i fought the goat and the...goat won

I have had to accept the inevitable: Penny is going to dry up this time. We can breed her again as soon as she's physically ready and in estrus, but for now, I have to let it go. It's disappointing, but I know it's for the best.

Penny was making some swift improvements, but then a confluence of events occurred over which we had little to no control. First, she got a significant skin wound just above her left knee, leaving me unable to use the goat hobbles as she was used to. Instead, I had to use the new, strong, perfect goat hobbles when they finally arrived around her ankles. She did not like this. Did I mention goats are extreme creatures of habit? Just when I got her used to the hobbles above her knees, we had to switch down to her ankles. She had been in the very first stages of standing still for me to milk. We were going from two hours of working together each time to 45 minutes. We went straight back to two hours plus and she wasn't even empty when I finally gave up.

While her routine was changing for the umpteenth time in less than two weeks, it started raining. And raining. And raining. And her barn floor went from fairly dry straw to sloppy, mucky, quicksand-like mud puddles in about three days time. Did I mention goats do not like water, especially on their feet?

We covered the barn with a tarp for extra protection. Still the rain came down around it, seeping in under the walls. We let her sleep on her milkstand. We put an army cot in for her. Meanwhile, both the front and back exit became so wet and mucky they tried to pull my boots off every time I went out there. She started refusing to come out, even to browse for food.

It was too wet to get the fence in good shape, so we bought concrete blocks for her floor. Still the rain came down, and the concrete blocks are waiting in the back of our truck for a day sunny enough (tomorrow I hope!) to get a truckload of sand to put under the blocks and create a nice dry barn floor for her.

Day one of the downhill slope, I got her up on the milkstand and began very patiently. I would reach for her udders and she would kick up with her new hobble, then slip on the milk stand from all the wet, then freak herself out even more. I would touch her udder again, she would kick. Touch udder. Kick. Slip. Freak out. Touch udder. Kick. I would hold her leg, she would fight as if it were for her life. I would take a break, take a breather. Touch udder. Kick. Slip. Freak out. Kick. Slip. On and on. I became more matter-of-fact with her, then enraged, then I cried. Then she let me empty her, which took a total of 20 minutes on each side. Two and a half hours later I was bringing less than a quart of milk into the house. Most of it had to thrown out because it was too dirty from all the mud slung around.

That night I went to (shudder) WalMart, evil of evil that it is, to buy her a non-slip mat for her milkstand. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Day two of the downhill slope, I went out in the morning. The milkstand was too wet to install the mat, but I couldn't get it out of the barn with my pregnancy, so I planned to install it later that afternoon when Jeff could drag out the milkstand so I could clean it. It was supposed to be sunny and dry that day. It wasn't. It got soppier and wetter and muckier and yuckier.

And Penny had learned that if she kicked enough with her hobbles near her ankles, she could get quite some vertical action. Enough to get me to quit messing with her. At least, that's how I read it that day. In reality, she could have been even more upset about the lack of browse, the wet, the slippery milkstand, and my wacked-out emotions the day before. I was far from my Zen place already when I first walked in the door. I think she smelled it a mile away.

For two hours I tried to empty her. I got one side halfway emptied and the other side barely touched. I felt violent toward the poor goat. I hate feeling violent toward anything, except maybe my computer on occasion (shhh...don't tell it). Finally, after telling her over and over how she was not going to win this, she might as well give up, well...I gave up and she did win.

Here's a little thing that I struggle with in my personality - I do not like to fail. It doesn't matter if other people consider it a failure, or if it's even all that important to me. I refuse to fail. This can create a lot of pressure in situations like these. I felt like I was on a deadline to get it straight before she dried up. I felt like I wanted to succeed at it very badly, especially for Mazzy's dairy-free diet sake. Yet, our success wasn't entirely dependent on me. It was also dependent on Penny, and on the normal time constraints that come with having a family, and on the weather. It's hard to refuse to fail at something when there are so many factors out of your control.

Fast forward to later on the second Very Hard Day. I started getting really crampy in my lower belly. On the first Very Hard Day, I kept trying to pull Penny closer while she kept trying to hover near the wall where I couldn't reach her. One time that I pulled her toward me, I also pulled something in my belly and I felt it as soon as it happened. When I started cramping the next day and it didn't quit, I knew what had to happen. I had to let this go for right now.

Jeff, in a last-ditch attempt to save her milk, tried modifying the milk stand with something permanent that would keep her legs in place. She squatted and refused to let anyone near her udders. He gave up, and we haven't looked back. It's the right decision. Does it count as failure when it's a conscious choice, I wonder?

There were four major factors that contributed to my choice.

Penny was rapidly developing a negative connotation with her milkstand and with being milked. She would continually shake and shiver and barely breathe while on the milkstand. She stopped having the grain that was right in front of her and would just stand shaking in obvious fear. She comes from great milking bloodlines. I'd prefer to not lose the ability to milk her entirely by pushing it right now.

I was over-exerting myself for this stage of pregnancy, and although having more healthy food choices for Mazzy is extremely important to me, not threatening the unborn baby is more important. I'm not a stranger to pregnancy loss.

The stress in our household since we've been trying so hard to milk such a reluctant milker has been insane. I would welcome the opportunity to learn how to care for her, house her, and bond with her without having the milking in the equation right now.

The girls and I still do have a life, and everything else was falling by the wayside to make room for the milking and the ensuing exhaustion. 20 minutes once, even twice a day, no problem. Two hours once or twice a day? I'm sorry, but I can't keep that up.

So what's the plan now? You know I have one!

Well, my plan is to really focus my energy on learning how to care for her and create a strong bond with her before we try again. I've been consulting my internal dog training experience as well as any goat behavior books I can find to develop a training plan for her to help us milk later. I plan to feed her grain twice a day in her milkstand with her head in the head lock while I first pet her and make her comfortable, then move on to brushing and eventually working with her udders again, even when she's not in milk.

We'll let the hobbles go until her wound is completely healed, but they will come back as part of her eating routine. She should be quite comfortable being handled by the time she can be bred again.

We're also looking for a companion goat for her. A local breeder was recommended to us by a woman in our homeschool co-op. As soon as I can get in touch with the breeder, I'd like to see what she suggests. We are thinking either a young dairy doeling or an older doe that is already in milk but is a second or third freshener. We could try to milk her before we left the breeder's farm. An easy milker would be a welcome addition to our little homestead at any time.

And now, I'm looking at Penny as if we'd never tried to milk her. Let bygones be bygones. I love her too much to hold onto anger over this. As far as I'm concerned, we got a sweet, friendly goat from great milking bloodlines, and as soon as we can breed her, we can give milking a fresh try.

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.....

a new crafty blog

My cousin Cara has started blogging her crafty projects at Pink Tea.

She's good. Really good.

Right now, in her own words, she is "obsessed" with felt foods, and they are beautiful! Check out her felt tea sets for inspiration when you get your next children's birthday party invitation.

Next on the agenda, she says, will be freezer paper stenciling on onesies and t-shirts.

Cara and I have had lots of fun over the years, from practicing and performing grand dancing productions in our grandparents' living room for our family audience, to staging art shows in the same space, with little price tags on our "art" for our adoring family fans, to sharing the same month of June in the same year for our respective weddings, one in Kentucky and one in Virginia. My only regret is that we don't live closer, so we could make barrettes and stenciled shirts over our kitchen tables as we shared tea and our children shared play.

I've never met an artist quite as good as she who refuses to admit to her talent. But you be the judge.

maple sugarin'

5 weeks since my last post?! I'm so sorry. Believe me when I say it hasn't been from lack of desire, but from the lack of time and purposeful prioritizing that happens when you have needy wee ones in the house. One day it will not be so, and I'll long for their little days back, I'm sure.

So many posts have rolled around in my head these past 5 weeks, it's been hard to narrow down which one should come first. Until we did our maple sugaring. Correction: if you're going to tap your maples for syrup, you gotta say "maple sugarin'." Just how it is.

It's been so exciting to plan the sugarin', learn about it (we attended a free park program for Backyard Maple Sugaring that was invaluable), prep the supplies, then follow through to receive...syrup! Real, 100%, all organic, maple syrup from our own maples on our own land. Ahhh....

The pictures in this case truly are worth 1000 words, so I'll let them (mostly) speak for themselves.

For weeks, I've been working on crafting some spiles from our elderberry limbs. You can purchase commercial spiles to use for tapping, but I wanted our first sugarin' attempt to give us free food, not stress us with a big upfront cost that we didn't know if we'd get back. As it turned out, crafting the spiles from elderberry was very fulfilling for me. Our friend Lauren came over one day and we sat at the kitchen table with Sydney (yep, Sydney! Sassy as she may be), all three of us carving out the soft pith from inside the elderberry limbs. It was such a nice handiwork activity to have while we talked about babies and homebirth and summer gardens.



I tied the leftover elderberry limbs that were too small to use as spiles into a bunch and stuck them in a large jar of water. I was so pleased when their little buds began to sprout! We will plant them in our orchard area this Spring.



Jeff took care of tapping all the trees. First, he drilled a hole at a slightly upward angle, about 2 1/2 inches in.



Then it was time to tap in the spile. He covered the hammer with a heavy cloth so it wouldn't split the elderberry.



Some of our trees began dripping sap right away!



It was Jeff's idea to use the little clamps on each spile to hold the catchment containers. We used empty water gallon jugs since they were inexpensive and easy to obtain.



Jeff then tied each jug to the tree as an added precaution.



Our first day was a sunny one with perfect sugarin' temperatures, so we got a full half-gallon of sap, which we then strained before boiling.



We boiled it down to the "maple tea" stage, which is about halfway to the syrup stage. Then, we could no longer resist the urge to taste it.





Yes, we are camera dorks, as if you did not already know!

It finally seems that Spring is around the corner here in our little part of the world. There hasn't yet been a day quite nice enough to leave us with the fresh, renewed vigor of being Alive Again. But there's been enough promise to make me break out The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun, one of my traditional Winter-to-Spring rites of passage. Premature? Probably. But little darlin, it has truly been a long cold lonely winter at times, more so than I can ever remember.

Sydney and I started our first round of seedlings over the weekend. We started all the frost-tolerant plants in our seed cabinet.





Next week, I plan another round of frost-tolerant plants, and then we'll move on to the frost-intolerant plants by the end of March.

And for tonight, that is all. I've just popped a big bowl of local popcorn to which I added chopped honey glazed walnuts I made last night. I'm off to watch one of my guilty pleasures on Hulu while the children are finally sleeping.

a cool gardening tip

Our organic farming, permaculture expert friend Ande recently gave us this gardening tip that was such an easy and wonderful idea, I had to share.

If you've planted any trees before, then you know what a large hole must be dug for all its roots to be gently placed and spread apart inside. The general rule, I believe, is to dig twice as wide as you dig deep. My rule is to dig twice as wide or a foot larger diameter than the existing roots when spread out gently - whichever is larger.

When you're finished, you have a nice big dirt spot that is quite easy to distinguish from the surrounding grassy area. But within no time at all, it becomes a weed patch.

Ande says that he plants shade-tolerant perennial herb seeds around the base of new trees when he puts the tree in. Then, he surrounds them with some sort of fencing to protect the tree (and the herbs, by proxy) while it's little. This means that as the tree matures, so does the herb garden. In the end, there is no weeding to be done around the tree and you have useful plants under there to boot.

We are planting many, many trees this year. Some have been given to us, some we will order to add to our budding orchard, and some we will transplant from the woods. I'll also be ordering many, many perennial seeds and flowers of different varieties to plant around each tree.

back to basics

Although the January cold, wet, unrelenting grey is driving me more mad on many levels this year, there is also a certain rhythm to our days developing here which is a welcome respite from the constant chaotic and unpredictable running we did in the city.

Jeff and I looked over our (lack of) finances yesterday and realized we needed to make some lifestyle changes again. It's so easy to justify buying things at Christmas time - even on a credit card, which is usually a no-no in our home - that I usually end up running up a credit bill that is twice as much as I spent on gifts. When I'm in Target, for example, buying something I "have to get" for so and so, and pulling out the credit card to do so, I'll just go ahead and throw on the snacks we chose for ourselves, the snow boots for Sassy, and the high chair we need for Magpie.

Then January comes and I shake my head again. Why did I do that? Why did I let that happen?

So now the credit cards are coming back out of the wallet where they'd made their home during December, and I'm on a spending diet again. Part of this means staying home more and using less gas. One trip to a major hub here requires about a third a tank of gas - going into the city requires over half a tank. These kind of expenses add up quickly, especially since Jeff and I use our errand-running time to also have quiet time alone. This means we don't usually go out as a family, all of us noisily throwing around ideas in our very small car, each one trying to be heard over the other. Jeff and I both being the introverts we are, we'd much rather go alone, listen to music, and regroup by the time we get back home so we can walk back in the house with a smile instead of a headache.

Since I can't go out and spend money on various classes and supplemental activities for Sassy, I joined the time4learning program instead. It's a terribly goofy name for a quality web-based homeschooling curriculum where children learn different skills through hundreds of online interactive lessons and activities. (I don't get any money for talking about this by the way. I like for my blog opinion to have credence, not dollars!) I have to say, based on our first week, that it's the answer we've been looking for. She does between two and four activities a day, and they each take about 15-20 minutes. They are laid out on the site in order of which skill set should come next according to her current age, grade level, and existing skills.

She loves doing these kind of online activities, and with one baby in the house and another looming, I can overcome my Luddite tendencies as a teacher to recognize the value of outsourcing part of her learning to the computer right now.

In particular, her interest in reading is improving. Although I've always been an avid reader, I wasn't enjoying teaching reading to Sassy. Math is more her thing, and reading came as more of a challenge to her. I just wasn't enjoying teaching something that she didn't seem to be "getting" when it came so naturally to me. I even considered hiring a tutor to teach her how to read. (Pathetic. She's in first grade.)

I knew that part of the problem was probably that neither I nor her dad were being impartial enough while teaching her, because we were frustrated that she wasn't getting it more quickly. Enter computer program - nothing if not impartial. Since we've only used it for a week, I can't gauge her level of improvement yet, but she's doing the activities without complaining and that's a great sign.

We pay $20/month for the service and it keeps records of her completed activities for me. I'm finally confident that I'm not going to forget to introduce her to something essential, just because it wasn't on my radar, like say....metric measurement, or calendar skills, or how to tell a mammal from a reptile, or any number of things that I take for granted because I just know them.

Having this "school" to complete each morning has given our days the structure and rhythm they've been missing. She has different limitations on weekdays versus weekends. She's not allowed to watch television programs on weekdays until 4:00, for example. She has to complete certain core lessons that I put on the refrigerator and we check off until she's finished. After that, she has choices of what sorts of things she wants to do. The choices include just about everything except watch television until 4:00, but she likes to hear choices. So I tell her she can listen to a book on CD, play a game at pbskids, help me with whatever I'm doing, or play with her toys - inside or outside.

I love this structure. Not too much. Not too little.

She also has two predictable chores that are hers. The first is to put the laundry from the washer into the dryer and the other is to empty the dishwasher onto the table and stack the dishes into similar piles.

Not too much. Not too little.

Really, the post-Christmas financial concerns have made us step up some of our self-sufficiency plans. Jeff has started building us a shelter for a dairy goat and a sheep. Eliminating a monthly milk bill and a weekly trip to get said milk 60 miles away would be a welcome change.

Sadly, we are forced to sell our older van we wanted for vacations, and sadly, I'm forced to cart two (three in June?) children in a Kia Spectra sedan, but while the vans look lovely and roomy, it's more helpful for me to consider my basic needs for a vehicle. They are: it gets reliably from Point A to Point B and doesn't cost me much money to maintain. The Kia fits those basic needs for now. Sometimes I look at it on a continuum: a nice, posh, brand-new Honda Odyssey would be my first choice in our "ride." A horse and carriage would be first-choice in how much I want to pay for transportation. The Kia is somewhere in the middle.

We're planning to do some maple sugaring this year. We have so many maples on our property. If we wanted to tap them all, I'd have to spend over $50 in commercial maple spouts. I'd rather spend that $50 (if I spend it at all) on a huge outdoor boiling pot, so I'm looking at some handmade options made from elderberry limbs. Since I hate just sitting watching television programs and doing nothing productive while I'm sitting there, I thought perhaps the elderberry spouts might be a good idle time activity.

We're trying to keep our food bill as low as possible, so I'm sort of falling back to Nourishing Traditions habits, trying to get the most nutrition out of simple staples.

All in all, we're trucking along, tying to keep from getting too blue in all the grey.

Here are some recent pictures, but I have many new pics that will have to come later. At Maggie's first birthday party, we accidentally left our DSLR at Nana's house. AGHH!!! So, I can't post any pictures of her first birthday or any pictures taken in the past two weeks really. AGH!

Maggie is one!



Modern Grandpa



Our dogs' toy
We joke about the number of once-living things our dogs scavenge from the woods and the neighboring fields that end up scattered across our lawn. And we joke about our mindset with them - how much it's changed since we were in the suburbs. Case in point: here is the third deerskin they've drug up from who-knows-where to toss around and take turns chewing on. Had we looked out our back door of our little suburban home to find a deer skin in our backyard, let me tell you I would have freaked out, convinced that teenage kids around me were dabbling in something terrible and evil and were surely out to get our family. (Yes, you may laugh.)

Here, I drive home & get out of the car to find my dog gnawing on a random deer leg with fur and hoof still attached, and I shake my head and laugh while I pat her head.

Things change.

library day

We had our first Mommy-Sassy day today since our Magpie was born. We headed to town to visit the library, the chocolate shop, the nature shop & the coffee shop. Before we left, I thought it would be fun to pull up an activity we could do at the library together. I was looking for something that helped teach specific library skills, remembering those field trip days we would take in grade school, visiting the library, learning about the Dewey Decimal system, browsing through card catalogs. Although the process has changed since information was stored digitally, the same filing system still exists and deserves some explanation.

How pleased I was to discover a 9-lesson curriculum just for K-2 children, focused on the same library skills I wanted to share with her. An elementary school in Stanton, KY publishes this library skills curriculum online.

We decided to start with the lesson on learning how books are filed alphabetically by the author's last name, using the Easy Books in the children's department as an example.

The published lesson plan had us start by reading the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes - one of our favorites - but they were all checked out.

So we read two other Henkes books and two books of Sassy's choice. Then we sat at one of the little tables where they already had coloring sheets and crayons set up. I told her she could either color one of the pre-printed sheets or just use the back of the page to draw whatever she wanted.

She did both.



We folded the sheet in half and she wrote her first and last name near the "spine." Since the books on our library shelf were labeled with the first two letters of the author's last name, we wrote the first two letters of Sassy's last name at the bottom of her book to remind her what to look for. Then, we filed her "book" on the shelf where it would go alphabetically.



She asked if we could just leave it there. "Sure!" I said. Then we laughed conspiratorially, like we were doing something so subversive.

She played computer games for another half hour or so, while I talked to the children's librarian who, I found out, was part of the LLL group nearest me. As we left, I asked Sassy to let me take a picture with her by her newly filed library "book." She was so afraid that the librarian would realize we were breaking the rules - since we had filed it there - that she had to sneak it out with her. I was amused, so I played along like I had no idea she was taking it with her. When we got out the door, we laughed like sneaky cohorts again.