House of Goats
by
Tammy Owen
Published by Wyrd Goat Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Wyrd Goat Press, LLC
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Cover design by Kamila Zeman Miller
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1. The Perfect Plan
Ron drove just the two of us to meet the real estate agent. Civilization seemed far away as he turned off the highway up a steep road with hillside on one side and a slope toward the little-used highway on the other. Our sedan snaked away from the last vestiges of urbanity past some small farms framed by the winter-bare limbs of oak and big-leaf maple trees, and then to my surprise, we passed the snowline. We'd had a bit of snow in the city but it had long melted away. The white stuff on the hill had gotten pretty crusty and hid in the shadows of barns and in storm ditches, but it still made me think of wintery holidays with actual winter in them.
So far we'd looked at McMansions, run-down double-wides with DIY additions, 1970's era ranches with bizarre floor plans, and everything in-between. Neither of us were in a terrible hurry to find a house, but at the same time I wanted out of the city. Gangs had started to move into our little suburban neighborhood, and I'd outgrown our garden area. I just wanted some acreage so we could raise more veggies, maybe even some animals, and I hoped that I could ignore unneighborly neighbors more easily.
One of our neighbors in particular had been getting wackier by the day, to which the huge, now deformed black walnut tree in our backyard could attest. She'd decided that she wanted just grass in her backyard, a fact announced by the sound of chainsaws early one Saturday morning. Apparently the half of our tree overhanging her property, along with all her lovely shrubs and garden beds, had to go. I worried that a strong wind would knock the poor, overbalanced tree over. It would fall, of course, onto our property.
The sad irony was that most of the shade fell on our side of the fence.
Anyway, we saw a lot of houses as we made our way up the hill. Those houses came in every style and state of repair and disrepair we'd seen so far all over three counties. McMansions and manufactured homes coexisted uneasily with traditional farmhouses and converted barns. The only thing the homes had in common was upheld by the law of the land, literally--a minimum of five acres.
I liked the distance between most of the homes. It would be a short hike to get to a next-door neighbor, which seemed like paradise compared to Ms. Wacky Wacktree. I also liked the horses, the cows, the walnut orchard and the partially covered sign advertising blueberries we passed.
This was the life for me.
Ron pulled into a short driveway and my heart sank. The squat, gray, boxy ranch wasn't the ugliest place we'd seen, but it distinctly lacked charm. I pasted on a hopeful smile.
Our agent wasn't there yet.
"Want to look around?" Ron asked.
"Sure." I stepped out onto the gravel driveway and instinctively walked toward the side of the house where a muddy footpath led to the back. The ground plunged from a gentle slope down a snowy, overgrown grassy hill. I tried not to let my feet slide out from under me as I minced my way down.
Blackberries. The back was solid blackberries, looked like twenty feet high in spots. The dark, arching, thorny vines had lost most of their leaves but not all, creating a thick, impenetrable zone. I could imagine my shredded body, clothes reduced to rags from my struggles, being found in the middle by search and rescue crews weeks after I disappeared. They'd have to bring in heavy equipment to get me out.
The house had a deck in back so we climbed the steps. And I got my first look at a view that still takes my breath away.
Evergreen forests fell away into a series of gullies and climbed again, where they curved gracefully around snowy pastures. Mist floated down the river gorge, making islands of the shorter hills under a clear blue sky. Most of the trees were dark, tall Douglas firs, but there were quite a few oaks and maples. I later learned that oaks were a special feature of our particular hill, as if the place had a connection to the oak-laden desert just over an hour's drive away from here.
As much as the view, I loved the wintry silence. The east wind softened the faint sounds traffic from the highway. When the wind died down the traffic whispered like distant surf.
"I love it." The words came out of my mouth before I'd really thought anything through.
"You're going to hate the kitchen."
I looked at Ron. "How do you know?"
"Adam and I broke into the place a couple days ago and had a look around."
Ron, one of the most abnormally law-abiding people I knew, occasionally got under the influence of Adam and stuff happened. Normally it involved caves or whitewater rafts. I stared at him in surprise.
"It's bank owned. No one's lived here for two years. Looks like no one's broken in and trashed it yet. We saw at least a dozen business cards from other real estate agents on the kitchen counter."
No one had broken in besides him and Adam, I thought wryly. "Mmm hmm." So. Lots of people had looked at it and walked away. I leaned on the rail some more and gazed out at the view. Normally I was all about looking in the windows of unoccupied houses for sale, but the view had me captivated. I couldn't see the mountains or the river itself, but I didn't care. I felt like the mistress of all I surveyed.
"Master of all I survey," Ron muttered. Small birds pipped among the thorny vines. I could totally turn this nightmare of invasive alien monoculture into a garden paradise. War of the Worlds reversed.
We heard the car pull into the driveway and went back to the front. Gail got out of her sporty red car and smiled. As usual, her short blonde hair and hot makeup was perfect. "Have you had a chance to look around?"
"Just a little bit." I shot Ron a look lest he, in boy scout fashion, confess to his crime. "There's a lot of blackberries."
"Whose barn and field is that?" Ron asked.
I hadn't even noticed the barn. The faded red two-story building was mostly covered in blackberries. A couple of wood posts and a little fencing stuck out here and there to indicate the pasture. The corner of the pasture was pretty close to the house, but I decided I wouldn't mind someone's animals grazing in picturesque fashion beside my future garden.
"Oh, that belongs to the property," Gail said.
"Wow." My exclamation wasn't entirely inspired by admiration and joy. I imagined myself precariously balanced on a ladder trying to repaint the upper reaches while blackberries dragged at my heels.
"It's not easy to get to the barn because of the blackberries," Gail said, "but they're low enough by the front doors that you can get through if you've got boots on. I checked and there's nothing left inside. The building's in pretty good shape." She let out a weary sigh. "I know you've been looking at nicer places, but this is a really good deal, and you've been willing to look at fixer-uppers before, so I thought I'd give it a shot. There's another place down the road from here I want to show you too, so we can go look at that instead. It's a lot more money, but it's in better condition."
"Let's have a look inside, at least," I said.
Gail let us in the front door and I walked around upstairs. Ron was right. I hated the kitchen, and not just a little bit. The dark galley was completely closed off from the rest of the house. The only bright point was ugly--yellow countertops. Yech. Even if the arrangement of appliances were less atrocious, I far preferred open floor plans so I could yammer with my friends while I cooked.
The kitchen wasn't the only sore spot. The one and only bathroom upstairs, the one attached to the master bedroom, was small and horribly out of date.
I'd just remodeled our sole bathroom at our old place. "Burnt orange countertops? Really?" I didn't want to think about remodeling another bathroom. I went back outside onto the deck through the sliding doors. Again, the view held me captive and the bathroom didn't seem so horrible anymore. It would be just another challenge, a challenge I'd be willing to take on for a view like this.
"It's a really nice view," Gail said behind me.
Ron joined me at the rail. I had one of those crazy, irrational moments just then, imagining us spending spring days and summer nights just like this.
"I like it. I think it's doable."
Ron looked at me as if I was crazed. "Really?"
"What do you think?"
"I hate the house."
"Really? You hate it?" My heart sank. Ron didn't use the word hate casually.
"The rooms are narrow and weird and it has white carpet."
"Yeah." We both preferred hardwood floors. We'd torn out all the carpet in our own place when we found out it had hardwood floors underneath. I loved that aspect of our current house most of all.
"You like it? Really?"
"I love this." I looked beyond the blackberries. It was as if they didn't exist for me. In my mind, below us stretched a glorious romantic garden full of exuberant, overgrown roses and lilacs. Beyond the small stand of trees on the west side of the house, where the blackberries were a little shorter, I'd put a nice big veggie garden. "Can we go look out there?" I asked.
Gail smiled a very real estate agent-y smile. "Sure."
We walked under the bare trees and I sifted through the fallen leaves. "Ooo, these trees are awesome. Copper beech, silver maples, and a Liquidambar. Score!"
"She does this sometimes," Ron explained. "You're lucky it’s in English and not in Latin."
Actually liquidambar was the Latin but I managed to stop myself from blurting that out and coming off like a show off. "Are those apple or pear trees through there?" I asked, gesturing at some squat fruit trees by the road.
"I'm not sure," Gail said.
I couldn't tell from the fallen leaves, though the fat fruit spurs jutting from the bare branches looked promising. "So that orchard between us and the barn, that must be ours too, right?" I couldn't tell for sure, but the bark and the narrower fruit spurs on the tall and skinnyish fruit trees made me think cherry.
"I'm not sure if that's an orchard, but it is part of the property," Gail said. "Do you want to see the downstairs?"
We followed her back to the house but I wasn't paying much attention except to note with wry amusement how very seventies it all looked. At least it only had one small wall with wood paneling that abutted a stone fireplace. The rest of the walls were blissfully, if unimaginatively, white.
The place had enough bedrooms, two fireplaces, and I could update the bathrooms and kitchen later.
I bounced around in glee in a way I hadn't since we'd decided to not make an offer on the much-mourned House of Awesomeness that stood on the worst possible acreage in the world. In many ways, this property was its exact opposite--bleh house, but fabulous property. I tried to bring myself down back to Earth--after all, Ron hated it and we weren't in a rush so why settle--but I had a hard time containing my enthusiasm. After all, when it came down to it, a person could completely rebuild a house. Creating a view, not so much. And it was a southern slope, perfect for growing just about anything except shade plants. We could even have a vineyard if we wanted to.
We went out to our cars and Gail led us back down the hill. The other place turned out to be spectacular, but it was also a spectacular mess. The prior owners had torn out everything of value, including the plumbing and wiring, before taking off. And the place cost twice as much.
I loved the rounded corners, granite counters, extra-deep tubs and magnificent tile, but no matter how neat it was that they'd begun to turn the barn into a second home, I knew we'd be bleeding money into a project on top of a hefty mortgage, and for what? Flat land with no view. I was put off by the place. Ron just made a face when he saw the ripped out wiring and shook his head.
We looked around for another month, but I couldn't get the awkward ranch house with the incredible view out of my mind. So we went back again so that I could let it go. Instead, Ron found himself falling in love with the land.
"A crappy house with a million dollar view," I sighed.
"It's going to be a lot of work," he told me.
"We'll get goats," I said. "They're easy, right?"
"They're hardy. We had Highland cows when I was a kid. They kept the brush down pretty good, if not better than the Nubian goats my mom had."
"A cow sounds like a big commitment."
Ron nodded. "Goats might work. I'm not sure how long it'll take for them to eat through all this. Years, maybe."
We sat, leaning on the rail elbow to elbow, and took the plunge. This was the house. This was the place.
This would be our new home.
I looked at Gail. "We'll take it."
Her elegant eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Oh! Great! I'll start the paperwork."
2. Bringing Them Home
Our pickup truck, dubbed the Millennium Falcon, had sadly gone to small pickup heaven just before we moved, so when we decided we were ready for goats we got the assistance of our friend Todd and his truck. Three adults, two pre-teens, a truck, a sedan, some plastic tarp and a dream.
The kids and I sang on the way. My husband had his business face on, serene but serious, his blue eyes lighter than usual and creased with a hint of smile. His mood always lifted when we went into the desert.
Ron is not a large man, just an ordinary, average guy, he likes to say. But he has a wiry strength that originates from his country youth. He wore his light-brown hair short, which minimized the white witch-mark near the crown of his head.
Our kids are a reflection of both parents, lean, light brown hair, blue-gray eyes, though they were tall for their mid-grade school ages and might grow to be as tall as my six-and-change foot uncles or my husband's willowy giant of a grandfather. We all looked forward to a new life away from the city, though the kids already missed their friends.
We drove through the Columbia River Gorge on a perfect April day, meaning it wasn't raining and a little sun glowed through the clouds. We even hit patches of full sun, locally referred to as 'sun breaks.' The patterns of golden light and sooty shadow on the hills and cliffs, with hundreds of waterfalls spilling down the dark rocky faces, made me think of castles and women in long dresses and cloaks buffeted by stiff winds.
Soon the fir forests gave way to grassland dotted with oak trees. We'd gone from temperate rainforest to semi-arid hills in less than a hundred miles. The highway cut straight lines alongside the broad, gray Columbia River. We took the exit to Madras and the road began to climb and wind along the sides and saddles of hills. We saw some livestock, but mostly the land looked wild and empty. Some fields had been plowed, others lay apparently fallow, rippled with cow trails that dented the hill slopes with mini-terraces of straw-colored grass.
The clouds thickened up, forming a gray, barren blanket. This time of year it rained in the high desert more often than other times, but the mountains had squeegeed out most of the water. Those clouds didn't give up moisture as often as in our neck of the woods, but at least a little rained down here and there during certain times of the year. The oaks, poppies and mullein certainly looked happier, and the sage was actually green.
The grassland grew more sparse and the soil looked red in spots. Often the only signs of life for miles were long lengths of barbed wire fence held by sun bleached, rough-cut juniper posts. Except around houses, and in deep gullies, the oaks all but disappeared. The junipers that took their place always looked the same to me no matter the time of year--dark, gnarled and prickly, dotted with pale blue berries that shriveled in time into something that looked like peppercorns. They seemed impervious to heat, drought, snow, rain or biting winds with temperatures well below zero in the dead of winter.
We cut through Madras and zigzagged north and east through a series of increasingly primitive roads, until we came to a little goat farm with about three hundred head, living heads that is, of goats. "No Trespassing" signs dotted the length of the long dirt road leading to the house, edged on both sides with barbed wire fence. As we neared the house and outbuildings, their wolves started snarling, warning us that they meant business and despised intruders. I love all sorts of canines, but I was just as glad that the fierce animals were in large, sturdy, elaborate kennels that included chicken wire roofs and cement 'doghouses.' They'd dug dens into the hard, rocky soil, expanding their doghouses with natural earth burrows that went deeper than I could see.
The entire property looked forbidding. I hoped that we'd come to the right place. I imagined the owners coming out of nowhere, shotguns leveled at our windshield, or maybe they sat somewhere just out of sight looking at us through rifle scopes. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a couple of old gents waiting on the porch to warn off intruders with shotguns like the old guys in Secondhand Lions, one of my favorite movies.
Judy and Amery emerged from the house, skin baked dark by the sun, gray hair thinned by time, their eyes squinting from cautious smiles. They looked like a much friendlier version of American Gothic, both lean, the husband significantly taller than his wife, a typical couple that in a couple more decades might be described as elderly. My husband quickly got out of our sedan and offered his hand. "I'm Ron Owen, this is my friend Todd Anderson and this is my wife, Tammy. Your daughter sent us here for some goats."
Their smiles instantly changed to unguarded and genuine grins. I hadn't realized how tense I'd gotten until I relaxed and about collapsed from relief. "Oh, yes," Judy said. "Come on in."
Judy swept me away from the man-talk, my normal comfy place, and herded me into the house. The kids traitorously stuck with their dad and Todd.
Judy had the makings of a goat cheese factory in her large, dilapidated kitchen. Cauldrons of goat milk sat about in various stages of cheese-making. The scent of that cheese had a wild character I wasn't used to, but the unfamiliarity didn't make me recoil. In fact it smelled wonderful and exotic. My memory jerked back to the flavors I'd loved in a really good venison stew I had once in college. That flavor seemed to be infused into the mild cheese scents.
Like many folk I knew in more remote parts of Oregon and Washington, Judy had a lot of her things in the outdated kitchen stored in coffee cans, apple boxes and just about any other reusable container that would fit neatly against a wall or in a shelf. The place was clean, but cluttered. The clutter at my place wasn't as organized or as clean as hers, even if I had less of it. I guessed right then, correctly, that if I wanted to do the farming thing right I'd have to clean up my act, especially if I wanted to make cheese, or beer, or wine.
She had books, lots of them, most of them beautiful, dusty antiques though I saw some newer ones here and there. I owned some of the same books, like Joy of Cooking, Stocking Up, and The Encyclopedia of Country Living. Her daughter had given me that encyclopedia, in fact, as a housewarming gift.
"Are you going to milk?" Judy asked.
The thought appealed, but Ron had warned me. "Oh, I don't think so. I'd read that when we breed them they'll come into milk, and I'll probably milk them while they have kids, but when they start weaning them off I'll wean off milking." Ron had informed me that milking was a chore different than any I'd ever known in my life. For the sake of the animals, you had to have the kind of work ethic that would get your butt out to the barn even in the most evil weather no matter how sick or tired you might be. He also told me that milking developed the strength in his very strong, knobby, calloused and scarred hands.
Many of his scars came from farm life. A dog. Barbed wire. Horses scraping him against trees. I wondered if I'd end up with scarred hands like his.
Anyway, once you started milking you had to do it twice every day at the same time or the animal suffered. I hated the thought of goats in pain because I slept in, or got caught in traffic on the way home from shopping.
Judy's brow wrinkled up and she put her hands on her hips. "I suppose you could do that."
It worried me that she hadn't tried it before. It made me doubt that weaning off of milking would be a reasonable thing to do. I watched her expression, hoping for a sign of approval. "I just thought that way, we could take a vacation."
"A vacation." Judy's brow wrinkled even more. "Yes, I suppose you could take a vacation that way, once in a while. That might be nice." She said it as if it might be nice to win the lottery, speaking as someone who didn't actually buy lottery tickets. "Are you going to make goat cheese?"
"I have a friend who knows how. I thought I'd trade her milk for a portion of the cheese that she made out of it." Ann and I had already talked about it. A former goat owner, Ann missed her herd of fainting goats and looked forward to a chance to make goat cheese again.
"Well it's very easy to make." Judy gestured at her loaded counters.
"It looks like a lot of work." I felt like a jerk for saying it, especially after my rather cheerful attitude toward working hard around our property while my husband pulled in the wages. I needed to be tough and ready for work. "That is, I'm not sure I'd be very good at it. It looks complicated."
"I can show you."
"Maybe I can come over sometime to help, if you have time. It's easier for me to learn by doing."
"Oh yes, that would be nice."
"I don't even know how to milk a goat," I confessed. "I saw some plans for making a stand but I don't have one yet."
"They're probably a terrible design. People pass around those things because they work all right and they're easy to put together, but they don't have to milk as many goats in a day as I do. Let me show you a proper milk station that'll save your back." We went out toward one of the many buildings. They all looked like they were made of teak--weathered, beautiful wood with grays and multitude of soft sand colors. "What kind of wood is that?" I asked.
"Juniper. My husband has a small mill. He cuts all the boards and makes all the posts and such. He can make hardwood floors, too. You should ask about it."
Now that was self-sufficiency. I felt a strange kind of awe-struck envy, as distant a dream as a vacation was to Judy.
Judy led me through an assortment of gates, each with a different kind of latch. White goats milled around at the edges of the fences, following us, meh-ing for a handout or a bit of attention. Their soft faces and strange eyes made me smile. They had graceful, gently curved horns with ripples on them. Judy took me inside a large shed. Immediately a goat started crying for attention outside. "She wants to be milked," Judy said with a grin. "But it's not time. If you don't do it at the same time every day, and in an orderly way, it can be a real problem. Now, as you see, with this sort of milk stand the goat will be just at the right height this way."
The shed's floor was a split-level. Behind a few boards down the middle that served as a fence, a platform sat a couple of feet off the ground, just the right height for Judy, who sat on her milking bucket, to reach out and milk without having to bend to milk. "They put their heads through here," she said, showing me an opening to her left between some more boards. "I put a little grain or alfalfa in that bin there for them to chew on. Then this board," she said, grabbing a board held by a single bolt, "swings down to hold them behind the head." She demonstrated. "I don't have to hold the older ones like that, but it's handy for the young ones."
I put the platform idea on my husband's to-do list, hoping he wouldn't mind. After all, I had a lot of sod to pull, and a garden to plant.
I still felt guilty about foisting off work onto Ron after I'd promised to do most of the work around the place. "I have to remember to show Ron this before we go. If I try to describe it to him, he'll probably think I'm crazy."
"Great." Judy smiled. "Now, let's go see your goats."
By this time, by the way the men and kids were walking around, Amery had given the man tour of their pastures, the wolf kennels, the various buildings ... he may have even shown them the mill. I was a little jealous. There they were: our lean kids with the tall, thin farmer as if they were his own except they were city-kid pale, my husband with his stooped, broad farmer's shoulders and fierce eyes nodding along, and Todd, Ron's thick, dark, hairy coworker and (thankfully) one of the most patient men on Earth. The group ranged about, kicking rocks and talking in low voices. I wished I'd been able to go with them, and yet I'd learned a lot from Judy on the flash tour. I liked her in that almost-instantaneous way that happens sometimes. I supposed that I really wouldn't have rather been with them. My herding dog genes had simply kicked in, wanting us to stay all together and learn all the same things.
"How old are your kids?" Judy asked.
"Eight and ten."
"Goat milk is great for kids, much better than cow's milk. People around here pay extra for my milk. It's good for eczema, arthritis, folk with digestive problems, and there's no problem for folk who are lactose intolerant--in fact, I bet most problems people are having these days have to do with cow's milk and all the stuff that ends up in it. You can raise a baby on goat's milk when the mother can't breast feed for whatever reason, but a baby would starve on cow's milk."
I had no idea how valid her claims were. I had heard, though, the thing about being able to raise babies on goat's milk. I wouldn't have bet my newborn kids' health on it, but if I didn't produce enough milk myself, I suppose I would try it. I know at least one person who did that due to insufficient milk production and her baby went from being colicky on formula to happy on goat's milk.
Everyone met up at a small pen that had two tiny goats--two little girls. The baby goats were much smaller than I expected. About the size of a medium dog, I couldn't imagine them riding in the back of a pickup.
And they weren't members of the magical breed of white goats Judy and Amery had developed from years of careful breeding between Saanen and champion Boer males. One of our goats was black and white with floppy ears. She had a gently arched roman nose. The other was like a gazelle, tan with a black and white and tan striped face. Her face was dished like a deer and her ears pricked up and a little forward. Both had straight horns. They gamboled about together, isolated from the rest of the good goats, ears flopping with every bouncy leap.
"Yes," Judy said apologetically, putting her hands on her hips. "We're sorry about these. You see, we didn't have any to spare this spring. We're trying to build our herd, you see. But we felt so badly about it that we found you these culls. That one," she said, pointing the black and white goat, "is a Nubian cross, maybe mostly Nubian. And that one, well, that's a goat." She frowned, and then smiled cheerfully at me. "Now, I understand if you don't want them. That's just fine. We can sell them to someone else. But since they're not what you wanted we'll be charging half. That's just twenty dollars a goat."
I wasn't actually disappointed, except that I instantly discarded the idea of breeding them. If they'd been culled then someone, probably an expert, had decided they had undesirable traits. I shouldn't get them, even on the cheap ...
They were so cute, and I didn't want to have come all this way to return empty-handed. "That's fine. We'll take them." Not the best decision process, but looking back, I'm glad we did it. Unbeknownst to me, that Nubian cross would take me on a long, often heartbreaking but wonderful journey.
Ron doled out the money to Amery. Ron often notes aloud that he exists solely to keep me happy by funding my wacky schemes. I thought about how that man surely loved me to put up with all this, and how much more I'd be drawing on that love in just a bit. Hopefully I'd make it up to him by showing real savings on our groceries before too long.
"Now, do you have a dog crate or something for them?" Judy asked. She looked anxiously at Todd's itty bitty pickup truck.
They would have fit in a dog crate, both of them together. In fact, that would have been a brilliant idea.
Too bad I wasn't brilliant.
"Um, we have a tarp. I guess we could just put them in the back seat," I suggested.
Ron gave me a look. That was not the plan.
"I bought a couple of dog harnesses, and we were going to tie them in the back of Todd's truck, but they're so small ..."
"Oh, you don't want to tie them," Judy said.
I had no idea then how bad an idea that would in fact have been, even if they'd been hogtied as well. Happily, her advice just reinforced my instinct that tying them up for a long drive wouldn't work.
"Sorry Todd, looks like we won't need your pickup," I said. "Except if you could take Kate or Keith back with you, that would make room for the goats in the back seat."
"I could put one of the goats in the back of the cab," Todd offered. "I put my dog there all the time. No problem."
Ron grimaced. "It'll make a mess."
"Most likely they'll just lie down for the whole trip," Judy told us. "And they won't go when they're lying down."
Yay! I had an ally. "I'll clean up after her if she does anything bad." Anything so long as the poor sad things didn't have to get tied up in the back of a pickup.
"I can handle it," Todd said. "The dog's made messes back there before. I'll go clear out some of the trash back there."
"It might help absorb stuff if you leave it," Ron pointed out. Ron doesn't get sour or bitchy when things start happening that he doesn't like. His expression holds a kind of dignified, cold irritation that some find intimidating. He had that expression now. I'd upset him yet again, and I owed Todd more than what appeared on face value. I owed Todd all that he was due for his generous gesture plus the massive amount of imposition Ron felt we'd inflicted by putting Todd in this unplanned-for situation.
Ron just can't abide people doing nice things for him, especially if it's a change on an existing plan. It's part of his nature to do for others, and not to receive. I think the idea that someone might be mildly inconvenienced or that it might cost them a penny to give him a gift embarrasses him fiercely, maybe because he would rather they keep what they have and be comfortable or give it to someone else more needy, since he can do without. He'd be happy in a stick shack in the desert with a knife and a camping pot.
My best friend Rachel and I are still working on civilizing him. Like a wild horse getting used to human touch, we're getting him used to the idea that people feel good when they do nice things for him or give him gifts, and that it doesn't really hurt either party. It might even be pleasant for one or two of his friends to express generosity without turning it into a battle of wills. Ron ought to know, being so generous himself.
Anyway, our daughter Kate volunteered to ride with Todd in case the goat tried to do something that might interfere with his driving. Our son Keith would ride in the backseat in our sedan with the other goat. We spread out the tarp over the cloth upholstery, the tarp originally meant to provide cover for the goats in the truck.
Judy and Amery provided straw for absorption, just in case. We sprinkled it over the tarp. The strong, golden scent of clean straw filled the car. I thought briefly about cutting the tarp in half and giving the other to Todd, but decided against it. Cutting a tarp was a form of vandalism that Ron likely wouldn't tolerate, big tarps being precious and all.
I had my doubts that the straw would do any good if the goat decided she really needed to go. I could imagine a golden, bubbly puddle flowing from one low to another as we rounded curves in the road. Yeah, this was going to be fun.
"Now if they get runny or dirty bottoms, that's called scours." Judy had begun to fuss like a mother sending her children off to camp for the first time. "We give them a handful of soy meal with their grain and that seems to straighten things out. They're still on bottles--here, let me get you some nipples and rings. They'll fit on a regular two liter pop bottle. Amery, tell 'em about the alfalfa."
Amery dutifully nodded. "Alfalfa has extra protein in it. Don't feed 'em grass hay, it's no good."
"Good green alfalfa," Judy said, coming back with the nipples and rings. "Oh dear, these aren't very clean."
"I'll clean them. We gave our kids bottles after I weaned them," I told her, absorbing everything they told me as best I could, terrified that the goats would keel over the second I took them home. "I know to keep them really clean." I clung to that knowledge. Keeping bottles clean for babies so they don't get sick. That I could do.
"That's good. That'll keep away the scours." Judy put her hands on her hips. "I know I'm forgetting something."
"Oh, hoof trimming--" I'd been nervous about it. "It's not hard, is it?"
"Oh, you won't need to do that. Our goats keep in trim just from running around."
I looked around at the hard countryside and thought yep, I'll need to trim hooves. Our pasture, except in the deepest part of winter and hottest part of summer, had tender, friable, earth.
Or maybe I wouldn't have to if we maybe built a little rock mountain, and put down some gravel in front of the barn.
Ah, the silly dreams and needless stress that boils up from the big unknowns ....
I put the harnesses on the goats anyway so they'd be easier to handle in the car--a purple one for the black and white goat, green for the other. Todd picked up one goat, wrapping his thick, hairy arms behind the goat's hind legs and under its chest. She immediately began to bawl, and when Ron picked up the other and that one started to bawl, they both got more frantic. Herd animals, separated! Oh the trauma drama. Judy wrung her hands, and if I hadn't a load of bottle-feeding supplies keeping my hands busy I would have wrung mine too.
Keith piled into the back seat, grinning, and Ron put our goat, the black and white one, in the back with him. Keith held the little goat to make sure she didn't bolt when we shut the door. She shifted around, half-struggling, half-trying to get comfortable. The two of them looked beyond adorable together.
"We have a partial sack of soy meal," Judy said. "Amery?"
Amery nodded and got the partial sack of soy meal. Ron opened our trunk and Amery loaded it in. A little of the soy meal and dust wafted into our trunk.
I knew that farm life could get messy, so I took this and the straw in the car in stride. Still, I wondered ruefully if we'd ever have a clean car again.
"Well, we'd better get going," I said.
"Yep, yep." Judy made a hesitating step toward me as if she wondered if a hug might be appropriate, so I gave her a hug.
"Thanks so much," I told them both. "We really appreciate this." My insides pulled me in two directions. I wanted to stay for the security of having a goat expert on hand and to get more advice, but I also wanted to get home before our baby goats started pissing and crapping all over the place.
"No problem. Next time we'll have some nice ones for you," Judy told us.
Ron and I piled into the car and we took off, Todd behind us.
Other than straining my neck to look at the baby goat, which was very well behaved, the long trip home was uneventful. Keith kept his arm over her, and talked to her. She lay with her front legs tucked up tight to her chest and her hind legs following her belly. Her nostrils occasionally pulsed or she'd flick a heavy, floppy ear, but other than that she remained still and quiet. I wondered if her goat instincts made her feel like she was surrounded by predators and her only hope would be to remain motionless and pray that they didn't notice her.
When we finally pulled into the driveway I tensed, because we had a new big hurdle ahead.
The dogs.
3. Nose to Nose
Our dogs.
Nikita was a mixed-breed, but mostly German shepherd and few would guess that she had anything else in her bloodline unless they knew to notice her high hips. She was a hard-core old-school dog. Gentle, incredibly loyal, fiercely protective, she had all the positive traits and beautiful looks inherent to her primary breed. She'd snapped at a living being exactly twice in her life. Once was as a puppy, too eager to snag ham offered to her by our friend, Adam. She never grabbed at food again--Adam's yelp of pain was enough to make her tuck tails and ears and writhe in guilt for hours. The other time was, completely inexplicably, at a park when an attractive young blonde woman with her hair in a ponytail, dressed in pink shorts and a pink tank top no less, jogged by. I have no idea what terrified Nikita about this person who looked like a doll and that I could snap in half just by breathing on her too hard. The blonde shot us such a look. How dare people train such vicious attack dogs?
Little did she know Nikita's true nature; heart of a hero, spine of a noodle.
Once we had an intruder in our average suburban backyard in the days when we had that sort of thing. Nikita alerted us by barking so ferociously I knew immediately something was wrong. Ron was working graveyard in those days, and I'd returned to bed for a nap after the kids had gone off to school. I pulled on a robe and went out to the backyard.
All I saw, through my shock, was a man with a huge red and white umbrella, which he flashed at Nikita in an effort to back her off. Occasionally he threw something at her.
I dashed back to our bedroom. "Ron, there's someone in our back yard throwing rocks at Nikita!"
Ron bolted out of bed. I ran back to the yard, assured that back up was on the way, to defend my dog. Nikita was in full form by this point, leaping literally six feet in the air (she could have caught the top of our six foot fence in her teeth with each leap) and barking on the way down. Leap brough brough brough brough! Leap brough brough brough brough!
I'd worked up into quite the enraged lather by this time myself. "What the hell are you doing to my dog?" I demanded.
Nikita ran behind me. To hide. Oh, I'm sure that she would have defended me to the death if I got into trouble. But the fact of the matter was that my fierce, beautiful girl had not actually attacked the man, nor bitten him. She was one hundred percent bluster and relied on her alpha to come to the rescue.
Which he did. Ron came up from behind me, buck naked, with a sword in one hand and pistol in the other. Why a sword? That's a long story. Suffice it to say, Ron was kind of a renaissance man, and we had a small collection of swords around the house.
By this time the meter man had time to close his umbrella, revealing his electric company uniform. His voice had pitched up a bit higher than normal I'm sure. "Meter man!"
We bustled Nikita into the house, with apologies. Ron put on clothes, and went back out to shake hands and explain, but the meter man had taken off.
I'm sure we're the subject of legend, as a cautionary tale, among the municipal utility companies. I later saw a completely different meter man checking our meter using binoculars from our neighbor's yard.
Frey was the product of an unlikely union between a large ball of lint and a bear. Actually, near as we could tell he was a pit bull chow mix, with neither of those breed traits except a hint of appearance. In fact, I suspected mostly human ancestry. His long, brown/gray brindle hair felt more like human hair than dog. He sat like a person in our kids' child-sized stuffed chairs, watching TV with them. He preferred human company, and had little interest in things doggish, including following commands. Fortunately, we didn't have to train him. He amiably kept close and didn't have any bad habits. His only dog-like trait was a long-abiding hatred of squirrels, which he despised with the melodramatic passion of a super villain.
I knew either of these animals could surprise us when presented with goats. The goats were too small for the pasture and barn in its current condition. We hadn't yet gotten a couple of critical pieces of the fencing in place--minor things, but mainly, the 'truck' gate had to be tightened and adjusted, because the gap between gate edge and post was much too large. Our wee goats could easily slip through.
The truck gate wasn't really a gate like most city people would think. It's field fence, which is sort of like super-large chicken wire, completely unframed, topped with barbed wire. The purpose of the barbed wire on the top of a truck gate is to attack anyone who tries to open or shut the gate. Ours, like many truck gates, had a post in the middle that wasn't in any way attached to the ground. It kept the middle of the fence from scrunching down over time and added something heavy for me to drag while I was under attack by barbed wire. The gate could also be rolled up or just flopped to one side.
If you're picturing rolling up a gate as a neat, easy process, you don't understand truck gates yet.
This twisty, rather dangerous and awkward contraption had to be pulled tight enough that it wouldn't sag, but not so tight that it would be impossible for one person to 'latch' it. And by latch I mean take the end post and jam the end under coils of baling wire hanging from the fence post, and then bungee cord the middle, and finally get down on hands and knees to loop the bottom coils of baling wire around the bottom of the gate post.
By the way, the way I latch the gate is backwards. I hear it's normal, and easier, to start from the bottom--if you can pull it off. I can't seem to get ours shut that way.
It hates me. I have the emotional scars to prove it.
We also had to reassess the fence itself. In my mind's eye, when we'd checked the fence before we'd seen the goats, I figured its foibles and flaws wouldn't be a problem. Now I wondered if there might not be too many spots where little kids--baby goats, not children--could get through. I also wondered if there were enough electric lines on the side we shared with our uphill neighbors. We didn't have field fence on that side at all. About fifty feet of horse fence, which our baby goats could just duck under, ran along the top of our pasture. Where that ended, electric fence began. I could only see a little of our pasture here and there near the top. Blackberries smothered the rest of the pasture in the form of a huge thorny forest on our side. The neighbor cut and sprayed to keep his field clear and to make sure the blackberries didn't short the line.
We'd have to cover the horse fence with field fence, at minimum. We'd have to do a little machete exploration to figure out what else had to be done.
Anyway, we got out of the car and put Keith in charge of the goat, making sure she wouldn't run off now that she could get out of the car. She didn't want to run. In fact she preferred to stay underfoot.
Todd pulled in, and Kate leapt out. "The goat pooped and pissed in the truck!" Her hair had managed to stick up in odd places. I wasn't used to seeing Katherine so disheveled, as her very straight, thick, slippery hair tended to fall straight down even when we tried to engineer some style to it.
Todd came out, shirtless. I thought he was bent and tense with anger, until I realized he was trying not to laugh. "I think I scared your daughter."
"Oh?" Now I was really worried.
"When the goat went in the back, I took off my shirt and told her to mop it up. And she screamed--"
"I did not scream," Kate protested.
"--and--" Todd couldn't hold back the laughter. "She screamed eeek! you're a monkey!" He giggled. "Your daughter is a kick."
"I was not scared," Kate pouted, crossing her arms.
I had to admit, I found Todd's hairy torso alarming myself. I don't think I could have prepared Kate for that sight. Words fail to describe. "Um, you want a clean shirt?"
"Nah." He waved me off with a grin.
We got the other goat out, and took them toward the dog run, chain link fence surrounding a couple thousand square feet of pasture grass, low-growing junipers, a few ornamentals and four large trees. We have the only chain link fence on the entire road. My idea.
I was such a city girl. Still am, in a lot of ways. At the time I worried that I'd made some sort of country faux pas. Turns out chain link is expensive and doesn't make sense when field fence is taller and much more effective for farming purposes. I could have saved us a lot of money if I'd thought about it, but I’m not sorry we have it. The chain link has held up better than our field fence. Of course that might be because the dogs aren't as hard on fences as goats ....
I let Ron take over the job of goat-introducer. Ron likes to say he was raised by coyotes, and he knows dogs on an instinctive level that I'll never match. "We have to take them right in," he said. "Don't give the dogs a chance to think that they're anything that's coming in from the outside to intrude. These goats are family."
The baby goats, of course, were terrified. Keith and Ron had to hold them firmly while the dogs snuffled them over. I hovered nearby, anxious, looking for any sign that either dog would smell 'food' and try to take a bite.
But both dogs, surprisingly to me, seemed to take to these strange creatures. The goats weren't as curious about the dogs. Baby goats, for the record, do not like getting their butts sniffed, or their faces licked.
I couldn't dawdle. I hooked the goats up on lead lines, each to their own tree. I knew enough that if they got tangled with each other, they could strangle each other, so I gave them just enough line so they could butt heads but not actually get around each other.
That would have to do for now. Later I planned on setting up two clotheslines, one for each, so they could roam a bit.
I wished I could let them roam loose. Sadly, some of the plants in our dog run were toxic. If I let them loose with the dogs, they might poison themselves. Worse, if they panicked and ran from the dogs, they could run themselves to death or incite a predator/prey dynamic that would go very badly for them.
If the dogs killed one or both goats, it wouldn't just be awful for the goats. Everyone would lose.
I don't think the humane society accepts dogs that have killed other animals. I don't think I could leave them in the dark about that. It wouldn't be fair. If someone adopted a blooded dog, what if it ended up killing a household pet or livestock or, pity forbid, hurt or kill a child? I'd be responsible. I couldn't even imagine turning them loose to starve or get hit by a car or start preying on other peoples' pets out of desperation.
I don't know what anyone can do with a dog that has killed a domesticated animal. Most farmers elect to put a killer dog down. I doubted that I could handle that. I hoped I'd never be in a position where I'd have to face it.
Todd, entertained by the quiet spectacle from behind the fence, said his goodbyes between our apologies for all the trouble. He refused offers to help him clean out his truck. The kids lost interest quickly and went inside.
I lingered outside on the decaying front porch with Ron, taking it all in. The dogs, now that they recognized that these were animals under our protection, had categorized them as objects that they needed to watch and sat with us, the rest of their pack. Not that Frey really kept watch on anything. That was Nikita's job. Frey was a country gentleman of independent means now, in a squirrel-free zone to boot. (We have very few squirrels--too many things eat them around here.) I had a dog on each side of me, warm fur keeping my legs comfortable in the chilly spring evening.
The black and white goat, like the gazelle-looking one, had a striped face, but not even a bit of tan. "She's marked like a skunk," I said. "And the other one looks like a gazelle."
"They're pretty pitiful," Ron said. His voice had relaxed, his tone hinting at but not quite slipping into a drawl. He has to focus to speak with an actual eastern-Oregonian drawl these days--his accent has definitely settled into the 'normal' wet west-coast way of pronouncing words.
"Yep." My worries had started to ease. "I'll fix them bottles. They must be hungry."
"I'll get some water."
When I came back with the bottles the goats bawled like I was killing them and attacked the nipples. One yanked a bottle right out of my hand and pranced around with it, gnawing on the nipple in frustration. I finally recaptured the bottle and held on tight. Pale yellow foam formed around their lips and they made little muffled grunting sounds as they drank. I was glad I wasn't a momma goat. Yikes.
My first foray into raising livestock had begun, and a naming tradition, unbeknownst to me, had begun as well.
The kids agreed. We'd name these goats Skunk and Gazelle. I just hoped they'd still be alive in the morning. I slept uneasily all that night, and checked on the goats and dogs often to make sure nobody was hurting anybody else or themselves. I felt like a new mother again. Nothing seemed natural, and I couldn't predict the challenges I would face. If I did, I wonder if I would have gotten the goats in the first place.
It would have been a shame if I didn't.
4. Life and Death
Skunk and Gazelle not only lived through the night, but thrived as the days stretched out. They gained in size and strength immediately. That first week, while I tried to set up the lines so they couldn't get wound around the trees and get stuck, went by fast in the way that time always zips by with babies. I finally ended up with a system where they had about eight feet of line on each clothesline. They liked sleeping together, so I made sure that not only could they lie down, but they could snuggle together. They curled up like little dogs, heads slightly off the ground, necks arched gracefully, ears flicking in their sleep.
Everything seemed fine.
Until.
We'd gone out to dinner. I don't know why this little fact filled me with so much guilt. The accident could have as easily happened overnight, and would have likely gone much worse, ending up with two dead goats.
We were gone for a few hours. It was still a little light out when we pulled into the driveway.
I knew right away something was wrong.
The goats weren't bawling for attention.
I saw Skunk's neck arched back over her back, kneel-laying. Gazelle was on her side, completely tied up.
As I dashed into the dog yard, Nikita whining and following along, I noticed that although Gazelle was really tangled, she wasn't hurt. Skunk, though, had somehow gotten Gazelle's line around her belly. It had cinched so tight in their struggles that she had only a few inches around her spine. She was barely breathing, gums white, lips tensed in pain.
Ron always carries a knife. He started cutting, but that line around her midsection was too tight to get a blade under without cutting her. I loosened line in coordination with his efforts, working loose ends through the struggle-tightened knots as fast as I could. I'd had a passion for knots, both tying and undoing them, since I was a little girl. That served me well now, but every second seemed to stretch into an eternity.
Finally the line relaxed and Skunk took in a sighing breath.
"Is she dead?" I wasn't asking a rhetorical question. Skunk was very much alive at this point, but that didn't mean she hadn't already crossed past the point of no return.