Homestead Time

How do you know...?

2009-10-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

How do you know something is good for you? By the taste.

Our garden food tasted good. All of it.

There was no such thing as a child saying he didn't like something, if it was from the garden or the goats or the chickens. It was all good.

I firmly believe taste is the way we know something is good for us. Good flavors come with other good things, the things that build healthy bodies.

Our garden was full of good things, and so would we be as we ate our way through the harvest bounty. Such were the blessings from all the work.

The work was a blessing too. It felt good. That's how we knew it was good.

Such statements beg for an acknowledgement of God. But at the time we were between Gods, so while we had appreciation for all the wonder of good-tasting food and work-hardened bodies, we didn't know where to direct our thanks. All that was yet to come...

The color of harvest...

2009-10-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

The colors fell into piles leaving stark branches behind. I could almost smell the burning leaves of my childhood, now made illegal because of pollution. How I had loved to be in charge of the burning of leaves at the curb! I earned the privilege by showing how carefully I added just a few more rakefuls to the pile and didn't allow the flames to rage.

But now the only flames were in the color of maples, and their glowing cinders slowly drifted until they were slowly extinguished on the ground, getting ready with the help of the snow to merge with the loam beneath them, slowly, slowly....

And in the stillness and crispiness of it, we scurried like squirrels to bring in the last of the harvest. The light went from somber-bright to slanted to shadowy to dusky all too quickly, and we had potatoes left to dig and squash left to cut. Everyone scurried. The wheelbarrow was filled to the tipping point and run up to the porch. Boxes were topped off, then couldn't be lifted. Small arms were filled while small legs ran for the kitchen.

Frost was coming. The great white steed of the north was about to blow out his ice-breath. By morning the grass would be crunchy-white and the squash plants droopy-black.

The goats looked on, munching mouthfuls of alfalfa and timothy to keep warm with. The bacteria in their guts happily stoked up the fires of metabolism when fed such fine fodder, and they would not be cold.

But our noses reddened and we wondered where last winter's mittens had gotten to.

Gradually the dark took over, and the feeble porch light shed no glow on the garden. It was time to quit. As we moved the piles of veggies from the porch to the kitchen, we looked over our shoulders toward the darkened plot and wondered what we had abandoned....

Inside we went about our business: homework, practicing, the cooking of supper. We had turned the heat on just the day before, and we were toasty. Clumps of earth stuck to everything, squash, children, shoes. Later we spread newspapers on the floor and lined the harvest up on them. Hands on our hips, we stood in a circle and smiled, and then got back to work.

1977

Root cellar?

2009-10-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

Our house happened to come with a storage room in the basement, one without shelves but an actual room not designated for anything else. It became our root cellar as the first overflow of harvest began to take over the kitchen counters.

Root cellars are cool and moist because they have earthen floors. Dirt floors. This room of ours had concrete floors just like the rest of the basement. So it failed as a literal root cellar, but it reigned supreme as a-space-to-store-things. John built shelves.

Winter squash were the first inhabitants. They had hard skins and looked durable enough to survive for several years as storage foods. We had vast numbers of them.

The shelves were about as wide as a good-sized squash, so we lined these winter ingredients up in a single rank side-by-side.

We also had potatoes to store, and sunflower heads. We cut these off at the neck and placed them seed-side-up on the shelves. Apples were piled up on a side away from the potatoes, because their smells intermingle and I thought I might not be fond of raw-potato-flavored apples.

I think we had a few turnips, too.

Green beans went into the freezer, which was in another part of the basement.

Tomatoes and eggplants stayed in the kitchen. Their sheer abundance overwhelmed us, but even our amateur thoughts about storage were not so naive as to expect them to survive on their own for long.

I had thoughts of canning, but no time or expertise. How pretty the shelves would have looked with jar after jar of tomatoes! But it didn't happen.

We just ate them as fast as we could, on sandwiches or in the pot for dinner, whatever it might have been.

Soon a hard frost would hit and put an end to the bounty. But for now it threatened to overtake us, and we were glad to have some place to put it all that was for the most part out of sight.

1977.

MIT

2009-07-03T20:51:00.000-07:00

JSL was a professor at MIT in those days. He often took the Wellesley College shuttle bus in, so I'd drive him to it, about 5 miles from our house. Other times he took the car all the way through Wellesley to the MTA station in Newton, and then rode the Green Line downtown and tranferred to the Red Line, which would take him to Kendall Square. It was at least an hour each way.

MIT was an interesting place. Everyone there was of course the brightest of the bright. The professors taught intense classes, and did intense research, and many did consulting for corporations besides. In fact, MIT arranged it so that every professor worked 4 days a week, leaving the 5th for consulting.

And they paid according, about 80% of the salary a high-quality professor might earn at another prestigious university, or even at a state school.

So JSL often was away on consulting trips. And that left me with the goats and the milking and the chauffeuring and shopping and cooking and gardening, and the three children and dogs and cats. But the extra income made his trips worth every effort. And except for when the heat was horrible, I managed ok. And the kids were helpful and cost-effective and supportive.

But the consulting began to dry up with the wretched economy. He was home more often, and that was a great help, but the diminishing income drained us in pocketbook and spirit. We began to despair.

And now in the fall of 1977, with our oldest child 11 and starting 6th grade, our thoughts turned to college expenses, and we realized we were in big trouble. The University of Massachusetts would just not do, but what else could we manage? We had 7 years to put away enough money for the first child, and the second was just a year behind him. And at that moment we were not putting anything away, we were just barely keeping a hold of our house.

MIT did have a plan for teachers' kids: they would pay half the expenses at any accredited institution in the country. It was just a matter of coming up with the thousands of dollars we would need for the other half.

And that seemed as likely as the economy improving. The very thought left us feeling hopeless.

1977

Harvest

2009-06-20T16:59:00.001-07:00

As the end of August arrived, we had a better mix of heat and cool, including a few truly chilly mornings. Maples were showing signs of turning to fall colors. And young goats were coming into heat.

Meanwhile, we were enjoying a bounty from the garden. Tomatoes were inundating us, as were zucchini. Our favorite bounty, though, came in the form of purply shiny-skinned eggplant, which we used at virtually every meal but breakfasts.

There was of course fufarah, now full of green peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and big chunks of eggplant. We also had eggplant sandwiches made of fried eggplant slices, goat cheese, and fresh-picked lettuce. But perhaps our favorite was babaganoush, a mixture of cooked eggplant and sesame tahini, mixed with lemon juice, garlic, and a bit of salt. The fact that all this sumptuous eating was for free was hard to comprehend.

Another garden treat was jerusalem artichokes. We had discovered these in the food boxes we got each week from the coop, and though it was expensive to plant them instead of eat them, we were reward by a long row of tall sunflower-like stalks with small flowers on top. And all we had to do to add a sunchoke to the meal was to dig about their roots and pull up as many as we wanted.

We had to learn a few tricks about cooking them: to saute them in oil takes a while, until they give up and soften, then brown. Before they brown, they taste like oysters, while afterward more like potatoes. They could also be steamed and eaten like potatoes, or mixed with potatoes and mashed. But our potatoes were still in the ground, and we were happy enough to cut the sunchokes in discs or strips and add them early to the pot that would sooner or later contain all the components of fufarah.

So we ate well. A slice of our beloved pure-white goat cheese went on the top of almost everything. There was never a food as glorious as our homemade whole-wheat bread toasted, a thick slice of tomato still hot from the garden added along with lettuce, the bread spread with butter or good mayonnaise, and then goat cheese in its 1x3 inch slices aligned across the top so that a knife-cut would not disturb it. It was a bit messy to eat, but accompanied by mint 'tea', it made a 100% satisfying lunch. Or we'd just eat it in hand, or crumbled into fufarah or onto a garden salad.

So harvest brought a lot of joy, and it was just beginning.

1977.

Much to think about

2009-06-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

By the end of August my thoughts were full of four pressing and painful issues:

1. What to do about the neighbor Nancy.
2. The meaning of my father's passing.
3. Whether to try for another baby and risk more sorrow.
4. Money.

Money was the constant theme. How to survive, really. The economy was a mess: inflation was upwards toward 20% a year, more in some spheres. Taxes were up and up, as were groceries and gas. Everything but our income, which was not tied into the cost of living. We were slowly slipping into financial doom.

As for Nancy, I held a lot of affection for her in my heart. I thought she could be a neat friend. The strange things she had said and done were mysteries to me, and didn't stick well to her in my mind. I thought maybe it was all due to her husband, who was a strange character we seldom saw. He had set up a leather-working shop in the old carriage house, but when the kids were over there playing, they never saw him do anything but lie on the couch he'd moved in there. So as thoughts of Nancy went round and round in my mind, I alternated between feeling mystifed and loving. Very confusing. As for what I might do to ensure the better outcome, I had no idea.

My father's death caused me primarily to think more of my mother's welfare. She seemed happy enough, and in one way we were all relieved: she had much more freedom to come and go and visited us much more frequently, sleeping in our family room off the kitchen, where the kids loved to visit her. Of course she was not confined there but she carved out a little niche in that spare room and often had her knitting out and a cookie for the kids. So his loss was not ours, not in any immediate way.

But then there was the loss of my little ones. The tiny body I had held after my body ejected it caused a constant underlying ripple in my awareness still, after nearly a year, and that was just the first. I had wanted a large family, and somehow I was failing to fulfill that dream. I had failed to provide 9 months of nurture for these two eagerly awaited new members of our family while they built their little earthly homes deep inside of me, and it all seemed so wrong. The emptiness was filled with the doctor's ringing voice: you will never bear another child.

But I didn't feel that way. I really felt I could bring a new baby into the world, as I had 3 times before.

I was still in the 6 months of rest that doctor's partner had recommended before I should try again, that tumultuous late August, so I didn't need to make any decisions. But it weighed on me like poverty and loneliness and death.

So my mind was filled with much to think about, and my heart stood on the precipice of deep pain. There was nothing to do but keep doing, and loving those whose care I had successfully found myself entrusted with. Time would do something with all this...

1977.

Thunder

2009-06-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

Thunder is the sound of hope to me, of change and relief. It doesn't always work out, but usually thunder comes with rain and cooler air, blustery squally air, breathable bug-free air.

And so it was in August 1977 that with the death of my father and the unfathomable ways of my neighbor came blessed thunderstorms.

They heralded fall, and school days, and goats in heat. But more than anything, to me, they heralded hope.

I had made it through another summer, and though more hot days would visit us, they would not stay. There would be no more relentless stretches of misery.

Thunder also heralded watermelons from the garden, and a harvest of corn, which was waiting for us as we got back from the funeral.

And soon the squashes would be ready, and the potatoes big enough to dig for.

Life was good. The trials of spring and summer were yielding to the turn of the seasons, and I was filled with such optimism that I couldn't help but stand out on the porch and breathe deeply.

I searched the maples for signs of color and found tell-tale yellows dappling the abundance of green in their crowns as if the sun were shining on them.

But there was no sun. It was gone behind roiling black clouds that fulfilled the thunder's promise. I ducked back inside as huge drops soaked the porch in moments.

I shivered with delight and a welcome chill, and watched the barn disappear behind a sheet of steel that connected the silvered earth with the steely skies. The children poured in soaked and huddled with me, their puddles mingling with mine till the kitchen was flooded. The thunder rolled and rolled and rolled. The lightning smashed against us, bringing the dogs to tremble against our legs. We sighed and shivered until we were actually cold, then ran for towels and dry clothes. The thunder rolled away.

The garden leaned. The beans looked beaten, and the potato vines dashed to a pulp.

But then the sun came out, the air dried out, and the garden righted itself. It was time for harvest. Summer would no longer press against us with its thick white air and too bright yellow light. Tomorrow when the furrows were no longer filled with rain, we would reach into the ground and gather the goodness.

Our reward was a upon us. My hope was fulfilled.

1977.

Adjustments and renewals

2009-06-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

For years my mother had kept the peace, and the past year had been stressful, but from the time my father had stopped drinking 6 or 7 months before his death, her days with him had become sweet and companionable.

Such was the irony of the peace and loneliness she felt in his absence.

I called her often just to keep her company. And she came for prolonged visits, which we all enjoyed. And she enjoyed her grandchildren and singing with John at night while they did the dishes together.

We watched August evaporate and looked forward to the first days of school, then the first fall colors.

And all the while I thought about my sister, whose baby was due in 6 months, then 5. And I began to believe again that I could have a baby, too. No matter how discouraging the doctor had been.

The thought brought a bright smile to my inner person. It felt right and good, and I was willing to give it a try.

I felt renewed. The experience of my father's death might be the beginnings of a new life.

Funeral days

2009-06-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

My father's body was cremated. My mother was annoyed by the call she received to bring his perfectly good suit that someone else might be able to wear to the funeral parlor for the cremation. She resented that it would go to waste. But they insisted that he had to be cremated in a suit.

So that was the end of the old wool suit and the body it had housed for years and years.

The ashes were placed in an urn, which had somehow arrived at the cemetery. A tiny hole had been dug and we stood around the urn and the hole and shared a few thoughts. Then in the sterile way of modern burials we left. Later the urn with its spent ashes magically found its way into the hole and was covered, but we were saved having all that disturbing sort of memory.

As if we could think of anything else.

Later that day we had the memorial service. My brother had come, and his wife, and my sister was there still. And the five of us were there. We shook hands with old friends and acquaintances after a routine service in the bright sanctuary of the Presbyterian church I had grown up in. And later that my parents had joined and served in.

And then we went to the home of the friends who had picked me up at the train the week before. Everyone sat around talking about my father, and how alcohol had killed him. Their grieving was made tolerable by a round or two of drinks...

I didn't drink. I had, until I had wised up, but that was well in the past. So I was jarred and unsettled, and was glad when we had to leave for the three-hour drive home.

The goats needed to be milked, and we needed to regroup as a family in our own way, with soberness and also sobriety.

Turning points

2009-06-11T20:32:00.001-07:00

The next days were full of turmoil and turning points.

We took care of the neighbors' goats while they were away. I went over and got my instructions, and then for the next three days I followed those instructions. But when Nancy got back she accused me of stealing half a bag of their feed. And no thank yous.

I got a call from my mother. My father wasn't doing well. As soon as they gave him a treatment - draining his belly of excess fluid - he deteriorated again. And each treatment left him without energy. Back in the winter the doctor had said that if he had one more drink it would kill him and he never had another, though he continued to smoke. It looked like it might already be too late.

The last days of July sweated themselves away with mosquito-y milkings at night and fly-hazed chores in the morning. Milk filled the fridge and the freezer, and on the counter the new wheels of cheese tended to mold in the unrelenting 90-degree temperatures and over-abundant humidities.

Then the call came. My father was in the hospital. The last treatment had been too rough on him. I needed to go home.

I left by train that night, and prayed the peculiar prayer that he would die before I got there: I was too afraid to see him weakened and dying. Lifelong friends were to pick me up at the Stamford station and take me straight to the hospital. When I got there he was alive, and I did see him. He was comatose.

His arms were bruised. Propped up, he half-lay under the white sheets. Mercifully he had no tubes: he hadn't wanted them back a few years before when he made those kinds of decisions, calmly, unconcernedly, in happier days. He had wanted nothing extraordinary and he had nothing extraordinary now.

I drove home my mother and my sister, who had come, and talked about this and that. I slept fitfully in the heat with the big old window fan blowing on me, the same as had kept me sane in the miserable summer days of my childhood. I consumed quantities of cold water and thought of my father with no tubes. How thirsty he must be! When morning came, we drove back to the hospital.

My sister had come in some days before, and together we visited and held vigil. My sister was a few months pregnant. Her enthusiasm about having a third child was under control. Her bump made me envious, and also hopeful that someday we too might have another child.

But we were there to be with my father, and I was not content to turn my back on him. I went to his bedside and talked to the unconscious familiar and unfamiliar face.

He responded with a grunt.

So I talked some more. And I asked him if he wanted some water.

He nodded vigorously, so I used a straw to dribble an inch or two of water at a time into his dry mouth. He scared me by choking on it, so I asked if he wanted more. He nodded earnestly.

So all afternoon I dribbled the life-giving water into his eager mounth and talked to him. He didn't say anything, but expressed his interest with small nods, all the while receiving the next inch of water eagerly.

He knew I was there, and I wondered if that worried him. We had a deep communion during those hours. I was able to give him that life-sustaining potion, water. Or love.

The next day I needed to hurry back to take care of family and farm. I was there a day when the call came: he had died. My mother and sister had opted not to go early to the hospital the morning after I left, and a few hours into the day they received the dreaded call. It was August 19, 1977. My father was dead at age 68 of liver disease. And kidney failure due to dehydration.

I ran next door and asked Nancy if she could take care of the goats while we went home for the funeral. She refused.

I got on the phone and could find no one home. All were on vacation. I begged Nancy.

Finally she relented. I thanked her and we piled in the car for the three-hour drive to Connecticut and the intense days ahead.

The 4th of July after...

2009-05-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

On July 4 1976 Boston had a big celebration. And then suddenly we found ourselves again on July 4, but a year later.

On July 4 1976 we had thought we'd take the kids into Boston to join the crowds and wish our country a happy 200th birthday. We had thought to hop on the MTA and let the subway drop us off at Park or Boylston and walk the rest of the way to the Harvard bridge, whence we could watch the fireworks that were discharged out over the Charles River.

But Kay Ferguson's son David had gone in ahead of us and found a pay phone and called and warned us off. He said that there were several million people squeezed between the highways leading to Boston and Boston Harbor, and while everyone was behaving it would be way too easy for a small child to get separated or maybe even trampled. And we had three to watch out for.

So we had stayed home. We had local fireworks to enjoy, and we were ok about it.

And now a year later we decided to have some friends from MIT over to enjoy a store-bought watermelon filled with berries, peaches and more melon. And we decided to include homemade ice cream. Made with store-bought milk and cream.

The day was of course hot and sticky as 4ths of July always are, and we hung out in the coolest room of the house and talked. We were the only ones with kids, so the comings and goings of small humans were met with puzzlement, which amused me because it seemed so normal to me.

After the watermelon gave out, we worked on the ice cream. It wouldn't freeze. A half dozen chemists sat around trying to get the mix to harden, and nothing happened. Then someone remembered the salt, and we were soon divvying up the lovely slurry and covering the servings with strawberries. Very yummy, but too soon gone!

Everyone went in different directions before dark, and we had chores to do and never did make it to the fireworks.

We enjoyed the fireflies instead, which flashed in syncopation with distant booms, whether heat lightning or fireworks we never knew.

With the 4th behind us, we were in the full intensity of summer. We dreaded the exuberant and abundant flies by day and the clouds of mosquitoes by night, but otherwise we enjoyed our existence: the freshest possible, purest possible, food from the garden, cold hours-old milk from the ladies in the barn, and the companionship of each other without the stress of meeting any schedule but milking and chores.

It was tranquil. Until mid-month, when peace went away never to return in quite the same way again.

Lunches supreme

2009-05-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

When we finally had our first ripe tomatoes, in mid-July after a month of steam and sweat, we discovered a remarkable way to eat them. Only on the farm could we have indulged our urgent cravings for this treat!

We took our homemade bread and cut it thick, and toasted it in the toaster oven, then covered it with butter.

We then cut a fresh wheel of goat cheese into 1/4 inch slices, and laid them on the bread, as soon as possible so they would soften from the warmth left over from the toasting operation.

On top of the goat cheese went one or two huge, thick, incandescent tomato slices, usually still warm from the garden and filled with that glorious earthy smell. They were red all the way through and juicy.

Then we added the lettuce, fistfuls from the later planting and already in danger of bolting before it could all be eaten.

And then, maybe some good mayonnaise, or maybe not. And then on top, another slice of that good coarse deep brown whole wheat bread.

And then a diagonal cut, because Nana always cut things diagonally and it seemed respectful to do it her way. (She said a diagonal cut is a way of keeping your face clean because you can eat the point first intead of having to dig in sloppily on the side.)

And then the first bite, pure heaven - creamy tangy cheese with bright tomato with crunchy, slightly bitter green with the deep roundness of the whole wheat.

A glass of cold goat milk or water stood by, and did a pile of napkins to handle the tomato-y drip.

When the green peppers were ripe, a slice might be added to The Sandwich, but no other adulterants were tolerated or desired. It was already Perfect.

Sewing

2009-05-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

Sewing seemed to go along with the whole homestead theme. If we were going to do everything else ourselves, why not make our own clothes?

I had sewed from a young age, stitching my finger in the old treadle sewing machine my grandmother had left to my mother when I was only 3 - and supposed to be napping.

I had an aunt, Mar by name and actually my mother's aunt, who sewed, and when I was turning 7 she sent me a package full of scraps of lace and buttons. I made doll clothes from my mother's leftovers and added those things. It gave me great delight to make skirts for my doll and little tops.

Then when I was 9 I started some serious sewing. I had been knitting and weaving potholders to sell by then, but I felt it was time to start making clothes for me.

I don't remember the first article, but by the time our things came out of storage after our year in Kentucky in 1951-52 and then our year in a rented house, 1952-53, I had access to a sewing machine and began to make skirts.

I made pleated skirts with elaborate calculations instead of a pattern - just so much for the length and so many pleats to take up the width at the waist, a plain waistband, and a zipper. Some fabrics were designed to be used in reversible skirts: one side plain, the other plaid. I had to do my calculations just right to make sure only the plain showed on one side, and only plaid on the other, and make the waistband so it looked good whichever way I wore the skirt.

I also made a few gathered skirts out of fabrics with a border print.

I continued to make skirts, also pajamas and an apron, a two-piece dress, and then in high school two formals and a madra men's jacket for my boy friend and a matching skirt for me .

The two formals I made out of the same pattern, a year apart, because the design was so interesting. Following the directions, I lined up the strangely shaped pieces in seemingly random fashion and couldn't imagine, the first time, how it would turn into anything resembling a dress. Then, with one final alignment, the whole strange mess slipped together and I had an elegant formal before me. I made the second one only to have that great experience again!

In college it was not easy to sew so I just knitted. I couldn't afford the wool so I knitted up for other people what they bought for me to work on. It satisfied my desire to work with my hands.

I made my maternity clothes, once we were married, simple tops and skirts with a cheap machine ($39!). And I made costumes for the resulting children for Halloween and for dress-up: a boy astronaut suit and a girl one, and then later Indian outfits. I also sewed for my nephews.

And then life got in the way for a while. I was working at the TM center, we went to Switzerland, and sewing was left behind.

Usually when I sewed in was in great gulps. I couldn't make just one thing. When the passion hit me, it hit full-force, and I bought patterns and fabric and established a one-person assembly line. And I'd fizzle out after three or four garments.

Then, there on the farm, as the frantic activities of spring were subdued by the hazy, overheated days of early summer, I was suddenly overtaken by another urge to sew.

Notice that none of the items I had sewn had anything to do with fashion. I was sewing for the sake of doing it, and for clothing my body, or those of my children, or I was looking for the satisfaction of having made something useful. But making something to be stylish wasn't part of it.

So as I set about making clothes for my children, I was looking for an inward satisfaction but not with an eye toward what might help a child fit in.

In fact, even back in 1977, it was hard for a child to fit in with home-made clothes, as I found out when they all went back to school.

But by then the sewing urge had left me once again, and I had unfinished items sitting in a drawer, the pins still holding the patterns to the cut-out fabric.

My daughter was 9 1/2 and I did make her a few cute things. The real sewing fun was ahead of us, but I knew that if I had to make clothing for our family I could. With that sense of accomplishment I put it all away for another day.

Fufarah

2009-05-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

Our evening meal was fufarah, which was anything the garden handed us.

We dug early potatoes and cut them and sauteed them in the big frying pan. Baby beans also went in, cut once or not at all. By July the peas were dying, and the brown vines had mostly gone to the goats, but a few peas were left for the pot.

The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants were growing but were not yet ready.

But small squashes began to appear, and by the next day they were no longer small. So we learned to pick several each night, and they too went into the pot.

It was all sauteed, then served on brown rice or noodles or eaten with bread.

But just before serving, we topped the mixture in the pot with crumbled goat cheese in great quantity. This was a rather dry cheese from our constant production that used up the excess milk we had in mid-summer. The wheels sat salted on the counter for a few days, and it was a contest to see whether we could eat as much as we made.

Not that we wanted to. We hoped to make it through the winter months with summer's bounty.

So every few days a wheel of cheese about 6 inches across and an inch deep went into a plastic bag and then into the freezer.

The cheese softened when tossed onto hot fufarah and added a zesty flavor and a nice touch of protein. With rice and all those garden veggies we ate well, and no two meals were the same. But they were all fufarah, all summer long.

Dog days

2009-05-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

The heat of July was upon us. It was steamy from morning to night and through to the next morning. The sun was high in the sky and cooked any creature that ventured out. The goats lay prostrate in the shade of the barn, moving from the west side in the morning to the east side in the afternoon.

And the dogs and cats lay as flat as they could on the kitchen floor, or under the shade of an apple tree if they were one of the outdoor cats.

The people hid in dark corners with their library books and drank gallons of water, or they sat on the basement steps where somewhat cooler air could be found.

The mosquitos filled the twilight evening and stirred up the steam with their buzzing. We had to put winter jackets on to milk so we wouldn't be eaten alive and drained of every drop of our overheated blood. Only our hands stuck out into the buggy air - there was no other way to milk. The goats' tender udders were covered with bites, and as soon as their heads were freed from the milk stand headholder, they whipped around and bit at the new welts.

By the next morning, with the overnight temperatures finally lowering to the high 80s and the sun rising early and sizzling, a new generation of flies was out waiting for us in the barn. We had to cover the milk pail with a paper towel to keep them out, and while we milked they buzzed our ears and bit our necks. We had hung fly tape above the milk room and in several other places in the barn, and each strip was soon blackened with fly bodies, but with no breeze - and there was no breeze - a black cloud hung stationary and nastily around us.

We waited through the days and hoped for a thunder storm that might signal a change of weather but at least would cool us a bit. Heat lightning flashed above the trees from some distant luckier town but never came closer no matter how long we looked at it and longed for it.

Day after day the heat hung on us, unstoppable in its flow from the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of Maine. No mountains rose in between to stop it.

But two young creatures roused themselves at the end of each day, even in the persistant heat, and shook off their lethargy. The beagle boys were ready for their nightly hunt, and who knew what raccoon or neighbor cat was waiting for them! Their eager noses began to twitch at sunset, and by dark, when we were all dashing in from the barn with our itchy hands and full buckets, they were ready for their nightly run.

Off they went, only the white tips of their tails visible, and then only their yodels audible.

When they came back, called in at the last minute before we went to bed, their bellies heaving and their tongues heavy, we made sure they had a bucketload of water each. They flopped down and went to sleep, their legs still running the woods.

And we flopped down on top of the sheets and spreadeagled and tried to think comfortable thoughts. Soon the sun was up again, the buzzing began, and we searched the sky for clouds. And there were none. The dogs slept...

Surprise request

2009-05-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

I was still smarting from the neighbors' attack by rocks, and feeling like an idiot for not knowing what if anything to say to them or do about it, when I got a surprise visit from Nancy, the mom.

I felt that unpleasant adrenalin burst and braced myself for the unpleasant encounter that was only seconds away. I wanted to avoid a confrontation at all costs as always. I didn't want to find myself telling her in angry-frustrated-tearfilled fashion just what I thought of a man who would drive his children into a neighbor's yard and have them attack the neighbor's garden with rocks.

I probably was still holding my breath when she walked up to me - I was on our porch - and said,

we need to be gone for a few days, can you take care of the goats?

After we talked about the details, I said yes.

In the back of my mind I wondered if she even knew about the rock attack. And whether I should tell her in case she didn't.

We went over to her barn so I could see her set-up and learn what needed to be done: feeding both goats and chickens, milking goats, clean-up, bottling milk...

I agreed to do it, and said not a word about the incident.

Migraines

2009-04-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

A few weeks after my miscarriage, I started having migraines again.

They made me curl up in a ball and want to avoid everything. I hurt from the base of my spine to the top of my head and over into my eyeball. And they gave me a tight feeling in the pit of my stomach.

They came every 3 days and lasted a little over a day. Or sometimes they came for 3 weeks and then I was immune for another month or so.

It made it hard to be a good mom, to have any patience at all, to do chores, to weed the garden, to cook, to drive, to listen to anything or think about anything.

They were a hideous waste of time, and they wouldn't stop. I tried changing my diet but it didn't help. I couldn't make an appointment or set a date with friends or help out at school because I might not be able to show up.

The pain, hideous as it was, and relentless as it was, was only part of the problem. Not being able to live was another.

And there was nothing I could do about it because nothing worked.

Storm of stones

2009-04-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

One pleasant June Saturday I was putting in a little extra time weeding the garden because the weeds were just as tall as the peas, close to my height. They had sprung up after a warm rain, and I was determined to find the plants we had intended to raise.

Instead of kneeling for hour after hour - or at least minute after minute - I took some newspaper with me and sat on it while I weeded. The cats brushed against me as I sat there beneath walls of vegetation that spread as far as the eye could see in all directions. It was a bit steamy down there out of the breeze, and even at the tops of the weed stalks there was little movement.

As I was plucking away, I was somewhat surprised to hear the sound of a vehicle close by and approaching but I thought the neighbors might be loading or unloading their pickup nearby.

Too true!

As I sat there in the weeds, I heard a thud quite close to me, then several more. Rocks were falling nearby.

I pushed myself to my feet and there before me was a shocking site: the neighbors' truck was backed up to the edge of our garden and their children were lobbing rocks into it.

All I could think to say was HEY!

When they saw me, they jumped down from the truck and ran, and their dad, who was driving, stepped on the gas and zoomed back into their yard.

In reality the rocks were stones maybe the size of a fist or so, and they lay here and there around the garden, having knocked down as many weeds as vegetables. I picked them up and added them to our tidy pile, and little material harm was done.

But the hostility was disturbing. Clearly they hadn't seen me or expected anyone to be around when they launched their attack, and I don't know how many more rocks they might have tossed into the garden if I hadn't been there. The thought that someone would enlist his 12 and 10 year olds and his 3 year old to throw rocks into a neighbor's garden was seriously disturbing. Our kids played with theirs! How could anyone think of doing such a thing?

We did nothing. What could be done? I felt we were dealing with an irrational man, one capable of violent acts. It left me rattled, uncomprehending, confused...

Phone calls

2009-04-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

We used to talk to Nana every week or two. She was my mom and while not much earth-shattering happened between calls, it was nice to check in and chat. So it was a little strange that she hadn't called for a while. And neither had I - we were busy and time just slid by.

We had a few calls but everything was as always, other than the big space between them.

In June she did call and mentioned that my father had had another treatment. They had drained excess fluid from his belly again. Not much was going on, a friend had died, my sister was expecting, just family chatter.

They lived about 180 miles away in Connecticut. It was awkward for them to visit because my father didn't like the outdoors very much, and he also smoked a great deal. They had come up in the late fall soon after we moved in, and he hadn't liked smoking out on the porch.

And we really couldn't stand having smoke in the house, not just for the minutes it took to inhale a cigarette but for the months after when the smell lingered on and on.

That combined with his dislike of leaving home and also of driving any distance meant that we didn't see either of them very often.

Before the farm we had gone to Connecticut to see them a couple of times a year, and usually continued on to New Jersey to see the other grandparents. But the farm made leaving impossible.

So we hadn't seen them, but we'd talked on the phone. And now we were not doing that as much, but our chats were full of homey news and I always enjoyed them, and Nana did too. I knew we'd get back in the swing of it when we had the farm routine under our belts.

Dusty's other brother

2009-04-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

Poor little Charlie, Dusty's littermate, had been killed by a car when he was still tiny, so Dusty was a lone dog except when he romped with Spanky next door.

But then Dusty's breeder called and said that a third puppy from the litter needed a home. His family, she said, had small children and the young fellow was not good with them. On the other hand, since our children were older...

Of course we said yes.

So Dusty's long-lost brother, now full-grown, arrived. We were eager to see if he was as wonderful as Dusty.

He wasn't. He was snappish and sullen, and obviously had suffered through a lot of mishandling.

But we embraced him - from a distance - and made him part of the family.

Whatever Dusty's thoughts, he kept them to himself. And when evening came and he could smell delicious woodsy things on the air, he showed Sam how to go howling off into the woods in their pursuit.

Two beagles howling in the woods is a formidable sound. We always knew where they were, but what did the suburbanites who surrounded us think was happening? Surely some poor animal was suffering...?

Indeed, later we found that the woman who lived all the way through our woods and hers and up the hill to the estate beyond had concluded just that and was contemplating sending her teen son out with a rifle to put an end to the agony of whatever poor beast was suffering so.

The dog boys couldn't be called home until they'd tired of sniffing and yodeling, but just before we went to bed we'd call them: Dusty! Sammy! and in they'd come, bolting up onto the porch and in the kitchen door, skidding across the floor, panting with hanging tongues, ready for a bowl of fresh water and a good scratch behind the ears from their beloved stay-at-home friends.

After a few months of nightly forays, Sammy began to mellow out. He never did engage with us as Dusty did. But Dusty was exceptional, and Sammy was just a dog, and for that reason alone Dusty loved him.

School's out!

2009-04-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

What a relief it was when school was out! What fun we had together! It's not so much that we - mom and kids - hung out together all day long, but that the kitchen was homebase, where the young adventurers would come back several times during the day from their forays into the neighborhood.

Once chores were done, their time was their own. They had long hours with friends, and also we made frequent trips to the little library in the tiny village of South Natick, just less than 3 miles away and as close as any public area. The waterfall below it was especially enticing on hot days, though we mostly just looked at it as we hurried by on some errand. An ice cream cone at Brigham's or Friendly's accompanied most trips into Wellesley to buy groceries.

In the car we sang and talked and sang some more, mostly camp songs from my childhood. We loved the two-part sections and any song that could be sung as a round.

Back on the farm, the heat of the day was spent reading, each of us gorging on the tall stacks of books we brought home from the library.

June was kind in that most evenings were cool even at the end of hot days, and that meant more time for the garden. Now that we were eating spinach, chard, and peas, the evening hours were ushered in by a quick run to the garden for ingredients for our perpetual summer meal called fu-fa-rah. It consisted of whatever combination of garden goodies that were harvestable with whatever additions the fridge and larder yielded.

A typical early summer fu-fa-rah would be sauteed peas, greens, rice, and goat cheese, of course drunk down with frothy, cold goat milk.

The one harvest we could count on even this early in the season was rocks. This was an area where the glaciers had scraped and ground the bedrock and left stones and boulders behind. Large and small, they seemed to rise up all summer, so that every time we went out to the garden, new ones were lying on the surface.

The family ritual was to pick up as many as any one of us could carry, then pile them up in the yard-wide margin between the edge of the garden and the property line. Soon we had a miniature stone wall growing up beside the garden, reminding us of how the real stone walls that lined our property had come to be.

Picking rocks and peas was fun in the cool of the evening, especially when we didn't have to worry about getting everyone to bed. On breezy nights the mosquitoes were no bother. The display of stars overhead called for lying on our backs on the grass so that Dad could tell us their names, and point out the constellations. It was a season in-between, soft and sweet.

HHH

2009-04-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

That is, HAZY, HOT, and HUMID! The first of June left us wrung out. Suddenly the temperature in the shade was 90 and the humidity everywhere was close to 100%. The air was nearly white with it. The goats lay sprawled out in the shade, and we hid in the house with the windows closed, hoping to keep the heat out.

Meanwhile, the garden grew.

A few days later the temperatures went down, but the humidity stayed. Even when it was 75, it was too hot to work and we liquified as soon as we lifted a finger.

But since the weeds had grown just as the veggies had, we needed to weed.

I took my turn in 15-minute spurts. During the day the sun beat down and I drained cup after cup of water. In the evening, when it was cooler, the mosquitos came out and ignored every repellant we dared use. And the weeds kept growing and we kept plucking away at them.

So did the veggies grow. The cherry tomatoes were showing more color and we were eager for them to get to a truly ripe state. Tiny peppers appeared, and the eggplant flowers added an elegant color to their corner of the first garden. And tiny beans were emerging from below the blossoms that had borne them.

The peas were getting exasperated with the heat, though: they stopped producing and the vines turned to straw. We gave up and fed the vines to the goats, who seemed to think of them as dessert.

Gradually the number of hazy, hot, humid days increased, and the respites between them disappeared. I kept the radio on in the faint hope that the forecast might change. We quietly played games in the house (though VJ never missed a chance to tend his glads out in the full sun). With no A/C, the coolest place to read or nap was the floor. We spread out so as not to suffer from each other's added heat and dozed in a drowsy stupor so the hours till we could enjoy the cool of the evening would pass more quickly.

But some nights it never cooled off. Then we lay spread-eagled on our beds and sweated the hours away.

And July and August were yet to come.

School's out

2009-04-14T19:11:00.001-07:00

The baby goats were getting big, and happily drank down daily their two quarts of milk, then ate hay all day long and nibbled at whatever grain might have been spilled in their yard. They also practiced their escapes and generally wreaked havoc with the fencing.

One favorite activity of us all was called 'goat TV'. We'd stand by the hour and watch them cavort. Sometimes the human children got into the mix and all 10 or so wild beasts dervished together.

Dear Old Dad made the mistake one day of lying in the warm sun, in a spot of soft grass that appealed to him and happened to be in the kid pen. He was soon covered with young goat damsels. The blade of grass in his mouth didn't last long...

We couldn't wait for school to get out so we could take a break from getting up too early and start enjoying each other in a less-structured way. The children had been playing with the next-door neighbors. Their children were similar in age to ours except for the youngest, who was just emerging from toddlerhood. Other children in the neighborhood played with ours, too. I envisioned a summer of ball games and running through the sprinkler and the squeals of a dozen or more happy vacationers.

But it was not to be.

The family next door seemed to share our interests, and I was full of hope for a real friend in the old house so near ours. But things weren't progressing too well. Our family seemed to be greeted with suspicion every which way we turned.

It wasn't our lifestyle per se, it was the sense that we were out to cheat them somehow. The father particularly seemed looking for offense, but both adults at times acted oddly. It seemed to begin with the warm weather, when we were all outside so much more often.

One incident seemed innocent enough: the neighbors' year-old puppy, a doberman gangly and goofy and named Spanky, came loping into our yard when I was the only one home, trotted up onto our open porch, and grabbed Dusty's feed bowl. I opened the door to coax her to let go, but she was already heading for home.

I ran over to their house myself so I could keep an eye on where she went. That other property had a big barn plus a carriage house on it, in addition to their home, and I knew Spanky could take the bowl anywhere, then lose interest, and I might never find it.

But she went straight to her house, where Nancy (the mom) and her mother, visiting from another state, had just come home from buying groceries.

I ran breathless around the corner to their door. Spanky was already inside, greeting Nancy with huge wags. The bowl was sitting just outside the door.

Both Nancy and her mother looked at me curiously, then Nancy went into the house with bags of food. I explained to her mother that Spanky had come over and carried off Dusty's bowl, and I was there to get it. I picked it up from where it lay at her feet.

But she objected. She said that Spanky didn't do that, wouldn't do that, and I could leave the bowl there. I started to laugh, then saw that she was entirely serious, grimly serious.

I looked for Nancy to come out to tell her mother that that wasn't Spanky's bowl, but she didn't.

I left without the bowl, figuring I could pick it up later when grandma wasn't around. I was filled with confusion. Spanky was certainly acting as any puppy might, and I found it mildly amusing. It was human behavior I just didn't get, the flat contradictions and doubting my word over such a trivial thing.

That was just the first...

Interlude: Thoughts on writing a personal history

2009-04-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

I want to be completely honest about our time on the farm. It was a great experience, full of growth and life-altering occurrences and circumstances. But it was also a most difficult time, and writing about it brings me pain and must be worse for the reader.

So I have held back as we plunged ahead into the Summer of 1977. It was more than anything confusing and frustrating. And yet....

Goat bread

2009-03-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

So we had a boarder who contributed cash, and we had all our own milk for free because we sold enough to pay all the goat-related bills.

We also had the veggies growing taller and more robust in the garden, with the promise of an excellent harvest and food available without cost well into the winter, and maybe through till Spring.

The only costs were the time and energy it took to weed and keep an eye out for bugs, and to continue to remove the rocks that seemed to grow right along with the veggies. Fortunately there were not many bugs.

To round out the early mid-summer menu, while we were waiting for the bulk of the produce to be ready, we ate a lot of goat bread.

It seems that the major bakeries, such as Pepperidge Farm, had outlet stores where anyone could go and pick up day-old bread. And then when some of it hadn't sold, after about a week, goat people (and others with animals) could go and get it. What was left was the really old bread, stale, often in ripped bags, sometimes moldy - 100 pounds for $5. Five cents a pound.

That was considerably less than the cost of goat feed, and in some cases approximated their feed in quality. Of course we never fed them the moldy bread, so there was some waste. But for the most part, the ability to buy goat bread really helped the feed bills.

We'd go to the back door of the store, off the alley, and back up with the station wagon, then go in and take from the shelves in the store's back room whatever looked good to us, 100# at a time. We all helped pitch it into the car. Then we'd drive home and back up to the bulkhead and carry it down to the freezer, to be thawed several loaves at a time for each feeding.

The goats loved it. They'd grab a slice or two as we held it out to them, gobble it down, and come back for more. Their favorite was cinnamon raisin...

And if they refused a slice, we knew it wasn't wholesome, even if it looked ok to us.

Of course it didn't take us long to start eating the bread ourselves, and that meant we could save several dollars a week, with bread $1 a loaf.

So we made it through the early Summer while we watched the garden grow.

a little the help from our friends...

2009-03-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

The financial pressure hadn't abated. And then one night a win-win solution popped into our awareness, something that had been there all along...

We had gone as a family to the TM center for a pot-luck supper and a video. At the back of the room was a man we had met a few times. He was looking for a place to live.

And we had the downstairs bedroom, with its own half-bath.

And he could pay a few hundred dollars a month. In short order we had made our arrangement, and he moved in the next day.

The money was welcome. And he added to it by bringing fruits and lebneh and other foods from his native Palestine. He taught us to enjoy many Middle Eastern dishes as well.

Our big house was capable of housing one more. And so we backed away from the precipice of financial disaster and began to breathe again.

Chicks!

2009-03-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

We were pretty overwhelmed with the goats, but we knew chickens, ducks, horses, any farm animal with the exception of pigs (John had had to drive by a pig farm as a kid), would be in our future.

One solution was to start with some broilers, and just raise them in the good old garage, the garage that had already housed goats. Then we could put them in the freezer and be done with them, without having to have a hen house.

So I poured over chicken catalogs. I didn't know there were such things, but a goat friend shared one with me...

Of course cost was a big issue, and it was tempting to buy LOTS of chicks so the cost each would be less.

I tried to interest friends in sharing the load. But in the end we were on our own. So we ordered 30 chicks.

I couldn't imagine how they'd come mail order, but the day arrived and a mailman drove up the driveway with a single low box of peeps, tiny beaks sticking out of the airholes.

I had made a small pen in the garage, coverd the floor under it with shavings, and set up a heat lamp in a box, plus a watering bucket and a feed dish. I had bought the right kind of feed for baby chicks and it was waiting in their dish.

So all I had to do was pour in the chicks and watch.

They were yellow fluff, and the tips of their wings were beginning at this age of one day, to turn white and stiff - real feathers.

They went right to work drinking water. Every one was healthy. They pecked at food, ran in to the box, out again, plunked down and slept, and repeated it all. I was caught up in watching them and could hardly draw myself away. The kids loved them when they got off the bus...

So they grew. Every day they were whiter and less fluffy. They began to look like adolescents, gawky and squawky instead of peepy.

I could see how they would be ready to eat in 6 or 8 weeks. They were bred to be eating machines. They ate enormous amounts of feed, going from one sack of grain in the first week to several sacks a week toward the end...

We 'harvested' them in late June, when they were fat, by catching them by the necks and tossing them into the burlap feed sacks our goat feed came in. We cut slots in the bags and placed them in the back of the station wagon. By the time we got all 30 handfuls into the bags, most of the holes had heads sticking out.

Then I drove them down to the packing house and returned that night to pick up 30 naked broilers in plastic bags. I don't know where those little yellow balls of fluff went...

And the plastic bags went into the freezer and we cooked them two at a time all Summer and early Fall.

Books

2009-03-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Our fancy colonial-style house had 4 bedrooms, one down and three up. We couldn't imagine sleeping on different floors, so we all slept upstairs.

But VJ was definitely the sort of fellow who should have a room of his own. It's where he read his huge collection of books about dogs, gleaned from our little local library and anywhere else he could find one. Plus his room was somewhat long and narrow, with only one good spot for a bed.

So that left one bedroom for mom and dad, and one for Fritz and Margo.

These two, 7 and 9, were good friends, and both liked to lie on their beds and read. But they also liked their privacy, and their special things, and time apart.

One fine day, Fritz solved the problem for us. He dragged his sleeping bag into a large - long, and narrow - closet that had been built off the main upstairs hall.

And he took his reading lamp and his pillow and several dozen of his favorite books, and made himself not only a bedroom but his own house.

We didn't think he'd actually sleep in there, but he insisted. It was his own space, and he loved it.

So now we had 4 bedrooms upstairs.

Later we remembered an old daybed that was tucked away in our unused family room, and measured to see if it would fit. It did. Exactly. Its 3-foot width and the 3-foot width of the closet matched perfectly, like two puzzle pieces.

The sleeping bag would have to go on top of it instead of sheets and blankets because there was no tucking room down the sides.

But there was space at the head for him to put a box to hold his books. And he lay in there and read by the hour.

But sometimes, when all was quiet outside and the sun had set, we all piled onto our big bed in our bedroom and read together, sometimes 5 separate books, sometimes one that one of us read alone from. Growing legs hung off edges while we all shared great books.

Sad sad sad...

2009-03-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

The garden was perking along. We were fascinated by the potatoes, which were growing vigorously, white blossoms breaking out on the ones that would grow white spuds, and purply ones on the reds. We couldn't wait to dig them, though it would be months before the new potatoes would be big enough.

The eggplants and tomatoes were racing each other to produce the first fruit.

The peas were so good we stood in the garden eating them off the vine, even though they were still quite small.

The beans were making bean blossoms, and those were turning into baby beans...

And amidst all this joy in the garden, and the fulfillment of much planning and waiting, and despite all the sweet little buds growing into real little beans and peas,

And right there where the baby goats entertained us, and tried to reach the tiny crabapples starting to form beneath the beautiful and abundant pink flowers...

I woke up one morning with an all too familiar feeling, and before the day was out I had had another miscarriage.

Two in a row was bad news.

My doctor generously proclaimed that I would never have another child.

The object of my every thought was no more.

And without children - an infinite string of children - what was the point of the farm? All this work was for the long-term, for EVER. And suddenly the end of the road loomed up and stifled the very purpose of all our hard work.

Well, not all. We had a 7 year old son. A 9 year old daughter. Another son who had just turned 11. We were very blessed.

But my arms felt empty, and my heart more so. I could enjoy what I had, but my whole vision of eternity - endless increase - was stifled.

It was a sad sad sad day. . . . . .

Disbudding and other removals

2009-03-26T21:31:00.001-07:00

Goats are born without horns - good thing for the moms - but little bumps begin to appear soon after birth. Especially in little bucks, who may show points breaking through when they are only a day old.

It's really quite stirring to realize how well equipped baby goats are to survive in the wild. They can run at their mother's side by the time they are a couple of hours old, and within days can and do turn their little heads toward an attacking foe (farmer's son for example) and lower their heads. Those little horns would not do much damage during the first few days after they appear, but by the time the kid is only a month or two old, he is capable of presenting a formidable shield - albeit on his head - to his enemy.

On the other hand, it is devastating how well equipped baby goats are to get tangled in fences, beat down doors, and poke innocent visitors.

So it is considered good practice to remove the horns before they get fairly started.

Before the little horns erupt through the skin, they can be felt in the form of little buds. If these buds are removed when they are small and unerupted, the goat will be hornless and safe.

To disbud a kid, the procedure must be undertaken for little bucks within the first week or less after birth. However, since little bucks may in actuality be little burgers, it may not be necessary to go through the disbudding procedure on them. It depends on how long they are to be kept.

For does who are destined to be milkers, it is possible in some cases to wait a little longer than a week. But once the little horns erupt, the whole process becomes more challenging.

For one thing, the bud is bigger, and for another, the disbudding tool will not fit neatly over the horn and be able to remove the base of it. And if the base, or bud, is not gone, the horn will grow.

Even a small piece of bud left on the skull of the goat will result in horn growth, certainly not into elegant horns but instead into lumpy pieces that may break off and bleed.

So it's best to get right to the disbudding.

Disbudding irons are like soldering irons: there is a handle at one end, and a hot steel rod at the other. In the case of the disbudding irons, the end of the rod is designed to fit around the unerupted horn bud: it has a recessed center, with a ring around the outside.

When the iron has been plugged in and becomes hot - very hot - it is time to capture the kid. Holding his head firmly - this may be a multi-person job - the brave farmer ascertains the exact location of the horn bud by feeling for it, then presses the rod over it.

How long to hold the iron in place is a matter of practice, so the first time the new farmer disbuds the new goat may be a nerve-wracking experience. For both. If the iron is not held down in place long enough, the bud will not be encircled and killed, and the whole process will have to be repeated or the goat will end up with ugly horn-bits. If the iron is held in place for too long, it will burn through into the....

Well, new farmers usually don't cause dire damage, they just usually end up not doing enough.

The ideal result is that the horn bud has its blood supply cut off by the encircling rim of iron, and can be plucked off bloodlessly.

There is a lot of smell of hair and screaming of goat, but it's over with in a minute or two. Per horn. Then the baby's head is dusted with antiseptic powder, and he is let back into the kid pen to tell his little brothers and sisters what is in store for them.

We don't love doing it. But it is far better than horns.

And it is also far better than converting little bucks to the genderless sweethearts they must become if they are to escape the butcher knife. This conversion process involves tiny robust rubber bands the inside diameter of which is the size of cheerio holes and rubber band stretchers and once positioned the rubber bands cut off circulation and end the process by which bucklings become big smelly bucks.

So the early life of little goats is not all play. But then they forget about these things, and go on with their bouncy little lives.

A flood of milk, a wheel of cheese

2009-03-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

And so the very warm days of May saw us committed to staying home and enjoying the life we were putting together on the farm.

The baby goats had been nibbling hay from the beginning but now they were really enjoying it. The result was that we had more milk for ourselves. Lots more milk. Streams and rivers of milk.

So it was time to start in earnest preserving it for the winter ahead, and that meant making cheese.

Each day, we would put what was left of the the morning milking, after the babies were fed, into half gallon bottles for us or those who were buying from us. And we would put what was left of the evening milking into a pot to make cheese.

The coagulant for the cheese was rennet that we bought at the drugstore. The bacteria to ripen the cheese and give it flavor would come from the air.

We brought the milk back on the stove to a good temperature for the coagulant to work, about 110 degrees, then added the rennet dissolved in a small amount of water. Within a half hour or so the milk would begin to separate into curds and whey. By morning the separation was complete, and we'd cut the curd into inch cubes so even more whey could escape.

Meanwhile the bacteria were beginning to grow in the milk, changing its character in a way peculiar to each type of bacterium.

As long as we worked with meticulously clean pots and stirrers, and with fresh milk, we found only wholesome bacteria growing. But under less ideal conditions, the milk could produce yeasty or foul cheese. And sometimes if conditions were just right, we produced just curds with little bacteria and hence little good goat-cheese flavor.

After the curd was cut, it was time to put it in the collander. We used several layers of cheese cloth to retain even more of the curd while it was straining.

The mass of curds needed to sit for a while in the collander, usually several hours into the new day. Then we transferred it to a cheese press and cranked down on it.

The press was a tube about 6 inches in diameter, with a disk that fit into it. A heavy wood screw could be cranked and made to press on the curds. Whey could leak out the bottom.

The harder we pressed it, the better it would keep and the harder texture it would have.

We made an effort to get most of the whey out of the curd. When we decided it was done, usually by the next morning - 36 hours after the process had begun - we took the wheel out of the cheese press, salted the outside to help preserve it, and put it in a plastic bag in the fridge. For many months we were able to produce a wheel a day.

Some went into the freezer. The texture was a bit crumbly after freezing, but perfectly good for a topping for spaghetti sauce or hot veggies.

At times we also left wheels out on the counter, and watched them closely for spoilage, rubbing salt on them each day as a preservative. If the cheese ripened at room temperature, or the warm temperatures of summer, they could ripen to a delicious flavor and smooth, firm texture. But the spoilage rate was high, and mostly kept it in the fridge to ripen.

We had plenty to eat, and plenty more to freeze for the winter ahead.

First camping trip, part 2.

2009-03-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

The morning after Bobby Kennedy was shot, we packed up our things again and headed toward Yosemite, which was still a very long day away, if not two. It all depended on how well the babies did with traveling, and of course how the car held up and so on.

The car actually turned out to be a problem. We pulled into a service station to get gas, the attendant checked under the hood, and then reported the dire news that we had developed a leak in the transmission line and we had no transmission fluid left. And no mechanic was on duty. But we could come back tomorrow and get it fixed.

We were worried about burning out the transmission, so we found a campground right there in Bakersfield California, and set up our tent. It wasn't the setting we had envisioned when we had set out: our ears were glued to the radio to see if Bobby Kennedy had died; we were camped on a bed of dust at the base of a major highway; and we were hardly in a place where we could go for a hike or see wildlife.

Actually, we did end up seeing a bit of wildlife: wild-colored jays kept stealing our food. The little ones took delight in it. Until one bird came out of nowhere and stole a graham cracker out of VJ's hand.

We spent a long day there, dreaming of Yosemite, still so far away.

The next morning I got up early. The ground was hard, the light bright, the temperatures warming rapidly. The babies were still asleep. Bobby Kennedy was dead...

I made oatmeal and sat in the car waiting for the others to start the day. Finally everyone was up, fed, wiped clean; the car was repacked, then the children added. Off we went to the service station.

The day crew checked the transmission fluid and the line was full. It had been an error.

So we drove to Yosemite. We made it that same day. We put up our tent and got out our stove and lantern and put the sleeping bags in the tent and blew up the air mattresses. Then we walked around just breathing the sweet air. The skies were blue, only a few clouds to the west. We gaped in awe at El Capitan and washed clothes and ate a meal in the village. And I eyed the horses that were for hire, thinking how much I had enjoyed riding one horse one time when I was about 14. Maybe, just maybe we could afford a trail ride.

John had no interest, so I volunteered for him to stay with the babies at the tent. We made the reservation for my ride for the next afternoon and I looked forward to it eagerly. Meanwhile we cooked on our little stove, took walks, and generally felt free and easy in the pleasant openness.

The next day dawned gray and threatening. When the time came for my ride, I decided to go even if it rained - I might not get another chance, since our time at Yosemite was about to end. So we drove to the corral. I was surprised to find I was the only trail-rider. I climbed on my assigned horse eager to be off, and fell in line behind the leader.

I waved goodbye to my amazed two year old and long-suffering husband, and as we rode off it started to rain. The leader put on his raincoat. I didn't have one.

We rode down a long one-horse-wide trail into the woods. The rain was getting heavier by the moment, but in the woods it was a little lighter. Except for the drips from the pines.

The ride was to last for an hour. I was getting cold and the adventure was quite different from what I had anticipated. He and I tried talking but the noise didn't carry well, so we just rode on in silence.

I was cold and chattering and wondering at my unique folly - no one else had ventured out! And I began to wonder how much longer the ride would last, at the same time feeling guilty for the thought because we had spent good money on the ride...

As we walked along, I was lulled into a peaceful state despite the wet and cold.

It was then that I saw movement up ahead and the leader pulled his horse back abruptly. A mother moose stepped out of the woods and crossed his path, followed by her baby.

The leader pulled his horse back to mine, and exclaimed in such a way that I was amazed at his obvious fear. He explained that a mother moose with a baby is dangerous even to a man on a horse, and he had never seen one before, nevermind one crossing his path a few feet from him. He felt we had been very lucky to avoid a conflict. I had just seen a lovely wild beast and she had hardly seemed dangerous. But then I was new at riding a horse in the woods.

Eventually we got back to the corral. The horse was in as much a hurry as I was. The family was waiting in the car, and John had my jacket for me. I put it on but couldn't get warm. We went back to the campsite. It was heavy gray, dark and rainy outside, but probably not much past four p.m. I crawled into my sleeping bag and shivered, while John got supper under the protection of the tent flap. I couldn't get warm. Finally it was bedtime. I fed Margo, then fell asleep. In the morning I had a horrendous cold.

It was time to head home, and then once we got there, time to pack up all our belongings and move to Massachusetts. As we drove through central California, I realized how I would miss it. I had lived there for three years, John for four. It had taken me nearly all those three years to come to grips with this strange land we had been living in: it was not the least bit New-Englandy. But I had grown to love it after all, and now we were leaving.

So it was a bit of a sad trip, but we vowed to go back. Back to Yosemite, Bridal Veil, ruggedness, woods, mooses, and camping with our kids. We had camped, we had fulfilled our dream at last, and we were ready for more.

A trip... part 1. Error and shock...

2009-03-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

The basement was huge, and the kids had enough room to roller-skate down there when the weather was rainy. We also had a washer and dryer, a freezer, and lots of left over space. In one corner we had built shelves to store things on.

And on those shelves, just within sight, was our camping equipment.

One hot summer day after I had gathered up the laundry and was carrying it to the washer, I noticed it sitting there idle, and memories came back of our very first real camping trip.

The red sleeping bags, the blue tent, the green camp stove and lantern... BIG SIGH! We could not figure out how to get away with everything that needed taking care of.

So the memories came flooding back with great poignancy.

John had finished his dissertation, and soon we would be driving East so he could take his first job at MIT. In between we had a couple of precious weeks and we knew just what to do with them.

That is, we knew we wanted to go on a real camping trip. The question was, which of the many great sites in California would we visit?

We picked Yosemite. It was a name from our childhoods and the name alone flooded our minds with magic and mystery.

It was a long two days' drive with a 2 year old and an infant, so we decided to spend the first night with friends in Pasadena. We drove up the 'back way' from San Diego after a difficult day of packing clothes, disposable diapers that we had just heard of and were trying out, food, and all the camping equipment in our old Pontiac Catalina sedan, and leaving room for a car seat and a car bed.

(In those days there were no car seat laws, and we always traveled with the baby of the moment lying loose in a car bed that was made from the pull-out body of an old baby carriage. A baby carriage is - never mind. The image makes me cringe.)

We left late, and arrived after dark in Pasadena and fondly greeted the friends we didn't see very often. We would be sleeping in their house that first night, and John carried things in from the car while I fed the babies, nursing Margo and getting VJ some supper they'd saved for us.

John came in from the car after carrying in most of our needs for the night with a puzzled look on his face. After looking around and going back to the car several times, he said that the clothes box was missing.

I could just picture it where I'd been adding small shirts and shorts, on the far side of our bed. I could just see how it could have gotten overlooked...

We couldn't go on without it. The thought never entered our minds to buy new clothes for us all. Instead, John suggested that he go back to La Jolla, pick up the box, and return in one big round trip. It would take him till past midnight...

I thought hard about alternatives but came up with nothing.

This dumb little mistake was to put him in time and space at almost the exact point of an historical event that will forever be part of the history of our nation and perhaps humanity....

While he was gone, we watched TV with the family. Bobby Kennedy was speaking in LA. The speech was inspiring! It fired our young spirits with hope for justice and peace.

Then, when it was over, and he left the podium, and the news crews were tying up the broadcast, suddenly the cameras switched to the kitchen, where on the floor lay...

This was June 4-5, 1968. Bobby Kennedy lay dying, and we sat in shock. John was still gone and I wondered if he'd have the radio on and would have heard about it. Finally he arrived, an hour or so after the shooting. He had come up the coast instead of the back way, and had gone through LA. He reported that he had heard and scene much commotion, sirens and police lights...

No such thing as a free goat...

2009-03-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

As we went to goat shows and saw the truly beautiful animals being shown there, I began to appreciate the elements that made up that beauty, and I began to see what 'dogs' our goats were.

Of course we just wanted goats for milk, so what did it matter?

What we had failed to appreciate in the beginning was the small issue of the need to breed milkers every year so they would continue to produce milk.

The normal cycle was annual: Starting at a year, a young doe had her first kid. That meant she was bred at 7 months. She would produce milk for the next 10 months, the last three of which were when she was pregnant with her next batch of kids. After that her supply diminished to almost nothing, and her owner would dry her up and give her a rest for the last two months before the next batch of babies was born a year after the first.

Let's say she has her first kid or kids on March 1. She is then in milk until the following Jan 1, and gets a rest until the next March 1 when she has a new batch of kids. She would have been bred on Oct 1.

Some few goats can produce for more than 10 months, but the rule of thumb is that they need to be 'freshened' every year.

The by-product of this freshening is baby goats. One the first year, two or three or four or five thereafter.

In a dairy with 5 milkers, that would mean something like 15 babies, half doelings.

Newborn does can be raised to make more milkers, sold to someone else for that purpose, or eaten. Newborn bucks generally must be eaten, though some are sold as pets.

Leaving aside the unfortunate young males, there are usually still more little does than a dairy needs to replace the mature milkers, who produce well for at least 5 years.

So they need to be sold. And if the dairy is a business, they need to be sold at a profit, or at least at break-even.

So this is the situation we faced: we had many small does, and it would have been great to pay some of our bills by selling them.

And of course our goat-people friends were trying to do the same thing.

And that's where shows came in. It was a place to show off one's gorgeous goats, and it was a place to get ribbons that proved the goat was gorgeous.

And after a few shows I realized we did not have gorgeous goats. Nice ones, milky ones, but not good-lookers.

It could be argued that the looks of a goat have nothing to do with the ability to produce milk. But it's not so: each aspect of a great-looking goat has to do with the ability to produce. These traits define dairy-goat beauty.

So when we didn't win ribbons, we didn't sell goats.

A lot of our first goats were very low cost, or FREE. They made good milk. They didn't win ribbons. They made as many babies as other goats, and they ate as much as other goats. We just couldn't sell their babies.

And that's when I realized there's no such thing as a free goat.

Interlude: John gets a job

2009-03-21T09:03:00.001-07:00

John had a big decision to make and then we could go on our first camping trip.

We had owned the equipment for 8 months or so, and had yet to get away and really camp.

Meanwhile Margo had been born. Then it was winter. Then the final typing (with a typewriter!) of the dissertation, all the while waiting for word about jobs and our future.

The offers trickled in over the Spring of 1968. The first was from JPL, Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, NASA's lead center for planetary exploration. A great job! We decided to go to Pasadena and see if we would thrive there as a family.

Then came an offer from two departments at MIT, back in home turf since we had both grown up in the Northeast. The Chemistry department and Geology and Geophysics put together a joint offer that would cover all his areas of expertise.

And then an offer came from the University of Oregon to found a new planetary sciences department with colleagues already established in space sciences. The offer involved the geology and chemistry departments and the Center for Vulcanology, and some involvement with the astronomy department.

Our trip to Pasadena helped us eliminate JPL right away. The smog was intense and we found ourselves lying on the floor with no energy. JPL's offer included the most money, but we rejected it for reasons having to do with our ability to stay alive in that environment.

(Smog in those days was a much bigger problem than it is now. A pall of chemicals rested over most of the major cities in those days, especially LA.)

So it came down to MIT and the University of Oregon. One established, the other growing. One with a huge reputation, the other striving for one. One with an urban/suburban flavor, the other in a big small town. One home, the other away. One without a touch of wilderness, the other right in it.

We could go camping as soon as he decided. Everything that happened in our lives after that would depend on the decision. It was a decision that would affect John's profession and who we all became over the next 60 years....

We put our heads together. And in the end, he chose MIT, and then we went on our first big camping trip.

Interlude: Vacations - preparation

2009-03-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

Just as a garden is a big solution to the inevitable and expensive need for food, camping is a great solution to the need to take a vacation.

John and I had both had favorable camping experiences at Girl Scout or YMCA camp as kids, so the thought of camping trips hit us very well. Even before we were married we were planning where we would go. Someday. When we had a car. And gas money. And camping equipment. And kids to share it all with.

The first opportunity to put the concept into practice happened when he was nearing the end of his student days. His dissertation would be done soon, and he could reasonably expect good employment. So we went shopping.

We bought: an 11x11 blue canvas tent; a Coleman camp stove; 2 sleeping bags that could be zipped together; 2 air mattresses; a Coleman lantern; a Rubbermaid wash tub; a clothesline and pins.

It came to about $90 at a time when John was earning a stipend of $250 a month. We had a long-term view of the use of all of it, though, and it seemed a worthwhile purchase.

We went to Mt Palomar, a couple of hours from our home in La Jolla CA, and tested everything out. At that time we had baby VJ, who was a little over a year old. It was a bit warm at Palomar, but otherwise it was a great way to check out that we knew how to put up the tent, take it down again (causing us to add a whisk broom before our next trip), start the stove, and use the lantern. At the end of the weekend, we were all set to go on a real trip.

Vacation!

2009-03-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

When the first hints of uncomfortable heat came every Spring, we began to think of vacation.

Vacations had been an important part of every Summer. We'd always headed North to get out of the heat...

The Spring of 1977, our first one the farm, was no different.

But then we looked at each other.

There was no money.

Gas prices were at an all-time high.

There was no time.

There was no one who could take care of the goats and the garden.

There would be no vacation. Not as long as we ran a farm.

Muscles...

2009-03-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

Before we moved to the farm, I had been leading a sedentary life for nearly a year.

And there was no building up the muscles period with the farm. One day we didn't own it, the next day we did. One day we had no goats to move from place to place, no goats to milk, no barn to build, no garden to cultivate and plant, no hay to move...

We did all these things. John did the big heavy stuff, but I was determined to do my share (despite morning sickness that was worse at night than the morning).

I learned that 40 lb bales of hay can be picked up and thrown up into a pickup IF you wear gloves so the wires don't eat into your hands. Forty pounds was less than the weight of my youngest child. Shouldn't be a probem! (Though truth be known I had never thrown him...)

And I managed stubborn 150 pound goats, though they did stand on their own four feet. But even the kids - children - could do that.

What I needed to be able to work up to was to carry the 100 lb sacks of dairy feed from the garage to the barn, a distance of about 200, maybe 250 feet.

After we had been at the farm about 6 active months, I gave it a try.

I figured I would need to get it over my center of gravity, so I hoisted it to my shoulder. The grain toward the front slumped down, and so did the grain toward the back, and altogether the bag took on the shape of shoulder with only a little adjusting.

And I walked with it to the barn, and managed to slide it into the grain barrel, open up the top, and begin the day's milking.

I was very proud.

Feeling the heat and humidity...

2009-03-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

On the first warm day, the morning was just delightful. And then the afternoon seemed a little too warm.

I was really annoyed with myself. I had been cold for months, and now that the sun was shining I was complaining of the heat? It was only 80 degrees!

I was weeding the garden. My back was turned to the sun. In short order I was drenched with sweat.

After an hour of misery I realized it wasn't the heat, it was the combination of 80 degrees with about 80% humidity.

The goats had moved into the shade, and Dusty was lying on the porch. I took a hint.

The problem with quitting weeding at that point was that the weeds were loving the heat and humidity as much as the rest of the garden. They were neck and neck. Head to head. Indistinguishable! And I wasn't going to the rescue.

I was actually quite disappointed in myself. As a kid I had turned red-faced at the slightest increase in temperature, when other kids were playing happily along. So maybe I had less tolerance for it.

But such fussiness did not fit into my vision of self-sufficiency. I couldn't picture the farmers of old whining because they were hot, or stopping the planting and hoeing and the hope of their families making it through the next winter because the humidity was uncomfortable.

But no matter what my attitude about it, no matter how many little chats I had with myself about enduring and suffering through for the greater good, I still got heat cramps if I was out in the sun for too long.

Not that the indoors was much better. We had no air-conditioning, and so often these warm and humid days were accompanied by little breeze.

And on top of this dysfunction in the heat, my disappointment with my ability to perform, I realized there was no solution. Either we lived the dream and suffered through bitter winters (which never overthrew my ability to function) and hot humid summers, or we gave it up.

It probably didn't help that whatever winds there were were from the south-southwest, straight up from New York City. You could taste the foulness of the air, and maybe some of the wooziness was due to the pollution.

Whatever the case, my inability to function in even late-spring heat was threatening to our whole homestead concept.

Feeling the heat

2009-03-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

In late April we had a balmy day, 80 degrees, and only a few days after we were still feeling the chill of a typical Spring.

The skies were mostly clear, and the bright sunshine was welcomed by us and the plants in the garden. Dusty and Kiki and the kittens lay out in it, and the goat moms took naps in it, while the babies bounced along on all the high points of their flat little corral and rejoiced in it.

It was goooooooood!

Interlude: M Obama plants a garden...

2009-03-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

Michelle Obama says she is doing this so that children will learn about eating better.

I hope another message develops as her garden begins to grow, though: growing our own solves lots of problems (overweight, high costs of foods, hidden additives, and many more). And eating local is ultimately going to be the only way to eat.

Here's the article: Michelle Obama Plants A Garden

The Oatmeal Wars

2009-03-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Oatmeal is a great wholesome inexpensive food, and we had it often. We also had other hot cereals, but mostly oatmeal.

We all liked oatmeal, and I liked the idea that it would last till lunch in small tummies.

As I sat up in my bed each morning with morning sickness, and supervised the getting-ready-for school of various of the three children, John supervised the milking and other outdoor chores and made the oatmeal for breakfast.

John grew up in New Jersey where there was an abundance of fruit, and loved to add fresh berries from our blackberry bushes, where they could be found in abundance in the late summer. His morning routine included covering his oatmeal with them before he flooded his bowl with goat milk from the fridge.

But in the Spring there were no berries. Instead, he dug into our supply of dried apricots to add flavor to his oatmeal.

And to get them soft, he cooked them right in the pot with the oatmeal flakes and water.

The three grade-schoolers did not like their oatmeal with soft dried apricots in it!

So they didn't eat it.

Each morning I'd come down after John and the offspring had left in their different directions, and I would find one empty bowl and three bowls filled with fruity oatmeal.

They weren't eating any breakfast at all.

So various ones of us suggested to Dear Old Dad that he not put the apricots in.

And he said, "But it's better that way!" And kept putting them in.

And each morning the children said they wouldn't eat it because of the apricots.

And that was a war that lasted for a very very long time. Until berry season. Each year.

Glads...

2009-03-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Back in the Fall when we first moved in, an older boy from around the corner became friends with VJ. His passion? Gladioluses.

He shared with VJ what he had learned about them and gave him some of the bulbs he'd just dug from his own flower bed, and together they looked for a spot in our large front lawn to plant them in.

VJ was in charge of mowing the 2 acres, and it had needed several trimmings in the Fall before the cold weather set in. This was 2 acres with the kind of lawn mower that a boy, walking behind, pushes.

He got to know the lawn well, so when the time came, he and Tom were able to pick out a choice spot for the glads.

Tom knew all about varieties and both boys were eager for Spring and then Summer to come so they could see what colors had resulted from Tom's experimentation the season before.

Back in the Fall they had dug a small garden, maybe 4 x 9 feet, toward the front of the property, out by the road. It was exclusively for glads. We watched them from the house as they dug hour after hour.

Whatever magic they put into the preparation, by mid Spring they were able to show us dozens of gladiolus spikes poking from the soil.

But we still had to wait for the flowers. The 10 year old and the 12 year old kept an eye on them...

Fritz shows a goat...

2009-03-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

When we went to our first goat show, the children decided to show some of the older kids.

Each kid got a collar for easier handling - read: catching and restraining.

And in the show, each kid is led by a leash hooked to the collar.

Some people who know what they are doing train their young kids to walk calmly at their sides. It is against the nature of kids as well as their human cousins to walk calmly, or even to walk, but with enough hours on the leash with a mature handler, they do get the message.

Our children practiced with their goats at a small 4-H meeting, and discovered their chosen Grand Champions would not be led.

They were instructed to go home and practice practice practice.

They went home and put away the leashes and waited with some small excitement for the show.

It was small show of 4-Hers from the Greater Boston area. Given that the Greater Boston area is essentially urban, there were not many 4-Hers to draw from.

The show was held in someone's big backyard. The show ring was defined by bales of straw. A real judge had been hired, and the usual strict show rules were adhered to. So it was a good setting in which to learn how to show.

Some of the 4-Hers had kids, but most had full-grown goats. Good choice!

When we first got to the show, we had to leave the goats in the car. They hollered when we got out and didn't take them with us.

Our children were in two classes each. They got to watch a while before it was their turn. The kids were still hollering in the station wagon, which was backed toward the show ring, so they went and got them, put them on their leashes, and tried to hold onto them.

I suggested they walk them back and forth. While they were just standing in one place, the kids had wanted nothing so much as to leap about and run, but now that the children were trying to lead them, they wanted to stand still. It did not look good.

Other children walked by us confidently with their goats aligned perfectly at their sides, calmly walking.

It was time to go into the ring for the first time.

VJ led the way, then Margo, then Fritz. With a lot of tugging, the kids adopted a position that on average was next to the children. On average. A lot behind, a lot above, a lot ahead - that's an average position next to the children.

It was chaos plus popcorn. Four goats walked calmly by their owners, three goats did not.

One child got frustrated and tried to control his goat. One child let go of the leash. And Fritz walked steadily around the circle seemingly oblivious of both the judge and the kid.

Around and around went he, steady and serene. Above and below went she, and right and left but mostly above.

The judge suggested that they should have practiced.

Fritz plodded on. Then when the time came to stand with the goats and show their best attributes, Fritz stood. Four children stood looking at the judge, 4 goats stood beside them. One child chased after the goat that was loose as it leapt over the bales of straw and headed back to the car. Two goats did back flips and cartwheels, and one child stood stolidly looking straight at the judge. The other shot daggers from his eyes into his acrobatic charge, but the kid didn't notice.

The ribbons were awarded. A blue to one of the children whose goat stood still. A red to another of the same. A yellow to the third. And a white Honorable Mention to Fritz, who really showed himself very well.

Fritz loses a shoe

2009-03-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

The children went to school, of course. It was a new school, and one with parents who knew their kids were the smartest ever. I knew that about mine too, and that meant there was no need to tell their teachers: I looked forward to their teachers telling me how great they were.

They were the new kids, and I was the new mom, and I had no time to hang out in the school parking lot and make friends. I had met the teachers about once apiece...

It was a year of budget strains at home, and when we got the news in November of that first winter that our taxes were to double, we stopped spending any money we didn't absolutely need to spend. It wasn't a tough decision, there just wasn't any to spend beyond the mortage, taxes, utilities - the basics.

Clothing was not a necessity, even for school. The children's bodies were covered decently, they had coats, and though each of them was beginning to look a bit ragged by Spring, soon they would be in a whole change of wardrobe of warm-weather clothes that had been stored away in the Fall.

So even while we had challenges in many areas, school was going along smoothly and was a place where we as a family could count on success.

I did get one call from a teacher who wanted to discuss Fritz's reading with me. I was surprised, but expected the best. During the conference, though, she told me he was in the lowest reading group and hadn't really begun to get the idea of reading.

Given that he had been read to from birth, that was surprising, but this was only a half or so of the way through first grade when she had me come in, and I thought there'd be time...

Then I thought, well, he has just spent a half year of kindergarten doing what he pleased in a hotel in Switzerland, so he's probably behind on his pre-reading skills.

We discussed his lack of interest in sounding out and she suggested that he might be one of those children who is a better sight learner, and he could just learn words and soon he would be a reader.

It seemed to me that the underlying idea was that he really wasn't mentally capable of learning to read.

I thought she was wrong, of course. I knew my boy. He was smart. Even though a good while before that, a person who did IQ testing professionally asked if she could experiment on him. I got the impression at the time that she thought he was a bit dim, but that was well after I agreed to do it. He sat on my lap and answered questions and answered and answered, and we never heard more from her. I was confident he would prevail again.

I agreed to let the teacher do what she thought best, and over the next many weeks asked him how school was and how reading was and got the usual answer, 'fine'.

So when the teacher called me back in, I was again surprised.

Already doubting his intelligence, she was now a bit upset. She was ... controlled. She told me she had a little problem with Fritz and wondered if I had any idea what to do.

Naturally I asked what happened. She told me Fritz had put his torn up old sneaker, one that had been in at least mud, on her desk. She wondered what I thought she ought to do.

That didn't sound like Fritz to me! He might have been oblivious of his schoolwork, but he wasn't the least bit interested in creating problems.

I apologized and went home eager to see if I could find out what had happened.

Fritz explained. When he got to his class in the morning, he did what he always did, kick his shoes off. One got kicked too high and landed on the teacher's desk. He didn't know what to do. The teacher didn't see it fly up there. The class was laughing. She turned around and saw the disreputable remnant of canvas on her desk and asked the class who's it was and how it got there. No one said anything. But every student turned and looked at Fritz...

We went and bought new sneakers the next afternoon. I don't think it changed her mind about his intelligence, of course....

A scary call...

2009-03-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

Right there while we were struggling in the Spring of our freshman year as homesteaders, we got a call from my mother. My father hadn't been doing well since January, she said.

That was news, the very first news that he might be in a decline.

She said he was having treatments - unspecified - every few weeks and they weren't working as well as they had been.

She'd keep us posted.

And how were the grandchildren?

Footsteps in the night...

2009-03-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

If you live in a suburb and it's daytime and you hear soft and small and rapid footfalls, you know the children are playing happily outside, and right in the yard where you want them to be. As long as there are no shreiks, in which case it could be the neighbor dog chasing them. You get up from your reading and peek out the window in case you are needed. The chance it's not a bear is great.

If you live in the city and it's nighttime and you hear hard and heavy and rapid footfalls, you hide in your closet. It's definitely not a bear, but there are worse things than bears.

If you live in the country and it's daytime and you hear heavy and lopsided footfalls, it's the cat. Cats can make themselves sound ten times as heavy as they are. You smile and go back to your reading. She only thinks she's a bear.

If you live in the country and it's nighttime and you hear any kind of footfall at all that is coming from outside, the animals are out and running around the house and in and out of the garden. Herd animals do not do this alone. You get everyone up right away and grab the flashlights and go capture the wild beasts and put them away and fix the hole in the fence or close the unlatched door, and do it now before they get into the neighbor's peas in the garden or hay in the barn. This is worse than being chased by a bear, and if one happens to emerge from the woods tomorrow, you will feed the entire herd to him.

These are important applications of universal rules and every homesteader should learn them.

So why not sell some goats!??!!!

2009-03-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

As the feed bills piled up, and as I got to know my fellow goat people, I realized that a big part of the goat game was selling goats.

That is different from having goats for milk only, but it is a real necessity if you don't want to end up with 10,000 goats. They have to be 'freshened' every year, and that always entailed babies.

Sure, it was possible to sell the doelings as well as the bucklings for meat, but it was also the difference of about $75 in the income from them if they were sold as lovely little milkers-to-be.

But with everyone having an abundance of kids in the spring, how would I be able to get them to choose mine?

This question had already been answered many times over: have the best doelings.

And since there was nothing much but pure cuteness to see in a baby, that meant going by the breeding. Like mother - like daughter. Or like sister - like sister. If the mother produced a lot of milk, or if she had characteristics associated with producing a lot of milk, her kids would have an advantage in the marketplace. And likewise if the father had produced a lot of great kids who went on to be good dairy animals, his other daughters would have a leg up. So to speak.

And how would anyone know these things? Through milk testing and shows.

So that's what we faced that busy busy Spring of 1977: goat testing and showing.

Goat testing consists of a once-a-month visit from someone in your test group, made up a other people in the area who signed up for cooperative testing. She came one evening and the next morning, and watched you milk, weighed the milk, and took a sample of it for fat content. Then you did the same for someone else, on a rotation basis within your group.

The sample was then sent to a Department of Agriculture lab for analysis.

A good dairy animal consistently produced a large volume of milk with a high fat content. So good results on the tests meant a good reputation when it came to selling kids. Like mother - like daughter.

I jumped right in to testing. Our group consisted of about 7 or 8 family farms around the southwestern part of the outskirts of suburban Boston. The closest farm was about 7 miles away, the farthest more like 15 or 18. We'd drive down in the evening, be there while they milked all their goats, drive home, and drive down again the next morning and watch again. In the winding, twisting roads of rural Massachusetts, the drive could take 45 minutes each way for the longer distances.

I always took one or more children with me in the evening, but couldn't in the morning because of school.

Some people milked at 6 pm, which was still light, but then at 6 am it was not that great. Still, it was fun to visit with the goat people. Others milked later, maybe 8 pm, which meant getting home close to 10 after driving on VERY dark rural roads!

Then a day or so later someone would come watch me milk and measure and sample.

We were the only family with young children on the milk-testing circuit, and I soon could see why: it ate up a lot of family time. And often we would still have our chores to do when we got home.

Testing is a good thing. It keeps us all honest with regard to the overall output of our operations: if the milk was not flowing in abundance, something needed to be changed. Or if the butterfat were low, same thing. And when someone came shopping for a goat, it looked impressive that we were on test.

On the other hand, if the test results were not good, testing wasn't going to sell any goats except to inexperienced shoppers.

So testing was potentially useful, once we got a track record - if the results were good. We thought our goats were great! But we didn't really know...

Stacking up the challenges

2009-03-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

In April 1977 we were done with the birth of new babies, and had the chore of feeding them all. It was fun. But it had to be done 3 times a day. (It did taper off to 2 in May...)

The food wasn't up and edible yet, and wouldn't be for a couple more months. That meant we were eating from the store. And that meant the finances were getting scary.

And looking at the total number of does we suddenly had, with all the babies, we realized we had more mouths to feed than before, and the feed bill was already high.

It is expensive to raise a doeling from newborn till she starts producing a year or so later. She eats and grows and eats and grows, then gets bred, then eats and grows...

And we had 6.

So the bills were accumulating for feed and hay, and aside from the milk we could drink and sell, and the bucklings we had sold, nothing was coming in.

And it was stressful.

The interesting thing is that at no time did we decide to call it quits. The long-term outlook was good...

That was our thinking: sell milk and goats, eat from the garden, later have chickens and maybe ducks and geese and turkeys....

And we knew that this was a wholesome way to raise a family, and learning self-sufficiency seemed very important. With double-digit inflation and high gas prices, the national economy didn't seem as thought it could be trusted.

So in our minds our little project was full speed ahead.

But in our guts we experienced a fair amount of stress.

There was no question we were living a dream, but it verged on a nightmare every so often.

And I was having stress headaches, or possibly migraines, every 3 days, and that definitely took some of the fun out. Sick headaches that meant that lights and sounds were intolerable...

Still, I was happily pregnant with the baby due in November, and I felt really competent being able to carry 100 pound sacks of grain and do other heavy labor when I didn't have the headaches.

I was able to earn a little teaching TM residence courses, and every penny helped.

John was away at scientific conferences fairly often, and I found it stressful to have the three children, the six kids, and the five mother goats all to myself to care for.

That's not actually fair to the children: they milked every morning and night, and did a fair share of chores. I was just feeling a lot of ultimate responsibility on my shoulders, and they didn't seem as much up to that task as they were to carrying the feed sacks.

But the days were warming up, bringing cheery thoughts with them as well as green shoots in the garden. We were ever optimistic. We never once questioned...

Interlude: Early gardens we had known

2009-03-12T20:37:00.001-07:00

John and I had both had some experience with veggie gardens, and we remembered them fondly. These small plots on land our families had owned 30 years before may have been part of the reason we were so keen on growing our own food.

My first garden was created by my mother during World War II at the back of our yard. At first we had a lawn than ran down to the edge of the lawn of the boy who lived behind us. Then my mother protected our property by building a post and rail fence across the back. Later came the garden, across much of the width of the yard, and up against the fence.

It was a Victory Garden. Americans were encouraged during the war to do their duty by helping raise food, whether they lived in the country or the city. I remember my mother digging and harvesting when I was about 2.

Later after the war my mother turned the garden back into sod. Maybe it had been such hard work that she didn't want to continue, or maybe there was just a sense that the war was over and it was time to return to normal life.

My Uncle Ed, already in his 60s by the time I came on the scene, also gardened. He lived in Hartford, and kept a garden that fed the family consisting of him, my grandparents, and his sister. Their parents before them had certainly had a garden at their home in Hartford, and my grandfather's family even had a cow right there in the city. The generation before them had lived in Ireland, and there they had a garden or succumbed. I looked at that garden with curiosity and was told to stay out of it.

We moved next to Darien CT where my father taught school. We had a flat backyard and my mother immediately set about scratching away the grass and planting. I was 6 or 7 and was not only able to give her a hand, she allowed me to do much of the planting and harvesting. I don't know whether she wanted to grow veggies then to help balance the budget, or just because a garden had been part of her childhood. I remember harvesting kohlrabi and green beans.

We moved four more times in quick succession, partly because my father was called up again due to the outbreak of fighting in Korea. It wasn't until I was nearly 11 that we moved into our final family home.

It seemed natural to me to start a garden. I couldn't interest my mother in the project, but I got our old shovel and rake and started to work.

I had a hard time of it because of roots and rocks. And the yard was fairly shady out there in the back. So in the end I just had a small garden and not much produce.

Meanwhile John's family had worked together in the yard every sunny weekend and a flower garden plus some vegetables was the standard for the family. I don't think there was a time when they didn't have a garden, even when they lived in New Hampshire with its short summers or in Massachusetts where they had a tiny yard. His father did the manual labor, and his mother, who had grown up on a farm, supported the project as the best way to feed the family.

When we had our first home, we set about putting in some plants, such as peas next to the back door we had in Lexington. It was in one of the few sunny spots. When we got to Wellesley the yard was on a slope and again quite shady, and I built up the downhill end with boards and carried some dirt in from the woods to build up the soil. I struggled to grow beets and spinach there without much success.

And then we moved to the farm. We had all this behind us, and were ready to get our hands dirty.

Goat ice cream?

2009-03-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

Given our total dependency on ice cream, we had at first assumed we'd be making our own with our goat cream. While we were still living in Wellesley, we had gotten 2 gallon buckets of something called Honey Goat Ice Cream from our coop, and had fallen in love with it. So why not make some from our own goat milk?

We even found an antique cream separator so we could collect the cream to be the featured ingredient.

(Goat milk does not separate spontaneously and create a cream line as cow milk does. Goat milk is naturally homogenized.)

To separate the milk from the cream, you just pour it in the top of the separator and crank the handle a lot, and out of one faucet comes cream while out of the second comes the skimmed milk.

So on our first try, we got the apparatus set up right, and poured in the whole milk. Out came the skimmed milk, but just heavy plops of cream came out of the other faucet.

Eventually we had to take the separator apart, and what we found was cream stuck to everything, but cream the consistency of putty or semi-hard butter.

There was nothing really wrong with it. All it was was supremely heavy cream, so heavy that it couldn't flow out of the machine.

So we scraped it off as much as we could (licked the rest off - it was delicious!), collected it, and prepared to make ice cream.

Usually ice cream is made with liquid cream, but we figured this had to work in a similar fashion. So we put all the ingredients (cream, sugar, fruit) in the ice cream maker, added the ice and salt to the outside chamber, and started cranking.

In maybe 45 seconds we heard a strange slapping or thumping sound, and the crank no longer turned easily. Soooo, we disassembled the whole ice cream maker, and there stuck to the paddles was...

Butter!

You'd never know it by looking at whole goat milk, but the cream is so heavy that you can almost never make it into ice cream, because it turns to butter first.

This butter we had just made was sweet and fruity, and actually quite wonderful spread on bagels. But it was not ice cream!

We gave up making ice cream at that point. We had a hideous amount of clean-up to do with all the parts of the cream separator and all the parts of the ice cream maker, and it just wasn't worth it.

Later we did make ice milk, and we used eggs to make a custard based rich ice milk as another way of using our own produce. But mostly we just bought ice cream at the store.

Out of the nursery...

2009-03-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Throughout April kids continued to be born, and each time we took them to the pen in the basement to join their older cousins, we were amazed at how fast the older ones were growing.

A brand-new kid is the size of a small cat, if you don't count the long legs. Or the size of a man's shoe, plus legs. They stand within an hour of birth, and start to bounce and kick an hour after that, if they're still awake.

But a week later, they are noticeably bigger, and their skills are equally more impressive.

The baby goats were all 'on the ground' and well. We moved them from the pen in the basement as soon as they were big enough to step over the fencing. We were amazed at how fast they'd grown. They went out to the 'kid yard', where they continued to 'popcorn', as we called it.

They still needed to be fed by a bottle, but that was no problem now that the weather was nice. We'd fill up the pop bottles to the top, cap them, and send them out two by two in the arms of the human kids. They'd prop the bottles under their elbows and the babies sucked them dry in about 2 minutes.

We let them have as much as they wanted. There was plenty.

But the milking routine now took longer: gather equipment, put the goats on the stand, milk out the half gallon or so they gave per milking, run it into the kitchen for filtering and pouring into bottles through a funnel, run back out with the bottles and feed the babies, who knew the routine and were crying lustily.

You could tell when a baby was full because his sides stood out and he'd begin to stagger. Soon he'd crawl into the pile of already sleeping babies and doze off.

By the end of April only the tiniest babies remained in the basement, but we decided not to keep them there. We moved them out with the other babies and they learned the routine quickly.

It remained only to dismantle the nursery and haul the used bedding to the garden. The plastic tarp that we had put down under the bedding, before the first baby was born, made the clean-up fairly easy. We dragged the sheet up the stairs and out the bulk head and around to the garden, where it helped nourish the roots of our future meals.

Our first kidding season was over. Our older bucklings were leaving for their new homes, mostly in suburbia. We were working from dawn till sunset and beyond. And we had a new habit called 'goat TV', which was the pastime of standing and watching the babies cavort to express their joy of being alive.

Saving (or earning) money with goats?

2009-03-09T21:24:00.000-07:00

At this point we had spent a lot of money on the goats, their barn, their feed, their straw, and various pieces of equipment. But we had not seen a lot of income from them.

By early April 1977 we were having all our dairy needs fulfilled. As a family we were drinking a gallon or more of this good fresh unpasteurized unhomogenized frothy pure-white goat milk per day, and we had lots left over, even after the babies finished with their share.

It was time to make that goat milk pay.

The first idea was to store it in the tried and true traditional method, which is to make it into cheese. That gave us cheese to eat and meant we didn't have to buy it at the store, and we were heavy cheese eaters. One gallon of extra milk meant one wheel of cheese, or about the amount we could eat in a day. Recipes for what to do with it are on GrammyPeg's Kitchen.

But cheese could not be an income making venture at that time. Goat cheese had yet to be discovered as something an intelligent person would pay good money for.

So I decided to look into selling milk. In Massachusetts at that time, it could be sold only from the door, so I would need to lean on word of mouth advertising or the milk would not be going anywhere.

But that turned out not to be a problem. The word did spread. Some people wanted it for sick babies, others for sick animals, others just because they liked it. We sold all we could produce, and we knew we could have sold more. We bottled it in half gallon juice bottles and our customers needed to bring the bottles back clean. They paid us $2 per half gallon.

Since we were selling all we had to spare, the milk going down the throats of rapidly growing babies began to look like an asset going to waste. We were happy to have our doelings consume it so they could grow big and produce milk of their own, but the bucklings that were named Hamburger 1, Hamburger 2, etc. were a different story.

So I decided to see if I could sell them.

Of course all goat people have an excess of bucklings at the same time of year. I tried to get the word out by using a wonderful little weekly sales booklet that allowed us to put in ads for free and pay 10% when we sold the item.That fit my budget perfectly! It circulated all over the eastern half of the state. But no one called for our kids. And I didn't want to feed them milk I could sell. In any case, I couldn't keep them, and as vegetarians we weren't going to eat them...

So I mulled over how to change my success, and one morning I woke up with a new ad to try. Instead of saying Goat Kid For Sale, I submitted, "Bottle feed your own baby goat".

I sold all of them that weekend.

The people buying them had a choice of what to feed them. Some opted to wean them to hay, some to milk replacer (an awful concoction that purports to be like milk but everyone knows from looking at it that it bears no resemblance to anything like milk), and some to, tada! goat's milk! Which they would have to buy from me...

I castrated the young bucks before they went so they would remain small and friendly.

We sold all the goat milk we weren't drinking. And so the goats started to pay for themselves and all our milk and whatever cheese we had the milk to make.

What we ate in the meantime...

2009-03-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Looking back at this point, we recalled that the economy of this little farm depended on growing our own food. Otherwise it would be unaffordable because even back then with 3 children we were spending $500 at the grocery store, and that was $500 we no longer had once we got the new tax bill.

The garden couldn't be hurried, though, and wouldn't be able to feed us even simple greens until June, 9 months after we had bought the property.

So I thought long and hard about how to save money on food.

Buying ingredients instead of prepared foods was a step we had partially taken a few years before. So instead of buying prepared beans, we soaked and cooked our own, saving about 60% of the cost. Or instead of eating cold cereal, with its high cost per ounce, we had oatmeal. Gradually I came to buy most of our food in bulk, and since I had always cooked, I enjoyed converting it into wonderful, inexpensive dishes.

The bulk purchases included many varieties of beans. We loved black turtle bean soup, and its cost was less than $1 for all of us. I cooked lentil soup often, maybe once a week, and it too was a huge budget balancer. See GrammyPeg's Kitchen for recipes.

I also bought grains in bulk. We had wheat, rye, grinding corn, barley, whatever was on sale.

Of course I made bread and various whole-grain biscuits and cookies, and I also made a dinner porridge that we called Tablespoon Soup.

We had been verging on vegetarianism for a while, and that helped balance the budget. We could barter goat's milk for eggs, and so we had plenty of those. And we had the milk.

Gradually I built up a good collection of bulk foods, and we had a lot of variety. There were two foods we never skimped on, though: we always bought real butter and plenty of ice cream.

And of course before the garden produced veggies, we had to buy those.

It was still expensive for us all to eat. And so I had to figure out other ways to ameliorate some of our financial woes, and for that I turned back to the goats.

We start the garden...

2009-03-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

March brought babies, a new pregnancy for me, financial woes, and the need to plant the garden. Two academics and their offspring were in for a reality check. It started with the garden...

Reality is never as tidy as the dream. When the Swiss woman planted her garden and inspired the dream we were trying to live, I was amazed at the fine raking and patient measuring she applied to what had been a pile of topsoil. Now we faced thawing sod that consisted of patches of greening grass mixed with mud or large expanses of rock-like still-frozen brownish turf. And who knew what underneath!

We had planned the location and size of the first garden, so on the first warm Saturday afternoon we laid it out by hammering 2x1's into the soil at the four corners, and every 10 feet or so in between. Then we ran string from one to the next, and John started up the new rototiller.

This beast of a machine made a huge noise even when it was in idle. The idea was to lift it up so the heavy tines in the rear didn't reach the sod until it was in the garden area. Then it was to be let down. In that position it would chop and lift and stir the top 8 inches of soil or so.

So John did quite a bit and I did some, and back and forth we went down the 45 feet of length and eventually from side to side. Rocks flew all over, and the kids picked them up. The garden was 3 feet inside the property line and parallel to it, so we put the thousands of rocks, most of them from ancient glaciers, right on the edge of the garden inside the property line.

It was not sufficient to till it once. It took a couple of passes to break up the loam and incorporate the dead grass into the soil and also make sure none of it took root. We were pleased to see that we actually had a large depth of topsoil, deeper than the tiller could cut.

Unfortunately at the house end of the garden John ran into ledge, a massive piece of granite that started just a few inches below the ground. When he hit this unseen piece of bedrock, the tiller leaped forward and threw him out of balance and wrenched his shoulders. It tapered gradually so that by the time it got a dozen feet or so into the length of the garden is was sufficiently below ground level that the tiller didn't hit it. (Later we found that nothing grew well in that area.)

The garden required several more passes with the tiller over days and weeks. The garden needed to dry out and then be retilled. And the weed seeds needed to sprout and then be plowed under. It took nearly a month to get the garden to the stage where it could be planted.

The boys and John had also grubbed out the winter's accumulation in the barn. John, who counts everything, reported that he had wheeled 50 loads of manure and bedding to the garden by the time the job was done. Then it had to be spread out, and tilled in. Several more passes were required to incorporate it fully.

By then April was full upon us. We needed to hurry and begin the planting.

I catch a kid...

2009-03-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

The day finally arrived when one of our does liked having me there when she delivered.

It was Elegant, sweet girl!

Elegant had grown right along with her pregnancy, and was looking like a copper blimp. She had grown more and more affectionate. We kept an eye on the calendar and on her, and on the sunny Saturday morning when we figured she was due, she kept close to me during chores.

And when I rubbed her, she voiced her approval in a tender way.

I added some fresh hay to the milkroom and led her into it, and sat on the milkstand so I could see what was going on. Not much, unfortunately.

I left to get some chores done, but she called after me in a loud Nubian voice. The rest of the ladies lifted their heads, then went back to eating their breakfasts.

The sunshine was warmish, but the milkroom was in the shade and cold. I grabbed a warmer jacket, the washbucket, some rags, and a brush. Might as well do some goat grooming while I kept near her.

By the time I got back to the barn, she was lying down and breathing hard. Her mouth was a bit open and she was looking off into space. Hmm! It looked promising.

Then she pushed. And pushed and pushed.

I had no idea how much was a normal amount of pushing, and when I should become concerned. I hurried to let myself into the milkroom. The brush, rags and water went on the little shelf, and I knelt down at Elegant's rear to see what I could see.

Not much.

I have a great respect for natural processes and think we all must work pretty well or we wouldn't have survived this long. So I was ok with waiting and seeing. Except for my natural impatience.

I couldn't tell what might be going on inside with the baby or babies, but goat people had told me the babies had to get themselves untangled and lined up during labor so they could come out face first.

In fact, the normal position, as I reviewed for myself, was the two front legs coming first with the nose just behind the tiny hoofs. Anything else was difficult to make come out right.

After some waiting, she pushed again and I saw a bubble about the size of my fist appear. The front of the baby should be in it, and what I wanted to see as I peered more closely was what part of the baby.

More pushing on Elegant's part gave me a better view, and I quickly saw the two white hoofs. But where was the head? The murky fluid in the bubble didn't give me a good view. Why hadn't I thought to bring a flashlight?

I called to the children, who were out and about doing jobs or cavorting on this first beautiful day of the Spring. I knew they wanted to see the birth. But Elegant was pushing harder now and I went back to trying to figure out if the kid was in the right position.

I was trying to discern the contents of the bubble when suddenly it surged outward and a blackish kid plopped onto the straw, with his face still in the sack.

Elegant reached around and made tentative licks on his tail. But his head was still covered, and he was bobbing his head up and down as if he were trying to get that thing off. I couldn't wait. I pulled at the sack. It was fairly tough, but in a moment - who knows how long! - I had it open and the baby let out a tiny, infantile meh! meh!

Elegant looked startled by the sound and began to lick him more vigorously. Then she quit and began to push again. I rubbed the baby with a rag fairly vigorously and he seemed fine. Then another bubble appeared: Baby #2 was about to be born.

She slid right out. She was red like her mom, but with spots. Cute bright white spots! The sack broke right away and she shook herself.

Sad to say, I scooped them both up and ran them to the house. Elegant would have to love me instead of her babies. She was soon milked, and the babies were fed and settled down to sleep. I treated her to her 'goat tea', the bucket of hot water new mama goats so appreciate, and I brushed her and talked to her and she rubbed her head on me.

The babies were first a little buck, then a little doe. They were gorgeous, with long Nubian ears and a bouncy attitude. We didn't name the little boy because he would end up as someone's pet (and only if he were lucky), but the little girl became Anandalila Velvet and took after her mom in temperament as well as looks. It was a beautiful day!

Elegant had done well for a new mom. Next time she might do more licking and be more self-sufficient. Within a few days she would be one of the goats who leapt onto the milkstand in her turn. And when she saw her babies again, she wouldn't know them. And wouldn't miss them.

At least so we hope.

How we named the goats: An retrospective interlude

2009-03-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

We named Monique's goats.

But the reason for the names went back several years in my personal history, so I will take a moment to catch up.

When John became a professor at MIT, we moved from San Diego to Lexington MA and lived in a rented house for two years. During this time we wanted to buy a house but never could save the 20% immutable down payment. And we didn't know how we'd ever be able to.

Then one of John's colleagues, who lived 15 miles south of us in Wellesley, got a job in Maryland and needed to sell his house, but he was having no luck. Seeing this, I offered that we would rent it for a year in lieu of the down payment, and he agreed! So that is how we moved to Wellesley. This was 3 months after Fritz was born.

We joined a church, I began to sing in the choir, and we met a few people. VJ went to nursery school. Our new life was beginning.

A year later we met the Fergusons at a church camp. John had had to go out of town at the last minute, so I took the three children, who were then 5, 3, and 1, alone. The first morning after we arrived, it was all I could do to get them up and dressed in the tent and make it to the dining room for breakfast. I was really tired from trying to settle them the night before, sleep on the hard ground, adjust to the noises of others around us...

As I dragged my cold and tired offspring to the dining room, Kay Ferguson, who was 51 at the time, and her husband Gene, were bounding up the steep hill from the waterfront with great energy. They looked half my age. I grumpily asked what they were doing down there so early in the morning, and Kay chirped, "We were meditating!"

After groaning inwardly, I asked, what's that, and she told me to talk to her son Bob - he could tell me.

It was one of those turning points that doesn't announce itself in a big way, just slips in and changes everything.

Bob was not available to talk, but Kay invited me to a TM lecture in her living room a few weeks later. In it they explained that through Transcendental Meditation (as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi), a person could get a rest that was twice as deep as during the deepest stage of sleep. And that in so doing, deep stresses could be relieved. And that with the relief of deep stress, behavior and attitude became more positive...

These three points were music to my ears. If anyone ever needed more rest, less stress, and more positive behavior and attitude, it was I. So I nervously started TM. And I liked it.

The next week, Kay invited me to come over to another meeting and hear about Shaklee. Which I did. And that was life-changing, too, but that's a different story.

A year and a half after starting TM, I went to teacher training, then began to run the Wellesley TM center with Bob Ferguson. I had purpose, and I was happy. I meditated twice a day, and began to see results. I went to TM courses and meditated more so I could make rapid progress: I was really intent on improving myself. And I learned a lot about the basis of TM, which included Vedic literature in Sanskrit.

And that's where the names of Monique's kids came from, and also the name of our farm.

We named them Mataji (Little Mother) and Rani (Princess). Rani is pronounced 'Ronny'. So Mataji and Rani. They were our first babies.

And their names went well with the name of our little enterprise, which was Anandalila Farm. 'Anandalila' means 'the display of joy'. And that's certainly all about goat kids: they bound around and display joy. And we expected we would as a family, too.

What you do with baby goats

2009-03-06T13:46:00.001-08:00

After I discovered Monique with her babies, I went into full gear with the routine we had decided on.

First, I needed to get them away from Monique. If I wasn't going to leave them on her for their entire childhood, I needed to get them away from her before they got the notion that she was where milk came from. And from thinking Monique was anything special.

(This practice of taking the babies away actually bothered me a lot. But it was considered to be necessary so that the babies would not hurt the udders. It was all well and good that in nature baby goats nursed off their moms, but that only lasted for a few months before the babies would be eating on their own, and we dairy people wanted to milk those udders for 10 months. And so on. So I went along and determined to remove the babies from their moms.)

So I went into the milkroom and scooped the two babies up and ran them to the house, one under each arm. They made baby goat noises, small meh-heh-hehs, and Monique called out to them. Soon I was safely inside. I carried them to the kitchen and put them down on the floor.

The next part of the routine was to check whether we had doelings or bucklings. We of course wanted does. What good is a little boy goat at a dairy? I checked and we had two does!

The third thing was to cover their navels with iodine, so infections couldn't work their way in. Even with a sheet of newspaper on the floor, that was a messy proposition. Baby goats are not prone to standing still, or lying quietly upside down in a lap. And these two were an hour or so old and were getting ready to run and hop.

Fourth, I needed to run back to the barn and milk Monique to get the precious colostrum from her and get it into the babies asap. Chances are they had gotten a little when they were with her, but we wanted them to have all she made. It would jumpstart their immune systems and had everything to do with their future health. And I needed to take a wash bucket with me, and the milk pail, and hot water for Monique: newly delivered does really love to drink hot water, maybe to warm them up after all the work they've just done.

And there wasn't a water bucket in the milkroom, so ...

I gathered up the three buckets, one big one full of hot water, one small one with Basic H and a rag for washing her udder and any other parts that needed attention after the birth (though they do well taking care of things themselves), and the milk pail. I also grabbed some newspaper so I could wrap the placenta in it, if she hadn't eaten it.

After milking out the colostrum, I then needed to bottle it and get it into the babies. We had soda bottles and black lamb nipples waiting, but we'd never used them.

By this time I had helpers home from school. We took turns trying to hold a baby, get the bottle into the mouth, get it to realize something good would happen if it sucked, and not waste colostrum.

The problem was, the nipple collapsed because no air could get into the bottle to replace the colostrum that had come out. We devised a trick of putting a rubber band into the bottle before putting on the nipple, which created enough space to let the air in.

The sixth thing was to clean up everything.

The kid-feeding process would need to be repeated several times a day. These were fully mature young kids, so they could probably go four hours between meals...

The kids grew sleepy after they ate, and we left them lying on the kitchen floor on some clean newspaper. In the normal course of events they would pass their mecomium, and it is a sticky, blackish-green nightmare, during their first day. We wanted that to happen before we put them in their nice clean pen.

Finally all the plumbing was working well, and we carried them to the basement, where they frolicked joyously, slept, ate, and generally fascinated the row of humans who sat watching them hours on end.

One birth down, four to go...

Babies!

2009-03-06T13:32:00.000-08:00

The time was coming for those babies to start to arrive.

The nights were frigid, and we didn't want to be cozy inside while baby goats were getting chilled. Nor did we want to sit in the barn all night. So John set up an intercom in the barn. One receiver stood on the shelf in the milkroom, the other on a desk in our bedroom. Every evening we went to sleep to the munching of goats, but no new little voices.

As it happened, though, Monique's babies were born during the day. I knew she was ready. Her bag had filled, she had some discharge, she was being very affectionate with me.

So I put her in the milkroom where there was no danger of interference from the other goats. I laid down an extra layer of straw. And I sat on the milkstand and waited.

The days were now sunny and above freezing, and a few flies were waking up and flying around. Monique lay on the straw looking calm, giving an air that nothing special was going on. And she caught flies by snapping at them with her mouth, and swallowing them.

Goats are vegetarians. I didn't know if this was part of the nonchalance she was affecting...?

The hours went by. Unfortunately I had a doctor's appointment around the middle of the afternoon, and I just had to leave. I really didn't know what was taking her so long, but at the rate she was going, I'd be back before the kids were born. I just didn't want it to go until sunset when the temperature would drop again.

So I left at the last possible moment, and hurried home and ran to the barn.

There was Monique, in the milkroom, with two tiny, perfectly dried off, standing, nursing, baby goats. Kids.

Well!

I was of course delighted that all was well. But I had missed our first birth!

I did strongly suspect that Monique had waited for me to leave before she had her babies. Later I checked with my goat-people friends and they all could tell stories from their own experience of such things.

Sigh. I had to wait another week before I actually saw a birth.

Neighbors

2009-03-05T22:12:00.000-08:00

And then, just as spring was emerging with confidence, a family moved into the old farmhouse on the other 5 acres.

They had kids nearly the right ages, a hippy-like mom, and a dedicated hippy dad.

They wanted goats and chickens.

And all seemed right and good.

But it wasn't. Strange things began to happen. And I didn't know what to do.

Poised for spring...

2009-03-05T17:37:00.000-08:00

As the New Year of 1977 came and went, several things happened.

First, we built a pen by putting up a chickenwire fence in one section of our spacious basement, under two windows that let in some sunlight. We filled it with straw and shavings and looked forward to the birth of the first babies, in early March.

Second, we planned our garden. Our property was somewhat narrow and quite deep. We wanted the garden near the house, but we also wanted to leave plenty of room to play frisbee and baseball. We needed to figure out the area we needed, and after much discussion decided to have 3 gardens. (Why would we want to start small? Had we ever started small?)

The First Garden, as we called it, was for the regular things that would be used in the kitchen every day: spinach, peas, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, all the regular vegetables. It was perhaps 12x20. It was to be dug in near the side of the property, about 3 feet in from the property line.

The Second Garden was for perennials, because we wouldn't want to have to plow there in the future and disturb them. These foods included jerusalem artichokes and asparagus, to begin with. The size was huge, maybe 16x30. It was behind the first garden with plenty of space between them for wheelbarrows and walking.

The Third Garden was for big long-season plants, like watermelon, corn, and squash. This one was about 40x40. It was down behind the goat pens, nearly out of sight.

That seemed like enough.

We had read about organic gardening techniques, but not about any intensive methods. What we knew was from childhood, and consisted of:

plowing
planting in rows
weeding
spraying with a hose
harvesting

So that was the plan.

Then we thought with all that plowing to do we needed a rototiller, and after much discussion spent a great deal of money on a Troy-Built.

We bought the seeds and they arrived before the ground could be worked.

The does were all bred and growing fat and the milk supply was drastically diminished.

The snow was beginning to melt. Buds were appearing on trees and crocuses and daffodils appeared. Everything was filled with promise.

The arrow was drawn back. The days grew subtly warmer. Ready, set....

Waves of green

2009-03-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

Generally speaking, there have been three waves of green. So it seems to me, looking back.

The first was in the early 1960s. Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, scientists talked about 'nuclear winter', and Dr Forrest Shaklee realized that the explosion in his lab had yielded a perfectly safe cleaner.

The second was in the 1970s. People like Kay Ferguson began to make noise in her community about recycling, a new concept that meant that we used things over, like newspapers and bottles. And there were plenty of other forces, all geared to helping us save our planet (which we didn't know was endangered) and make us more responsible in our consumption patterns. There was also a back-t0-the-land component, of which we were unknowingly part.

The third is now. It's been going on for several years of course, with more or less success. In the town of Anacortes WA the recycling program is so all-encompassing that the regular trash barrel is less than the size of the one for the recyclables: newspapers, bottles, plastics, etc. Meanwhile, at our apartment in Salt Lake, all we can recycle is newspaper, unless we carry our trash to some unknown, unexplained, and possibly non-existent facility. And of course much else is going on in the name of the environment.

These aren't distinct waves by any means, and I've left out all the part about saving the whales and not mining in national parks, and a lot of work by really good people.

A lot of being 'green' is altruistic or involves the greater good. Some of it is just silly, such as certain measures being touted to prevent global warming.

But when we set up our little farm, it was not really to contribute to the greater good. It was because we felt an urgent need that we could be self-sufficient.

And it was tough! We didn't know how to do it, despite reading book after book. It was ok that we hardly knew what we were doing with the goats, but a garden? Everyone knows how to garden! Before stores, everyone gardened to survive. You dig up the ground, plant seeds, water, and wait. You spray bugs and wait some more. You harvest.

When all your food needs to come from the garden, that knowledge is not enough, and may not even be accurate.

We wanted to be 'green', we wanted to live off the land, and we didn't have a clue how. The question as we entered our first spring on the farm was whether we could learn in time.

Monique meets her sweet destiny

2009-03-05T14:36:00.000-08:00

It was time to get our does bred for spring babies.

Since we had opted not to have our own buck, we needed to find one we could afford somewhere nearby. Affordable meant $50, not $500 or $5000. And somewhere nearby meant, we hoped, just a few miles away.

There was also the consideration of quality. We wanted a line of goats that produced copious amounts of milk, as well as had udders that stayed put and were not prone to mastitis.

And of course we wanted nice-looking goats. Just in case we wanted to get into showing, which all the goat people were talking about. Or 4-H.

The goat-people grapevine gave us some suggestions, and we made our choice for Monique, a nice Alpine buck with the qualities we were looking for, at a decent price. And only 15 miles away.

The trick was to recognize when the doe was in heat, which would last at best a couple of days and not recur for 3 weeks or so. We had been coached to watch for heats from August on, so we could use the calendar to keep track and increase our chances of catching one.

Once the goat showed signs of being in heat - being lovey, wagging her tail a lot, discharge - we were to load her into the station wagon and drive her for her date with the Big Boy. We were warned to be sure she was in heat, because if she really wasn't, we would have to repeat the process another day, or leave her to be boarded with the buck, a much more costly proposition.

Then when we arrived at the home of her date, the owner of whom would be expecting her by prior arrangement, we were to take her out of the station wagon and walk her toward the buck.

Meanwhile he would notice her and if she was in heat (and with some optimistic bucks, even this doesn't matter), he would greet her by flapping his tongue up and down while making romantic noises through his nose that would sound something like huhn huhn huhn huhn accompanied by slap slap slap slap. At the same time he would stamp a front leg on the ground impatiently and try to break out of his handler's hands.

Or he would be in a yard made of stout boards 10 feet high and he would be banging against the boards and flapping his tongue through the cracks.

And in either case he would be peeing straight forward onto his chest hair.

Clearly he would be wanting to make the best possible romantic impression on this new girl.

Then the doe would either sidle over toward the buck and turn her back toward him, or she would run back to the station wagon.

So the day came when Monique appeared to be in heat, and we attached a rope to her collar and led her to the car. With some serious prompting and lifting, she went in through the tailgate. We put some hay in with her, and I headed off for our appointment with Farmer John and the big fellow.

An hour later, we arrived. I held my breath. It was not just in hopes that she was in heat, but also because eau de boy goat is INTENSE.

She noticed right away. She was looking straight ahead trying to get a glimpse of him.

Things looked good. Her tail was wagging and she was screaming her own little love song.

I went to the tailgate and she hopped out and dragged me toward the buck, the handsome devil! He flapped and sang and peed impossible distances. She started to run. Farmer John led the handsome brute into the yard, my sweet lady Monique ran spraying milk everywhere, and then at the last minute...

We were on our way back home in about 15 seconds. Monique had smug look all the way.

One doe bred, four to go...

Our little surprise

2009-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

We closed on the property at the end of August and went away for Labor Day weekend, our last holiday because the next day we started bringing home the goats.

We had a little surprise for the children, and decided to tell them when we were all together that weekend.

The surprise was that I was pregnant.

I was elated. The whole concept of self-sufficiency, a family effort, was built in my mind around family. And since the early days of thinking about getting a farm, or perhaps even earlier, I had had dreams of more children.

Way back in my girlhood, I had wanted a big family. As a teen, I cried myself to sleep thinking how long it would be till I had my babies. I decided I wanted 14.

The reality of motherhood set in with our first, VJ. I breastfed him with great joy, but he seemed to have an insatiable appetite and a desire not to sleep and within a few weeks, I was exhausted. (Something I didn't know for another 30 years is that he would always have a voracious appetite and an inability to sleep.)

When VJ was several months old, I had shrunk in size to several pounds below my normal weight, and was jittery. It turned out to be a hyperthyroid condition that over time went away, possibly with the help of the iodine the doctor had me consume in copious amounts.

Then we joyfully had child #2. By this time I was definitely questioning the big-family idea. Margo reacted to many of my favorite foods and was uncomfortable throughout her infancy. And the thyroid problem hit again.

And 4 years after the first, we had #3. The thyroid problem hit very hard and I was miserable. It was so severe that the specialist we found in Boston declared I would never have children. When I told him I had just had my third, he did not believe me until John showed him a photo from his wallet. He put me on strong meds and I had to quit breastfeeding to use them, which broke my heart.

One of the most tender moments of my life happened right after that. I had 2 days to quit breastfeeding, so I began to wean Fritz onto a bottle, all the while mourning the change. But I did it with complete dedication, even while still feeling very sick with the thyroid condition. At the end of second day, we were done. I nursed him in the evening, but gave him a bottle for his last feeding before I went to bed. Then I crawled under the covers and laid there crying to myself with the loss of it.

And in his crib Fritz lay awake, restless, not crying but not settling down. He was 2 months old.

The hours went by and we each lay there awake. I could hear him. He never fussed, he just made baby noises. My heart was fully turned toward him and I felt that his was turned toward me.

Finally the sky began to lighten. It was probably 4:30 in the morning. I got up and went in to him. He was awake. I picked him up and carried him to the living room, sat in my rocking chair, and nursed him one last time with the last bit of my milk. He looked at me and I looked at him and we said our goodbyes. We acknowledged it would be ok.

Then I was at peace and so was he. We went to bed and slept well. We adapted. Life went on.

So now I was pregnant. Fritz was 6. It had been a while, and I was ecstatic.

The children were excited beyond words. It was a big unknown to them, and a bit abstract when we told them the baby would not be born till April or May.

From that point I felt a lot of fatigue, and some queasiness. It was obviously a good solid pregnancy, for which I was grateful. But it interfered with my ability to do as much around the farm as I wanted and had expected to do, primarily because I was so tired.

But I knew that in three months I would be feeling myself again and would be in full bloom of a happy pregnancy, feeling robust and in excellent health.

And it was true. I began to feel myself again by the middle of November.

A few weeks later, at the end of my 4th month, I miscarried a beautiful, perfect, but much too tiny baby.

It made no sense.

What goats are like, part 1. Herd animals!

2009-03-03T19:24:00.001-08:00

The biggest surprise of our first months on our homestead was encountering the nature of goats.

Up till then, we had thought of them as cud-chewing milk-producers on 4 legs.

We had a lot to learn. Goats are incidentally good producers of delicious and nutritious milk, but their real purpose in life is to be part of the family.

That's because goats are all about being in herd. They are happy to join the little herd of people who bring them home, and expect you to know all about herd rules.

The herd's first rule is Stay Together. If the family were to bring a single goat home, then leave it in the pen while the rest of the family went into the house, then this rule is broken, and two things happen as a result:

1. The family is loudly commanded to return for their member who was left behind.
2. If that doesn't work, all effort must be put forth to leave the pen and rejoin the family.

Goats are usually successful in rejoining the herd through one of the techniques.

The second rule is Follow The Leader. Herds know who the leader is. It is perhaps the tallest goat, or the bossiest goat, or maybe the one goat that is both tall and bossy. If the family were to bring a single goat home, the goat would recognize the leader of the herd immediately. It is that tall and bossy person that all the other members of the family herd around.

So don't expect obedience to anyone else.

Monique was our herd's leader. She was oldest, the first to arrive, and she was big. Maybe goats have other criteria we don't know about. In any case, she was the boss.

That's why when we went for our walk in the woods, all we had to do was entice Monique to come along and the others would soon be following.

Herd behavior explained a lot.

But what happens when you bring home a goat who has been the Top Goat in another herd, and your herd already has one?

Well, the usual bickering of course. Calling names. Butting. Kicking sometimes. Lots of discussion. Then one goat emerges as leader, and it's almost never the new girl on the block.

Take Paula for example. Paula didn't come to us for several years, but when she did, she expected to be boss. She was big and sassy, with a mouth that just wouldn't quit. But she had a lot of competition: Monique had been there for four years, and even though she was approaching 9 years of age, the high end for a goat, she had an eye for leadership - a very goaty intense no-nonsense eye - and Paula did not prevail.

So Paula said Fine! You may be the boss of this herd, but...butt butt butt...

Now about this time one of the younger does had 3 kids. And Paula had 4 of her own, all tough little bucklings of whom she was very proud. Paula saw her opportunity. Every time one of those happy, bouncy new babies ventured near her, she spanked it.

I was sitting in the milkroom one day milking the new mom, while her babies cavorted just outside the milkroom door. Paula hustled over and reached down and gave each one a mighty smack with her muzzle, which sent it flying.

Her own boys could do no wrong in her eyes, but anyone else's baby was fair game. She was the boss of the nursery. So there.

In the wild there's safety in numbers, and only the most vulnerable get picked off. Whenever a stray dog ventured into the yard, the goats would huddle together and faced them. When goats run with sheep in a herd, it is just for this reason: the sheep allow themselves to be herded by the dog or wolf but the goats stand their ground.

And interestingly, our own children were allowed to be part of the herd, playing in the pen around the goats, but other children were not.

If we just understood how herds worked, we stayed out of trouble.

Winter sport: reading seed catalogs!

2009-03-03T15:10:00.000-08:00

When the ground is frozen solid, then is the time to read.

1. Organic Gardening magazine
2. The whole Little House collection out loud to each other
3. Seed catalogs

10,000 kinds of beets! 1100 kinds of carrots! a dozen types of kohlrabi...

We could sit and drool and think of spring. And we did. Discussed bean varieties, decided we liked Gurney's best because the seeds were cheaper and the catalog more humorous.

We were not a TV family. This must have been the festive winter scene in houses of a decades earlier before electronic alternatives.

People still read seed catalogs today. When we visit our friends and family members we often find them in their bathrooms.

We didn't understand about local foods back then. Today I would not pick Gurney's, which is in Indiana. (Their website, http://gurneys.com/, barely mentions their location, though - maybe the current fashion of using seeds from local varieties would make advertising their midwest location treacherous. And I didn't see the good ol' silly Gurney's humor on their site, either.)

We read many catalogs, bought from Gurney's, would end up planting too much. But we didn't know that yet. It was great entertainment.

A death...

2009-03-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

The inevitable part about animals is that they die.

We were still sorrowing for VJ's puppy Charlie, when another loss struck.

Fritz was milking, VJ was feeding. It was dark in the barn. Erica didn't come to the feed trough. VJ went to find her, and tripped over her body.

She was lying in the middle of the barn, cold, with her tongue hanging out and foam in her mouth.

We never knew why she died. It could have been a poisonous plant in the new hay a neighbor had given us. Or it could just have been the change in hay.

It mattered so we could prevent the same thing happening to another goat. There she was, one of our milkers, VJ's goat, bred for spring babies, and she was dead.

John dug another hole in the ground and buried her.

Her death made us feel more vulnerable in this undertaking of ours.

Freshening

2009-03-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

The purpose of having dairy goats (at least in theory) is for the milk. Good goats produce milk for 10 months and then slacken off. To get them to start up again, they need to have a kid. Some great goats will go longer, but the usual rule of thumb is to freshen a doe once a year.

Like so many animals, dairy goats are on yearly cycle. A doe kid is born in the early spring, eats well for the better part of a year before winter conditions arrive, and has her own baby or babies when she is a year old, the next spring, so that the cycle can repeat itself on schedule.

The gestation period of a goat is 5 months, and at the end of that time the newborn is ready to leap up and begin life, on the move so as to avoid predators if in the wild.

On a farm, the newborn kid is not in danger of any predation except excessive petting and picture taking.

But the 5 month rule still applies. If you want babies in March, better get them started in October.

Most breeds of dairy goats are in season throughout the fall, and the kids are born throughout the spring. Some breeds aren't so particular, such as those whose origins are closer to the equator. These will breed in the fall for spring babies, but they will also breed in the spring for fall babies, or at any other time, just about.

We had only goats who were in season in the fall, and that presented a challenge if we wanted year-round milk. Does are usually milked 3 months into their pregnancy, then dried up for 2 months so all their energy can go into the babies. So that is two months when that doe will not be contributing milk to her owners.

The smart course is to breed some of the goats early, some late, in the fall season. Say some in late August with their first heat of the season, and some in November. Anything later than that is risky because the breeding season is almost over.

Freshening is all about bringing does into milk, not producing baby goats. In a sense they are throw-aways in the process, little mouths to feed that use up the precious milk.

But with good planning, they become assets, with homes waiting for them. More on kids later!

With a couple of does freshening around the end of January, and others coming into milk in April, the flow of milk can be out of bounds. Milking all those does is a bigger chore than it was in the fall, when the milk supply was running down and last year's doelings were not in milk at all.

What to do with the seasonal abundance of milk is the big issue of a goat dairy.

The wintry day, descending to its close...

2009-03-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

The days were short. Flurries became storms. Milking was done in the dark at both ends of the day, and required boots. Water froze in the buckets and chores included carrying pails of hot water from the kitchen sink to pour onto the ice in them. The goats drank the water hot and loved it. We called it goat tea.

We shivered in the milk room. The milk began to freeze in the pail before we were done. The barn was cozy, but not warm. The goats seemed comfortable enough, but ate more, and we gave them extra hay.

When the chores were done, we headed back to the house. A bright yellow rectangle lighted the way and served as a beacon. We were happy to reach the door, hand over the bucket of milk, and feel the first waves of warmth of the kitchen and the waiting meal and cozy pajamas.

Or if this was the morning milking, the children scurried to get on their school clothes, eat their hot cereal, and bundle up again to meet the bus. It was hard going out into the wintry day again, and their thoughts were already turned to returning home.

We all walk in the woods

2009-03-02T12:47:00.000-08:00

About 4 acres of our 9 was made up of a forest of youngish trees. The goat yard ran down a small hill to a wet. soggy, swampy area, then the woods rose to higher ground behind. We yearned to take a walk back there. No doubt the children would enjoy exploring, and who knew what we would find! We thought the goats would enjoy it too.

On a Sunday afternoon, we decided we could take a few hours off, and gathered everyone for the expedition.

The day was gray and overcast, that early December of 1976. We piled on the coats, hats, and mittens, then stepped off the porch onto the winter-dead lawn. I opened the gate to the goat yard and called to the girls. Monique came, the rest hung back. Such a thing had never been done before!

The people part of our family went on ahead anyway, and Monique followed us. Then, eventually, the rest followed her. Dusty ran off out of sight over the crest of the hill, while Kiki wound through our legs then bolted off to capture a falling leaf.

We had to walk maybe a quarter mile across some fields and alongside the woods before entering them to avoid the swampy patch. The goats stuck close to us, moving herd-fashion, at the beginning. But they began to spread out as the brown oak leaves fell and enticed them away. They grabbed in their teeth a bit of whatever was in front of them and alternated stopping to munch and bounding ahead. Finally we all got to a dry place, and entered the woods.

The ground was covered with dead leaves, the gray light dimmer. Shrubs, vines, trees, at first it all looked fairly uniform. And there wasn't far to go, just a few acres. Even so, we set out to see what we could.

The goat-ladies loved it! They had bark to eat, and poison ivy, one of their favorites, in the form of heavy vines with no leaves because of the time of year. We walked and walked and enjoyed discovering old grape vines, now huge ropes going up the trees. The ground was uneven, more in the form of evenly spaced furrows through which the trees grew.

The goats frequently wandered off for a brief moment, singly, but then came bounding back to the 'herd'. Monique's udder, never well attached, swayed pendulously too and fro as she ran. Dusty took off after something that smelled good then circled back around. It was peaceful and calm, still overcast and early-winter moody, and solitary in being just our family together there.

We saw stonewalls stacked in some distant era that were for the most part still standing, though some rocks had tumbled down and lay scattered in the brown leaves that had fallen this year and maybe last. Whether they marked the boundaries of today's properties, we didn't know.

We stood together pondering the furrows. John estimated the age of the trees to be something like 30 or 35 years. Calculating backwards from 1976, they had sprouted and sprung up in the early 1940s.

Then we understood. Pearl Harbor was in December 1941. The draft began the next spring. Young farm workers had been called up and had left their land plowed but unplanted. We were seeing those same humps of earth formed by the plow, turf now, covered with grass like graves, and the trees that had emerged through them from seeds scattered by the winds. The farmers were gone and hadn't been able to stop the seedlings from taking over the farmland, first carved out of New England forests 300 years before.

We had peeked into the past. What had become of those farm lads? Was there anyone who noticed or cared any longer about the encroachment of the forest? Grapes from long-gone arbors now climbed young trunks instead, but who would harvest the fruit? Only the raccoons or squirrels or birds. The goats were more interested in those ancient heavy gnarled vines, which they tugged at with their teeth.

The milk they gave us that night would be rich with history.

Life in the barn: winter

2009-03-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

The barn is cozy. The goats keep warm from their inner fires created by the digestion of hay and grain in their four stomachs. They don't have fur, just some hair that has grown shaggy, and their breath shows in the winter air, but they are toasty warm.

So is the barn, even with the big door open. Maybe there is a moon. The cats like it here.

Before milking, the goats are on their feet looking impatient. They want their dinner and are used to being milked at this time of day. After milking and filling their bellies with sticky molasses-sweetened corn and other grains, it is time to reflect upon the meal while chewing and rechewing. The best way to do this is while sitting on the belly, back legs out to the side, front legs extended, head up. The barn takes on a quietness when the milking is done.

When the rearrangement of food in the various stomachs is complete, and saliva is mixed with all, the goat need only let her head flop to the side and she is in the position for a long night's sleep.

It is entirely reasonable and pleasant to sit out in the barn with the goats on such an evening. They enjoy our being part of the herd. Even the sweetfeed tastes pretty good.

The barn: Part 3, using it...

2009-03-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

As soon as the barn was installed with goats, we developed our little milking routine.

Milking for most goats must be done twice a day, ideally 12 hours apart. As the days shortened, that meant milking in the dark at least once a day.

A reasonable time for both people and goats was 7 am, but that left the evening milking on the late side.

Soon we got into a routine of 7 am and 5 pm. We found the hour didn't matter critically, as long as we were consistent.

So here's what the routine entailed for the evening milking:

1. Fill the small pail with warm water, a squirt of Basic H, and a rag.
2. Get out the old pot that had lost its two handles and rinse it in hot water.
3. Grab the milk pail.
4. Stack the pot in the pail and the small pail in the pot, and hold them tight.
5. Grab a flashlight, and head to the barn.
(We have direct evidence that this can be done by a 6-yr old. Wish we had photos.)
6. Upon reaching the barn, open the people door, slip through while closing it, open the milkroom gate, and put the pile of pails on the ledge above the milkstand. Turn on the light.
7. Pour some grain from the grain bucket (a nice clean new trash can) into the feed dish on the milk stand, and admit one goat.
8. When she puts her head through the bars of the stand to eat, use the hook to lock her in.
9. Grab the warm, wet rag and wash her udder and teats. Grab a piece of paper towel from the roll on the ledge and dry same.
10. Take off mittens!
11. Take the old pot and put it under the goat. Aim the teats at it, and ready set squeeze (after squirting once on each side into the wash water).
12. Continue squeezing rhythmically while leaning your head against the goat's warm flank and humming.
13. When finished, pour the milk into the big milk pail, strip the teats, quick-wash them with the damp paper towel, and unlock the goat. She will leap off the stand. You will open the door and let her out and the next one will come in automatically.
14. Repeat with number two. Keep adding the milk to the big milk pail when you finish each goat.
15. Continue till all the goats have been milked.
16. Make sure all the goats are back in their part of the barn. Feed them their hay (if another child hasn't done it already) and a little grain. This can be done by leaning over the milkroom wall and putting it straight into the row of feeders there.
17. Toss the water from the wash pail out in the yard. Then put it in the pot. Turn off the light. Put the pail and pot in one hand, and carry the milk pail full of milk in the other hand, all while letting yourself out of the milkroom, closing and locking the gate, letting yourself out of the barn, locking the door, and carrying the milk without spilling a drop all the 100 feet to the house. Maybe in the snow.
18. Pour the milk into the filter that is awaiting its arrival in the sink. A parent will have ice waiting in the sink and will fill the basin with cold water, to chill the milk rapidly. He/She will also wash the pot and pails, and the big funnel filter, and bottle the milk.
19. Someone will do the water. More on the water, along with a discussion of feed, shortly.

The bar: Part 2, building...and a bad moment

2009-03-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

John designed the barn meticulously, and I could tell he was excited, even though building it was also a huge chore with a tight timetable. He measured and cut everything perfectly, and we all looked forward to the today when he poured the footers and we could declare it well begun.

After all, well begun is half done, as they say!

Next came the sills. And by the time he got the studs up, it was beginning to look like a barn.

So much so that I let the goats out of the fenced area and dragged them into the 'barn'. I was terribly eager to catch a glimpse of our life to come!

But the goats just walked out again between the studs. They didn't have a glimpse of anything but freedom.

After almost two months he was still building the barn, what with a full-time job and other farm chores and grading papers and so on. And I think he was writing a book at this time too.

It was critical to get the roof on before winter storms hit. By November, winter was descending on us rapidly. The long Thanksgiving weekend was welcome, but Thanksgiving day dawned cold, gray, and seriously windy. Kay Ferguson had invited us for dinner, but John was reluctant to go because it meant building time lost. In the end he came with us, then hastened back to continue putting the roofing sheets up.

I got home with the children an hour or so after he was back at work. When we arrived, I saw him standing on the roof in the wind silhouetted against the gray sky, trying to wrestle a sheet of plywood into place. Repeatedly he had had to climb down the ladder, pick up a 4x8 sheet, and climb the ladder with it by leaning against the rungs and inching his feet upward. He then had to stand on the rafters above the open interior of the barn and position the plywood before hammering it in place. I was aghast at what I saw!

We could barely tolerate the bitter wind as we ran to the house, but he had been out in it for hours, determined to finish while he had daylight, gray though it was, to work in. When he came in, the job finished, and I handed him hot cocoa, he told me a story that has remained with me all these years:

As he reached the top of the ladder on one of his trips and balanced himself on a rafter with the sheet of roofing overhead, a fierce gust of wind whipped it and caused him to lose balance. He did the first thing that came to mind, which was to whirl around in the direction the plywood had been blown and slam it and himself down on the rafters, where he and the plywood were relatively out of the force of the wind. That saved his life.

My heart still beats fast when I think of it.

The barn was finished by the end of the weekend, including rolled roofing and shingles. We trimmed it with 1x2s, painted it barn-red, and moved the goats in. The dirt floor was not cold for them, and they sat there chewing their cuds in the most contented fashion. We moved the milkstand to the milk room, and before long undertook the routine of a goat dairy.

The barn: Part 1, planning...

2009-03-01T18:15:00.001-08:00

It was no surprise to us that we would need a barn. We would build it ourselves.

(When I say 'we', I mean dear husband John S Lewis Jr, author and professor does it. When I say 'I', I mean I do it. Usually I say 'we' when it's a doing thing.)

We designed it to give us the greatest capacity indoors with the least materials. This is a simple calculus problem that should cause no pain or strain to anyone. The idea was to save money. Always to save money!

The calculation we did was to find the greatest floor area using the least amount of building materials, given the number of goats we wanted to house. We needed to include the milkers and the kids. We didn't think we wanted to have our own buck - there were plenty around - and in any case he would have had to be housed separately.

We already had 3 does, which could have meant as many, reasonably speaking, as 7 babies. Figure 15 sf per doe and half that per baby, and it would come out to 70 or 80 sf. The milk room would need to be added to that. But that was a pretty skimpy barn, only 130 sf or so, or 10x13. We also had to have enough loft space for hay. So we rounded up to what seemed like a reasonable size for whatever eventuality, 12x24.

The barn needed:

1. A people door.

2. A goat door for kids.

3. A milk room (a place to do the milking, not handle the milk), with a light.

4. Feed troughs.

5. A door for the does, big enough to scoop out the poop through.

6. A loft for storing hay.

The 288 sf barn, taking out 54 sf for the milkroom, left us with 234 sf for goats. We would be all set for 15 mature does, or 8 does and 14 babies, or some such combination. Plenty!

The one big door would need to face west, for afternoon sunshine in the winter and for removing soiled bedding. It could be just a doorway - we didn't anticipate closing it even in bad weather because the goats needed it for ventilation.

The one door close to the milk room was to let people in to feed and do the milking.

The kid door would let the babies out into their special fenced area, which would have climbing toys and plenty of space to run and jump.

And we added to our plans another door to the south in case we wanted to use two pastures for the adults, sometime in the future. .

The milk room would be about 9x6, situated at the near end of the barn. The people door would open into the barn, then a gate a open into the milk room. Along the outside of the milkroom were the feeding troughs, which would hold flakes of hay for continuous eating during the day. Another gate would separate the goats from the little corridor that allowed people to come and go without the bumping and nudging of the goat ladies.

The roof would be sloped because of the inevitable snow load, and the ceiling would be a comfortable height for people and to take advantage of the size of lumber.

The ceiling formed a loft, and had to be low and strong enough for storing a ton of hay above it. And it needed a hole for climbing up into the loft.

The dimensions were calculated based on 4x8 sheets of plywood and 8 foot lengths of 2x4. Thus the sides were 8 feet tall; the narrow ends were 3 sheets of plywood wide, while the sides were 6 sheets wide, minus sheets not needed for the door openings. The doors saved almost 5 sheets of plywood, the remainder needed for trimming.

The doors would be made of scrap lumber and 2x4s.

The sills would be supported with concrete footers spaced every 4 feet, with breathing space of about 6 inches below the sills for ventilation, the depth depending on the terrain.

The electric conduit that was plugged in at the house would end in the milkroom. An outlet would be attached for the plugs from the fence charger and the lamp we would milk by on dark winter nights.

This simple barn would take care of all our needs. We would store the grain in the garage where we could unload it from our station wagon. Water would be delivered to drinking buckets by a hose when temperatures were above freezing, or carried in pails from the house. It wasn't fancy, but it was relatively low cost, completely sturdy, and attractive. And we knew the goats would love it.

Fences!

2009-03-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

The goats needed a fence. We tried chicken wire and metal posts at first but they didn't notice. We built various barricades while we planned a good-enough fence, then passed out when we saw the price of what we'd planned.

The idea was to give them enough space - we had plenty of it - to keep them from destroying the grass they were housed with, and to keep manure from piling up. (Yes, we will talk about Manure. Soon. And we will talk about Flies.)

We started out with electric fence, the cheapest alternative we could find. After much reading we thought that three strands would do, one for each level of a goat.

One important aspect of goats is their ability to be where they want to be, and they definitely adhere to the philosophy that the grass is always greener in the other fellow's yard. So the first strand had to be above goat level by a couple of feet.

Then because it is not too hard for a goat to flatten herself against the ground, one had to be quite low.

And then we put one in the middle to keep her from stepping on through without noticing a fence at all.

Electric fences consist of the wire, fairly heavy guage, insulators to attach the wires to, and an electrical box. This is plugged into house current and keeps the fence in a low level of sizzle that the goats don't like. They seem to be able to feel it about 8-12" away, so they don't actually get a chance to lean against the fence.

The only problem for us with this simple apparatus is that we had no house current near where we wanted the goat fence. Another way of putting it is that we didn't want the goat fence up against the house.

The electric fence also needed to be penetrable by humans. For us that meant a gate that we could walk through that was not electrified.

The solution to the electricity problem was fairly simple. We gouged the earth, which fortunately was still unfrozen, down several inches, and buried an extension cord. As low-tech and possibly illegal as it was, this simple electrical conduit served us the whole time we lived there.

The cord needed to travel the 100-plus feet to the area where we were building the fence and to where we were going to build the barn. And it needed to terminate at the box that would charge up the fence. We buried the cord, but didn't yet have a place for the box.

And to this day we can't remember what we did to protect the box before the barn was built!

The real lesson here is to get the fence before the goats!

Goat milk?

2009-03-01T06:00:00.001-08:00

If you say goat milk, people say 'ew'. Even people who have never tasted it.

Goat cheese is popular and a lot of people can't get enough of it. But goat milk?

OF COURSE we tasted goat milk before we bought Monique! And it was good. We also read a lot about it, and the prevailing wisdom was that if goat's milk is handled right, it tastes like...milk.

When we first started milking, Monique's milk didn't taste as good as it had at Judy's.

That meant figuring out what about our handling of it was making it less than delicious.

The list of possibilities from goat books and magazines included:

Dirty containers
Not filtering the milk fast enough
Not chilling it fast enough
Hereditary off-flavor (in a rare goat)
Exposure to sunlight
Exposure to aluminum.

Exposure to aluminum? I had bought a cute little milk pail made of aluminum and that's what I was pouring the milk into. Instant blech.

We converted the milk pail into a flower pot.

The process from goat to bottle is another topic, as you will soon see, but I did learn from this list that even sunlight had a bad effect on the taste. No wonder goat's milk had a bad reputation. You had to handle it just right.

It took us about two months to get our technique down so that the milk tasted like nothing but wholesome fresh whole milk. And then it became a cornerstone of our diet.

Bringing home the goats...

2009-02-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

Our goat ladies needed to come home. We had three by the time we moved, and they were occupying space that Judy needed in her barnyard. The first frost would come in a month, and we had work to do.

We had a good-sized garage, divided into two halves. I thought they could do well in there. But first we had to build a milk stand. We set to work and had it in good shape in about a day. We painted it white, and put it in the garage.

I thought that we could let all the girls out of the barn, then bring them in one by one to be milked.

The thing about buying goats in milk is very similar to the thing about bringing home a new baby. Once you have them, you have them, and you have to learn very quickly. We knew how to wash, milk, and bottle, but we'd never had to do it ourselves in the right sequence in a way the goats understood.

So. The first morning I let them all out of the garage through the side door, then selected Monique and let her back in. I had to get her up on the milk stand. She slid her head between the neckholders and started eating, and I locked her in. And then sat down and milked her all the way out myself. My hands ached, but she looked done. I poured the milk into another bucket - more on this later - and let her out. Then it was Erica's turn.

It went ok, but by the time I was done, Elegant had wandered off.

And if they wandered off during milking, surely they would wander off during the day. We realized that the goats couldn't stay in the garage all day, so it was time to get busy on the fence.

And a barn.

Before we got the fence up and the ladies well-contained, they had discovered they could wander at will while I was milking their sister in the garage. And wander they did. One morning they followed the kids to the school bus, and as I came out of the garage I saw Erica climbing on board with Fritz.

It's hard to know what to do in a situation like that. I called her name, but she wasn't paying attention. I had other goats who would follow me down the driveway if I went after her. Finally the driver closed the door in her face and she came running back.

Oh how green we were. Not environmentally green, just green. How long, I thought, would it be before I had it all straight.

Self-sufficiency

2009-02-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

When we started out, we just wanted to grow our own food, for two reasons I think: It was deeply compelling for unknown reasons, and we wanted to save trips to the store. In the beginning, that was a matter of convenience. Later it was a financial necessity.

Long gas lines and high prices were only a couple of years behind us. That may have fed into our desire not waste gas only to end up in grocery stores buying blah manufactured food.

Plus, beginning in 1971, I had studied healthy living at the feet of my life-mentor, Kay Ferguson. She just naturally had a garden, and fed her family out of it every night. I learned about what I was serving my family, and watched her techniques as she prepared veggies, salads, brown rice in her cast iron pot.

Her garden was full of all sorts of veggies. It was beautiful. When she moved to a new house, one of the first projects was getting in the new garden.

She had grown up on a farm herself, and it was just what she did. The big difference between her and the rest of us is that she remembered how to eat, and we had all forgotten. We had taken the easy way out of buying processed cereals, hot dogs, and so on. Today's grocery selection is much worse, but we still had additives and broken foods in 1971 when I met Kay, and she had no tolerance for them.

From her I learned how to make lentil soup and stir-fried veggies, from her garden in season or from our 'organic' food coop that flew it in from California once a week. Her son Bob was just as proficient a cook and could serve up fine meals with little effort to those of us who worked with him at the TM center in Wellesley.

'Organic' was a newish word with somewhat unknown meanings to me.

A good part of what I wanted from a garden was good food. And convenient food. And self-sufficiency meant growing what we ate.

Or in reality it meant eating what we grew, but that's another story.

We had a lot of work ahead of us as we faced the unbroken sod that September. It was still only a dream beginning to become a plan. Not a half year had passed away from the first inklings of undertaking a new lifestyle. And we had taken a very big bite.

In the end, 5 years later when we moved to Tucson, we knew we could live self-sufficiently. And in between, we learned what that really meant, the hard way.

Disaster strikes...

2009-02-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

It wasn't a housefire, no one got hurt. Instead, disaster came in a little envelope with a window.

We received our tax bill about a month after we arrived at the farm. We had stretched to buy this precious piece of land and had invested our whole selves in the concept of becoming self-sufficient. We had calculated closely and aside from buying a couple extra goats and hence needing extra feed, we were on track.

But this was 1976. Inflation was out of sight, rising to 10% not long after we moved in, and 12% soon after. It was devastating.

And the City of Natick needed to raise taxes to keep up with costs. Our tax bill doubled.

When we closed on our property in August 1976, the taxes were $2600 a year, a huge amount compared to what we would have paid in most states. In fact, at that time Massachusetts was called, not affectionately, Tax-achusetts.

But then the taxes doubled. We literally were being asked to pay $5200 a year or over $400 a month. The mortgage was only around $700 a month.

Suddenly we were in a dire situation. JSL's salary at MIT of about $32,000 could barely cover the original monthly payments. He had been teaching there for 8 years, had consulted for NASA and aerospace companies, and we were still in trouble.

This was the beginning of 5 years of serious financial challenges. The rest of the story of our time on the farm, and the real reason this whole saga has relevance today, is because we had a big deficit to face, and tried lots of things, and somehow survived. And look back on it all with fondness.

Kitties

2009-02-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

Farms need cats. And kids need kittens.

Cats keep mice and rats from eating the goat feed. And birds from getting into the barn.

Plus they're cute. Plus our friend had a litter she wanted to get rid of.

So we got kittens. I don't remember how many we came home with. But after that day we always had plenty of cats.

The first kittens our cats had were born in our coat closet, up on a bureau we'd put in there to hold mittens and hats. Kiki did a great job cleaning up her babies, and then after a while she brought them down to the kitchen floor and took care of them down there.

Dusty was very interested in those kittens! And we were a little concerned what a big beagle, still not much more than a puppy, would do to them.

But Kiki had grown up with Dusty, and she trusted him. While we watched all coiled up and ready to save the kittens, Dusty lay down with them. They cuddled him and tried to find where he kept his milk, and Kiki took a break. From then on, Dusty was the second mom, licking them, keeping them warm, obviously enjoying them.

All of us spent hours watching Dusty and the kittens. Another lesson learned in our cozy kitchen on our farm.

Moving to the farm...

2009-02-28T14:20:00.000-08:00

Moving day finally came. It was right after Labor Day Weekend 1976. When we got back from being away for the weekend, school would start. The children would go to their new school from our old house and come home to the farm. We rehearsed how that would happen several times.

Meanwhile, while they were at school, we would load up the last of our belongings and drive the truck HOME! By the time they got to their new house, we would have everything pretty much unloaded.

The children (VJ 10, Margo 8, Fritz 6) had in the previous year lived 4 months in Wellesley, nearly 6 months in Switzerland, and nearly 3 more months in Wellesley. In Wellesley they had lived almost across the street from the school; in South Natick they had to go on the bus about 5 miles. In Wellesley their best friends had moved away soon after we returned from Switzerland; in South Natick they didn't know anyone.

Moving is never easy. But they were excited by the promise of having a garden and animals, and they had already met the goats and had taken home their puppies. Life was full of promise!

The house itself was not particularly of interest to us at first. It was large, with high ceilings and generous rooms. The kitchen was designed for people who actually cooked, which I loved to do! And it had enough room for a large table. The living and dining rooms were not often used. A family room shut off from the kitchen by walls and a door was uninsulated, as we learned that winter. A bedroom plus its own bath completed the downstairs. Opposite the big front door and the hall connecting it to the rest of the house was a door to the beloved backyard and all the potential we could envision for it.

Upstairs were three bedrooms, plus an unfinished area over the family room and part of the kitchen.

It was spacious. Not necessarily well-designed in that it didn't use the space efficiently, but it was big!

So in we moved. We spent our time together mostly in the kitchen, and outdoors of course. Things were in pretty good shape. It was a lot to take care of, but that didn't seem it would be a problem... We hadn't bought the property for the house, anyway, though today it is considered to be a beautiful home on a prime piece of real estate. But a lot happened in between.

Why not puppies...more lessons learned

2009-02-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

If we're going to have animals, I thought, it makes sense to have a dog. You know, to take care of things. We were heading out of town for a short vacation after we had the contract signed for the farm, and somehow I had read an ad in the paper about beagle puppies for sale. And it so happened that their home was not too far from the path we would be taking for our vacation.

So we decided to stop by. And I had also decided that this would be an ideal late birthday present for our oldest son, VJ, who had turned 10 while we were still in Switzerland. We were shown the litter, 4 wonderful young beagles about 7 weeks old. We asked that if we decided to take one, could we pick it up a couple of weeks later when we returned home. Certainly!

Three of the beagles were beagle-colored, and one was larger and yellowish. VJ picked out a beagle-looking one. Hmm, I thought, I really like the yellow one.

Sigh.

So I asked the nice lady whether if we bought two, we might get a break on the price, and could she hold them both for us. She said CERTAINLY!

So we ended up with two dogs. We got them, naturally, just before we moved. VJ named his Charlie, and we named the other Dusty because of his color.

They were still tiny when they got to the farm. They stayed in the house except when the kids were out playing, but it was hard to keep them from tearing into everything. So when I had to do an errand a few weeks after we moved, I left them outside. The house was quite far from the road, hundreds of feet. But they found their way to the street, and Charlie was hit by a car and killed.

I didn't know that, though. I came home to see one quaking, shaking yellow puppy, no Charlie, and also our youngest child, Fritz, who should have gotten off the bus just before I arrived, missing.

A policeman soon arrived. He looked downcast. I was in a panic. Something had happened. But was it to the puppy or to the child?

He didn't realize my problem, so he started out saying there had been an accident. He spoke slowly. I was frantic.

Then from the corner of my eye, I saw my son walk around the corner of the house. He had gotten off the bus at the corner of the next street, not at our driveway, and had walked home by way of another little boy's house.

My relief was of course tainted by the sadness of losing Charlie, and knowing that I could have prevented the accident. We took up the shaking, upset Dusty, dug the first of many graves in our backyard, and buried VJ's puppy.

Life entails death. It was the beginning of our tough lessons.

More goats: Elegant and Erica

2009-02-28T13:26:00.000-08:00

So as I was saying, Judy had several goats. I didn't know it yet, but goats sort of accumulate. Goat people know other goat people, and they fall in love with their goats. And then of course mamma goats are having baby goats every spring. So Judy had quite a few, and to balance things out at home, which was pretty close to civilization in suburban Massachusetts, she was selling some. Such as Monique.

And Elegant. Elegant was a tiny goat of a rich brown color. She was a Nubian, and she had been neglected before she got to Judy's, so that when we met her she was probably half the size she should have been. We fell in love. Judy sold her to us for just $60.

Erica was another goat of Judy's and we eventually (two months later or so) bought her.

But it was Elegant we truly slurped over. She was responsive to every touch and learned her name quickly. We wanted to take her home!

Except that home still meant Wellesley. We hadn't moved to the farm yet.

But hey, we had a basement! And a door that was only a step or two down to it from outside. And a grassy backyard that even needed mowing! Why not take her home?

WARNING: This was not a good plan!

First, goats don't do well on grass. It's too succulent for them. Their guts are great with browse such as the bark and twigs of trees, or dry leaves, or hay. But not grass. So we couldn't let her graze.

Second, goats are a real curiosity to dogs. Apparently dogs can smell them for a huge distance, because dogs we didn't even know came to see the new thing in the neighborhood. So we couldn't let Elegant out of the basement.

Third, goats have no respect for boundaries even small children respect, such as piles of laundry, which are easily walked over by goats, or drywall, which they eat, for that matter. We couldn't let Elegant stay in our basement.

Soooo, for the last few days before our move to the farm, we had to take Elegant back to Judy's. She was very understanding. They both were.

The move was coming up. But when we got to the farm, we still had a few barriers before we were able to house the goats.

Learning how to milk, and the repercussions

2009-02-28T13:05:00.000-08:00

Obviously if an academic sort of person from suburbia is going to buy a milking goat, she should learn how to milk.

I went back to Judy's for that purpose. She invited me to come at milking time and watch, and take a hand at milking Monique. (See earlier post explaining about Monique.)

So I went at twilight on a July evening with one or more of our three children, whoever was interested at the time. And we watched Judy milk.

What you do is: Wash the udder, dry the udder, squeeze the teats.

Yes, that's what real goat people call them, and we're not going to get squeamish here over a technical term. They rhyme with meats.

Here's how it's done:

1. Wash the goat's udder all over with a very dilute solution of Basic H in warm water.
2. Dry the udder with a paper towel or dish towel or clean rag (aka old dish towel).
3. Close off the top of the teat, right next to the bag, between the base of the forefinger and the thumb, one hand per teat. (Tricky: this is a two-handed operation. Or as goat people say, "If God had intended people to milk cows, he would have given them 4 hands." Two is just right for goats, who have two teats.)
4. Squirt a tiny amount of milk into the wash bucket, onto the dirt floor, or into the waiting cat's mouth. This is to get rid of the milk that has accumulated at the end of the teat where bacteria might grow in it.
5. Place the clean milk pail on the milking bench (more about this in another post) and begin to milk by squeezing the teat from top to bottom. The easiest way is to add successive fingers. (It helps to watch.). Continue in a rhythmic fashion, about one squeeze per every 2 seconds or so. You can alternate hands or do them together. The milk will begin to flow as it 'lets down'.
6. When the milk flow subsides, massage the bag gently and squeeze again, repeating until the milk stops squirting out. Then strip the teats to get the last of the milk from them. They will look empty.
7. Wash the bag and teats again.

That is how it is done. Not the first time, necessarily, though. I got a squirt or two the first night. But I just loved it! I went back many times...

The trouble with visiting Judy's is that she had more than Monique. She had several goats. One was named Elegant. She was tiny - someone had neglected her and Judy had come to the rescue. Guess what happened next?

Buying the farm

2009-02-28T10:04:00.001-08:00

This story is filled with little miracles.

We got home from Switzerland in early June 1976. By then I was just sizzling with having our own self-sufficient farm. From watching a garden planted in Switzerland to having our own homestead was an evolution I experienced in huge leaps.

I was ready!

But would there be land available? I would be satisfied with enough garden space to grow our own food - so I thought in the beginning. And maybe just a few little animals (like a cow? I didn't now about goats yet.)

I hit the ground running. I started looking for land in the paper, and called a real estate agent. We looked at houses with enough lawn to have a garden, but each time it seemed like too much house and too little land, or it was too suburban to be a complete self-sufficient operation.

But by late June I had found an amazing property that was just a little out of our price range, if we stretched and stretched. We knew we couldn't afford the whole thing, which was 14 acres.

Fourteen acres! What bliss! Or even part of it! This was in the town of South Natick, just beyond Wellesley, where we were then living.

But we couldn't afford all of it, so we made an offer on 5 acres. It was refused. We did our numbers again and offered a bit more. But the seller, a man who had been born on the property in the old house and then built a new fancy house nearby, wouldn't budge. He had to have his $95,000 or he wouldn't sell.

(Remember that these were 1976 dollars!)

So we were stuck. Then I thought, what if we add some more land to the deal, and some more money, so we offered to buy 9 acres for $95,000 and he said yes.

We had it! 9 acres! Our wonderful homestead! We could move in by the end of August.

It had a house, a huge lawn, a garage with a greenhouse on the second story, and woods. And what we really cared about: plenty of room for gardens and of course room for a barn...

Buying a goat: Monique becomes mine

2009-02-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

So where does a person go to buy a goat?

I had no idea. Out little farm in suburban Boston was not located in what I thought of as 'goat country'. (See the post on buying that little farm for more details...)

So I looked in the Classifieds and found a goat for sale!

I called the number and talked to a friendly lady named Judy. She became my walking goat encyclopedia and saw me through...well, no need to go into that yet.

I made an appointment to go see the goat she had for sale. This would be my first face-to-face with a goat since one at the petting zoo when I was a kid - er, little girl - ate my Weekly Reader out of my pocket. (Do they still have Weekly Reader in schools?)

So I met Monique. Goats have names, I found out. And personalities, as will emerge later in this saga.

Monique was an older goat, about 6 (out of the expected lifespan for dairy goats of about 10-12 years, with some luck). She was steady. She eyed me while chewing her cud (yep, they do). She stood about hip high. She was brownish and goaty: head, ears, mid-section, udder, tail... What did I know? She was a goat!

Judy told me about her. She was a grade - not purebred. She made lots of milk (!!! I said to myself). She'd had mild mastitis (ugly udder-destroying disease), wasn't beautiful (she wasn't?), but was an easy milker. All answers to questions I didn't know to ask.

So I bought her. She cost $150. I had no idea if that was good or not. I just trusted Judy.

I couldn't take her home yet, because we hadn't moved to the farm. I promised to pick her up as soon as we had something to do with her. (I COULDN'T WAIT!)

Why goats, part 1: they're not cows

2009-02-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Why goats?

We started out thinking we should get a cow, obviously for milk. We drink a lot of milk, so the thinking was, the cow could mow the lawn and make us the milk we were paying for at the store.

But a little reading suggested that a cow might be too big. And also that we would need two cows because one would be dry - NO MILK - for at least two months before she had her next calf. And she'd have a calf each year, and so would her sister, the second cow. And two cows produce an awful lot of milk! And what do we do with the calves. EAT THEM?

The same readings suggested goats. The point was, they are smaller (if they step on your foot, you don't have to go to the hospital), having more than one to get through the dry spell is not as challenging, they eat less. Of course they still have babies - kids - every year. (Maybe we could sell the kids? I mean, the baby goat kids?) And the children could handle them.

Right there I was won over. What was the point of having a homestead if the children couldn't do a good share of the work?

The more I read about goats, the more I liked the idea.

I had no idea where to buy them, but that is a different story.

The beginning...

2009-02-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

I sat in my hotel room in Switzerland and watched a woman from a nearby home plant her garden. First she had a load of topsoil delivered, then she smoothed it meticulously, then she measured it out in blocks with her meterstick, then she changed my life.

I was there a month and by the time I left, she had planted her sets and the garden was growing. I wanted to do the same.

Half a year later, we were eating our first crops, a few greens and beans.

But first we had to buy some land...

This was only a beginning. We had so much to learn, and so many adventures ahead. It was tough, and it was satisfying. And it turned out it was our financial salvation. But we didn't know what was coming, back then in early 1976.