time walking and balancing or finding his mother to nurse, though when he did find her, he went to town. We would often find him standing an inch from a wall, wagging his head back and forth; a position he would stay in for HOURS. I chalked it up to oxygen deprivation but figured it wouldn't make much difference. He was a male meat goat. His intelligence was irrelevant. As long as he lived and gained weight for the next three months, he would be fulfilling his purpose.

About two days later, my Mom called me in tears, begging me not to let anyone eat Moby. He was HER baby and she had helped him survive those first, tenuous hours and she just couldn't bear it if he was slaughtered. She suggested that we sell him as a breeding buck, to which I responded, "MOM, he is retarded. He should not breed." Still, my parents have been incredibly supportive and they made me sleep at a time when it was desperately needed, so I told her that somehow, I would ensure that he would not be eaten.

5 days later, Gypsy finally had her three kids, one girl (Bambi, so named because within 15 minutes of being born, she was long-legged and wobbling around and making little goatling hops and looking like a newly born deer) and two boys. The first boy was healthy and loved by his mother, but the last baby was found in a puddle of amniotic sac, unmoving and tiny. This was my Lazar Wolfe. When I found him and checked his sex, I incorrectly judged him to be a girl and named him Tzietel on the spot. My attempts to get Gypsy to accept this baby were all in vain. She finally started head butting him into the ground and the walls of the kidding jug so I had to take him (her, I thought) into the house, where Ellie and I cleaned him off (Ellie with her tongue, me with a towel and a blow dryer). He wasn't able to stand for hours, which is quite unusual and I finally put a diaper on "her" and sent Joseph to the feed store for some powdered goat milk as we now had 2 bottle babies. 10 minutes after he left, Tzietel managed to pee a stream of urine out the front of her diaper. I couldn't imagine how that could have happened...and that was when I discovered that Tzietel was a boy.

Oh the horror! This sweet little goat that I had brought back from the brink of death and kissed and snuggled and cajoled into walking and that I had dressed in a winnie the pooh preemie diaper and matching polar fleece jacket was a BOY. MEAT! Slaughter bound! I understood enough about breeding to know that, like Moby, this little goat was not qualified to be a breeding buck. He was too small, and too weak to possibly be a breeding buck.

After about 2 days of teeth gnashing, (Internal dialogue: "Tricia, you cannot keep weak bottle baby boy goats as pets. That is impractical, expensive and ridiculous. You shouldn't even bottle feed him with the cost of powdered goat milk being what it is" and "But I LOVE HIM! He slept in a laundry basket next to my head...and...yes, in the bed for a few minutes...I LOVE HIM!") I decided that he was NOT going to be meat. He was my baby and he would just have to be a pet. Like one of the dogs. We feed them and doctor them because we love them, not because it makes financial sense.

So, of the 7 boys that were born, two of them had already been designated as NOT meat. Then Joseph bonded with Milky, AKA Sampson.

I had pegged Sampson as a buckling to sell for breeding stock. He was the largest boy we had, thick and sturdy and came from a mother who kidded naturally, with no intervention. Unfortunately, he was also related to all of our other kids so he was not a candidate for a buck for OUR breeding program. We would have to sell him.

Joseph and I were now bottle feeding 2 babies, born 2 weeks apart and therefore on different schedules. At this point, Golde needed to be fed every 4 hours and Lazar Wolfe (AKA Tzietel) had to be fed every 2 hours. When Golde moved to an every 6 hour feeding schedule, Lazar Wolfe moved to every 4 hours. We were out in the barn and in the kitchen warming bottles a LOT. We were not sleeping much. Adding to the fun of bottle feeding, Lazar Wolfe was also a moronic eater...he couldn't get the nipple in his mouth and then when he did, he inhaled the milk and spent 20 minutes choking on the milk he had inhaled while we waited to be able to give him another try. This went on for the entire 3 months of bottle feeding. We were very tired and frustrated with my Lazar Wolfe (Joseph nicknamed him "On the Grill Tomorrow") and we had moments of wondering WHY we were doing this. Then Milky started coming up to Joseph while he fed Golde and Lazar Wolfe and resting his fuzzy little, Jack Russell like head against Joseph's hip. He wasn't trying to get some milk (like Havilah always did, the little pest), but just...cuddling with Joseph while he sat on the stool and fed the kids. Well...Joseph's heart melted. Of course by then, Milky was about 6 weeks old and we had long since castrated all of the other boys but not Milky because we were going to sell him as a buckling as soon as he was weaned. Joseph asked if we couldn't maybe keep Milky as a pet too.

Now we had 3 of 7 boy goats who should have all been sold for meat, designated as pets. We ran into some luck when I took Milky in to be castrated by the vet (I thought he might be beyond the point of my castration skills due to his age) and there were some complications and he almost bled to death. That wasn't the luck---the luck was that the receptionist at the vet's office fell in love with Milky and asked if we had any more (she wanted Milky but I couldn't give away the goat Joseph loved). I thought immediately of Moby, who had become much more clever and goat-like and had also gotten rather friendly. I ended up giving her Moby for free and Pamela's other boy (who I had named "27" in an attempt to not bond with him when the feeder fell on his leg and I had to spend weeks tending to him and re-designing his splint every other day so he could walk AND nurse as he healed and grew) because she suggested that Moby might be lonely all alone.

This left us with Lazar Wolfe, Milky, Taco, Taquito and Pamela's (other) boy. Lazar Wolfe and Milky were pets so out of 13 babies, we had THREE that we were going to sell for meat.

That was about 7 months ago.

We still have those 5 boys and we still have on our list of things to do, to butcher Taco, Taquito and Pamela's boy. Add to this that our chicken breeding exercises have resulted in 8 roosters who are many months past butchering age, and our farm is starting to look more like the humane society than a working farm. We are still meat eaters, but we are buying our meat from the supermarket, sourced from the type of high-output animal growing facilities that I abhor. For months now, I have been alternatingly tasking Joseph and myself with the task of calling the guy in the neighboring town who, according to local sources, has a mobile butcher business. He will come to the farm and dispatch the livestock, then take it back to his shop to clean and process so we can pick up our meat in clean, cut or ground as requested, vacuum sealed packages. What could be easier?

Adding to the need of taking care of this small matter is the fact that hay is now up to $250 a ton so we are paying a fortune to feed these goats and if we don't come up with a way for them to at least break even from a cost standpoint, we are in trouble, as are they.

The problem is...I love each and every one of my goats. I tried so hard not to, but...they are smart and affectionate and wonderful animals. Whatever caused me to choose goats, it was spot on. These are my kind of animals. Lazar Wolfe thinks that I am his mother and gives me kisses every time I come to the barn. I love him more than I care to admit. Fortunately, I have kept Taco and Taquito at arm's length but Pamela's boy has been getting sweeter and more visible over the last few months. He particularly likes chewing on my fingers and clothing.

We bought a buckling who is genetically eligible to breed all of our girls and we set him loose on all of our Mama's except Ashley (she is officially retired). We are waiting until next year to breed last spring's girls. So, in a couple of months we will have a new batch of kids and we absolutely MUST get rid of these three boys (and the extra 7 roosters) before that happens. Of course the goats and the roosters are past prime butchering age so not only is it going to be traumatic, but it will also make for some tough, gamey meat.

I've been trying to summon my PaPa's strength of spirit. He can't have found it pleasant to butcher cows. I am certain that he didn't, but he sucked it up and he did what had to be done.

I am calling on all of the strength of my family tree to get me through this. I made the lists. I knew that this day would come (and truly, this day came months ago but I've been ignoring it) and it is time for me to step up, suck it up and make the phone call. Really...it's not like I am pulling the trigger. There should be no reason for me to act like such a...city girl.

Today (or...maybe tomorrow), I become a real rancher.

I admit having been atrociously remiss in updating and I will make no excuses. Unfortunately, I am not providing a proper update now.

As a gesture of apology, I would like to offer a video of my sweet baby Lazar Wolfe, the last kid to be born at the farm last spring. He was Gypsy's third baby and she decided that two was more than enough so she dropped him and left him to die. Fortunately, I found him in time and we raised him as our own. The whole story will be relayed soon (I promise) but in the interim, here is a picture of him hours after being born:



And here is a video of him when he was about three weeks old. Apologies for the video quality---it was taken using Joseph's camera phone:

I have a new appreciation for what a woman goes through when she becomes a mother. Certainly, I've experienced only a taste (and a goat flavored taste at that), but the mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion does quite suck the creative juices out of one.

Starting from the last entry, 7 weeks ago (my shame!), I spent another few days on high alert; sleeping a half hour at a time, working with one eye on the goat cam, eating in front of the goat cam and driving Joseph insane with my inability to watch a movie without pausing it every 10 minutes to check the goat cam.

I also learned to run. I have never been a gazelle. I have been the sort of person who "injured" myself within 5 steps of a mandatory run in gym class (they finally just let me stop taking gym around the 8th grade) and who would rather arrive at work a half hour late than run for a bus. I amazed myself the first time I looked at the goat cam and was certain that I saw something coming out of the hind quarters of a goat. I sprinted. It is about 100 feet from the back door of the house to the barn and I spent the next few weeks sprinting that length an average of 17 times a day (and night). By the time the last goat was born, I wasn't even winded when I reached my destination.

But enough about me. You are probably wanting to hear about the goats.

As it turned out, Ashley, our aged matriarch, was the first. Ashley's udders (combined with her age) were the main reason she was culled from the herd of our patron goat saints. Her udders are about four times bigger than normal meat goat udders, and by the time she was ready to give birth, they were literally dragging the ground, tight as a drum and a hideous purple color. I was certain that she had mastitis. So it was that Joseph and I decided we had to catch her and put her in a pen so we could have the vet come look at her. It was midnight (of course) and about 29 degrees outside and she was in no mood to be touched. In my exhausted state, I tried to catch her and missed twice and promptly started to cry. Joseph barked at me to do something else (I think "GO SLEEP" was his order as it had been for weeks--the poor dear had watched me go closer and closer to the edge of a breakdown knowing that the real party had yet to start). I think I went outside and stared at the frozen moon. The next thing I knew, Joseph had convinced Ashley to let him put a rope harness on her and was leading/dragging her to the birthing suite side of the barn where the stantion was and the four kidding jugs. We placed her in one of the jugs with food and water (in a shallow dish--all of the books warn against giving birthing goats a bucket of water as they can, and do, drop their kids into the bucket and drown them. I'm sure it is inadvertent but still. I spent many, many hours in bed trying to figure out how much water would be needed to drown a newborn kid. As a result, I gave the mama goats about two inches of water at a time and refilled it 7 times a day) and decided to see how she was in the morning as it occurred to us that we had been told that hours prior to kidding, a goat’s udder got as hard as a basketball. No one said anything about purple, but she did have awfully bizarre udders.

We trained one of the goat cams on her and headed back to the house. We'd had so many false alarms that I didn't really think she was going into labor; I was still sure she was infected and going to die of mastitis before she ever had a chance to have her kids. The next morning however, there was a tell-tale string of goo hanging off her and she seemed to be straining. I watched the cam diligently, leaving it only for conference calls that had to take place in a room where a cat couldn't meow (and where the goat cam would not reach). Joseph had taken a leave from his job to be the primary goat watcher and caretaker. By 1pm, Ashley had stopped straining. I knew something was wrong so I called our goat patron saint Sue, and she immediately offered to come over.

Our patron goat saints live about 40 miles away from us. Somehow, she was there in 25 minutes. I wrapped up the call I was on and ran out to the barn where she stood looking at Ashley and talking to Joseph. I filled her in on the straining I had seen earlier in the morning and she said, "we better get in there." Right there, she dropped to her knees, asked us to hold Ashley's head and requested some lubricant (which Joseph poured on her hand in such quantity that she fairly drowned in it). In she went with me crouched next to her trying to learn whatever I could. She looked at me at one point and said, "I don't know if anyone is alive in there."



She reached around, with eyes on the ends of her fingertips and finally determined that the first kid was tipped down and was basically blocking the exit. Ashley had strained and pushed but couldn't get it out so she finally just gave up. Sue got a hold of the head and two front feet and adjusted it so she could pull. She warned me that it probably would be dead and she pulled.

The messy factor went so far beyond my expectations that I actually had a squeamish moment. It was brief, and I am fortunate that I am not a squeamish person, but DAAANNNGG. Blood and fluid and slime. Lots of it. All over everything.

Once Sue had the head and front legs out, the rest of it slipped out in a steaming, tiny heap and it moved its head. "Thank God, it's alive" Sue said, and I just sat there not breathing, not knowing what to do. Sue grabbed a towel and cleaned the face off and did a quick check between its legs. A boy. Ashley started grunting and licking him frantically and we all breathed a small sigh of relief. Sue tried to ascertain whether Ashley would start pushing now, and she tried a few tricks to get her to do so, but Ashley was way too busy licking her baby to push and really, if we were there to do the work for her, why should she? I was going to explain to her the wonder of natural childbirth as I learned in my midwifery studies but thought better of it. Sue went in and pulled the next goat, another boy almost twice the size of the first one. Ashley repeated the grunting and licking performance though Sue interrupted her to take him out into the main part of the barn and swing him from his feet. He had inhaled some fluid and she was trying to swing it out of him. When she was satisfied that his lungs were as clean as they were going to get, she told Joseph to take the first one in the house, clean him up and dry him off with a blow-dryer. I will never forget the flash of "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS!!!!" that went across his face. I was sure that my face mirrored his. Off he went with the now-bleating 5 pound boy and I turned my attention back to Ashley and Sue. She was back in there trying to feel what there was to feel, and identified another kid in proper position (head and front feet together). I asked if I could pull this one so I had a chance to learn while she was there. She said yes and I lubed up my hand and reached in.

Imagine a hot, paper thin water balloon covered in slime. Now try to feel through the balloon without breaking it and identify a head and front feet. Now get a grip on it and PULL A BABY WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE ALIVE OUT OF A UTERUS. Number one, it is slippery and easy to lose your hold. Number two, it is scary as hell. Number three, it is sort of gross.

Nevertheless, I finally managed to pull her out, the bag breaking a little sooner than we would have liked but it turned out that it was the least of the problems. This goat was huge, was a girl, and was covered in yellow slime and teeny-tiny tic-tac sized goat poop. She had befouled her amniotic sac and her breathing was not very good. Sue repeated the swinging routine and handed her, our little yellow girl, to Joseph who was just bringing back the second, dried off boy.

Sue thought there could be another one, so I reached in and thought I felt a head and front feet. Sue asked if I was SURE that was what I felt and I felt around and said yes, and she told me to pull. I got the hooves out and panicked. They looked wrong! I had the wrong feet! Sue swooped in and checked---they were the front feet but it was upside down so I was looking at them from another angle. She finished the pulling I had started and we had another girl with a jagged, lightning bolt of white across her brown face. She was adorable.

Four babies. All alive.

Sue told Joseph that he needed to immediately put up some boards diagonally where the heat lamp was so we could safely put the babies in there so Ashley wouldn't accidentally crush them. Ashley was a good mother, she told us, but she was so huge that she had would have no idea that she was laying on one of them until it was too late. She also warned me to make sure each of them were eating. With quads, you had to be really careful that one wasn't being bullied out of the way and I should be prepared to supplement feeding if it happened.

She reached back into Ashley and felt around to make sure there were no stow-aways or mummified babies (which sounds horrific and made-up but is an actual thing that happens and the official term that the goat books use). She declared her clean, told me to keep my eyes peeled to make sure that she passed the afterbirth completely and told me I had done just fine and now she had to go. She had an old goat of her own who looked like she was flirting with birthing when she left. I jumped up and threw my arms around her, possibly cracking one of her ribs. I was so thankful and overwhelmed with relief and terror at what could have happened if she hadn't come and so unbelievably amazed that Ashley had just had (with a lot of help) four healthy babies and that I had pulled one baby all by myself and half of another one. She gave me a squeeze back and said that it always made her feel the same way too.

And then she left.

Joseph and I were left with four infant goats who were all standing up and screaming about their starvation but they were wired to look for milk way up towards the hip, where a normal Boer goat keeps her udder. Ashley's teats were totally hidden when she stood up as they were at the bottom of her udders which were on the ground. When she was lying down, they were somewhat visible but these babies had no idea that they should look down there.



I have a pretty demanding job and I had just taken a two hour "lunch" to assist with four new lives coming into the world. As horrible as it seemed, I had to wash my hands, take off my bloody, slimy clothes and get back to work. Joseph was left to make sure that everyone nursed. About every 30 minutes, I would check the goat cam and see her lying down and sprint to the barn in a panic that she had crushed one of them. Twice, I got there just in time to lift her up and pull a baby out from under her. I'm sure that Joseph saved the babies more times than that and just didn't mention it.

One of the boys, the tiny one we called Taquito (it isn't a NAME really...one does not name male meat goats, but...we had to call him something), got his leg crushed that first day and was unable to put any weight on it. The yellow girl, who we named Golde, after Fiddler on the Roof, insisted on trying to nurse from Ashley's armpit. We spent hours trying to re-direct her efforts but she just screamed and screamed and continued to head-butt her mother's armpit. I milked Ashley (a feat in itself) and got several ounces of colostrum and tried to feed Golde with a bottle. She acted like I was killing her. I called Don and Sue (patron goat saints) and they said that sometimes they had to feed the new and stubborn ones with an eye-dropper.

At this point I had been about 2 weeks without more than 2 hours of sleep. Joseph was almost in as bad of shape as I was but he wasn't working off the farm so he was able to catch some naps during the day while I worked and in general he was better at saying "it's 2am and it is time to SLEEP and there is no need to jump up every 30 minutes and I am not going to do that." This is not to say that he didn't do his share (and more) of jumping up and running out to the barn, it is just that when I would tell him to sleep for 4 hours, he would do it and trust that I would wake him if I needed him. I had a hard time doing the same.

So, I sent Joseph to bed with earplugs for a few hours with the instruction that he needed to take Taquito to the vet to see about his bum leg the next morning and I set to trying to keep Golde alive. She had gone 8 hours without eating and her incessant crying seemed to be getting weaker. That is, until I picked her up and started carrying her to the barn.

Imagine the loudest, most piercing infant cry you have ever heard and amplify it. Several times. I almost dropped her in the interest of eardrum preservation. I was positive that our nearest neighbors, a mile and a half away, would be calling the cops to report us for the torture and murder of some small human. It was the most horrible sound.

I managed to get in the house with her and hoped that Joseph's earplugs were Bose branded (apparently they were) and I warmed some colostrum up on the stove in an old double boiler.

Colostrum is an interesting substance. It is as sticky as honey, stains any clothing it touches and dries like elmer's glue. I poured some in a shot glass and promptly spilled it on my blackberry. I don't know if it is evidence that my brain was working better than one would expect or proof of my altered state of mind that I found it incredibly profound and almost prophetic that I would spill GOAT COLOSTROM on the single most hated aspect of my job. The blackberry which puts me in constant email access (with the expectation that I will constantly respond to emails). My fancy, Los Angeles job and my farm-woman dreams collided there on the kitchen counter in a sticky pool of stress. It was like modern art.

I mopped up the mess (and so far, the blackberry is none the worse for it) and sat down with Golde, a re-filled shot glass and an eye dropper. 30 minutes later I was covered (as was the couch) in drops of drying colostrum and Golde was still screaming in starvation and terror. I gave up, took her back to the barn, put her in the play pen so she couldn't be crushed by her enormous mother or her enormous udders and I staggered (not sprinted) back to the house where I slept for a few hours.

The next time I got up, I re-heated colostrum and actually got her to drink an ounce or so. The next feeding, Joseph took a stab at it and got her to drink from the bottle (the trick, or so he read, is to tickle their bum to stimulate their sucking instinct. At first, we felt a little weird doing it but it is amazing how normal things seem when you have nothing to give you perspective).

Taquito was splinted up and returned to his mother who promptly rejected him after sniffing his purple leg (the vet thought he was so adorable, she used purple wrap the likes of which you would see on an 8 year old girl's sprained wrist). Joseph modified the splint until Ashley would accept it and there we were; 4 mostly healthy babies, one temporarily (we hoped) being bottle fed every 2-4 hours and one hopping on three legs, but we had done it.

We only had four mamas to go.

Goats and Llamas in the “wild” tend to live in rocky areas. The rocks cause their hooves to stay at proper hoof lengths so nobody has to catch them and try to trim said hooves.

Our little 7.5 acres does not have any natural rocks. We have the aforementioned gravel but that is not in the area where the goats and llamas live. This means that we have to catch the five goats and the two llamas and convince them that they should let us pick up their feet and trim their hooves. All four of them. That's 28 hooves.

We also needed to de-worm and vaccinate everyone so Joseph and I geared up for a weekend of intensive animal husbandry. We had both had the opportunity to trim a couple of hooves about a month earlier at the Ranch of our patron goat saints. They mentioned that since it was so wet (in the middle of the thaw), the hooves were soft and much, much easier to trim than usual. It was still a significant effort but the next day, sore from the unusual position and hands stiff, we congratulated ourselves on learning an essential skill.

Joseph built a head locking mechanism so once we caught the goats, we could maneuver their horned heads between two pieces of wood and then slide one of the pieces tight (but not too tight) to lock them in place. Then we should be able to just pick up each foot, snip-snip, inject, pour on de-womer and release.

The catching of the goats was more challenging than we expected. These are not tame goats. These are not dairy goats who are often bottle raised and milked twice a day and who line up in their proper order and patiently wait for their turn to climb up on the stantion for milking and human affection (and grain). These are wild and wooly, rough and tumble meat goats. They are hardier than milk goats, they are more independent and they have horns.

We also had the added concern that these goats are pregnant and at the time of the trimming, were due to kid in 3-4 weeks. One feels a little bad chasing down a hugely pregnant goat and scaring the bejeezus out of it. Still, it had to be done.

As usual, despite the fact that he has read none of the books, Joseph proved to be really good at catching goats. The first one he caught was Ashley, our matriarch and borderline senior citizen at 7 years old. She is also the largest at around 220 pounds. Being older made her slower which was nice, but the age meant that her hooves were made of pure granite. They were also grown out much more than we expected. Cutting curled granite is not fun. It is particularly not fun with a 220 pound, impatient, pregnant goat leaning on you to make up for the stabilizing force of the leg you are trying to hold at a visible angle. Careful not to cut too deep...

Joseph and I had to take turns, cursing at the worthless trimmers we had purchased at the feed store the whole time and it took us about an hour to get her hooves poorly trimmed, vaccinate and worm her. My thighs were shaking with the effort of holding myself and her up in a totally unnatural bent over position and my hand could barely open and close.

We had 4 goats and 2 llamas to go.

We ended up taking care of one more goat that day and saved the rest for the next day as it was getting dark and we didn't need to add one more obstacle to the project. The next day was Sunday and Joseph had his heart set on going to the Odessa Gun Club for the first time. I was feeling a tad overwhelmed by the prospect of caring for 3 goats and 2 llamas that day and decided to stay home and "rest." Of course what I did was worry that we wouldn't have time and decided to try and get some of the work out of the way before Joseph got home.

I managed to catch Gypsy, our bravest and most inquisitive girl and scooted her, one hand on each horn, one leg on each side of her, shuffling 4 inches at a time, over to the stantion and locked her in. She is younger than Ashley by a few years so her hooves were softer than Ashley's had been but it still took me about 45 minutes and a good sweat to get her done. I let her go and rested for a minute and realized that Lucy, one of the llamas was inside the small side of the barn. It seemed like fate, so I snuck in, closed the door behind me and caught her.

Once caught, she walked on the lead rope quite easily and I congratulated myself (terribly prematurely) for being such an accomplished rancher. The llama book indicated that llamas sort of despise having their legs touched so it is wise to de-sensitize them to leg and hoof handling often and from a very young age. Our llamas are 14 (they were advertised as 12 but once I looked at their papers, a mathematical error in the foster home's assessment was discovered). No one has been touching these llamas' feet regularly. I followed the book's other instructions, to tie the rope attached to their halter as high as possible to keep them from "kushing" (lying down with all their feet tucked underneath them). I did this and went for one of her hind legs. I was rewarded with a solid kick. Her leg shot out at an angle I never imagined possible. I think the copious amounts of wool masked some extra joints or something. Shaken but still stubborn, I went back and grabbed the same foot with more force. She kicked, but I held on. She tried to kush but the rope holding her face up prevented her from completing the move. She stood calmly for a moment and again I prematurely patted myself on the back. I had won. She had surrendered. I peered at the hoof in my hand, trying to make sense of this mass of horny, curled, twisted mess and then Lucy stepped the game up a notch. She leaned. I was bent over at the waist, parallel to her, facing her rear end and she just leaned her entire body onto my back. Lucy is easily 400 pounds. She also is much taller than the goats, so when she leans, it isn't just a sideways pressure, it is also a downward pressure.

I braced myself, unwilling to give in to this new manipulation, and tried to make the first cut on her hooves. If Ashley's hooves are granite, Lucy's are tungsten steel. They were also much more overgrown. The people we got them from had told us that they had trimmed them in late November and that late spring should be the next time it would be necessary. I thought we were beating the clock by doing it in early March. Either their hooves grew much, much faster than the woman who sold them to us realized (she was just fostering them, and not all llamas are alike) or...I don't know, but she was in bad shape and I almost broke the trimmers with my first attempted cut. My second through tenth attempted cuts resulted in numerous scratches, punctures and gouges to my hands but had no discernible effect on her hooves.

I decided, when my legs almost gave out under the combined weight of myself and a full grown llama, and I realized that if I fell, she would fall on top of me, to turn my efforts to the vaccinating and de-worming and wait to do her toes when Joseph got home. Lucy apparently took my change of pace to mean that she was the victor and should be let go. When I went to give her the injection of the vaccine, something which went quite smoothly with the goats, she FREAKED. I hadn't ever touched needle to skin; I was just trying to part her wool to FIND her skin. The next 10 minutes saw me smashed between Lucy and the wall, stepped on, body checked (seriously. There is no other term for what she did to me) and spit at. This llama was pissed.

By this time, my hands, still swollen from the previous day's effort, were bleeding and scraped, my back was spasming, I was covered in straw, dirt, wool, poop and debris and sweat which provided a kind of glue for all the rest. The question, "why are you doing this exactly?" flashed across my mind, and I dismissed it. Then...it flashed again, and it stuck. Syringe in one hand and llama rope in the other, I came up blank.

I couldn't come up with any logical reason that I was raising meat goats and llamas. At this writing, I still can't quite remember...why. It was one of those moments that makes the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime" start playing in your head. "Well, how did I get here?"

Fortunately, I was too exhausted and had too much to accomplish that day for a full-fledged existential crisis so I told myself that there must have been a compelling reason for all of this and I would just have to have faith that...someday...somehow, it would reveal itself again."

Then I vaccinated Lucy, de-wormed her and took her for a walk around the pasture.

That is where Joseph found me when he drove up a few minutes later--walking Lucy in the pasture with Llama Daisy directly behind her. Daisy had spent the entire time I had been working on Lucy standing in eye shot in the pasture humming an alarm sound. She was relieved to be walking behind Lucy again, even if Lucy was walking behind that human.

Joseph and I managed to poorly trim Lucy's hooves (the trimmers really were worthless) and caught Pamela, the second to last goat. She is the second oldest and was therefore a challenge to trim, but next to Lucy she was a piece of cake. I was on her final hoof when Joseph decided to try and catch Gracie.

Gracie is the baby of the herd. She is only 2 years old, at least 100 pounds smaller than Ashley and the most vocal. She is the only goat who consistently makes goat noises when we feed (it's nice), but she does NOT trust us and does not want to be anywhere within arm's reach, no matter how hungry she is and what luscious food we are holding (usually alfalfa...these aren't pets and I've been worried about over-feeding). I thought it would take him an hour to catch her. 2 minutes later, I heard her screaming. I should say bleating or whatever the proper word is for goat vocalization, but she was SCREAMING. I thought, "oh, THAT is going to freak him out. He'll never hold onto her." I looked up and he WAS hanging on to her. It turns out that he had run her down and caught her at a full run. He was so excited that nothing was going to make him let her go. I finished up Pamela as quickly as I could and we took care of Gracie.

We were DONE except for Llama Daisy. Joseph and I spent about 20 minutes chasing her before I finally said that the risk of one of us breaking a leg was too great and the prospect of trying to deal with another Llama that day made me want to lie down on the dung pile and die. Joseph acquiesced. We ended up ordering some much better trimmers online that evening and they arrived before the next weekend. We spent another half hour or so chasing her that Saturday (but this time we each had a broomstick in each hand; something Joseph read would help but just made me worry about us falling and impaling ourselves) and had to give up. Joseph caught her in the barn the next morning and we got her trimmed and vaccinated in record time (for a llama...about 50 minutes) and our animal husbandry chores were done!

We spent the next few weeks with last minute preparations for kidding season. Joseph built kidding "jugs", we bought and installed wireless security cameras with infrared capabilities for nighttime monitoring and re-read all of the horrendous things that can go wrong. Goat (and sheep) books have entire, multi-page sections describing the various ways that a kid (or lamb) can be mal-positioned. You could get a backwards delivery (feet or butt first), you could get multiples trying to come out at the same time, you could get feet but the head is bent back and can't get out. The solution for all of these is for the owner to reach in, miraculously determine what parts they are feeling, reposition the kid and then encourage/assist with the rest of delivery. This is "pulling" a kid.

I don't want to do it. I have been wishing for single kids for all the does (the opposite of what any normal person wants when they are raising livestock) because it seems like it will result in the fewest problems. I have to admit when I look at Ashley though...if she only has one kid in there, we are in big, big trouble:







I have never seen a goat this big. She could have up to 5 kids (5 is highly unlikely but...not impossible). Poor old girl. I feel terrible for her.

Her due date was March 28th but she was so huge that I started expecting delivery by the 24th. Expecting delivery means many, many trips to the barn to check on her nether regions to look for signs of impending kidding. Her udders are so huge they touch the ground sometimes. I don't know how her kids will nurse (another reason to wish for singles...if she has 3-5 kids who can't nurse, that makes 3-5 kids that we have to bottle feed every 4 hours).

Once Joseph installed the cameras, the trips to the barn lessened in frequency a little, but not much. It is remarkable how a static-y, infrared image of a goat ALWAYS looks like the goat is in distress or possessed by Satan, both of which cause me to put shoes and coat on and head for the barn.

The weather had gotten rather balmy earlier in the month but late this week it started snowing and we've had snow every day. Kidding in freezing temperatures. SURE. No problem.

We're now on night 6 of waking every 2 hours to go to the barn and check everyone. Ashley is now 2 days OVERDUE which I never imagined. Dorie, a sweet 4 year old who I think is one brick shy of a full load, was due today but so far, no kids. Gypsy and Pamela don't have a determined due date. It could be any minute or it could be late next week. That means I am on high alert for 4 goats and every stretch, burp or cud chewing has me saying, "isn't that a sign of labor?"

I'm sure it is just the sleep deprivation talking but I am starting to think these babies will never be born. It is illogical but...I have had so many false alarms that...I just don't think it is going to happen. Joseph went to the goodwill and bought up all of their baby vests and cardigans to put on the kids due to the cold. I feel a little like a crazy, childless woman as I fold this random assortment of sweaters, purple velour cookie monster jackets and winnie the pooh embroidered polar fleece with one eye on the goat cam, flashing constantly between two cameras.

Does Dorie seem to be straining? She let me pet her this evening at feeding time which is very out of character. I was hoping that Ashley or Pamela, one of the veterans would be the first but my money is on my sweet half-witted Dorie who will probably need a lot of assistance. She IS looking a little strange. I should go check on her. Just for a minute. Then to bed for an hour or two.

Just when we felt like the snow was here to stay, it warmed up. Instead of feet of snow we had pools of water that froze and turned to pools of ice, then back to water, then ice, and so on for weeks. The snow slid off the chicken coop roof and tore down the poultry netting we had over the chicken yard to keep the chickens in and the pigeons (and other wild birds) out. The dogs played on the ice, Ellie leaping and trying to break through to the water underneath, Daisy barking fearfully every time her step caused a cracking sound. It was a wet, destructive time.

Unlike last year, the mud has been quite manageable. This can be attributed to the thirty five hundred dollars we spent on gravel last spring in preparation for the wedding. At the time, it sort of bothered me that my largest "wedding" expense was gravel, but now as I remember sinking to the top of my boots in clay last year, I know it was worth every penny and more.

People talk about winter being depressing what with the sunset at 4:30pm, the snow and fog, the sense of living inside a frozen ball of cotton balls...the isolation, the darkness...and I suppose if one does not keep one's spirits up with fires in the fireplace and soup-making, it can be.

For me though, the blues hit when the snow started melting. Instead of a pristine white wilderness out my office window, I now had a view of dirt, broken limbs, dead plants, leaves from last fall that were never raked up and have taken on a matted, pelt-like quality, and soggy wood chips. Everything I see appears dead, dingy and dreary. Add to this the fact that my 14 year old boy cat has been dying for the last few months and the dogs have started killing mice and what I think was a small gopher, and I just feel a little too submerged in death to celebrate the thaw.

Mister Mister (my boy cat) has been fighting a mysterious illness for years now. We've had a number of times where it seemed that he was really on his way out, but none like this winter. He has steadily been losing weight despite medication and prescription food and he is now down to 4.9 pounds (from his healthy weight of 14-16 pounds). He is dying and each day I tell him that I love him and I am thankful for the years we have spent together and I make peace with the possibility that this could be the last day.

Somehow he just keeps declining rather than dying though and as he doesn't seem to be actively suffering I have not yet felt that I should end his life for him. I'm learning a lot about dying. It is not always sudden and tragic. Sometimes it is drawn-out and wearying. I'm not sure that one is better than the other. I appreciate having the time to say goodbye but it is hard to live with death. It makes a person feel guilty about laughing or having selfish desires. What if we go out for the evening and THAT is the night he dies? After all this time, for him to die alone would be terrible.

I manage to check myself and realize that A) This is a cat. B) Even if I personify the cat, I have to admit that the person Mister Mister would be would not want me sitting around waiting for him to die all the time and C) It is an important life lesson to be able to balance life and death. I should learn it as well as I can now, when it is a cat and not a person that I am supporting through the end of their life.

The winter and mountain pass conditions cut down considerably the frequency of house guests and since we have the livestock now and can't flit off to Seattle for the weekend, we've had a lonely couple of months. Joseph and I, in an effort to get me better integrated into the community, joined the Odessa Dart League. Joseph works in town and is very outgoing, so he has made friends and is fairly well known for someone who has lived here for a year and a half. I on the other hand, am sort of a mystery. I work at home and do most of my grocery shopping in Moses Lake as the selection is MUCH better (still not great compared to Seattle but who's complaining? I just wish I could buy some curry paste). Nobody really knows what I do for a living (even Joseph isn't sure anymore) and I think there are rumors that I am some snobby city girl or (even better) that Joseph and I are in the witness protection program and whatever it was that I witnessed and testified about was so horrific as to turn me into a crazy recluse and isn't it a shame that Joseph, who is such a nice, friendly guy, is saddled with a crazy hermit for a wife.

These rumors must be put to an end and I must find a way to make friends over here, so we put our heads together and came up with the dart league as the answer to both problems.

I have not ever been a dart player. Truly, I have not been a player of any kind for many years. As a child I was very competitive and a very, very bad loser. I also was a trifle on the un-coordinated side so anything involving throwing, catching, running, balance or teamwork ended badly. Thus ended my involvement in all things "sport" or "game" by my early teens.

Joseph is a game player though so over the last few years I have started playing cribbage, acey-deucey, Gin Rummy, Skip-Bo, etc. Fortunately, I win more than I lose. I haven't gotten much better at losing than I was at 12. Thus, when a woman at the bank urged Joseph and I to join the dart league, I was wary. It was likely that I would be bad at darts and did I REALLY want the town to get to know me as the sore loser I was?

I realized that my options were limited and darts seemed more appealing than church as a friend-making endeavor, so I swallowed my pride, had a firm talking to with myself about losing being a good way to make friends (after all, who likes a new person who wins at everything?) and we joined the league.

Joseph is a great dart player which worked out beautifully because sometimes, regardless of just how bad I am, we win. Sometimes we lose, but Joseph is such a good loser that I can't really be bothered by losing when I am on his team. I've met a lot of people and we've even started going into town on non-dart nights to have a beer with people we have met. It is good to interact with human beings in person. The phone is nice and email is wonderful but faces with their raised eyebrows, dimples and movement are sort of essential to sanity I am learning.

Operation "Make Friends" had a huge win last week when I received a phone call from one of the women I met early on and who has been very friendly and helpful and helped with the food at our wedding (her in-laws catered it). They (the young women of Odessa) have a monthly Bunco night and one of their regulars was not able to attend and she wondered if I would like to come.

Bunco. Me. Bunco.

I approached the evening with considerable trepidation but within 5 minutes I knew I had made the right decision. These were nice, intelligent women with good senses of humor and husbands and kids and jobs. I wanted to hug them all and thank them for existing and for inviting ME into their circle, even just as a substitute for a regular. I stayed late and had a wonderful time and felt some of the dreariness lift off of me.

There are still snow drifts scattered about and the nights are below freezing but today it was 50 degrees and perfect weather for repairing the chicken netting. Mister Mister started a new course of anti-biotics and spent hours purring on my lap last night. Tomorrow, Joseph and I are going to the gun club to try on another Odessa social institution. I've been placed on the official "sub" list for Bunco (the first step to someday being a regular)

It's not spring yet, but things are definitely starting to warm up.

Three Sundays ago I woke up around quarter to six with my senses alert and my heart pounding. It was dark still and the dogs and Joseph were fast asleep. I tried to identify what exactly had woken me when I heard it. The wind was definitively howling. I lay awake for a minute, trying to talk myself down from the adrenaline ledge. It’s just wind. There is nothing to fret about.

Once I get started on a middle-of-the-night fret however, it is just about pointless to try and stop. I may drift back into sleep but the sleep will be fitful and the underlying fret makes my dreams repetitive and…well…fretful. I knew the wind was coming from the east, which, despite my worry, made me somehow proud. Not only do I know which direction East is, I can tell the direction of the wind by the SOUND of the wind and I could tell that the wind was coming from the east. The door, which we generally leave open, on the side of the barn which the Llamas and goats come in and out of, is on the east side of the barn. I started imagining them all huddled in a tiny corner with a tornado-like wind funnel of straw and goat poop in their small area.

It was this vision that persuaded me to get up and at least look outside to see if the wind was as bad as it sounded. The trees, with their limbs swaying menacingly, confirmed that it was. My next confirmation came from the internet which had posted a severe weather alert with sustained winds of 40mph and gusts up to 65. Temperature with wind-chill: 9 degrees.

That did it. I went back to the bedroom and put on my barn clothes and out I went.

We had around 6 inches of snow on the ground from the previous weeks but the wind was blowing snow from all the fields between here and Spokane. The snow was crystallized and horizontal. I looked at the sky and saw stars. It SEEMED like a blizzard but the snow was all coming from the ground. I leaned into the wind and headed for the barn where I found Lucy blocking the door, completely covered in snow. Her eyelashes were frozen. I closed the door and the goats and llamas all seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The relief lasted about 30 seconds and then they all headed for the feeder. If Mom was here, it must be breakfast time.

By now it was about 6:15am and a little early for feeding but I was already there and they’d had a rough, cold, blustery night, so I gave them their food early. Their three water buckets were all in need of topping off too. I had a brief thought that I could leave that for later and talk Joseph into doing it but instead I took a deep breath, mustered my inner pioneer and headed outside with the re-filling bucket.

We had a frost-free spigot put in the middle section of the barn this fall so we wouldn’t have to haul water all the way from the faucet at the well. This seemed like a great idea, and it was. Unfortunately, it is placed in the middle section on the west side of the barn. The animals are in the northern section on the east side of the barn. Add to that the fact that the only way to get from the north section of the barn to the middle section of the barn is to go outside and around…and the spigot in the barn is less than helpful.

We had some grand ideas. We put hooks on the wall and hung three heated buckets from those hooks. We (we being Joseph) cut holes in the wall so we could plug them in on the other side of the wall and prevent the goats from chewing on the cords (genius!). We then strung a 50 foot hose from the frost-free spigot along the rafters and over the wall so it could be easily used to fill the three buckets. We were sure that gravity would keep the water from freezing in the hose (or rather, we were sure that gravity would cause the hose to drain, thereby preventing the problem of frozen water in the hose; we didn’t think that gravity had any direct impact on the behavior of water in freezing temperatures). The first time we used it, I congratulated Joseph on his cleverness and myself on choosing such a clever husband. The next day, Joseph came in after the evening chores and announced that the hose was frozen and no water would come out.

This left us with the bucket method of watering the animals. This entails filling an old kitty litter container with water in the middle of the barn (not too full or a girl might spill it which makes a precarious icy path for the next person on water detail), carefully walking out the door into the driving wind and blowing snow/ice crystals, opening the door to the north section of the barn, walking to the east side of the north section, opening the gate, closing the gate immediately behind oneself (still being careful not to spill) and pouring the water into the hanging, heated bucket.

Since my buckets are usually only filled about 2/3 full by the time I get to the heated buckets, it takes me 3-4 trips each time I am on water detail. It got old really fast. Fortunately Joseph takes this chore most of the time. This cold, stormy morning however, I felt particularly energized and did the water myself. It took ages but I felt like a tough cowboy, watering the animals in a 60mph blizzard. I didn’t LOOK much like a tough cowboy with my staggering under the weight of a kitty litter container half full of water in my lime green snow boots and matching hat, but I felt like one and that was enough.

My next stop was the chicken coop. They were clucky and cranky, as usual, but their water was frozen solid which was not usual. The heat lamp which has served us well during our year of chicken ownership was apparently insufficient for the low temperatures. I went to the garage and found a wrench, which seemed the best ice breaking tool, and back I went to the chicken coop where I bashed and cursed my way through the inch of ice and then burned myself on the heat lamp as I tried to find the perfect balance between keeping the water from freezing and melting the plastic top of the water-er.

I finally got back in the house around 7am, cold, windblown and ready for a hearty breakfast of freshly gathered eggs and several cups of hot coffee. The freshly gathered eggs however were frozen solid so I had to settle for previously gathered and thawed, eggs.

Joseph and I had a hearty breakfast and then bundled up and headed for the shed to chop wood and fill the two 50 gallon trash cans that we use for firewood transportation and storage. By now, there were snowdrifts up to our knees which made carrying the full garbage cans back to the house very, very difficult. This is another chore that Joseph usually handles as it requires significant upper body strength and, at 31, I have finally admitted that I am not as strong as a full grown man. This acknowledgement of my physical limitations came at a disappointing time for Joseph as it means I plead weakness when chores like water hauling and wood dragging come up. This time, he convinced me that I should at least come along for moral support. Together, we loaded the trash cans and dragged them to the house and built a fire. I bundled up with “My Antonia” and a blanket and read for the rest of the day between the fire and this view:






I tried to really enjoy the blowing, freezing snow and the knee high snow drifts and the excuse that it was too cold to do anything but read, eat and snuggle. This was the one big storm of the year.

Or so I thought.

The next Saturday, it started snowing. We’d gotten a few more inches over the week but nothing major. All day Saturday it snowed. All night Saturday it snowed. All morning Sunday, it snowed. I was supposed to fly to California on Sunday afternoon so Joseph started digging my truck out of the snowdrifts around 9am. About an hour later, the truck had still not made it out of the driveway. I was packed, dressed for the city (with make-up and all) and ready to go when I decided to check the weather forecast. Spokane was predicting 8 inches of snow in the next 4 hours. I imagined getting stranded on the road to Spokane, the blustery tundra drive that takes an hour and a half in the dry, bare summer but which was sure to take me double that (if I was lucky), or worse---that I would make it there and the flight would be cancelled.

I cancelled my trip and found out the next day that a Southwest jet, likely the one intended for my flight to California, landed and skidded off the runway, closing the airport down for two hours. Spokane got 13.7 inches of snow that day.

One of our friends in Odessa predicted that this was going to be an old-fashioned winter, the likes of which the old men still talk about (who could forget the winter of ‘49/’50?), and it seems he was right. We got another 2-4 inches of snow this weekend but this time, the business trip I had planned could not be cancelled. Joseph made a snowplow out of a giant I-beam drug behind his truck which made it possible for me to get out of the driveway in 4WD. Destination? Minnesota.

I’m sitting in the Minnesota airport where it has been snowing all day. I am trying not to fret but the mood in the terminal is getting increasingly cranky and I am just waiting for the first notice of a flight delay due to weather.

I’m starting to wonder if it is me? I’m starting to wonder if I need a bigger truck. I’m starting to wonder if the firewood will hold out (we got a $400 electric bill for December which has prompted me to turn the thermostat down to 63 and live next to the fireplace with the already paid for firewood). I’m starting to think that of all the places in the world, the Minneapolis airport is at the bottom of my list to be snowed in and my little rambler in the wheat fields is at the top. I just hope I can get home in time for the next snowstorm.

I am the proud Mother of 5 pregnant Boer goats.

It was an extended gestation (6 years) but at long last, we've got the foundation for our herd. Introducing Gracie, Gypsy , Pamela, Dorie, and Ashley:





They arrived on Sunday and immediately looked askance at the Llamas and us and then huddled up in the corner of the field, fleeing en masse if we came near them. We looked to the Llamas who supposedly had experience guarding a herd of 80 Boer goats before we got them. The Llamas looked terrified. They stood next to their dung pile (Llamas have a communal dung pile, like an outhouse. They make frequent trips to it and for the most part, restrict their pooping to that spot--it is brilliant) and made alarmed humming noises (llamas have a variety of bizarre noises; humming is one of them).

I had spent the previous 2 weeks trying to get the Llamas to like me. On the rare occasion that I cornered them, I was able to ascertain that one of them had a clearly visible cataract in one eye and the other seemed rather bow-legged. I hoped that in the face of a coyote, both flaws would disappear as they sprung into action, super-hero-like. They were pretty skittish and while they appreciated that I would feed them twice a day, they did not want me touching them or getting too close. Hugging was definitely out.

Now Joseph and I were standing in our field with 2 Llamas who ran from us, 5 goats who fled from us and the sneaking suspicion that our Llamas were AFRAID of our goats.

It was not really as I had envisioned it.

It was also FREEZING. It has been for weeks (we've had snow and ice on the ground since before Christmas), but somehow 23 degrees seems colder when you have an electric fence to finish, the sun is setting and you are feeling rejected by your long-awaited livestock.

We decided to give them a little space and went into the chicken coop to feed and water the chickens. The heavy snow had decimated the poultry netting that covered the outdoor chicken yard so the chickens have been locked inside for a few days. Joseph had put windows in the big side of the coop so they had plenty of room to roam inside but we have been trying to give the poor things a little extra attention while we schedule the repairs to the outdoor chicken run. As we puttered, we heard Ellie barking. Joseph opened the coop door and saw Ellie in the pasture, inches from the clump of terrified goats.

I ran to the pasture and through the gate, not sure if I was more afraid of her hurting the goats, the goats hurting her or the Llamas fulfilling their duties and attacking the canine predator, AKA my sweet baby. Once through the gate I saw the Llamas standing next to the dung pile looking nervous (prompting relief on one hand and disgust on the other; what kind of crappy guardians were these stupid Llamas?).

I ordered Ellie out of the pasture, apologized to the goats on her behalf and shot a nasty look at Lucy and Llama Daisy. My next disgusted look was at the fence, specifically the gate that Ellie had squeezed under.

Joseph and I strapped our headlamps on (it was now dark with the tiniest sliver of a moon glowing through the coldest fog that ever was) and we spent the next hour or so plugging the space under the gates and putting the finishing touches on the electric portion of the fence. I sustained my first fencing injury; as I was trying to attach the ground wire to the ground pole using a clampy thing with a screw built for such a task, my big fencing pliers slipped and crushed the fleshy side of my hand. Fortunately it missed the bones and my hands were numb from the cold. Unfortunately, my hands were numb from the cold and it took me much longer than it should have to realize that my tight grip on the vice-like pliers was not facilitating a clamp on the metal thing but rather on my other hand. Truth be told, I am proud of the giant black bruise, complete with blood blisters. It was sort of a rite of passage.

We successfully electrified the fence (my next fencing rite of passage will be to get zapped but I'm hoping to put that off as long as possible) and then went into the barn to double check that there was hay in the feeders and that the water in the heated buckets was indeed heated to prevent ice. We had partitioned off a 15x20 foot area for their barn space. It wasn't spacious but it was large enough according to all the books we read and the people we consulted and we had put a thick layer of straw down for bedding. Everything was in order, except there were no goats or Llamas in the barn. They were still standing exactly where they had been all stinking day.

I made a final effort to coax them all into the barn by tiptoeing within smell of them and shaking some hay and cooing. All it did is make them back away even further from the barn. I threw up my hands, told them to enjoy their stubbornness and Joseph and I went into the house to warm up.

I checked on them about 5 times in the next 3 hours and was pleased to see that the goats had moved closer to the barn and by the last time I checked, they were right next to the open door. The Llamas remained standing, statue-like, by the dung pile. I figured that soon enough, they would all get cold and go into the barn and I went to bed.

The next morning I leapt out of bed at sunrise (about 7am), pulled on my Sorrell boots, my hat and a couple of layers of clothing and ran to the barn. I found the barn empty, the goats standing next to the barn exactly where I had left them and the Llamas "kushed" (sort of a cross between a squat and lying down) next to the dung pile with a layer of ice over their wool. Stupid cowardly Llamas. They KNOW better! They've been sleeping in this barn for weeks now!

I took a leaf of hay out to the Llamas and told them that getting water in the barn was their task for the day and I set myself to tempting the goats in. Fortunately the goats had worked up an appetite and I was able to coax Ashley, the eldest, into the barn where she began to voraciously eat. As the other goats came in, Ashley head butted them away from the feeder (some matriarch). I had chickens, dogs and cats to feed yet (to say nothing of myself) and an early conference call for work so I admonished Ashley to be nice and left the goats to their pecking order. At least one of them was eating.

I probably checked on them a half-dozen times that day, donning the full winter gear each time. I saw little progress. The damn Llamas would NOT leave the dung pile and while the hay I had put in the feeder was gone, the goats insisted on huddling together in the fog and cold (it was about 28 degrees) just outside the barn. As frustrated as I was with the llamas, it broke my heart to see them covered in ice. The place that had been fostering them north of Spokane had them in a corral with no shelter at all, and they were covered in ice when we picked them up, so I knew they COULD handle it but I was sure that it wasn't pleasant. I went back inside and checked the weather forecast. There was a severe winter storm warning. Sustained winds of 40mph and gusts up to 60mph. The temperature could reach 10 degrees with wind-chill.

My fretting commenced in earnest.

I tried to focus on working, vowing not to check on them until after 6pm. At 6, I went to the barn and found the goats in the doorway. When I put hay in the feeder, they all came in. There was a lot of head-butting and shoving around of the feeder and each other but I witnessed all of them at least getting a bite. While they were distracted, I grabbed two handfuls of alfalfa and headed to the dung pile. For the first time, both Lucy and Llama Daisy ate from my hand. I began backing up, a few steps at a time, holding the alfalfa just out of reach. They followed. I got to the barn and stepped over the entrance. They did not follow. They looked at the goats and stretched their necks and Daisy made a humming sound. I hummed back. She looked at me quizzically so I did it again, realizing that I may be humming some kind of threat or insult and I could very well be the recipient of the infamous glob of gross Llama spit. She stepped one foot over the threshold. I did it again and reached the hay towards her. She stepped the OTHER foot in. Ashley, our matriarch goat, charged at Daisy, who flattened her ears and made a noise that sure sounded like spitting, but I was too busy trying to scold Ashley and hum reassuringly to take note of whether there was actually any spit. Ashley backed off and returned to eating and Daisy came the rest of the way in the barn. I put more hay in the feeder and Lucy came in the barn too. I could have whooped with joy but I checked myself and hummed a little more. I stood and watched them for a while and finally left the barn in time to see Joseph drive up. Then I DID whoop and leap around in the snow, yelling, "I DID IT! I DID IT! THEY LIKE ME!"

An hour later the wind started to pick up and I went to check on the animals. I locked the chickens up in the warm, snug side of the coop and peeked through the door of the barn. I hoped to see the Llamas or the goats snuggled down. I braced myself for the possibility that the barn would be empty.

They were all in there. Both Llamas and all 5 goats were laying down inside the barn. Our little family of livestock had found some peace together, or they were just smart enough to realize that the storm meant they had to set aside their differences for one night. Regardless, I felt like I had a part in it and that somehow, they all had decided that I was okay after all. For a human.

It was just as I had envisioned it. Okay...in my visions, there was never bone-chilling fog or gale-force winds or smashed and swollen hands, but aside from those minor details, it was just what I had been wanting for years. We are goat owners. We have arrived.

Joseph spent a lot of time this fall building permanent fencing around 4 acres of our land with the help of his brother, Mark and our patron saint, Don, the goat man. The timing on the goats has been pushed back again and again due to our lack of readiness in the fence department which has possibly subconsciously been fueled by our total panic at having LIVESTOCK for real.

I have been reading books on raising goats for about 6 years now. I honestly cannot remember what started it, but I know that it happened during or shortly after my Appalachian Summer of Destiny. I dreamed my little cabin in the woods with a year-round "crik," free range chickens, a vegetable garden and a sweet little dairy goat whose milk would enable me to make artisan cheeses that I would trade for things like chestnut flour or sugar (sometimes molasses just won't do).

The dream has changed considerably over the last 6 years but the goat has been a constant. It became the ultimate symbol of the life I wanted.

The free range chicken idea, under threat of coyote kill and the challenge of gathering free-range eggs, has turned into a chicken coop with a series of nets draped over the chicken yard to keep the chickens in the safe zone. In the last 3 weeks, the nets have decided that they are not going to last the winter. Words cannot describe the misery of working outside on fencing in 12 degrees with a 15 mile an hour wind from the North. Anyone who has experienced the phenomenon of "brain freeze" should be able to relate a little, but after 20 minutes, the brain freeze transforms into spinal cord freeze and your hands (which are useless in gloves) develop an alarming color and you worry that they may actually snap off if they are knocked just right. On the upside, you can't feel the cuts and scrapes that you acquire while working on the fence.

In my dream, there were no fences.

The circular, cordwood cabin in the holler with the crik has become a late-1950;s rambler in the high desert with a few strategically placed frost-free water spigots.

The dairy goat, a cute little Toggenberg, disappeared from the dream after an educational 9 day stint as a goat-sitter for a small herd of Nubian dairy goats. Talk about high maintenance animals. This goat-sitting adventure occurred literally 5 days from when I finalized purchase of the homestead and, I'll admit it now, it caused a small amount of panic in me. I learned that having dairy goats means that you have to milk, feed and water twice a day, every day, regardless of weather or illness or dinner party invitations or a great price on a weekend getaway or traffic or flat tires. Keeping on top of the milk was a challenge too. I mean how much chevre does a person need REALLY?

Not ready to abandon my goat dream, I started looking at non-dairy goats. Boer goats soon rose to the top as the lowest maintenance, hardiest, best suited for Eastern Washington goat option. You don't have to milk them, they are not high strung and neurotic as dairy goats often are, they are good mothers as goats go and have fewer delivery problems than dairy goats tend to have.

Joseph and I talked it over and agreed that we would get Boer goats. We met a couple who re-located from Vashon Island some 20 years ago and who have a great Boer goat breeding operation near us. They have given us a ton of information, advice, help and inspiration and we decided to buy a few of their does (female goats) who are due to kid at the end of March and April. They are two of the nicest people we've met in the last year (which is saying something---we've met a LOT of really nice people this year) and I can't believe our luck in finding them.

They have also been very patient over the last year as we have pushed back the date to get the goats again and again. We had a lot of good reasons to delay; the wedding and wedding recovery was a big one. The efforts to manage our first vegetable garden and learn the arts of canning, dehydrating and pickling took a toll, and before we knew it, it was October. That is when Joseph and company got cracking on the fence and we started talking (again) about setting a date for the goats. It looked like mid-December was going to be it, which meant that we would be here, alone for Christmas.

I am a big fan of Christmas. I know a lot of people who avoid family-holiday gatherings at all costs. I am not one of those people. I have a great, great family and I like to spend as much time with them as I can. The thought of just missing Christmas with the family was more than I could stand so Joseph asked our goat friends if we could push the transfer date back one more time so we could have a final Seattle Christmas hurrah. They said yes.

We gave the chickens and cats a ton of food and water, piled the dogs and ourselves into the truck and off we went over the treacherous mountain pass and into our last Christmas without livestock.

I can't remember ever having a better Christmas. The only thing I would have changed would have been another few days to spend more time with Joseph's family and our friends but aside from that, It was the greatest farewell to our footloose days that I could have imagined. My Mom had a few weepy moments that this would be the last time the family was ever together for Christmas and how could I choose to move away and then tie myself down to LIVESTOCK instead of being a normal person who can always come to Christmas. I patted her and told her that of course we would be together and everything would work out and really, nothing would be different.

Unfortunately, I know that is untrue.

Every time I think I have fully committed to this dream, I encounter a test. In the last 16 months, I have gone to Seattle at least a dozen times. Usually I went alone for one night and Joseph stayed and took care of the animals. A few times we both went, taking the dogs with us and leaving the relatively self-sufficient (for a couple of days anyway) cats and chickens. I have been at most of the parties and family gatherings that we've been invited to (My family celebrates birthdays as well as all the major holidays--we really do like spending time together) and the birth of my niece (that was my favorite drive of all the drives to Seattle--it was a glorious day). On top of that, the job I had last year had me traveling several days every month to everywhere from Grand Rapids, Michigan to New Delhi, India.

So, I really have a more cosmopolitan life now than I did when we lived in Seattle. I've been straddling my old and new life and haven't sacrificed anything. Joseph has been the one left home alone to care for the animals more times than I can count. He doesn't complain, but it isn't really fair and it can't go on like this once we have goats. Ranchers do not flit off to the city once or twice a month. Asking someone to care for your farm is a huge favor, even if that person is your husband.

So, I must admit to my Mother and myself that getting the goats, that ultimate symbol of this adventure, does mean something and it does change things. Joseph and I have committed to this home, far from friends and family. We have committed to each other, forever. It's time for me to jump in with both feet. Goats. Llamas to guard the goats. Pigs (Why not? If we're going to do this rancher/farmer thing we might as well do it). In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

We came back from Christmas and made arrangements to get two older llamas for guardian animals (they protect the goats from coyotes, cougars, etc) that we found on http://www.petfinder.com/

We bought our first aid supplies and made the final modifications to the barn and yesterday, the last day of 2007, we drove 2 hours with a borrowed truck and trailer and we acquired Llama Daisy Duke and Llama Lucy Penny. They were owned by an older woman in Idaho who passed away and her kids couldn't take them so they were being fostered at an animal rescue until a permanent home could be found. They were accidentally bred while in foster care so in September, we'll have two baby Llamas to go with our Mama Llamas. In 2 weeks or less, we'll be getting our Mama goats (four or five) due to kid in March/April.

I think this is where the dream becomes reality. No more straddling two worlds. This year, we jump in the deep end.

Last night at 9pm, before driving into town to celebrate New Year's Eve, Joseph and I were standing outside in the dark and cold working together on the gates to the pasture. I had snow halfway up my leg and straw all over my coat. It was really cold. My lips and nose were completely numb. It was exactly what I wanted to be doing.


Please join Joseph and I in welcoming 2008, the "Year of Livestock," and the newest members of our lives:

There is a concept in livestock circles known as "culling." This is where you eliminate the weak, old, or otherwise undesirable animals to ensure that you are spending your time, energy and money on the top quality animals most likely to offer a positive return on your investment.

I understand this concept. I could create a spreadsheet with elaborate formulas which would clearly show that it is unwise and even irrational to feed and care for old, sick or otherwise undesirable animals. The books I have read on raising chickens, goats and pigs all discuss culling and I get it.

Culling an animal is usually the equivalent of a death sentence. Excess males of most species aren't good for much except eating. One buck (male goat) is sufficient for a herd of 20-30 does. One rooster is sufficient for 15-20 hens (if you want to have baby chicks---if you don't, you don't need a rooster at all). If half of the babies born on your farm are male, you rapidly end up with too many males who eat your food, attack you and cause trouble and vet bills. There are exceptions of course; some wethers (altered male goats) make great pack animals or weed control animals, but there is a limited market for both and at some point, you just have too many boys.

Mass producers of animals don't usually bond with their animals so it is easy for them to go by their spreadsheets and say that since a hen only earns her keep for the first 2 years of her life (a generous estimate), she should go to the slaughterhouse by her 2nd birthday and male birds should be butchered by 8 weeks. The person making that decision is rarely the same person who danced with delight the first time they gathered an egg from the hen, or squealed with joy when they heard the first peeping of the excess rooster when he was a chick.

We hatched four chicks this summer. Joseph and I read the chicken books which all said that within a few weeks, it would be obvious which ones were males. We both inspected the behavior, plumage, combs and feet of the developing chicks and around October when the chicks were a few months old, we congratulated ourselves on a crop of 100% female chicks. Amazing! The odds were against us, but we had all hens!

Around that same time, Prancer (our evil rooster) started behaving strangely. He stopped attacking us. He actually seemed to avoid us in what can only be described as submissive behavior. His crow changed into a hen-like warble and his tail feathers went missing. I thought he might be sick but weeks went by and he didn't develop any symptoms of illness (like sudden death) so I decided he must be molting (a process where they lose some or all of their feathers and re-grow them) and he would get back to normal in time. Weeks and then months went by and his behavior didn't change. I stopped carrying "the stick" to protect myself against him (an old curtain rod which we have used on many occasions to fend off Prancer attacks). In September he had ripped one of his spurs off which caused a lot of bleeding. Chickens are very attracted to the color red and tend to cannibalize flock members who get injured. Joseph and I tended his wound and kept him separated from the flock for a few hours while the bleeding stopped. I thought maybe our mission of mercy had changed his mind about us. It was certainly easier to do the chicken chores without a 6 foot curtain rod in one hand, but I sort of missed his strut and crow. He seemed...sad.

About 2 weeks ago I was in the coop "scratching" the chickens and two of the chicks (no longer chicks but mostly-grown chickens now) were standing next to my feet. I looked down at one of them and said something about how brave she was and she looked up at me and crowed.

Hens do not crow.

I hadn't yet recovered from the surprise when the other chick stood up on her toes and beat her wings...exactly like...Prancer used to do. I looked at both of their tail feathers and saw that yes, they had grown a few inches longer than the other hens' feathers and...these were not hens. These were adolescent roosters.

We've had some poultry casualties over the last few months. Lazara's sister was found dead one morning in the coop--old age I'm sure (she should have been culled the moment we got her but we just couldn't). Thanksgiving morning, Joseph found one of the Sara's dead. No obvious reason. The books say that if you don't cull your chickens regularly, you should expect this; chickens die sometimes. We weren't too upset by this; these were older chickens and just members of the flock; not pets. Our most traumatic chicken event came the day we buried Apple. Edwina, my sweet cuddly wonderful chicken who had been raised by our niece, Natalie, escaped from the coop (she ripped a hole through the top of the netting) and met her end out by the barn. Joseph was at work and I found her. With Apple not yet buried my reaction was more extreme than it would have otherwise been; I totally melted down. I cried and cried and called my Mother and cried some more. I seriously questioned whether or not I was cut out for farm life. Was the universe trying to tell me something? Was this a test to see if I could handle the realities of having animals? Losing two pets in two days just seemed fundamentally unfair.

With the help of my Mom's shoulder and Joseph's hugs and the sunset burial where I promised Edwina that I would always remember her as the first chicken I ever loved, I wiped my tears and tried to thicken my skin. Farm life is hard. For every chick that hatches, a chicken will die. This is the life I wanted and I just have to suck it up, and NEVER NAME ANOTHER CHICKEN.

I have said again and again that our chickens (with the exception of the 3 remaining Niece chickens---Suzy, Chico and Marilyn) are not pets. The chicks that we hatched do not have names and they exist to off-set the natural losses of the adult hens. The proper thing to do at this moment in time is to choose which rooster is going to live and to "cull" the other two. The market for pet roosters is not very brisk, so I doubt we would have much luck giving them away (and the people who WOULD want a "pet" rooster probably have visions of cock fights and...I'm not going to allow one of my roosters to end up like that). Unlike goats, Roosters make lousy pack animals and pretty inefficient weed control so the stew pot seems the logical choice. The question then becomes...which rooster lives?

I've been avoiding the question and hoping that everyone would just get along or that two of the roosters would decide that the coop wasn't big enough for the three of them and they would tunnel out and take to the skies, little rooster nap-sacks hanging from their wings. Unfortunately, I think that is wishful thinking. Prancer is getting more and more withdrawn and Prancer Jr has no tail feathers left at all (though his other feathers are GORGEOUS). The black one has grown 4 inches in the last week and developed a very distinct strut. Last night he was looking at me in a new and menacing way and I decided to start carrying the curtain rod again. He is clearly the dominant one and from an evolutionary standpoint, he should be our new rooster and the others should be put to another, soupier use.

I've always been a sucker for the under-dog though. I'm leaning towards culling the whippersnappers and keeping our aging Prancer. With the boys out of the way maybe he'll grow his feathers back and regain his crow. Or maybe I can convince Joseph that we need a garage rooster and a barn rooster. That way they can each have their own domain and we won't have to kill any of them. They'd keep the bugs down...though we would need to buy more curtain rods for protection and we'd be setting a dangerous precedent. In a year's time this could be the home for wayward, unwanted male animals. They'd probably gang up and turn on us in a "Lord of the Flies" meets "Animal Farm" showdown, mocking our attempts to defend ourselves with window treatments. The neighbors would shake their heads and tsk, saying, "That's what you get for not culling..."

My pride will not let that happen. It is time that we crossed over from pansy city people to real country people. It is time to kill, clean and eat an animal that we have raised. If I can't do it I will have to become a vegetarian or continue eating chicken that other people have killed and admit to being a hypocrite.

Wait, so my four options here are: death by gang of un-culled males (and target of neighbor tsk-ing), vegetarian, hypocrite or murderer?

Decisions like this make me miss the days when Joseph and I argued about which delivery Italian restaurant we would order from tonight.

As I carried one of our dairy heaters into my office this morning I muttered to myself that I was SICK and TIRED of being cold all the time. In the last 8 days the temperature has not risen above 38 degrees and in the interest of not having a $300-a-month electric bill, we've been keeping the thermostat turned to 65. Unfortunately, 65 degrees in the hallway (where the thermostat lives) seems to translate to 50 degrees in our front room (where our television lives and three of our largest, bird-killing, heat-escaping windows).

I caught myself mid-mutter and realized that it is merely November. We have MONTHS of bone chilling conditions before Spring comes. I better change my attitude and quick, or the bitter cold will turn to just plain bitterness and nobody wants that.

Fortunately, it snowed the first snow of the winter a few days ago which considerably brightened up the landscape and provided the entertainment of Ellie and Daisy romping in the snow (though it didn't make me any warmer). The first snow also marked the official start of soup season. We had a ton of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving so I decided to make my first turkey stock. The turkey stock project gradually evolved into a turkey soup project which, by the end of the day had evolved into the best soup to ever come out of my dutch oven (I should confess that I classify soup as a totally separate entity than stew or chili so the number of contestants this soup had to beat out for the title of "Best Soup to Come Out of My Dutch Oven" was very small).

The nice thing about soup-making is that it is WARM. Standing over a stove top for hours wearing wool socks and a new beanie, tasting, stirring, tasting, adding thyme and tasting again is the next best thing to a sauna when you're bone-cold. I enjoyed it so much that I froze most of it and used the rest of the leftover turkey to make ANOTHER soup. This one got a little out of hand and wound up being a weird curried-turkey-rice dish that more closely resembled yellow paste than soup, stew or chili. I wouldn't say it was BAD, but the best I can say for it is that it'll stick to your ribs and I was warm while I was making it.

If I'm going to continue to keep warm by cooking, I'm going to need a larger freezer and some more tupperware.

I do adore my dutch ovens but something about the cold and the darkness makes me long for television reception. Nothing really warms the soul like re-runs of sitcoms and while we do have season one of "Bewitched" on DVD and some random season of "Everybody Loves Raymond" it just isn't the same. Joseph and I have resisted getting satellite TV for fear that it will keep us from being productive in the evenings. I should probably rephrase that. I have resisted getting satellite TV and Joseph has not begged me to change my mind (though he has threatened a few times to attempt TV piracy by hooking up the old dish my parents gave us. I feel quite certain that we would have to sign up with some kind of provider to get any reception so I haven't bothered arguing with him about it. If he wants to hang out on the frozen roof playing with a satellite dish when he could be inside watching "Bewitched" or painting the basement or looking into the bubbling cauldron of curried glue, more power to him). Although...I hear Satellite TV often includes the food network...which may offer new and non-gluey recipes for the dutch oven...

No, No, No. Satellite TV is the first step down a slippery slope of...well I don't know what. Easy Living I guess. First would come the TV, then we'd have to crank the heat up because the room with the TV is WAY too cold, then we'd see commercials for things that we don't need like cool new electronics or pretty store-bought clothes or Pizza Delivery. The next thing you'd know, we'd be buying eggs at the grocery store and forgetting to plan our spring garden. No. Call me a martyr but I will not let that happen to us.

We're just going to have to dust off the cribbage board, buy a better reading lamp, put long underwear on our Christmas Lists and learn to whittle or mend fishing nets or something. A person is supposed to be restless in the winter; it makes spring all the more welcome.

One afternoon in mid-May Joseph and I went into town to run some wedding errands. We drove down our little gravel road (which gets an average of 2 cars per day) and took a left at the intersecting gravel road where our mailbox lives. About a mile later, I noticed an animal of some type sitting in the middle of the road. I slowed down as we approached it, but it didn't run away. It did however turn to face our oncoming car and revealed itself to be a little dog.

I honked. It didn't move. I honked again. The only response was a cocking of its little butterscotch colored head and a twitch of the most ridiculous ears I have ever seen. Joseph opened his door to tell the little dog to get out of the way but before he had time to say "Shoo" she ran around and jumped into the car through the open door (I should clarify that "shoo" is not really a word that Joseph uses...but if he had been going to use that word, he wouldn't have had time).

She was thrilled that we had opened the door and jumped into the back seat as if she belonged there. We drove up to the nearest house, assuming that she lived there, but when we opened the door, she didn't get out. We "helped" her out of the car but from judging by the greeting she received from the three dogs in the front yard of the house, it didn't appear that we had found her home. We conferred and decided that we couldn't just LEAVE her there so we opened the door, she jumped in again and we drove on.

She wore a little red harness which had a name tag that read "Apple" with a phone number. We called the phone number and got the voice mail for "Andrew." We figured we would call back in a little while and we went to do our errands with Apple in the back seat (she would occasionally climb into the front seat to give us kisses). By the end of our errand running, I had developed a soft spot for this little thing and almost wished that we could take her home with us. I was practical though and when Joseph remembered that a young guy named Andrew had moved into a different house down the road, we drove her to that house and let her out. As we were backing out of the driveway, she jumped in the passenger side window. Her legs were absurdly short (possibly part Corgi) and yet, she managed to leap through the window. We repeated the experience twice more as we backed out. Finally she resigned herself to watching us drive away, which I was a little disappointed by, truth be told.

As the spring moved on, we would sometimes hear her barking in the evening (she lived about a mile away) and Daisy would stand at the edge of the fruit trees and bark back at her. A few times, she came to visit. We found out later that she was usually hooked up to a zip line outside when her owner wasn't home. She didn't seem to like it much and would periodically escape and come to play with us. She even came to visit the day of our wedding and "attacked" my Aunt Rosie (she came out of nowhere and leapt onto her lap and would not be moved).

Daisy loved it when Apple would come visit but Ellie had a tendancy to get her nose bent out of shape. She'd start snarling and snapping at little Apple after an hour or two. The day that Apple decided to join Ellie on my lap, Joseph happened to have the camera and caught Ellie as she explained to Apple that I was HER Mom and Apple could just step off:




We loved it when Apple would come to visit (aside from Ellie's jealous temper tantrums) so in September when Andrew mentioned that he was moving to Moses Lake and was looking for a home for Apple, we were tempted. After a moment of thought however I put my foot firmly down. Two dogs is plently of dogs. Three dogs is just...well it's excessive. The people who lived here for the 4 years between the original owners and us had a minimum of 5 dogs (at one point they had 10) which just added to the...trashiness. There. I said it. The people who lived here were trashy and they had a lot of dogs and I was paranoid about being like them in ANY way. So I told Andrew that no, we would not be able to take Apple and good luck finding a home for her. I followed it up with, "Of course if you can't find ANYONE who will take her and it's between the pound and us...we would take her...temporarily. We could be sort of foster parents while you look for a permanent home for her."

2 weeks later Andrew pulled up in front of the house with a bag of dog food, a bag of toys and Apple. We exchanged phone numbers and I said we'd take good care of her while he looked for a permanent home.

That night, she slept on the bed curled up behind my knees.

The next day while I was working at my desk, she walked in, crawled under the desk and fell asleep on my feet. My heart melted.

Ellie did not warm to Apple's 24-hour presence as quickly as I did. In fact, Ellie went into a sulky blue funk for days. She spent hours behind the toilet (her favorite sulking place) and could hardly be persuaded to dance for a treat. Joseph and I tried to make an extra effort to show her that we loved her just as much as ever but Apple tended to hear the loving and come investigate which made Ellie retreat to the toilet and look at us reproachfully. I felt terribly guilty. My little girl was suffering and it was my fault. I imagined that she must feel like I had felt when my parents brought home the squalling little attention hound that was my baby brother, ruining the perfect universe of undivided Mom-time I had been used to. Poor Ellie. I started worrying about what she would do when we had a baby.

We continued to shower Ellie with love and around the 5th day, she snapped out of her funk. She seemed to realize that we DID still love her and darn it, this little Apple was kind of FUN. She was really good at running and chasing and added a whole new dynamic to the games they usually played. The three of them became fast friends and I promptly announced to Joseph that I loved Apple and I didn't want to give her to anyone else and I didn't care WHO thought we were trashy for having three dogs. I asked Joseph to call Andrew and tell him that we'd like him to stop looking for a home for her. He did, and she was ours.

I love my cats. I have loved my cats for 13 years now. They are wonderful. I love Ellie and Daisy. They are my sweet, 45 pound babies. I adore them and I have since we got them, one year ago. What I am about to say should in no way diminish how much I adore Mister Mister, Edie, Ellie and Daisy.

For some reason (maybe it was her size), I found myself going totally ga-ga over Apple. I made up odes to her sweet little feet (the sweetest feet a dog ever had) and carried her around like a baby, kissing her little belly. I called her my little Apple-Butter, Apple-Fritter, Apple-Bee, Apple-Blossom. My sweetest little Apple-oosa....that's probably enough to get the idea. I was in love with her. I baby talked to her. I spoiled her. I loved her. I thought of finally learning to knit so I could make a little sweater for her. I couldn't wait for winter so I could see her playing in the snow (I love dogs playing in the snow).

Even Joseph went pretty soft on her. His previous rule that no dogs could sleep on the bed went out the window and when Apple decided that ON the bed was not good enough; she wanted to be under the covers between us, he relented after just a little grumbling. After all, she did have the sweetest little eyebrows a dog ever had. And she was just a little thing. He called her our little toaster oven.

The next month can only be described as dog-bliss. The three girls would spend hours racing around outside. I have never seen Ellie and Daisy enjoy playing so much and Apple was thoroughly enjoying life off a zip line. She was wild and wooly and crazy but when she came inside she would cuddle down at my feet while I worked and curl up on me when I watched a movie or read a magazine. She cuddled like Ellie and Daisy never would. When I would come home from the store she would jump up on the hood of my car. She would follow Joseph around outside and just lay down in the garage while he worked on something, getting up to follow him when he went outside. She was a happy dog and she made all of us happy too.



Last Monday I flew to Los Angeles to get trained on my new job. I had to leave the house at 4am to get to the airport in time and before I left I kissed Joseph and Apple and Daisy, all asleep on the bed (Apple convinced Daisy that the bed was THE place to sleep and she'd started sneaking onto the bed around 2am every morning). I blew a kiss to Ellie, asleep in the closet and kissed Edie and Mister Mister's forehead as they slept in the cat tree (Edie made a protesting and cranky MEOW in response. She IS 14 years old...I shouldn't have woken her). I started the car and with a bit of a self-pitying sigh, drove off to my "other" life.

It was a short trip, full of fancy restaurants, valet parking and swanky hotels. A totally different world than our home life. I spoke to Joseph on Tuesday night after an amazing sushi dinner and before retiring to the hotel bar for bonding with my new colleagues. I told him all about the new job, the people I was working with...and the food. I mostly raved about the food. I asked how my babies were and he told me that they were all fine, though he hadn't seen Apple for a few hours. I suggested that he check down at Kolby's (the neighbor with the three dogs). We hadn't been able to find her one night and after hours of worry I had found her over there playing with those dogs. I was sure that was where she was.

The next morning I called Joseph to say good morning. He didn't answer. I called a couple of hours later. He didn't answer. I sent him an email. No answer. I went to the airport and spent a couple of hours waiting for my flight from LA to Seattle. I called a dozen times. I couldn't imagine where he could be. I had a paranoid flash that he WAS home, he was just not answering the phone because he hadn't found Apple the night before. Then I started worrying that he had hit a deer when he was driving around looking for her and he was hurt or worse.

I am a fretter. Joseph will get angry at me from time to time for my tendancy to fabricate things to worry about. So, I spent the flight from LA to Seattle trying to put Joseph's voice of reason in my head. EVERYONE is FINE. Everyone is ALWAYS fine. I am always worrying and there is never anything to worry about. Still, as soon as the plane touched down, I was dialing home. No answer.

15 seconds after I hung up the phone, it rang. I saw that it was home and answered, "You're ALIVE! I'm so glad! I've been worrying and worrying and imagining you dead in a ditch and--"

"Apple is dead." He said, interrupting me. "Apple got hit by a car."

I sat on that airplane full of people on their way home from Mexican cruises and I couldn't say anything. I have no idea how much time went by. I'm sure it was just seconds.

"I didn't want to tell you over the phone but you kept calling and calling and I knew you would be worrying..."

I think I said something like, "I can't have this conversation. I'll call you when I get to Spokane." And I hung up the phone.

Death isn't something that I have a lot of experience with. Suffering, I understand. Depression and anguish and hopelessness, I am very familiar with. The sudden death of someone healthy and joyous and young...I couldn't process it. Half of my mind set to telling me that I could not cry until I was in my car in the Spokane Airport parking lot. There would be no weeping on a puddle-jumper flight from Seattle to Spokane. The other half of my brain tried to be very logical. This happens. Dogs get hit by cars. Animals die. People die. People lose their children in car accidents. This was a dog. This was a dog that was mine for barely more than a month. This was not a tragedy in the grand picture of life; it was just a sad thing.

I made it to the bathroom in the Spokane airport before I lost it. My baby. My little Apple Blossom. My sweet little precious Apple-oosa. More than anything I wanted to hold her and feel her warm little body. I couldn't believe that I never would again.

It was a long drive home. When I got to our gravel road I stopped the car. I didn't want to drive up to the house and find that it was all true. I wanted to wake up and have Joseph roll his eyes and tell me I worry too much. I wanted to run away.

Then I thought of my sweet, loving, kind-hearted husband who had been all alone with this for over 24 hours. He had found her. He had carried her little body into the garage. He had tried to spare me the news as long as he could. He had dealt with it all by himself with no one to comfort him. It was time for me to be there with him and for us to grieve together.

The next day, Joseph started work on the new Bio-Deisel refinery they are building in Odessa and I had my first day at home with my new job. At one moment Apple's absence would overwhelm me. At the next, I would forget, and adust my feet under my desk, expecting her to be asleep there. I would go to the basement and halfway down the stairs turn around to see why I didn't hear her little toenails on the stairs behind me.

Just before sunset, I shut down my computer and went out to the row of trees where we had decided to bury her. I dug her little grave. I had never dug a grave before. I knew that Joseph would have done it but I felt like I needed to do it. I felt like it would help it to sink in so I could stop forgetting and having it hit me like a ton of bricks every 10 minutes. I have never lost an animal that was MINE before. Apple was mine. She was my sweet baby and I wasn't there when she died. I was in Beverly Hills eating $200 worth of Sushi. I know that it didn't matter whether I was there or not. Apple didn't understand that cars wouldn't (and usually couldn't) stop for her. We don't know who hit her. Maybe they didn't realize they had hit her. Maybe they did. It doesn't matter. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't Joseph's fault.

Joseph came home and we buried her as the sun went down. We told her that we loved her and we thanked her for finding us and for bringing us so much happiness. We told her how sorry we were that we would never see her play in the snow, or get a bath, or meet a baby goat.

Ellie spent the next several days in a state of total despair and neediness. She was as miserable as we were and she needed to be touched at all times. We spent some long hours on the couch with me crying and her resting her head on me and licking my face from time to time (and whining if I didn't have a hand on her head). I turned my attention to cheering her up and today, 9 days after we lost Apple, I think she is improving. She is still awfully needy but she has started playing with Daisy again (they are having to re-learn their games for 2).

Before we lost Apple, Ellie would lie on the bed if, and only if, there was no one else on it. If anyone would jostle the bed or touch her while she was on the bed she would growl a little and harumph herself off the bed and into the closet. The last few nights, she has slept on the bed with Joseph and I for the first half of the night and Daisy has slept on the bed the second half. They take up a lot more room than Apple did but we don't mind. It reminds us of our little toaster oven and fills a tiny part of the hole she left behind.

We've been busily marching into fall and looking forward to the long, cold winter. That is, I have been looking forward to the long, cold winter (Turtleneck sweaters! Fires in the fireplace! All-weekend chili contests between the two of us with two dutch ovens and a cribbage board to keep us entertained between tastings! No weeding or watering of the garden!). Joseph has been chopping wood and trying to remind me of the weeks on end where the fog was so thick that we couldn't see the garage from the house or the field across the street, of the perilous driving conditions and suicidal deer (note to self--buy more deer whistles for the cars) and the mud. I have a selective memory. I don't think it was that bad.

We harvested our crops and skinned and froze the ripe tomatoes, pickled the hot green peppers, taught the dogs to like eggplant (I could have and should have made several batches of vegetable lasagna with the bounty of eggplant but...well, I had to let something go and since Joseph hates eggplant, that is what ended up being wasted). Once everything was harvested we found ourselves with 16 pounds of green tomatoes and 42 eggs in the refrigerator (we'd been too busy to make eggs daily and the chickens had been quite prolific so things had gotten a little out of hand). I still had the rotten eggplant on my conscience and was not about to let those tomatoes or eggs go to waste. I made a batch of non-fat baked green tomatoes with the green beefsteak tomatoes (shockingly good with a little hot sauce splashed on top) and set a few on the counter to ripen but there were still far too many. Joseph made an 8 egg omelet which was a hearty dinner for him but which didn't put a dent in the egg supply. Out came "The joy of Pickling" where I found recipes for curried green tomato pickles and spicy pickled eggs. I have an adventurous palate and I love just about anything pickled and I love curry so...I thought we could make a few pints of the curried tomatoes. After my attempt at Apricot Ginger Chutney (which will not be given to anyone at Christmas with a little red and green plaid ribbon around it; it is just this side of inedible. Lesson learned: doubling the ginger is not wise on one's first try with a recipe), I wanted to follow the recipe religiously and I was prepared that this would be a "weird" pickle and possibly one that only I would eat. I thought 6 pints would be enough to last a couple of years.

The recipe in the book made 3 pints so I doubled it (in my head) as I went along. I started by selecting unblemished tomatoes (most of them were a little bigger than a large cherry tomato), washing them, coring them, and slicing them 1/8 of an inch thick as instructed. I quickly realized that it would take days and I had fond visions of a family of women in gingham aprons making huge batches of canned goodness to be divided among them, each working with assembly line efficiency. I, on the other hand, was slow and wearing rubber gloves to protect my delicate hands from the acid in the tomatoes. I had given myself a terrible acid burn while working with our hot peppers a couple of days before (they didn't seem that hot...) and I was gun-shy. Incidentally, I tried about 18 different remedies for hot pepper burns and the one that worked the best was scrubbing with orange GoJo and then rubbing a cut red onion all over the affected area. Presto. No more burning. I found that remedy after several hours of misery and while I now had the secret recipe for defusing the burn, the memory of it was all too vivid, so I wore rubber gloves to cut the tomatoes. They lasted about 5 minutes. The third time I cut off a small piece of the glove and had to root through the tomatoes to find the missing piece, I took the damn things off and reasoned that green tomatoes don't have nearly as much acid as red ones so I should be fine. But I digress.

I did not have a community of aproned women to come help me; I had Joseph. I asked if he would be willing to give me a hand and he willingly and enthusiastically jumped in (though I stopped short at putting him in a gingham apron). The first thing he did was pull our new food processor out of the cupboard and say, "Um, would this speed things up?" I shook my head, "No. The recipe calls for 1/8 inch slices and they have to be cored and...I'm sure that would turn it all to pulp." He asked if he could just TRY it on a couple of tomatoes. After getting his assurance that he would clean the processor once the experiment failed, I relented (we DID have an abundance of green tomatoes. I could spare a handful in the interest of science). He set it up as I continued to core, slice, slice, slice, slice, core, slice, slice, slice, slice. I heard the whir of the cuisinart and the next thing I knew, Joseph placed a sliced tomato on the cutting board next to the one I had just sliced. It was not mangled, it was not pulverized. It was beautifully and cleanly cut and closer to the 1/8 inch than any of mine were. I love this food processor. I love my husband for shaking me out of my martyr ways.

We set up our own assembly line of washing, coring and whirring and before we knew it, 4 pounds of green tomatoes and a few onions were sliced up, salted and sitting in a covered bowl for 12 hours. We moved on to the pickled eggs which were much easier (I say that because Joseph peeled them. There is nothing worse than peeling a farm-fresh, hard-boiled egg. We even selected eggs that were a week to 10 days old which should be plenty old enough to hard-boil and peel. We used the proper boiling method, shocked them in cold water and then peeled under running water. IMPOSSIBLE. I really, really lose my temper with eggs that don't peel. I tend to hurl the partially peeled egg in to the sink, the garbage, across the room...so Joseph took over the egg peeling and I made the brine. Piece of cake. Within about 30 minutes we had a quart of spicy pickled eggs. That brought us down to 18 surplus eggs (until we checked on the chickens and collected 6 more).

Later that night we completed the curried green tomato pickles. I tasted them before I sealed and processed the pints. They were...interesting. I was pretty sure that they would not be something (again) that we would be giving away with pride and ribbons but I hoped after they had their week in a dark place they would be appealing to me in some way. I was glad that we'd only made 4 pints. I got online and found a recipe for a spicy green tomato chutney (again with the chutney...I thought if I followed the recipe closely it would be fine) and a green tomato salsa. They looked like just the recipes that would transform our remaining 12 pounds of green tomatoes into Christmas gifts.

I had to go on a business trip the next week and then to Boise for my Grandmother's 80th birthday. I knew that the tomatoes should be canned asap but I just didn't have time. Joseph offered to do it. I was a little wary--I mean sure he had helped with the last batch but...he hadn't read the book on canning. He didn't know the history of pickling and the different ways that people pickle around the world. What did he know about chutney? Still, with my bags packed, my keys in hand and a counter full of produce that would go bad by the time I got back, I didn't have a lot of choice. I told him which recipes were to be used and where to find them, assured him that I had purchased all of the ingredients and off I went. On Friday I called him and asked how the canning had gone. He said the salsa tasted a little...green...but he had made 12 pints of it so hopefully it would improve with time. I asked about the chutney. He paused. "I was thinking I would wait until you got home to tell you." I asked him to just tell me now.

It seems that he had gotten a little mixed up (quite understandably) and had used a different recipe than the spicy green tomato chutney recipe. I said that was fine--he said he hadn't realized it until he got to the end and remembered the 8 granny smith apples that I had purchased for the chutney recipe...and realized that he had followed a recipe that did not call for any apples.

"What did you make Joseph?" I asked cautiously.

"ummm....it seems that I made...more...curried green tomato pickles."

"How MUCH more?"

"Oh, 8 pints."

Our first year of gardening had produced 12 pints of green tasting salsa, 6 half-pints of nasty apricot chutney, 4 pints of dark looking pickled hot peppers, a few bags of frozen tomatoes and chili peppers and 14 pints of weird CURRIED GREEN TOMATO PICKLES. There was nothing to do but laugh, which I did until my Mother (who was sitting next to me) started to get concerned that something had sent me around the bend.

A few days later I was back home and working in my office. Joseph came in and asked me to have a bite of the hamburger he had just made. I'm trying to eat healthier and Joseph tends to put 1/2 inch slices of cheese on his burgers (delicious, but not very heart-friendly) so I declined but he pressed and it DID smell good so I took a bite. It was the best burger I had eaten in at least a year. There was something...fascinating and addictive about it. I had a few bites and finally asked WHAT he had done to make it so amazing.

He smiled and peeled back the bun. On top of the cheese where one would expect to see a sliced dill pickle and sliced onion, there was a pile of curried green tomato pickles. It. Was. Fabulous.

We went through the first jar in no time and are halfway through the second. Last night I used it to make a curried tuna melt. I'm thinking of buying some nice Chicago-style hot dogs just so I have something else to put it on--this stuff is so much better than any relish I have ever tasted. I don't think 14 pints is going to be enough. Next year we will have to double our tomato crop, maybe introducing a second, late planting to ensure that we have enough green tomatoes to fill the need.

We opened a can of the salsa and found it to be not only not "green tasting" but better than the store-bought salsa we had in the fridge.

The lesson to be learned here is...oh dear. I think the lesson is that Joseph is better at canning and pickling than I am. No, no...there must be a different moral to this story.

The lesson to be learned here is...that canned goodness makes lousy Christmas gifts. If it doesn't turn out, you are too ashamed to give it away and if it DOES turn out, you don't WANT to give it away. I know! We'll give everyone pickled eggs for Christmas. They turned out quite good (as pickled eggs go) and we have no shortage of extra eggs (at last count, we were back up to 46 in the fridge).

Or we could buy people fuzzy socks with snowflakes on them. That would probably cost less to ship.

On August 31, 2007 we celebrated the first anniversary of our lives in Odessa. It's been quite a ride.

Looking back over the last year I am shocked by the optimism we mustered in the face of unexpected plagues. I was not really a positive minded kind of person in my urban life. In fact, I generally felt that most endeavors were doomed to fail and therefore pointless. Somehow determination and delusion collided when Joseph and I decided to move and the result was honest to god optimism. Over the last year we have faced exploding toilets, months of fog and mud, distemper, sage bugs by the millions, 7 acres of noxious weeds, businesses closing (so long Odessa gas station, so long job), a population of deer with a death-wish, chickens ejecting their intestines, baby bird corpses scattered about and yes, a bit of loneliness from time to time.

I talk a good talk but I must be fair and admit that there have been many moments when all of these things (plus a wedding to plan and execute) tested my optimism and patience. We are still in an awfully precarious spot; The job market is non-existent. The friends we have made locally are still in the infancy of friendship and far from a sure thing (I accidentally spilled a beer on one of the two women I was hoping to be friends with last weekend at Odessa's annual Deutschesfest and she left in a soggy huff. This act of slightly drunken clumsiness may have cost me a burgeoning friendship). Money is an ever-present concern. What if the well DID run dry? What if I total the car by hitting a deer? What if (heaven forbid), I lost my job? I don't think we'd be able to make it on my salary as a Walmart cashier but there aren't that many other options. Put on top of all that the stress of getting married and I am forced to admit that there have been a handful of tense moments between my dear husband and I. Our unspoken agreement is that for each crisis, one of us gets to be the freaking out one and the other has to hold it together. That works pretty well. It's when we both think it is our turn to freak out and yet the other is already freaking out that we end up not handling the situation very well.

The day of our moving anniversary, we were getting ready for guests. Joseph's Brother, Sister-in-Law and 4 beautiful nieces were coming for a visit. It was a hot day so we decided to splurge and turn the air-conditioner on to ensure that the house was pleasant for them. We threw in a couple loads of laundry and set to straightening, cleaning, dusting and such. As I was washing the dishes I started getting loud sputtering out of the faucet instead of the expected stream of hot water. Strange. I continued cleaning; we had the iPod cranked up and were trying to do the fastest job we could.

Over the sounds of Paul Simon, Joseph and I heard something. A hissing of some sort. It seemed to be coming from the washing machine which usually makes very different sorts of noises. We both walked towards it, our collective brows furrowed in concentration when it hit us. We've heard that sound before. It is the sound of an appliance (toilet, sink, washing machine, whatever) trying to get water and not getting any. We put it together that the sputtering sink faucet and the hissing washing machine meant that the well was not getting water to the house again. Last time we ended up replacing the motor on the well pump. We were warned then that our pump was on its last legs and could go at any time and that it would probably be six to nine thousand dollars to replace it. I have hidden that warning (and its price tag) deep in the crevasses of denial in my soul. When I recognized the cause of the washing machine sputter, of course I was sure that it had finally happened.

Joseph crawled down the hole to see what was going on and tinkered with the holding tank, air pressure level etc until we had water to the house again. I breathed relief and went to turn the washing machine back on. The water wouldn't turn back on. I opened it and found the load of towels soaking in rusty water. When the well holding tank got low, apparently a bunch of rust came into the pipes and clogged everything. Joseph said not to worry--he would clean out all the rust from the small pipes going to the washing machine, dishwasher, toilets and sinks and everything would be fine.

I tried to shake off the heart-racing, bile-inducing fear of a well pump gone bad and moved on with the day. I put the finishing touches on the bathroom and on my way back to the kitchen I smelled something. Burning something. Sure enough, the dryer was emitting a little smoke and a very unpleasant smell. I opened it. There was a screwdriver that had wedged between the turning part of the basket and the lint catcher, holding the dryer in place so the motor was burning itself out trying to make the dryer basket move in a direction that the screwdriver wouldn't allow. I turned it off, manhandled the screwdriver out of place and tried to turn it back on. No luck. The dryer was dead.

I had HOUSE guests coming and the pipes were full of rust, the water holding tank was apparently leaking air or something (and full of rust), the towels in the washer were soaking in rusty water and the water intake was clogged and now the dryer was broken.

I walked into the room where Joseph was trying to put the new air-pump in the Aero bed (the original pump died after one use) and I stood in the doorway holding the slightly bent screwdriver which was to blame and which had come out of his pocket. "This was in the dryer. Now the dryer is broken." I knew, despite the accusatory tone in my voice and the tremor in the hand holding said screwdriver that it was not Joseph's fault that his screwdriver killed the dryer. I'm sure I was the one who scooped up his clothes from the floor and threw them in the washing machine. I always check the pockets, but Carhartts are sneaky. They have extra, secret tool pockets down by the hammer loop. I never check there.

We had a moment where the adrenaline from the frantic cleaning, the issue with the water, the washing machine and the broken dryer all came together in a dust devil of temper losing. We both were trying to gauge whose turn it was to melt down when Joseph got a gleam in his eye and said, "Aren't you glad I fixed up the old clothesline?"

It was a bold choice--to attempt to diffuse the towering specter of anger with humor, but somehow it worked. I laughed, put the weapon--I mean screwdriver--down and asked how the aero bed was coming. He clicked it in place and pushed the button and bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvvvvv. It inflated.

About an hour later I was vacuuming and wondering why the central air conditioner (which we had installed before we moved in) wasn't cooling the house down faster. I checked the thermostat. It was 82 degrees in the house. The air conditioner was set to 74. When we turned the air conditioner on that morning, it was 79 degrees in the house. Now, I'm not a mathematician or a meteorologist or anything but...I think it should work in the opposite direction. I listened for the roar of the air conditioner. I didn't hear it. I turned it off and on again. It didn't come on.

At this point, I didn't know whether the universe was playing some huge joke on us to remind us of how crappy the place was when we moved in, or if it was a warning of things to come in year two or WHAT, but I found the timing to be very inconsiderate. I turned the central fan on, hoping at least that would provide some relief, and I heard it click on. I went to the vent and felt almost nothing. I called Joseph who confirmed that yes, there should be actual, identifiable air coming out of the vent, at least enough to flutter a little girl's hair ribbon. The air coming out of the vent was so weak it didn't even disturb a HAIR on the vent.

We looked at each other. The dryer was one thing, but WINTER IS COMING and the 1 year old, just out of warranty central heating and cooling system was not working. What is an appropriate level of freaking in that scenario? Joseph watched me cautiously, poised to duck if I started throwing things. I put my head in my hands and squeezed a tear out, then took a deep breath and shrugged. He said something along the lines of, "we don't need no stinkin' central heat/air/fan ANYWAY." He gave me a hug, we switched off the thermostat and headed to the kitchen to make dinner.

Of all the things we have done this year, of all the hard work and accomplishments, and all the challenges that we have faced, that moment is my proudest. On a day when everything was supposed to go right and NOTHING did, when expensive and rather important aspects of our basic needs failed us, we were somehow able to laugh and dance in the kitchen while we made tacos.

Our glass was half full.

Later that evening I pushed the start button on the dryer, not expecting any reaction, and it started. I ran to the thermostat and turned the air conditioner on and heard it roar to life. Apparently the dryer motor just needed to cool down after the altercation with the screwdriver and the air conditioner needed to de-thaw after a long morning of trying to cool the house.

It's an important lesson for us. I think we're finally starting to get it.

One does not complain about over-abundance.


One does not complain about over-abundance.


One does not complain about over-abundance.


I know this in my head but...really. This is ridiculous.

Everything is growing. The vegetable and herb garden is an absurd success. We have more vegetables than we know what to do with. At dinner tonight when we had another main course of zucchini and tomato sauce with parmesan, Joseph confessed that he is "vegetabled out." We've been harvesting for less than a week. We're in big trouble.

The eggplants are the biggest concern for me right now. We've harvested three and there are about 6 mostly grown which are mere days from harvesting. I like Eggplant Parmesan and Baba Ghanough more than most people do but even I couldn't eat all this eggplant. Joseph says eggplants are slugs in disguise and won't eat them at all. I've begged him to help me with them but he is firm.

The Zucchini are less of a concern as they'll keep a while in the basement pantry/root cellar but I know we are going to have way too much. The tomatoes...well, the tomatoes are so ridiculous I am ashamed. Not ONE of the tomato plants died and they are producing more than I ever dreamed possible. Yesterday evening I spent 2 full hours pruning them and discovered that there is an entire generation of NEW tomato blossoms popping out. I harvested 15 last night and there are probably another 6-8 that I should gather today.

We have 2 types of squash in addition to the zucchini--one is an acorn squash with approximately 50 squash blossoms and the other I think is a crookneck but I can't remember for sure and of course we didn't write anything down this year. We had a wedding to plan. I truly expected everything to die and we would chalk it up to a learning experience.

In April Joseph brought home a couple of old quadtrac treads (weighing 900 pounds each) and a few tractor tires. We spent weeks excavating dirt from areas that had too much, sifting the dirt (the lovely clay soil which I expected would suffocate anything we tried to grow) through a device he invented and which looks a lot like an old time gold prospector's sluice box and put the resulting weed and grass-free dirt into the treads. It took us about sixteen times longer than I expected it to and while I entertained myself for the first few hours shouting out lines from Cool Hand Luke and singing "That's the sound of the man working on the chain gang," it got REALLY old once my hands were covered in blisters and the muscles in my back were knotted up like a retired fishing net. I tried alternating arms with my shovels full of dirt but coordination has never been my strong suit and every time I tried to use my left hand for guiding the shovel it went wild and ended up everywhere but in the tire. I finally gave up the alternating arms. By the end of the 2 weeks it took to fill the tires, I had one very impressive tricep and one very impressive forearm muscle. Unfortunately they were on opposite arms so I looked a bit lopsided. I had to spend the next month concentrating on atrophy as much as possible so my disproportion wasn't terribly obvious in my strapless wedding gown. The farmer's tan I just had to accept. One simply cannot be a farmer in a tube top, no matter how much better the tan is.

We kept plugging along until the tires and treads were mostly full of dirt but we were so sick of looking at the stupid things by the time we finished that we didn't plant our seedlings until weeks after the "last frost" date of May 15th. As I recall, my words as I planted the seedlings were, "STUPID GARDEN. I hope you all die!" In my heart, I must have sent the seedlings thoughts of encouragement because they are doing very well despite the late start and verbal abuse. Come to think of it, they may have banded together and the acorn squash (who is conveniently placed in the center...) told all the other plants that the best way to get back at me for my words of anger would be to grow like crazy and overwhelm me with the bounty of an Eastern Washington vegetable garden. "We'll show her," I can imagine it saying. "That girl will be praying for squash beetles and cucumber worms before the summer is out."

That is the problem with allowing your seedlings to come to life in your kitchen instead of a greenhouse. The close proximity gives them too much insight into your psyche and therefore weak spots. You just can't trust some vegetables.

Of course, we have no vegetable threatening bugs. The stupid clay soil appears to be the perfect thing for raised bed gardening and I don't know what to do with all these damn tomatoes. The herbs are taking over and are now starting to flower and despite the fact that I've weeded these raised beds ONCE in the last 3 months, they are far from over-run.

I hate myself for resenting the garden's success. I have read many accounts of people who studiously plan their garden and measure the pH of their soil and make the proper amendments and plant mutually beneficial plants next to each other and who struggle terribly to get a single tomato plant to bear fruit. Is there a secret part of me who is thrilled to her toes by the abundance? Absolutely. I want to invite all the people who thought I had no idea what I was doing and were sure I would get my come-uppance once August hit and all my plants died to come help me eat some of this cornucopia. The rest of me shakes her head and reaches for the books on canning and pickling. I can't let it go to waste.

I did not grow up in a canning or pickling household. In fact, I have never, to this day, watched anyone pickle or can anything. About 3 weeks ago when the apricot trees were loaded with fruit, I decided it was time to sink or swim as a farm woman and I made and canned an apricot ginger chutney. Some good friends of ours who have been an excellent source of emotional encouragement gave us a canning set for our wedding so I had no excuse. I struggled with the mincing of the ginger and I suspect that the result is going to be awfully strange and fairly unappetizing but the fact remains that I DID IT! It was a hot Sunday afternoon but I decided not to turn on the air conditioning anyway. Did Ma Ingalls have air conditioning? HELL NO!

By the time I was finished, sticky and over-heated, I was cursing the fact that the harvest (and therefore canning) season is in the heat of the summer and I was imagining the Ma Ingalls in my head tsk-ing at my silliness. "Life is hard enough" I could hear her saying, "without choosing heat and hardship over air conditioning." It's probably a sign of heat exhaustion to imagine talking historical figures in one's head. Regardless, I canned my first can.

I'm finding that the worst part of learning new things is the fear of failure that overwhelms me between the time that I buy the book explaining (in minute detail usually) the task I wish to accomplish and the time that I finally leap in and do it. There is just so much information out there and what if I do it wrong and what if the lid doesn't seal and what if one can somehow turns out bad and that is the can that I give to a dear friend and it KILLS THEM?

These are the things that keep me up at night and drive me to curse the bounty of my vegetable garden.

I try to remind myself that so far (knock on wood), I haven't failed miserably at any of these "farming" tasks. I've failed in numerous small ways but it hasn't caused any major disaster. Slowly, the vast expanse between the country living of my dreams and the country living of my dusty, wind-swept reality are getting closer and closer together.

I have shelves of old cans, a box of new canning lids, jugs of vinegar, boxes of salt and mounds of surplus veggies. There really is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Well, I also fear the acorn squash just a little bit:

We now have 2 chicks and they are thriving. Joseph and I "candled" the remaining eggs (a process which involves a cardboard box with a small hole in it and a halogen trouble light inside--or a candle, but we opted for the plug-in variety) and it appears that we could have as many as 9 more chicks on the way. It is more likely that we have 7 rotten eggs that look to our inexperienced eyes like they have chicks in them and 2 more chicks in waiting, but at this point I feel pretty good letting nature take its course. Of course Joseph just read that a rotten egg can start "weeping" and then explode after a long enough period of time which is a horrifying thought, but at this moment, I am sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for a flight to India for a ONE DAY business trip (one day in India that is...4 days getting there) so if any of them do explode, I won't get hit.







They are sweet little fuzzballs but I will not make pets of them. I am quite content making pets of our foster chickens. Edwina and Suzy, two of the niece-chickens can only be described as cuddly. When I walk by the fence of the chicken yard they run along-side clucking at me so I realize that I should come in and give them some loving. The other two are sweet but appear to have decided that they are chickens after all and they don't NEED affection--just food. Edwina and Suzy seem to be convinced that they are human. I am coming to that conclusion myself. I actually found myself wondering if I could make a little chicken diaper for them so they could come in the house and hang out. I bet they would love to snuggle down on the couch and watch a movie with us or cluck around at my feet while I make dinner (picking up scraps of food as I "accidentally" drop them).

It is an insane idea. I do recognize that. I can just see the news report about the crazy woman in the country who diapered her chickens and let them sleep on her pillow at night next to her head (to catch the orifice flies of course). I will resist the temptation.

Joseph seems just as smitten with the girls in his own way, though he hasn't broached the subject of bringing them in the house. Instead he has put his mind to building a proper chicken tractor which will give them a luxury mobile condo with fresh grass (and apricots) every day and will permit us to have them in the yard with us while we putter around or sit on the patio playing cribbage or dominoes. We should, should, should be focusing on the goat projects but...twice a day we are struck with how WRONG it is for Edwina and Suzy to be in the chicken coop with those...chickens instead of in a nice, people-friendly place like a deluxe condo/tractor in the orchard.

Or...maybe we should just get television. It may be healthier in the long run and less likely to cause our neighbors to tell tales about our eccentricities. So far, no one has seen us hug the girls but once we have them in the yard with us...it becomes a likely scenario.

The last 3 weeks have seen us wandering around in a bit of a haze. We pick up a hoe, dig some weeds, then absently put the hoe down and walk over to the hammocks where we swing for a few minutes. One of us will say, "we should probably DO something" and the other will agree and we will get up, pull a few handfuls of weeds, decide that it is too hot to be weeding and we go in the house and walk around picking up dog toys, putting them down again, vacuuming the hallway but not getting to the living room, etc.

It IS too hot to be weeding but I think the root cause of our lack of motivation is that we are experiencing the old wedding let down they speak of in tales of yore. The immediate pressure is off and we're having a hard time gathering the motivation to start in on a new project. We just need some down time.

Unfortunately, the world is not taking down time and we need to get moving. By the end of the month we intend to have goats which means we need goat fences (a major project), we need goat medical supplies, buckets for water, vaccine schedules, heat lamps for when the does kid in February and all the other recommended accoutrements for goat birthing (hanging scales, baby monitors with a strong enough signal to go from the barn to the house, some clue of what we are getting into...). We also need to figure out the water situation.

We have a "frost free" hydrant next to the well which theoretically, we can use to get water during the freezing months (one cannot use a hose for the transporting of water when it is 10 degrees). Last winter we had no reason to use this hydrant. Our outside adventures consisted of chopping and gathering wood, sweeping the porch and running around occasionally when the bitter wind was not blowing too hard squealing, "LOOK! Snow!" This year is going to be different. Not only will we have goats that will need fresh water at least once a day, we will also have the chickens that will need water.

The prospect of standing at the hydrant filling buckets of water and then carrying those buckets of water to the barn (careful not to slip and fall) in windy, freezing, foggy conditions is not appealing at all. I can see it taking the bloom off the adventure of animal husbandry in a hurry. The solution is to run water to the barn so we can walk through the freezing fog to the shelter of the slightly warmer barn and THEN fill up the water buckets. It is difficult to really grasp how terribly important this is when it is 95 degrees outside. Cold? What is this cold you speak of? Can't we just swing in the hammock for a little while longer?

I would almost describe our mood over the last few weeks as blue-tinged. The gas station closed down a few days after Joseph went back to work. This was a blessing on one hand (I hated how much he had to work and it left little energy for farm work) but it sure left us lonely and without any town gossip to chew on (except the closing of the gas station but we've really chewed that one to death by now). We've been sighing a lot.

Even the chickens were making us a little sad. They almost stopped laying in June; four of them went broody and just wanted to sit on eggs in the nest, so they stopped laying. They others apparently are well beyond their productive years so we were averaging about 1 egg a day from our flock of 13 hens. Part of this can surely be chalked up to the heat--they just don't have the energy for egg production--and the rest can be chalked up to the fact that we have a flock of OLD chickens. Half of these girls should have been sent to the stew pot long ago. The only ones that I think still have egg production in them are the ones that went broody and were refusing to lay.

So...we got discouraged and started buying eggs at the grocery store. When we got back from the honeymoon and found the four broody hens still broody (it had been MONTHS that they had been like this---we read that they usually got over it after about 3 weeks), we decided to just let them have some stupid eggs. Maybe they would hatch something but more likely, they would just sit on a bunch of rotten eggs. FINE. We were sick of going out to collect the eggs and coming back empty handed and disappointed. Better to go out to the coop with the intention of feeding and watering the chickens with no expectations of eggs. Stupid chickens.

One of Joseph's brothers bought chicks for his four girls to raise several months ago. The girls took excellent care of these chickens (they were desirable, easily identifiable breeds! Actual chickens that look like the pictures in the chicken catalog) and they came to be quite sweet and tame. Unfortunately, they reached egg-laying maturity last week and with their egg-laying, they became suddenly vocal. As they were suburban chickens and suburban neighbors don't always like barnyard noises, it was decided that they should come live on Uncle Joseph and Aunt Tricia's farm.

These chickens are so different from our chickens I hesitate to define them as the same species. They are beautiful and young and they follow me around like little feathered puppy dogs. They have lovely yellow legs (not all bleached out and scaly like our old girls), they make the sweetest little clucky noises and will eat scratch right from the can in my hands. THIS is what chickens should be. Unfortunately, they are used to a slightly more pampered way of life and as sweet as they are, when I start to leave after visiting them, they seem to plead with me to take them wherever I am going and not leave them in this...this...COOP with these withered, crotchety, inbred country chickens. Joseph turned the old chicken transporter into a mobile chicken run and put them in the orchard yesterday. They were able to eat grass and bugs and apricots and seemed much happier. The new chickens came with names; Edwina, Marilyn, Chico and Suzie. They will not be treated like old production hens--they will be pet chickens because they have been loved and named and we will just have to keep them forever. I am thrilled with our foster-chickens.

These new chickens got me thinking about the custom of culling old, non-pet birds and I realized that we should, if we are going to be serious about this endeavor, do some trimming to the flock. It is absurd to feed 17 chickens if only 8 of them have any hope of giving back anything of value. I was just screwing up the courage to broach the subject of our worthless flock compared to the four new arrivals when something amazing happened.

A chick hatched.

A sweet little baby chick was sitting in one of the nests with one of our broody little white banty hens. It was all fluffy and yellow with a dark, hourglass shaped spot on its back and head. It was actually sitting in the egg shell, just like in the pictures. I started screaming, "We have a CHICK! We have a CHICK!" which caused the mama hen to scoop the baby underneath it. Without the hypnotic cuteness I was able to tear myself away and almost break my neck running to the garage to find Joseph. I was astounded. Joseph was less surprised. He said he thought he heard peeping that morning but hadn't wanted to mention it to me in case it died. (What kind of a man DOES that?)

I went to our main chicken book (the one with all the breakdowns of the protein and calcium content of proper chicken feed by age and breed and entire chapters devoted to the humidity requirements of incubation) and I searched for what to do when your chicken hatches an egg. There was really nothing. The only reference to natural chicken breeding was, essentially, “chickens have been bred to not get broody so they can’t hatch their own eggs. Get an incubator.” The book goes into great detail about how to build a brooder to put the new chicks in after they have hatched in an incubator. It talks about different philosophies of flooring for new chicks. It talks about culling less than perfect chicks and it prohibits the introduction of chicks to the rest of the flock.

I looked for another book. In the much less antiseptic, “Chickens in your backyard” it says that it is rare to have a hen who will go broody and who will sit on her eggs long enough to hatch them but if you happen to have one, good for you. It says that the Mama will probably take care of the chick but you should isolate her and her eggs.

I went back to the coop. In the nest where the chick was were both of the white banty hens. I don’t know which one hatched the chick. Maybe they both did? Maybe they took turns sitting on it these past 21 days. In the two nests on either side are two of the Sara chickens who are also sitting each on a clutch of eggs. We don’t have enough feeders or confined areas to separate each of the four chickens and who could decide which of the banty hens should go with the chick? After much gnashing of teeth and re-checking of the books we decided to move the nesting box containing the four broody hens and the baby and the dozen or so eggs they were sitting on into the other section of the coop. We bought a chick feeder and water-er and some chick food and decided to just let nature take care of the rest. It seemed cruel and unnatural to take the chick away to put it in a cardboard box with a light bulb above it when it was perfectly content to snuggle between its two mommies in the nest. It’s a gamble, since according to the books, the chick is sure to die unless it is in a sterile, man-made environment, but Joseph and I are both leaning towards chucking the book out a window. I mean really. All over the world people have chickens and I can guarantee that every family in Mexico who has chickens does NOT have an incubator. Maybe mail-order chickens don’t know how to hatch and raise chicks but OUR chickens have the advantage of being old and crotchety and apparently have not read the books that tell them chicks come from incubators or via USPS. They seem to have some instincts left.

We checked on the mamas and hopeful mamas a few hours later and were disturbed to find that they had changed places. This is not what the books say should happen and I was tempted to put each of the hens back in the nest where they were when we moved them but I stopped myself (okay, Joseph stopped me and I came to agree with him). If these chickens want to do some sort of communal egg hatching and raising thing then so be it. It is a grand experiment.

The four new, sweet chickens and the surprise chick have given us a much needed shot in the arm. We are FARMERS sort of! I spent a couple of hours pruning my amazing tomatoes, harvested a zucchini and gathered a bunch more apricots from the orchard (yes, the “orchard” currently consists of 5 trees, but we have visions of many more). I think the post-wedding crash is over. We are starting to see the literal fruits of our labor and we are ready for more.

Today’s spreadsheets are: Water Extension Project, Goat Acquisition Project and Chick Hatching Experiment

We’ve got to get on those goat fences if we’re going to have baby goats this winter. Yee Haw!

I was attracted to Eastern Washington for a number of reasons. First was the cost of real estate. Second was proximity to friends and family and third was the supposed lack of bugs.

I spent several years searching for just the right piece of land in Appalachia. Something about halfway up a mountain overlooking a holler (to avoid being in the path of a flash flood of course) with room for a small cabin (if you've been to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN--and who hasn't--I had in mind something like Dolly's childhood home but about twice the size). My maternal grandfather's family comes from East Tennessee and I've always felt drawn to the area.

About 6 years ago I bought a 1967 Dodge A100 Van and took a leave of absence from my job. I piled the van full of camping supplies, 2 milk crates full of books, 1 stereo (but no extra batteries...a gap in the planning) and two plastic tubs full of food. I brought things like pancake mix (I failed to notice that it required eggs) and cans of refried beans, dried cranberries (to ward off scurvy), lots of beef jerky and an enormous box of dehydrated onions, rice and curry powder. I can smell that plastic tub now.

I had done a little camping but I was by no means an experienced outdoors-person and I had never been to Tennessee. Still, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I drove out to Summertown, TN (a journey deserving an entire book) and spent 2 weeks at "The Farm," a commune where I was going to study Midwifery. It was then that I discovered the moths.

Tennessee has more moths (type and number) than anywhere I have ever been. They are frantic, swarming, attacking beasts who lie in wait, unmoving and chameleon-like until you least expect them (in my experience, they like to wait until you have just stepped into the shower and turned on the water) and then they explode into a cloud of wings and antennae and fat, fuzzy bodies. They stick to your skin when you are wet, often leaving a wing behind in their panicked efforts to...I don't know...die? What are these moths frantically trying to do when they attack a wet human who is innocently trying to take a shower or when they beeline (mothline?) towards a porch light or the flame of a candle? Are they TRYING to die? Is it some sort of moth suicide Olympics? But I digress...

The moths in Tennessee are many and varied, and while they are beautiful when they are resting during the day (particularly the Luna Moth which is by far the most beautiful winged insect I have ever seen), I grew to fear and despise them (you would too if you had to peel moth wings off your naked body in a commune shower).

Then there were the mosquitoes. I have an interesting relationship with mosquitoes. They are drawn to me much as the proverbial moth to flame (see above). I have done scientific experiments (and I use the term "scientific" very lightly) where I go outside with a number of friends for a defined period of time. We are none of us wearing insect repellant, perfume, perfumed lotion or anything that would give one of us an unfair advantage. After the defined period of time, we would go inside and compare mosquito bites. On average, I have 10X the number of bites of any of my friends. If that were not bad enough, when we compare our bodies’ reaction to the bites, the disparity is even greater. Where a normal person may have swelling the size of a dime or a nickel, the redness and swelling from a mosquito bite on my body rarely is smaller than the diameter of a plum and has alarming irregularity of shape with streaks and ripples along the edges. It is a phenomenon that has gotten worse as I have gotten older. I suspect that if I could somehow harness my essence and put it in a mosquito trap, I could make millions.

Tennessee in the summer is a hot, humid place with almost daily torrential downpours lasting 10-30 minutes. Mosquitoes love it. By the end of my first month in Tennessee I looked like I had a bad case of the chicken pox. Bites of various ages and states of healing were woven together across the fabric of my skin. I was hideous. I abandoned my "all natural, safe for children, DEET-free" mosquito repellant for the Libertarian brand, Back-woods, don't talk to me about cancer you lily livered tree hugger, ALL-DEET-ALL-THE-TIME spray which I practically bathed in for the rest of the summer. It reduced the number of mosquito bites by about half, which I considered a victory.

After two weeks of studying midwifery at the commune, I decided that I was looking for a less tofu-focused summer experience and I chose to bid adieu to the folks at "The Farm" and continue my summer of Tennessee alone with occasional stops at my friend Charlotte’s home in Nashville for showers, food requiring refrigeration and companionship. I found the Meriwether Lewis Monument campground which is located on the Natchez Trace and allows 2 weeks of free camping (music to my unemployed ears). The first night I set up my tent and set to collecting firewood. I tramped through the woods in my thermal leggings, singing early Dolly Parton songs and occasionally calling out “Honey, could you put the cooler in the tent?” in the direction of my tent because I suddenly had gotten a trifle paranoid about being a single girl in a no-fee (read: no amenities and no ranger and no phone and mostly homeless people) campground so I thought if I acted like I was with someone, the other camper (there was only one other camper that I could see for a mile which is actually the worst scenario possible) would not think I was a potential axe murdering victim and leave me alone. Either that or he would think I was certifiably insane and steer clear of me. It seemed to have worked because I was not axe murdered and he left the next day.

ANYWAY, I collected my firewood, went back to my camp and built a fire, heated up some refried beans with dehydrated onions and curry powder (note to the reader: canned refried beans do not contain sufficient liquid to re-hydrate dehydrated onions. I recommend using a bit of bottled water to soak the onions and THEN add the beans and curry powder (which should probably be omitted altogether---curried refried beans was a misguided culinary choice). It took me two servings of beans with hard bits of dried onion to reach this conclusion), and after trying to read by candle light (don’t bother even trying this if you are camping in Tennessee---within an hour the candle will be covered with layers of dead moths and they’ll snuff out the flame), I decided to turn in.

I woke about three hours later with my legs and abdomen ON FIRE. I leapt out of my sleeping bag and stripped off my thermal leggings (the very same that I had been wearing on my firewood collecting expedition), expecting to find fire ants or sprigs of stinging nettles in my pants but all I saw by the pitiful light of my flashlight were tiny red dots covering my body. There were dozens of them, with an astounding number centered at the back of my knees and my waistband, and each one itched like the very fires of hell. I searched the sleeping bag and my thermal leggings for the culprit(s) and found nothing. No spiders, no gnats, nothing visible.

I will admit, it was a welcome distraction to the visions of axe-murdering and scenes from “Deliverance” which had filled my head before I went to sleep but that is the best I can say for the experience. I managed to get to sleep by slathering myself in anti-itch gel and sleeping on top of the sleeping bag. I later discovered that the plague I had stumbled upon was the dreaded “chigger.” I had never even heard of a chigger which is why I didn’t know what a bad idea it was to walk through the grass collecting firewood in the same clothes I was going to sleep in. By the end of the summer I had 163 chigger bites which lingered for months. They would seem to disappear and then inexplicably flare up again for a few more weeks. Chiggers, I thought, were the worst bugs that existed anywhere. Then I discovered ticks.

I woke up one morning a week or so into my two weeks at the Meriwether Lewis Monument campground and saw something climbing on my arm. I swatted it off and then, like a good little curious camper, crouched down to look closer at it. It was unlike any insect I had encountered before but after some inspection and brain-racking, I decided that it must be a tick. I was filled with glee—I had found and identified a new thing! Look at me learning! About a minute later I saw another one on my sleeping bag. That is when I started getting a sinking feeling. I found 4 more ticks on and around my sleeping bag and then I started searching my body. I had to get out my tiny camping mirror and the mirror from a makeup compact to see my back and sure enough, I had three ticks in the middle of my upper back—just out of reach. I tried to swat them off with a towel but it was too late; they were firmly implanted. I remembered hearing that if you hold a match close to the back of it, it will back itself out of your body to get away from the heat. I had some matches so with some creative mirror placement (it took about 45 minutes to hang the compact from the top of the tent at just the right angle), and some stretching in anticipation of the contortions that would be required, I began trying to get a burning match close to the tick. I burnt myself about 5 times before I got anywhere near the right area and when I finally got close to it, I got too close and burned one of the ticks to death. Now I had two live ticks and one dead one imbedded in my body. These were deer ticks, carriers of Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I decided that camping alone and soul searching was all well and good, but I needed another creature with opposable thumbs to help me and since I had scared off the only other camper at the Meriwether Lewis Monument Campground, I decided to climb into Betsy (my van’s name is Betsy) and drive back to the commune and beg for help. The midwife that I had become friends with removed the ticks, gave me a course of anti-biotics for the prevention of Lyme disease and educated me on chiggers. I headed back to camp after a stop at a grocery store and I sprayed every inch of the tent and van with my newly acquired libertarian bug spray.

A few weeks later, after several days of recuperation at Charlotte’s house (who was having an infestation of roly-poly bugs) I headed east and drove into the Appalachian Mountains, going up Round Mountain near Del Rio Tennessee for the most isolated portion of my journey. I started a page in the back of my journal listing the various diseases that I could die from so if my body was found up on Round Mountain, they would have some ideas of what might have done me in (assuming I didn’t die of something obvious like a wild boar attack or a copperhead bite, both of which I had been told was a strong likelihood by some men at a truck stop). Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever were of course on the list as well as West Nile (it was the first year that West Nile really hit the US), Brown Recluse death (I’m still not sure what the proper term is for death by Brown Recluse bite—I was bit by one on a prior camping trip but I was apparently lucky that it bit me on a large scar on my back which, according to the doctor, slowed the release of the venom into my blood stream. I was feverish and seriously achy for a day or two but other than that I was alright. The spot where I was bit still swells up occasionally into a big, angry blister for a few hours and then disappears). I added Malaria and Dengue fever because I figured that the mosquitoes who could get through the DEET bath were probably the type to have come from somewhere that had those diseases.

The cicadas (I think they were cicadas—they were really freaking loud and huge) were insane that summer and I swear that I had bruises from them flying into me at twilight. It was like someone shooting a walnut at you with a pellet gun. One of them managed to fly under a 2 gallon jug of water and walked it 6 inches across the picnic table. ONE of them. Walked a 2 gallon water jug full of water 6 inches across the table. I wish I was exaggerating. They were terrifying. By the end of the summer, I was covered; head to toe, in various bites, burns, bruises, wounds and scabs.

Somehow at the end of the summer, I was convinced that city life was not for me any more and I wanted to live out in the country. Over the next 5 years I searched with obsessive dedication for just the right piece of land but whenever I would find one that seemed perfect I would remember the ticks and the chiggers and the moth wings on my naked body. My Mom kept encouraging me to look in Washington. I thought that Eastern Washington was a barren desert wasteland and I had no interest in it until I went on a very short camping trip to Dry Falls with some friends. There were some mosquitoes because we were near a lake and this was a camping facility with showers and drinking fountains and such which naturally breeds mosquitoes but aside from that, it was relatively bug free. We went for a walk to see some caves and while I almost expired from the heat, I was shocked by the total lack of bugs.

A year later Joseph and I came out to Odessa to see this place (we really came out to see a place in Davenport—this place was a last minute addition to the agenda) and in the hour or so that we were here, I didn’t see a single bug. It was mid July, a year ago almost exactly and I thought, “There are no bugs in Eastern Washington!” I was sold. Cheap land, less than 4 hours from Seattle and NO MOSQUITOES.

In September, came the millions of sage bugs. Then came these tiny flying bugs who don’t seem to bite but they love the shade and the light and they will cover the windows at night trying to get in. Some of them do get in of course and they seem to particularly like red wine. Within 45 seconds of a glass of red wine being poured, there are two floating gnat like things. They look like fleas but they fly and don’t bite. I really hate them.

I hear that the spiders can get pretty bad but we’ve sprayed the perimeter of the house and I thought I was fine with the occasional spider (I figure they must eat those horrid flying flea things so they have a bit of leeway with me). Then I found a really fast, larger than normal spider in the bathroom. He seemed more menacing than the usual house spiders, like the rooster on a bad day and he had this sort of beautiful spotty pattern on his back. I put a glass over the top of him and went to the internet. I’m about 70% convinced that he was Hobo spider but I am prone to paranoia so I’m going to say that he is PROBABLY just a garden spider.

None of these “bugs” are really too bad. They don’t inspire terror like the freakishly strong cicada or routinely carry death like the deer tick or the mosquito. They are minor inconveniences and a little extra protein in our food and drinks. Nothing to freak out about.

Then there are the flies.

If the low temperature is above 35 degrees, the flies appear. They multiply like gremlins. We have some that are small, silent and exceptionally fast—these are the ones that live in our bedroom. They wait until we are asleep and then land, unheard and unseen, on the edge of our mouths and our nostrils and the entrance to our ear canals. There is no sleeping when a fly is trying to invade your facial orifices. We try to lie there quietly, pretending to sleep, fly swatter in hand but they know that we are faking. Joseph and I have an unspoken understanding that if one of us has the flyswatter and the other has a fly on them, we have permission to swat that fly, even if it is on the other’s face.

We have another variety of flies, which are slightly larger than the mouth invaders. I call them the hair flies. They love to land on our heads and walk around with their unnaturally long legs, tickling our head and causing a panicked, “SOMETHING IS BURROWING IN MY HEAD” reaction. I have pretty thick hair so they can walk around a lot before I realize that I have a hair fly on me. Often, by the time I notice, they have lost interest and gone in search of Joseph. Joseph’s hair is usually less than a half-inch long. The hair flies absolutely love his head. They seem to think it is an amusement park which I can understand since his skull does have some unique peaks and valleys.

I find these flies rather annoying. Joseph goes totally insane. There are nights when he swears he gets 45 minutes of sleep, snatched between ear invasions by the facial orifice flies and then gets up in sleep-deprived desperation and makes coffee and is instantly attacked by the hair flies. He can’t get rid of them and on really bad days when he’s had a few bad nights of orifice flies in a row, he claims that he can hear the hair flies laughing and saying, “Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself” as he slaps his head and screams, “These flies are KILLING ME! I AM DYING!”

This is what I wake up to many mornings. I try to give him perspective and tell him about the horrors of chiggers and life threatening ticks and bruising cicadas but he doesn’t seem to really understand. We could have easily wound up in East Tennessee instead of Odessa. I think he would have left me by now if we had. If he thinks the flies are killing him…maybe next summer I’ll take him camping at the Meriwether Lewis Monument campground and show him what bugs are REALLY like.

Though…I can’t help thinking about the children’s song about the old lady who swallowed a fly. It does say, “I guess she’ll die.” Maybe there are life-threatening fly diseases. Maybe I should be freaking out about the orifice flies. Or maybe the next time Joseph thinks he’s swallowed a fly I should suggest that he swallow a spider to catch the fly, swallow a bird to catch the spider, swallow a cat to catch the bird…

Or I could just buy some flypaper for the bedroom.

We survived the wedding. We even managed to have a fabulous, wonderful time. Well, everyone but Ellie who decided that she prefers being a dirty, smelly farm dog to being a princess:









The help from friends and family was phenomenal and I don't think I have ever felt more loved. Even the weather cooperated with a high of 75 and a low of 50. I couldn't have ordered a more perfect day. The rooster kept his beak closed through the whole ceremony (at least as I remember it) and provided entertainment to everyone the rest of the time. The food was great, the music was great, but the best part (aside from marrying my true love of course) was having so many loved ones HERE! At our home! Many people promised that now that they've been here, there will be no keeping them away and I hope that it is true.

I can't imagine a more perfect wedding for us. This is how great we looked:











My parents (the saints) stayed here while we went to Puerto Vallarta on our honeymoon. The temperature hit 105 while we were gone and my parents had their hands full keeping all of the plants and animals alive (hanging baskets LOOK pretty and are lovely for a wedding but maybe a tad high maintenance for this part of the country). They also supervised and assisted in the installation of new flooring while we were away. It was supposed to happen before the wedding (we had the worst flooring imaginable. It was indescribably bad and un-cleanable) but it didn't happen and I had to let it go (breathe in....breathe out...home depot is not the devil incarnate...or is it?). I have a feeling that they might not want to visit for a while which is totally understandable but too bad because now we have no projects for them to work on and they could just come relax.

Oh, that's choice. I crack my own self up. I have to admit, to be fair...I already have started a spreadsheet to project-manage the NEXT projects. Kitchen re-model and expansion, installing a sprinkler system and water to the barn (in two places), the coop and the "shed" in addition to the building of fences for the goats we are getting in August. Fortunately we don't have the money for any of these projects yet so I think we'll be okay.

The tomato plants apparently got the memo that they should be doing something productive and while we were gone they doubled in size. I'm a little afraid of them...who knows what is hiding in their lush foliage? They are taking over. I know I should do some pruning (at least I think I should) but I'm terrified of pruning the wrong thing. I'm starting to suspect that 12 tomato plants might have been over-kill.

All the life and heat and explosion of growing things (the wheat is purt'near ready to harvest and the kochia, our favorite noxious weed has just found it's groove) has a flip side, as it always seems to. We've got baby birds everywhere and it seems that the only time I see them is at the moment they lose their little partly-feathered lives or shortly after. We aren't sure if Ellie is seeking them out or if she just happens to be in the right place when they fall out of their nests but either way, Ellie is doing her part to keep the population down. Yesterday was the worst--I think a whole nest blew down and three little babies who probably didn't have a chance anyway were ushered to the next plane of bird life by the little princess with the white ribbon on her head (hmmm...maybe she is trying to get back at us for dressing her up like a pampered little girl dog instead of the vicious, blood-thirsty beast she thinks she is?).

Despite the record heat and the dead, bug eyed fledglings, I am so happy to be home. We had an amazing time in Mexico and went on all kinds of adventures including careening through the forest canopy on zip lines---yes. I did that. The woman who refuses to get on a step ladder for fear of falling. I was hundreds of feet in the air going 70 miles per hour down a WIRE connected to my body by a harness. I have a DVD showing me doing it as evidence. I promise not to ever make anyone watch it because it is DULL but I have it if any one cares to challenge that I did it (and that I ROCKED. The guides all said so). It was lovely to be waited on and not have to wash a single dish and it was so humid that I didn't have to use hand lotion ONCE. I had no idea how dry my life had gotten out here in the high desert.

We had such a wonderful time that we decided to bring a little of it back home in the form of a pair of hammocks and a wading pool (we got the wading pool at the hardware store in town...we didn't bring it home on the plane). We spent Monday settling back in at home and trying out the new hammocks and getting attacked by the dogs and just resting before the inevitable return to reality. I think it was my favorite day of the honeymoon:

I continue to be amazed by the love that the universe sends my way.

A week or two ago I broke down and asked my friend Sara (the one that four of the chickens are named after) if she could perhaps come help us get ready for the wedding for a few days. She is taking some time off work right now and while I normally have a hard time asking anyone outside of my family for help, I swallowed my pride and begged for assistance.

To say that she came through is an understatement. She rounded up 5 of my girlfriends and somehow convinced them to drive all the way from Seattle to spend the weekend helping. One of them (we'll call her JJ) had previous commitments on Saturday so she drove out on Friday (at least a 4 hour drive), helped paint the living room and prune the TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL Lilac trees and then drove BACK HOME that evening. I was amazed and thankful and thrilled and thought it was a great start to what would be a very productive weekend with Sara, Joseph and I.

The night before Sara and JJ showed up I had been madly pulling Mustard along the edges of the wheat and as I bent down for the 8,983rd time, something went TWANG in my foot and it felt like I had a horrible charlie horse in the tendon running from my heel to my pinky toe. "Well that's unpleasant." I thought as I tried to walk it off. I've had some pretty major injuries to my feet and ankles in the past. I've broken my ankle, sprained it endless times, torn ankle ligaments several time (once I fell down a flight of stairs and damaged the ligaments in BOTH ankles at the same time--that was impressive) and I messed up my Achilles tendon at one point so bad that I had to wear this horrible metal boot for a couple months so it could heal. This twang thing didn't concern me too much. I couldn't have actually hurt anything; I didn't fall or twist or roll anything. I just reached to the ground to pull some mustard.

By 10pm on Friday night, I couldn't walk. My charlie horse had turned into an actual injury that was KILLING me. Sara and Joseph kept ordering me to SIT DOWN but my brain kept saying, "This pain cannot be real--I didn't DO anything!" I started to understand the helplessness and frustration of people whose backs go out from something as innocent as tying their shoe.

I finally accepted the fact that I needed to sit down and ice my foot so it could be 100% better by the next morning when Joseph would head off to work and Sara and I would continue work on the house painting project. This gave me time to look around the living room and kitchen. My house was a terrible mess due to a business trip to Salt Lake earlier in the week (technically the business trip is not responsible for the house getting dirty but it is responsible for the fact that it had not been cleaned) and the carpet was covered in the fur of two cats, two dogs, the dust, dirt and debris of at least a week of all of us walking around and not a small number of dead flies (we TRY to throw them away when we kill them but sometimes they are impossible to find and there are JUST SO MANY). My refrigerator was empty except for the groceries that Sara brought with her (which I thought strange but wonderful). My kitchen was clean because for some reason Sara had started cleaning it as soon as she arrived (Sara is not normally a clean freak which is why I was okay with her being at the house without it being clean--she has seen many homes of mine in much worse states than this one was on Friday).

The pain in my foot was getting worse and I was getting increasingly angry about it. I do not have TIME for some stupid injury. THIS WAS NOT ON THE SPREADSHEET. I was also exhausted so I decided to go to bed. I woke up to the sound of a car horn honking and Joseph telling me to look out the window. I did, and there, in our new front parking area were my friends Laura and Julia. "SURPRISE!"

I was mostly asleep. I started walking to the door and was stopped by a wave of pain. Oh yeah. I am crippled from PULLING MUSTARD. I went back to the bedroom and put on an ankle brace (which helped not one bit) and hobbled with my cane (the double ankle ligament tearing incident years ago resulted in me having to walk with a cane for about 9 months after the wheelchair and crutches portion of the recovery were over and when I found myself unable to walk earlier that evening, Joseph had found it for me) to the front door. As I walked to the front door It struck me with fresh shame just how filthy the house was. Julia had never seen my house and she would be seeing it for the first time looking like hell. That was unacceptable. They came in the house and hugged me and said, "We're here to WORK!"

The battle between wanting to weep with gratitude and wanting to weep because I had not planned for this (and I have a strong need to plan) resulted in my mind just spinning. What materials did I need? What items were the highest priorities? What was I going to feed everyone? Where were they going to sleep (on the furry, dusty carpet?)? How could I, a person who has a hard time accepting help, let my friends work on my place when I couldn't even WALK? THANK GOD Sara had cleaned the kitchen, that sneaky, wonderful girl. I remember saying a few times, "I would have vacuumed...." and I KNOW that I asked Joseph to please vacuum my office immediately in a way that probably sounded like I was furious with him for not warning me. Which...I was. Well…not furious but...not thrilled.

The next morning I woke up and my foot was feeling markedly better (it was to get much worse after an hour of walking on it) and I had a house full of friends. My perspective was much rosier. I realized that if I had been warned that they were all coming I would have spent considerable time and energy planning and fretting which was not the intention of my friends. What you don’t know about, you can’t fret about. Brilliant. I’ll have to let people keep secrets from me more often.

We all put on our work clothes and set to painting, planting, weeding, weed-eating and generally working our fannies off. Mo, another good Seattle friend showed up that morning and put in a LONG day and night and then had to drive home at some ungodly hour the next morning. She drove about 7 hours to be here to help on Saturday.

We worked until we just couldn't work any more and then got cleaned up for a bachelorette party on the town in Moses Lake. We had dinner (with multiple espressos to give ourselves a boost) and due to exhaustion and the lack of things to do in Moses Lake, we decided to have the rest of the party back home. Somehow we stayed up until after 3am and had a wonderful night despite our aching muscles. The next morning Sara made breakfast and we had a great morning and then turned to weeding, painting, scraping windows, pruning, hauling away truckloads of branches, etc. Laura, Julia and Sara left around 7pm with the house completely painted.

Many people will talk about helping. Some of those people sincerely WANT to help. It is totally unreasonable to expect even one’s best friend to make such incredible actual effort. It is inconceivable that FIVE friends would make the journey out here, sacrificing time, money and their bodies to help us once we discovered that this bite we have taken is more than we can chew. And yet, that is exactly what happened. I am more grateful and overwhelmed by their generosity than I can express.

The help of my team of women put us back on track. The place looked so much better. Joseph and I sat down and marveled at the progress, then started listing what ELSE needed to be done. Today, we got a little overwhelmed again. Okay, a lot overwhelmed. Then, once again, a miracle.

The guy who is fixing and painting our barn (we'll call him John) offered to donate a half day of his crew's labor as well as his tractor to our cause. There is a giant pile of debris behind the coop that needs to be moved and I had guessed that it would take Joseph about three days to move it. The tractor will be able to move it in less than an hour. The area along side and behind the barn needs to be leveled and covered in wood chips (which we need to chip). I figured it would take Joseph a day to build something that he could drag behind the truck and then to actually drag it (making modifications to the invention along the way) and then we would spend a full day raking the wood chips all over. The tractor will be able to do it in a couple of hours.

I am not ashamed to say that when Joseph came to tell me what John had offered, we both got extremely choked up. How is it possible that people are so wonderful to us? How can they be so giving? How can we be worthy of this?

I was an independent child (Don't HELP ME! I'll do it MYSELF!). As a young woman I resented it when someone would open a door for me (you think I'm HELPLESS? I can do it MYSELF!). I didn't want to owe anyone anything.

When I started thinking about wanting to buy property, my ultimate goal was self-sufficiency. I wanted to grow my own food and weave my own clothes and to know that I was not dependant on anyone for anything. Over the last 9 months I have discovered how wrong I was. I can't do this myself. I need Joseph's help. I need my parent's help. I need the help of friends and strangers. This is not a failure on my part. I am not weak or pitiable because I need help. I am incredibly blessed because I HAVE help. I am so humbled and thankful for the kindness and love and support I have gotten from everyone around me (and many of those who are not around me but are sending love and encouragement from afar). Self Sufficiency. What a lonely, misguided goal. How lucky I am to be beholden.

My emotions are running high. We're having a wedding here with a LOT of people in 1 month and there are endless things that need to be done. This causes great anxiety. The list of projects that have yet to be completed (or even STARTED) is long enough to occupy the two of us for the full month. Add to this a full time job (including a few business trips coming up in the next two weeks) and the planning of the actual wedding and we have more work than time.

Projects, I can handle. I mean I am a little overwhelmed but I can take it. I have my spreadsheets and time-lines and priorities and milestones and it is all under control on paper. It is the surprise maintenance which is NOT on the spreadsheet that is messing everything up.

One of the landscaping projects we have mostly completed was establishing some no-grass (or weed) zones in the front yard. We wanted to reduce our water usage and the maintenance involved in excessive lawn space. We identified an area where the grass was not really growing anyway and Joseph removed the "sod" down several inches and eliminated all evidence of growing things and I spread wood chips over the area. We cut it in an aesthetically pleasing shape and edged it with landscape edging. It looked fantastic. Yesterday as I sat at my desk I noticed some green poking through the bark. Despite the fact that in the LAWN area, which is being watered daily, the grass is dying, we have grass growing in the un-watered bark area. Re-clearing the area of grass is not on the spreadsheet. There is no time.

The same thing is happening in all of the flower beds. Grass and weeds are growing. I did not budget time for this. I also did not budget time for mowing the lawn. We don't have a riding mower. We have a small briggs and stratton mower that was given to us when we moved out here and which Joseph got running in the fall. It's not a bad little mower except that it doesn't cut most of the "cheat grass" which is everywhere and it takes him about 4 hours to get the whole lawn mowed. After those 4 hours, we still have many 8-20 inch stalks of cheat grass sticking up all over the place. If he spends another couple of hours weed-eating, those are eliminated and the yard looks great. Really lovely.

The lawn is over 50% weeds however and these weeds grow at a much faster rate than grass so three days after Joseph has spent a day mowing, we have a sprinkling of 6 inch weeds all over. 2 days later the lawn looks like a forest of neglect. I don't have 6 hours of lawn cutting and trimming every 5 days in the spreadsheet.

Last weekend we bought some bushes and flowers and whiskey barrels and started planting. I was thrilled. The hydrangeas are in my view from my office window and the one that was covered in blooms lifted my spirits all day for the first couple of days. Last night I noticed that the blooms and leaves were not doing well. Not doing well at all. Am I over-watering? Under-watering? Is it normal transplant shock? Two of the hanging baskets with some hardy wild daisy type flowers were near death when I watered them last night. We brought them home on Tuesday and have watered daily. All of the flowers we planted seem to be in an equally precarious state. They look GREAT except that they seem to be struggling to stay alive.

I took a little break from planting and watering and weeding last night to get the mail and on the way back I had a thought so horrific I almost stopped breathing: What if I have a black thumb?

Not only is this thought horrifying from a financial perspective (oh the money we spent buying these plants) and from a wedding perspective (nothing says romance like withered, dying plants and flowers) but never in all my moments of fear did it occur to me that I might not be able to grow anything. I've worried that I might preserve or can something incorrectly and give someone botulism. I've worried about poor weather and the well running dry and fire and losing my job but I don't think I ever considered the possibility that I could just suck at tending living things. I could make them die.

The horror.

As a result of this stress (all of the stress, from the over-abundance of weeds and the giving in to chemicals to help manage their growth, to the grass interfering with carefully planned landscaping designs to the fear of the dogs getting hit by a car to the fact that the flock of chickens is suddenly averaging ONE EGG a day, to the effort to get the house painted and new flooring throughout and the wedding planned...) I have started walking around with a barely contained anxiety attack lodged just below the base of my throat. If we didn't have the pressure (self imposed) of having everything look great by the wedding, the level of stress would be reduced, but certainly not eliminated.

This level of anxiety is a sharp contrast to the joy and wonder and love I am feeling for this place. I am so proud of the work we have done and the changes we have wrought. The 2 hours before sunset are magical and peaceful and awe inspiring. The other day Joseph set up a hammock chair in a tree towards the back of the property and sat me down with a drink around 7pm. It was so beautiful, and it is so different from my life in Seattle, and it is real. This is my life. This beautiful place with the hawks soaring overhead and the two precious dogs at my feet and the long shadows of sunset and the flowers I planted and the house mostly painted and the man I love working on his horseshoe pit...I am in love with my life. I am giddy and weepy and absolutely terrified of something happening to shatter it. I fly to the highest heights over a sunset and drop to the pits of despair over a clump of grass in the rose garden. I can't sleep, I have a hard time concentrating...it can only be love. There is no other explanation.

Well, it could be botulism.