|
November 2009 There is something about spending unstructured time with the goats and sheep. Time just watching them or puttering about around them, which it has been commented on that I have been doing of late. Puttering, that is. Take today as an example. Cameron Lycett-Green has consistently refused to join the goats in the goat pen. Major problem because Cocoa Cronsberry, visiting buck, is in residence there, theoretically having bred the six adult does that have been with him for several weeks now. At least long enough to give me hope that I'll be milking in this February. However, unless Cameron jumped in and out again during a passionate moment, she, who twins, milks like a dream, and is half Nubian, is not yet bred. My several efforts to get her into the pen were met with great resistance. A goat with horns that also is very clever, extremely intelligent and as agile as her feral counterparts is a handful indeed. I failed with every attempt. Mr. Cronsberry is a cinnamon bark colored Sable goat with a rather longish coat. It is not as long as some of the Togs, but I suspect his offspring will fit in nicely. What to do? Cameron must be bred as she goes every summer under the pseudonym of carrot, to a camp in Andes to be fussed over, fed and milked by a number of children. She must get bred. There is an expression I've come across several times of late. Seize the moment. And so, while ditzing around the carriage house, I found myself on the correct side of the gate to the goat pen and within an arm's reach of a piece of baling twine I had once put around Cameron's neck. I reached out, and seizing the moment grabbed her with one swift movement and ensconced her with her aunt, cousins, the two Sable does and the visiting buck. It became immediately apparent why she had been so reluctant to go in the first place. Edwina, Sable doe most difficult attacker in a split second had tried to trash the younger and smaller doe. Cameron leapt into the feeder and blatted at me to come and resave her. I didn't. Rescue meant the possibility of not having any kids or milk from her this year. She shall have to stay there. Her little daughter didn't like that. Is too little to fight it out with the big does. Cecelia can see her dam but not lie next to her. So she remains in the carriage house proper, for the moment (I am loath to use the new expression: "harvested" for the old trusty word "butchered") in a week or so when the work in the main barn shall begin. I'll have one a day done and begin to make chick confit for the winter. What a joy it shall be to have real confit. The first paddock in the carriage house, the one where the year's market lambs were responsible for building up a past, is now being hoed out. It soon shall become home to four I have sold, that is, until their buyer picks them up. The remaining metal debris from the major summer clean out went to the auto crusher a day or two ago. What a loft of the grand miscellany now reduced to minor disarray asks for an organizing hand, and, perhaps a couple of hours with a shovel to remove the wet bedding the ducks have created and the bare bones of the building will be ready to dream about. Ready for winter. Ready for me. There is enough hay in the loft to satisfy the eight remaining goats for most of the winter. First cutting, but nice first cutting with enough residual stemmy stuff to provide bedding. I love that building. The proportions of that building are pleasing. Sometimes I sit on the steps going up to the loft and simply look at it. Sometimes Nunzio asks to come in and I let him. He, too, shall have his own stanchion. And I have regained my little office in the corner under the stairs. The chickens, what is left of them, live upstairs in a large coop in the loft. There is a light over my desk, and were I to find my old thermos, I'd have a perfect place for myself in which to think and oh, it would seem that's all I do. Have time to think. Here alone in this great house. But, even I am astonished by the number of interruptions any given moment here. The life here unfolds. I still haven't quite grasped some of the essential things that would relieve my day. One of those things is that when a player retires or is retired, a new player manages to turn up. Luke Ferguson did not show up, again. I had made the condition of his arrival contingent upon his delivering to me the $40.00 face-core of wood he's owed me for two years. My mistake. However, the young student who wants to be a plumber turned up one day and has odd jobbed it here a few hours a week ever since. Turns out he loves hard physical labor such as digging, Luke Ferguson's specialty. What I failed to grasp is that sometimes things do work out. And that which doesn't can somehow be borne. It is the shadow of that that is the most burdensome. Small victories. Large defeats. Sometimes they even balance out. The young hopeful plumber has proven himself to be a very competent, very serious young man. He has been working here a few hours every week. I soon shall have the stanchion perfectly clean, and the heater waterer for the chickens securely wired. He sees what is needed to be done and does a fine thorough conscientious job. His only drawback is that he shall soon be graduating from school. November remains to be behind August and approaching February, my favorite month. February can be a living hell or a very fine month. It largely depends on November. This is a kind of wrap-up month. Finish the last of the food preparation, storage, bottling, preserving. Get the house in order. Gingersnaps in a metal tin in the bedroom. Socks in a sock drawer. Everything needed to possibly be comfortable at hand. Perhaps a store of chocolate hidden away to be forgotten until it becomes a serendipitous find at winter's mid-point early in February. It rains. Again and once again. The leak in the dining room roof echoes with a corresponding one on the other side. The brook has flooded over. My sheep are caught on the far side. There is, thankfully, still thick pasture there. They will have it if the brook is impassable by the nightfall and they are kept out of the barn. I can only hope the donkey is with them to discourage any coyotes with ideas about dinner. Farm days Sylvia Jorrin There are more postings in the Farm Stories Archive There are several audio journal entries in the Farm Stories Archive Supplemental section |