I know it's kinda cheating...

but take a look over at Patrick's blog for the breaking goat news. I'll be back soon.

The Glamour of Farming

This growing your own food business is a lot a fun.

Most of the time.

Then comes the day when you realize the milk goat has a terrible, messy belly-ache because you, the clever farmer, fed her way too many orange peels. Or, at least, you hope that is what is causing her upset. Not being a vet, you haul out the biggest book on the animal care bookshelf, the Merck's Veterinary Manual. (Thank you Brendan and Kirsten) It confirms you suspicions. You decide that the goat will live, but that the family won't be drinking the milk for a few days, just in case. You send Mr. Farmer to the store to buy organic milk. While he is off in town you discover that even in her distress, sicko goat felt well enough to knock down and mutilate the wire cage protecting a wild honeysuckle vine in the goat pen. Your parents, generous enough to let you stick your dang vine-ravaging goats on their property, would like to this this specimen preserved, hence the cage. You straighten the cage, tromp through the incredible boot-sucking mud and return with a five-pound bag of cayenne pepper. Why do you possess five pounds of cayenne pepper? It was going to be an attempt at organic pest control. The sicko goat is certainly making a pest of herself. You cover the ground around the cage with the spicy stuff and sneeze a couple of times. Okay, time to milk. On your clock, anyway. Goat girl thinks it's time to play tag. You're it. A bucket of grain and some stolen mouthfuls of alfalfa later, you nab her. Then she runs with amazing strength, dragging you to the gate, eager to leap up on the milking stand. Okay, chores done, wipe that sweat off your brow.

Oops. Remember that cayenne? It's in your eye now.

You think this farming thing might not be worth your trouble after all? Mr. Farmer returns with a gallon of organic milk from the blasted grocery store. $8!!!

Okay, okay, I'll go do my chores, just let me get this pepper out of my eye first.

The Order of Things

I wrote a few posts back about creating order inside our new home, adjusting to a smaller space and less belongings. After the work of decluttering and tidying is done it feels so wonderful to stretch out and enjoy our home.

A few days ago we butchered a goat. We have created a little farm life here, an extension of what we began at our old home. On a farm there is a never-ending cycle of fecundity and sparsity. In the spring the garden wakes up and begins to grow after the winter pause. The animals bear young; dozen of eggs from the chickens, one or two kids from each female goat. The summer heat and long days full of sun help the garden to produce an astonishing amount of food in just a few months. The tiny chicks and frisky kids also grow with amazing speed. A chicken eats its way to butchering size in just twelve weeks. By the time autumn blows in, the garden has filled the root cellar, freezer and pantry with pounds and bushels and quarts. Also in the autumn the chicken coop feels much too crowded. Roosters loudly compete for attention and require substantially larger amounts of corn and scraps than they did as chicks. Some of the goat kids were male, or simply number too many to feed economically. As the light and warmth wane and the chores of the garden are fewer, butchering time comes.

Just as our home feels roomier and calmer after removing the excess, the chicken coop is quieter and much, much more peaceful after the majority of the young roosters and older hens have been, with enormous gratitude, dispatched to the freezer and pantry. It is much the same with the goats. As the male goats become mature they become aggressive and hard to manage safely. To allow peace to return to the goat pasture, leaving the does to chew their cud and fatten up until they give birth in the spring, we butcher the extra animals after they have done their job of ensuring that another generation will be born. The winter months stretch ahead of all of us, animals and humans, a quiet, less active time. The garden is scrubbed clean by the cold wind and frost while the animals enjoy the warmth of their shelters. In the snug house we plan next year's garden and cook from our stores.

Really, extra is not the right word for the animals we butcher and vegetables we eat during these dark, cold days. Unlike the material excess we gathered for years and then removed from our home, those creatures weren't brought into the world without thought. On the contrary, we put great consideration into just how much food our family requires for each turn of seasons. Each spring we plant what we hope is the just enough seeds and plan to raise just enough meat. We try to raise just enough, not too much, not too little.

I do believe the world could use a lot more just enough right now.