penny

We now have a dairy goat and I love her. She is alternately affectionate and needy, stubborn and punky. Hmmm....come to think of it, sounds a little like yours truly.

She's a year old and this is her first time in milk. Her previous owners milked her very rarely, choosing to let her kid nurse instead. I've never milked an animal before her. We are quite the pair, both of us ignorant to what each might want and need from the other. But we're working it out - on intuition, a little instinct, and a growing trust in each other.

Penny is slowly getting adjusted to our place. She has started eating well and jumping on up to her milk stand, head through the head lock, nose right into the grain bowl at milking time. A process that took two hours the second day takes about 45 minutes now. This is progress!

With a dairy goat, you have to be there. Every day. Every milking time. Ten months of the year, give or take. You can't skip a day just because you feel like it, and you can't go on vacation or, say, have a baby, without finding someone to take over the milking for you. How do I like this big responsibility?

Well, after having children of my own, a daily responsibility doesn't really scare me anymore. One doesn't exactly give pause before assuming the status quo. When all our kinks are worked out, it should take about as long as the time I spend changing and rinsing diapers each day. Or nursing Mazzy my Magpie down for her various naps. Much less time than cooking. Those things don't overwhelm me, they are just life.

Jeff built her a lovely barn in just 2 days. The barn feels cozy inside, and warm. It smells good. I'm the milker right now. That feels good too. It has a strange familiar feel to it, a certain rightness. Not once have I thought, "What the heck am I doing milking this goat? This is weird!" Instead, it feels like something I might have been doing all along.

My picture of Penny above is poor, quickly snapped on my Blackberry with little to no consideration of lighting or composition. Who knows when I might get a better shot. The weather turned warm here, Penny joined our crew, and now each morning I hit the ground running and never stop until nightfall. I can't be taking time out to tote around a heavy camera and compose lovely shots when that time could be spent finishing one more railing section on our deck, or planting 10 more seeds, or prepping the root bed, or, or, or.....