Category: Friends

Posted on

Baby Goats = Happiness

Okay so I introduced Charlotte and Nell on this blog, but then they didn’t work out.  They were born last November and, because of the cold winter, the owners did not go out to handle them.  The lack of contact with people made them quite feral, at best, uninterested in humans and, in actuality, afraid of humans.  They were constantly looking for ways to get away and escape.  Goats are smart, or at least clever, and they found ways – EVERY DAY – to escape the pasture.  Then they were so hard to herd back in.   At any rate, we gave them back to the original owners, wishing them a good life.

Enter Jasmine, Jade, and Jessica…

Jasmine is the nursing mom and Jade and Jessica are her babies.  The twin girls were five days old when we got them, and now they are about a month old.  We were going to rename them, but Danielle told her niece, Jessica, that we had a goat with her name, so we were stuck..and we’ve come to know them as Jasmine, Jade, and Jessica.  They come from a line of J names.  Aunts are Janice Joplin, Jonie (Mitchell), etc…When we breed them, we will have, of course, Joan and Josette, Jay (Mascis), Jennifer (Drinker), Jalopy, Jerry, Jupiter, Jinny, Juniper…

Jasmine, the mom, is a year old.  She was held as a baby by her owners, Danny Botkin and his wife, Divya.  She is so gentle, and she feels more secure when people are around than when she is alone.  Jade and Jessica are complete cuddle-buns.  As you can see.  We got them for friendship as well as for milk and pasture management.  They like to eat invasives like poison ivy and bittersweet, leaving the grass for the horses.  They have not tried to get out once as they feel more secure around their stall.

Several mornings a week, we go to Atkin’s Market in North Amherst to get their gone-by vegies for the goats.  They love all of it except cucumbers, parsnips, and chard.

 

 

Posted on

There’s a Low Below the Low you Know

This is a line from an old Malvina Reynolds song called “there’s a bottom below“.

Yesterday morning it was -11 F when I went out at 6:30 to feed the horses.  That was so so low…but today…Oy Vey!  -12 F.   The cold is bitter, almost mean feeling, like it wants to hurt.  I dragged the hay across the pasture on the sled, breathing deeply.  Now as I sit here writing I can feel the cold in my chest.

The cold seemed to be freezing the little alveoli and capillaries in my lungs.  I have the water on to make some ginger honey tea to warm them up again.  

I’ve been locking the horses in their stalls at night and closing up the barn.  I give them two buckets of water each which are 3/4 gone when I come in the morning with the rest frozen solid.  I have to bring the buckets in to melt so I can fill them again.  It amazes the me that the hydrant in the barn keeps flowing!  I let them out in the day but feed them their hay in their stalls so they can be out of the bitter wind.  We haul the hose down from the house and then back to fill the daytime outside tank with the heater.

This cold feels epic!

However, the pipes in the clinic only froze and didn’t burst, there is a big pile of wood outside to keep our stove fed, we can unplug the freezer that is in the garage and, astoundingly, the ponies are warm under their blankets.  Today, from this low below any low I ever knew, the temperature is going to rise! Life is good.

We also keep warm by having friends here.  We had a wonderful Shabbat dinner with John and Sharon on John’s 83rd birthday.  I made Cholent and Zoe made Challah.  I feel so blessed in so many ways.