from the vault: wreck of the hesperis

Dear Readers: I've been tidying up a folder of document files, and found this piece written for the blog last June but not posted. Since I haven't written about the goats for quite a while, I thought you might find it entertaining. I'll add a couple of pictures of Campion taken at about the same time.

Yesterday afternoon I was painting in my studio (formerly known as my tent) when I heard a goat shouting. The voice was that of Campion, who generally has a lot to say about everything and nothing, so I wasn't overly concerned. But the shouting continued.

MEH. MEH. MEHHHH.
MEH. MEH. MEHHHH.

Everyone had food and water, the weather was pleasant, and there was no sound of colliding horns. Without moving, I called out to Campion, asking what the problem could be. Sometimes just speaking to a goat by name is all they need to hear to settle down.

MEH. MEH. MEHHHH.
MEH. MEH. MEHHHH.

I put my brush and sketchpad aside, climbed out of my chaise, removed the icepack strapped to my back, and followed the sound down to the Upper West Side.

There was Campion, head high, excited, and yelling his head off at seeing me.

He had somehow gotten inside the vegetable garden fence, the naughty goat.

And once there, he apparently couldn't get back into the paddock.

Goats are sometimes determined to go where they know they shouldn't be, but soon become terribly upset when they can't get back to where they know they belong. It's actually a very useful trait, from a goatherd's perspective. I remember the time Betula somehow climbed over the six-foot perimeter fence onto the bank garden by the driveway, and then hollered at the top of his mighty voice until I looked out the window and saw him there. Like Campion, Betula was tremendously relieved to see me when I hastened to the "rescue."

I opened the garden gate and Campion came trotting right over, then, halfway through the gate, remembered that he is a goat and should be playing it cool. So he stopped. He looked all around as if deciding whether or not to do me the favor of coming out of the garden. I did the only thing that would not prolong the process: nothing at all. If I had tried to hurry him out, he would have backed right up and hoped I would chase him around the garden for light entertainment. So I did nothing at all - this is not my first Goat Rodeo, Campion! - and in a few seconds, he stepped out into the paddock and I went into the garden to find his entry route.

Unfortunately, I found nothing. I hope this means he squeezed through the gate, which can easily have another latch added. If, on the other hand, he climbed over the fence, it will be a major problem. I am not going to start replacing all my interior paddock fencing - that is simply not possible under current management. So let's hope it was the gate.

Campion didn't do much eating while in the garden, which is a shame because there is plenty of grass and plantain going to waste between the rows I'm preparing for the vegetables. He must have gotten nervous right away. I did find a trampled stalk of Hesperis matronalis - "dame's rocket" - with buds and flowers, which was sad. I picked it up to put in a jar of water in the hope the buds would continue to open.

Carrying that one flower stalk through a paddock full of goats was no small feat - I was mobbed. And Acer, who I can best compare to a colt in terms of size and assertiveness, was sure he could get it away from me. I finally stuck the flower in my hat like a feather and held up my empty hands, palms forward, in the universal gesture for "I have nothing for you!" and the goats immediately ambled away. Even Acer.

Back into the tent, with the flower in a jar, for Daily Markmaking:

~~~~~

random weekend snaps

We've been having more strong winds.

These are not small branches.

~~~

I thought you might like to see what an

8-foot-wide hay bale looks like.
I probably should have put something on it for scale.
Piper, maybe.

~~~

A peaceful moment for Iris and Rocket.

Today Iris was combed for the first time.

Not so peaceful, but we took our time, got through it,

and were still friends at the end.

By the way, you can see why I've started calling her "Tiny Iris."

Literally from the moment of their births, she's been on the petite side,

and her brother has been on the solid side.

When you see them together like this,

the difference in the two extremes is really emphasized.

~~~

Daily markmaking continues!

This was Friday, #439: a dried zinnia head from last year's gardens.

~~~

This photograph of a hairy woodpecker could be clearer, but it was taken from 12 feet away and through two layers of glass. I'm glad I put this suet feeder close to the porch, because I've discovered the sound these birds make - a sort of whistly cheep, repeated, with a silent beat in between.

Every morning a woodpecker politely approaches the feeder,

and sounds so delighted and surprised to find the suet:

cheep?! pause cheep?! pause cheep?! pause cheep?!

It makes me smile.

I hope you had a lovely weekend!

Isn't it amazing how much daylight we're seeing now?

It's 7 PM and I can almost see the barn.

Even with the clocks moved ahead one hour, that's a nice change.

~~~~~

windfalls

Tsuga looks pretty pleased with her branch.

We've had some strong winds recently,

which have brought down many small - and some not-small - branches.

Fern was perfectly happy with her branch.
Until she saw Tsuga's branch.

At this time of year, I only move branches and fallen trees if I'm going to trip over them. I can't afford the extra leaning.

Fern says, "Mama, why don't we share?"

The goats spend hours nibbling on branches and downed trees.

I believe they find nutrients in the bark, buds, lichen and moss, and even the wood.

Iris has found a little stick All For Her Own Self!

Or so she thought.
Brother Rocket decided he would like that stick.

Tansy found a nice branch, but then reconsidered.

"I'll have my timber 'straight up' today!"

In other goat nutrition news, I had 1400 pounds of hay delivered yesterday.

This made me deliriously happy.

It's in two massive bales.

Each one is 8 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet.

They were delivered in about 10 minutes with a skid-steer:

up my ice-covered driveway and straight into the roundtop.

It was beautiful to watch.

Unlike standard bales, which are carried one by one from the roundtop to the barns and then opened up and distributed to the paddocks,

these bales will have to be opened in the roundtop and then large amounts of loose hay will be transported over ice and snow and - soon - mud.

I hate wasting hay, and loose hay is...loose. I don't want to leave a long trail of hay everywhere I carry it, twice every day.

So I'm going to try to come up with one all-season transport method that will be effective, efficient, and which I hope will not require buying anything.

Fortunately, I don't mind a challenge. And there's a weekend ahead.

What new fun are you planning this weekend?

~~~~~

ice

This morning when I stepped outside to pick up an armful of stovewood, I was delighted to find the air warmer than expected. Maybe as high as 20F, I thought. Almost balmy.

I can generally estimate the temperature within a few degrees, so on the way back inside I checked the thermometer by the door: 11F.

Eleven.

Balmy.

After a series of very cold days and nights, I apparently need to recalibrate my internal thermometer!

There is ice everywhere, and most of it is now under six or more inches of powder. This is not a great situation, and I've been very careful going from house to barn to workshop to stilt barn and into the paddocks to fill water buckets and distribute hay.

There are de-icers in both big water buckets - huzzah! - but I still use smaller buckets at times, and they freeze quickly. If they freeze overnight I can't just break the layer of ice on top - I must thaw the ice enough to get it out of the bucket. Here's how, in case you've never done it and ever need to: turn the frozen bucket upside-down and slowly pour a little warm water over the bottom and sides. Listen for the sound of cracking, and then one quiet thud. Lift the bucket off with a boot - to keep dry gloves off the wet bucket - and find a wide-based crystalline vase of ice, with a core of water that trickles out and leaves an huge ice goblet.

Last week I took photographs from inside these hollow cores, looking out through the curved walls of ice. There's one at the top of this post, and here's another:

Winter can be hard. Why miss an opportunity to have fun?

Today I actually had to leave the place for the first time in a week: get in the truck, deliver the recycling, pick up a book from interlibrary loan, and do some grocery shopping. When I got home in the afternoon it was still very cold but not too windy and off-and-on sunny, so I decided to take time to visit with all the goats and then do evening chores early.

Tsuga says, "Yes, do come visit!
And do you have something good in your pocket?"

While I was sitting in the barn waiting for the last goats to finish their grub,

Rocket discovered bootlaces.

He'd never seen them before, because I usually wear pull-on rubber barn boots. But today, since I had just gotten home after being out In Public, I was wearing my "nice boots" which I bought last month. They are like calf-height, waterproof, insulated slippers with rubber soles. And very long laces. Rocket took one look and knew what had to be done.

Here are Azalea and her little boy Mallow - not so little anymore! - hanging out on a bench after having their buckets of oats. Everyone gets a little something extra to help stay cheerful in this ongoing cold, snowy, icy snap; extra oats, with a little sweet feed on top, and carrot pennies for afters. Even my careful rationing of hay - I feed multiple times in smaller amounts each day instead of the total amount all at once, to reduce waste - has gone by the boards for the time being. In weather like this, I believe it's more important to have hay available to everybody, all the time, than to avoid waste.

The sky looked like this for just a few minutes,

as I was coming back to the house after chores.

I'm so glad I didn't miss it!

The forecast says the weather is going to change tomorrow.

Warmer.

And then warmer.

I'll definitely be wearing the pull-on rubber barn boots.

~~~~~

iris

Iris, Vinca, Rocket

My Very Occasional Helper was here for 3 hours yesterday,

so together we made a little progress on the barn.

Iris was also a Big Help.

Although I couldn't help feeling that she had questions about the whole idea of turning the airy, spacious barn into four narrow cubicles.

Not exactly cubicles; more like slip stalls.

Rectanguloids?

"Why? WHYYYY?"

Lately I've been noticing that tiny Iris has grown.

There have even been a couple of times when she was standing apart from the other goats - so, no frame of reference - I wasn't sure if I was looking at Iris or her brother, the chunky Rocket.

"Now I am a BIG goat!"

But then I see her next to an average-size human,

and she immediately becomes tiny again.

Big on personality, though!

That's one thing that hasn't changed since the day she was born.

~~~~~

goats unplugged

I got a decent night's sleep last night, and am sufficiently energized to give you the follow-up on Mallow and Rocket.

 Today they are both looking pretty chipper. FINALLY.

Thursday was not Our Favorite Day. They had their surgeries around noon, and I stayed in the barn to be there when they came out of the anesthesia, which, based on past experience, I expected to be within a half-hour. The actual procedure is very quick - my vet is efficient and has done this many times. I fully expected that by 1 PM the boys would have been up for a while, walking around in their stalls and nibbling at hay, and I could get on with my day.

While they were out, propped up on their sternums to help prevent bloat, and with noses pointed down to keep mucous draining in the right direction, I took the opportunity to make a little sketch. Here is is.

It's called: Mallow Being Still For The First Time In His Life.

One hour turned into two, without a blink or a twitch. Then three hours. I didn't want to call the vet, who already seems to think I am a fretful softie who worries about nothing. But I certainly would have felt happier to see the boys up and moving. And when, after three and a half hours they finally wobbled to their feet looking very dazed, they were too uncomfortable to move around and keep themselves warm. Both goats began shivering so hard I could see it from ten feet away.

Then I called the vet, who suggested making oatmeal for them.

This is not a painting of the oatmeal I made on Thursday. This is oatmeal I painted several months ago. But Thursday's oatmeal looked very similar and an image may break up this long story a bit, so here you go:

Unfortunately, Rocket and Mallow were still too out of it to want to eat, even lovely warm oatmeal. Vinca and Azalea, their mamas, thought being fed oatmeal on a spoon was great, though. They think we should do this more often, and not just on special occasions.

I did everything I could think of to try to get Rocket and Mallow thoroughly warm, so that keeping coats on them would then be enough to help them maintain their body temperature. But "everything I could think of" wasn't really that much. Using a heater in the barn is a fire hazard. These goats aren't like dogs or cats who will snug up next to a person and stay there, benefiting from their body warmth. And before you ask...no, I couldn't bring them into the house. Perfectly reasonable question though!

Rocket under my coat, seen through a hay manger.

Here's an enlarged view of Rocket's eye.
This is not the eye of a comfortable goat.

I got my extra-large electric heating pad from the house, and - being very careful to monitor how much warmth it was generating on the lowest setting - began putting it on each goat in turn like a saddle blanket, then covering the goat with one of my old barn coats which I am finally proven justified in keeping, so there's that.

I have only one heating pad, so I would put it on one goat until he had stopped shivering for a while, and keep an eye on the other goat. When the second goat started shivering again, it was his turn, and if the goat who was losing the heating pad was lying down, he could have the hot water bottle against his side, under his coat.

Rocket was up and down at long intervals, so the hot water bottle was a helpful back-up for him. But poor Mallow got up once and then could not lay down again, though he tried and tried and tried. He was so tired he was literally propping himself up against the wall of the barn. When he would try to lay down he would get his front end folded under properly but then, as soon as he tried to tuck his hind end down, he must have felt enough of a painful twinge that he would wearily straighten back up again. This happened every few minutes for hours. I cannot convey in words how sorry I felt for him.

The heating pad was at first swapped from goat to goat every 20 minutes or so, but the interval gradually stretched to an hour or longer. I didn't dare stop monitoring them, because the "unplugged" goat eventually started shivering badly again, every time.

By the middle of the night, both goats were occasionally nibbling a few blades of the hay, which was one load off my mind. As you goat-fans know, it is critical that goats keep their complex digestive systems in action.

Mallow in my old fleece jacket, nibbling a bite of hay. 

It was a cold night. Below freezing. I can't stand, or sit in a chair, for very long, and the boys weren't in the part of the barn that has a bench. So I was lying on the floor of Mallow's stall, where I could keep both boys in my line of vision - they were in adjacent stalls with a stockpanel divider between. I stole one of Piper's old mats (which is fair because she stole it from one of my chaises last year) and brought out a wedge cushion for a back support, and had an old lightweight sleeping bag to wrap up in. I was wearing two fleeces and a rainjacket and corduroy trews and gloves and a wooly earwarmer. My laptop was on hand to help pass the time "just in case I have to be out there for a while," but I couldn't listen to an audiobook because strange voices would have made ALL the goats, even the ones in the other barn, more upset than they already were.

When I took the heating pad off Rocket at 4 AM, he was cuddled up in a corner under his jacket, dozing. Mallow was still standing, so I gave him the heating pad again and went into the house to warm up and get a couple of hours sleep. At dawn I found Rocket moving around in his stall, with slightly runny eyes but a clear nose. Mallow was still standing and looking pretty sad.

I brought their mamas - and Rocket's sister Iris - into the stalls with them. They had been in the next stall over, where they could all see each other through the night but where the patients could not get pushed around or accidentally knocked down.

And then as the sky was getting light, I fed and watered everybody else - half the herd had been standing huddled together in the next paddock staring at the "recovery room" all night - and came back in to feed Piper and the cats and put the hot water bottle on my own back for a while. I had very good company.

Later, during the warmer part of Friday, both boys were allowed out for a while. But I kept Azalea and Mallow in a paddock next to the rest of the herd, and gave Mallow a little bit of pain medication to make him more comfortable.

Friday it didn't rain.
It was like some kind of crazy miracle.

Over the weekend it's been a gradual return to something like normality. Rocket's recovery has been straightforward, but without the repeated "reheating" throughout Thursday night, that may not been the case. I simply couldn't risk it - even a tough little monkey like Rocket is not designed for 12 hours of constant shivering.

I've kept Mallow and Azalea locked in a stall each night, so Mallow couldn't get pushed out of a shelter during the constant cold, dank weather we've had since Friday. Today is the first day he is looking more bright-eyed, and I saw him wave a horn at Azalea when the two were sharing a manger full of hay. It is always a relief when you see a poorly animal feeling cocky again. If it isn't raining tomorrow, I think we'll be back to our regular routine. How glad I will be!

And on we go.

~~~~~

changes

I started writing this yesterday, but was too tired to be coherent. Every waking moment of Tuesday was spent shifting goats around to keep two young bucks separated from the does, several of whom came into season yesterday morning.

Rocket at 13 days.

I had contacted my vet to try to get her out to wether both boys last week - which would have been perfect timing - but didn't even hear back. I managed to catch her with my third call, on Monday. I'm reluctantly wondering if it's time to look for another vet. I certainly don't expect someone to drop everything to rush out to my place, but I do need someone who will return my calls. I like my vet, but her practice has grown and this is not the first time I've felt like she just isn't "there" for me anymore; the last time, there was a communication delay for several weeks with the result that vaccines were administered at a time when their efficacy was reduced - which frankly, stuck in my craw. I'm a good client. I am respectful of the time of others. I don't complain about expenses and I pay my bills instantly. My animals matter to me.

[Deep cleansing breath.]

Anyway, the boys' appointment is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

Rocket now.

I'm a little sorry neither of these boys will sire offspring as they are both quite nice in terms of conformation. I even checked with the owners of their dad, in case they might want to have Rocket for his genetic potential - his mother is the daughter of my best doe, and is a good cashmere goat in her own right - but they are fully stocked with bucks. So, wethering it is. Mallow and Rocket will be happy and there won't be a constant risk of unplanned breedings.

In other news, I found my largest baking pan - it still had this watercolor taped to it, as I had used it as a drawing board back in July - 

and have started baking the candy roasters.

I started with the largest squash, which was 11 pounds 8 ounces - I had to cook it in two shifts! I've got several pounds of gorgeous purée in the freezer already. I will try to save some of the squash whole, for cooking in the Winter - it's lovely to cut into a squash and relive summer in that fresh aroma.

One quarter of the 11.5-pound candy roaster

The temperature has dropped below freezing several times at night, but a few nights ago it went down to the 20s F and the gardens really showed it the next morning. I pulled up all the remaining okra plants, and saved some wilted zinnia heads in hopes of seeds. I'm not sure how that works - do you know if the seeds have already matured before all the petals have dropped, or if they haven't developed and won't be viable? - but it's worth a try. I now have cardboard trays of seeds all over the porch - zinnias, bee balm, Suyo Long cucumbers, two varieties of okra, and candy roaster squash. The plan is to get all the seeds dry and into envelopes before I knock the cardboard trays over or the cats start playing in the seeds or Piper swings her tail and sends everything flying.

Piper on our long walk in the woods on Monday.
Plenty of tail-swinging that day!

There are still zinnias in jars on my windowsill, and I will enjoy them as long as possible. And of course, there are dozens of photographs on my laptop. I could keep drawing and painting zinnias for quite a while, I think. Maybe I will.

My eyes are almost closing as I type and I have yet to do my Daily Markmaking, so I'd better get cracking! I hope your week is going well :)

~~~~~

barn check

Just stepping out to the barn for a moment, to see how everyone is doing.

Would you care to join me?

Here are the charming Azalea and her mum, Lily of the Valley. Azalea seems to have forgiven me for trimming her hooves this morning. I want to be sure they are flat and smooth well before the 26th. I try to make sure the does' hooves aren't sharp-edged or jagged when they are due to kid. A mamagoat will often paw at a newborn kid with a degree of enthusiasm that will put the heart across you.

In the other side of the barn, we find Vinca having a nice snooze.

That little dark shape off Vinca's starboard hoof is Iris. 

See?

And then we turn around to see this:

Rocket, in the old chair kept handy for visitors.

Goatherd hand for scale.

 Twelve days old.

Little Big Goat.

~~~~~