Yellow Ladybird

‘Tis the season for goat breeding, so this fine but stinky fellow has come to join the does again. Romeo Santos (pronounced ro-MAY-o) seems happy to be here and is making the rounds. We’re trying hard to keep the stink confined to the barn, but already in the two days we’ve had him, the buck odor has made its way into our mudroom and onto my hands.

In case you don’t know what bucks smell like, they smell like urine. Buck urine. They pee all over themselves in order to appeal to the ladies. The odor is so strong that baby goat Kasia smells like buck just from snuggling up with her mama after her mama had spent the day with Romeo. Not realizing this, I pet Kasia this morning with bare hands (she’s so soft and fuzzy, how could I resist?). Now I get whiffs of buck no matter where I am.

Last year we just put Romeo in with the does and let them hang out for a month. It’s a little trickier this year. We have to keep Romeo and Kasia separate since Romeo is Kasia’s father... apparently they are unaware of their genetic relationship and would love to get together. We also have to keep Kasia with her mama (Temperance) at least part of the day since Kasia is still nursing. But we want Kasia to have a sibling or two this spring, so Temperance and Romeo need time together. Because no goat can be alone (it is distressing for herd animals to be on their own), we have come up with a complicated rotation to give Temperance, Clementine, and Mabeline stretches of time with Romeo, without leaving Kasia alone.

Of course moving fat, stubborn goats from one stall to another is challenging and requires chasing, pushing, and sometimes dragging. It’s no wonder out coats and mittens, and hence our mudroom, already stink. Fortunately, we'll only have Romeo Santos for 6-10 days instead of a full month, thanks to a little fertility boost that should help ensure the girls are in heat this week.  

To top off this fascinating goat breeding saga, here is a video of Kasia. It doesn’t show much, but you can hear her screaming. I’m not sure why she’s screaming – she often does this. It could be that she is hungry, mad that her mama is in a different stall, or frustrated because she wants a turn with the buck. Or maybe she is just singing.

If we get goat kids in the spring, we will plan to milk the does. With the direction our country is headed in, breeding and milking goats maybe become a survival necessity instead of an expensive hobby. 

As the horror of what is happening in our country sinks in, the only way I can keep the panic and utter despair at bay is to try to do something about it. Something, anything to help counterbalance the surge in overt racism.

My friends, Danielle and Susan, and I have been working on racial sensitivity together for several years. Hours of conversation around the dinner table, workshops, discussion groups, reading, and research have come together in the form of a website intended to raise awareness, share resources, and above all, encourage people to help counterbalance the whiteness that dominates our society. 

Color Counterbalance is a website, a bookshelf, a blog... a space to provide resources to help counterbalance the whiteness that dominates our society. Filling our homes with books, dolls, toys, and media featuring non-dominant races and cultures is a start to reflecting in our lives the diversity we want our children to value.  

Please take a look, please share far and wide, and please consider the books and products we feature* for your holiday gifts this year.

colorcounterbalance.com

(*We connect people to books, artists, and products, but we do not receive any benefits for purchases made)

Everyone has their own analysis of what happened, some informative, some frightening, some reassuring.

Here’s mine.

Scientific illiteracy. We just elected a president who doesn’t believe in global warming; there’s no denying now that our school system fails at teaching scientific literacy.  This is not an issue of “educated” versus “uneducated” (I know many college graduates who are scientifically illiterate), it is an issue of our country’s inadequate primary and secondary curriculum. When we reform our education system, in addition to scientific literacy, I hope we include a renewed emphasis on ethics, logic, and anti-bias curricula.

Educated Elite. Somewhere along the line, we began to place an excessive value on college education. Maybe this began in the 60s when going to (or staying in) college meant less chance of being drafted; this was the start of grade inflation as well, making academic success easier in order to protect students from failing out and being sent to Vietnam. The message was clear: the college-educated were more valuable members of society than the uneducated. As a result, society has come to place in an increased value on academic learning and a decreased value on vocational skills. Postsecondary degrees are a requirement for success, regardless of whether academic study is relevant to a particular job or career. Higher-level academic learning is perceived as more important than the vast range of practical skills our society relies on.

This shift benefits the wealthy who can easily obtain a higher education with no financial consequences, but burdens the middle and lower classes, who have to take on great debt in order to compete with the upper class for jobs. It also ensures the wealthy maintain positions of power in our financial, educational, and political systems. Excluded all together from the self-proclaimed “elite” are the people for whom college was not an option financially and/or people with skills not learned in college classrooms. This group has been penalized financially and socially, their contributions to society grossly undervalued, and their voices ignored by the educated elite. I’m pretty sure this divide played a role in the election.

Liberal Bubble. I have to start this one out with Michael Moore’s words:

Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

We all love our echo chambers where we self-righteously preach to the choir. How many of us left our safe havens to take a look at what others were thinking and feeling? If we did step out of our echo chambers, did we really hear and try to understand what they were saying? Or did we just reject what we perceived as offensive opinions without exploring where they come from or what they might really mean underneath?

As an educated, straight, white woman whose skills and education are valued by society, the current system generally works for me, at least compared to many other groups of people, namely people of color and the LBGTQ community, but also poor working class white people. Just driving the six miles on back roads to my kids’ school, I see several homes whose state of dire disrepair indicates the system is not working for the inhabitants. Being in my sweet, safe, liberal bubble, I’ve never had to acknowledge their struggles even though they are my neigbors. The rage they express about our system? I guess we should have listened.  

The Republican Party. Before the rise of the tea party, I could at least relate to my republican friends. We generally agreed on social issues (social justice, women’s rights, etc.), and disagreed on the role of the government and taxation. Our biggest difference seemed to be our weighting of the issues. The social issues I thought should take precedence were not their priority when it came to electing officials. Unfortunately, the party was so successful at convincing their people that less government is better that the only candidate they could get support for was an anti-establishment reality show business man.

As for the conservative republicans? Their agenda has always been to preserve white male privilege and power, something an effective government that values basic human rights and justice for all would threaten. This is often disguised under the veil of Christianity. Our country was built on white male privilege; it’s certainly not a new phenomenon.

The Democratic Party. I stepped outside my echo chamber for a minute the other day and saw a Trump supporter’s post about whiny liberals… the post hurt, but there was truth in it. We are whiny. And entitled. For those who didn’t get the democratic candidate they wanted, the response was to whine and fuss instead of jumping on board and supporting with full force our party’s agenda, or if you prefer, fighting against the republican agenda. We know now that there was no room for wavering. We needed all hands on deck to prevent Trump from winning. The way our elections are set up, we are not in an era where we get to vote for the independent progressives - or not vote at all - because Hillary wasn’t the first choice. There was so much at stake, and we lost.

Racism. My initial reaction was shock at the blatant racism in our country. But really, we’ve been experiencing blatant racism for a long time. How can we be shocked that people tolerate and, even worse, agree with Trump’s racist views when black children are regularly shot in the streets? We should have known. Then again, as liberal white people, the racism and violence people of color experience haven’t been truly perceived as our problem. As ashamed I am by our country’s racism, I’m equally ashamed that we’re only now tuning in to how very racist our country is… now that it may actually directly affect us.

Hope. The damage Trump will likely cause to our country is enormous – both socially and fiscally. But perhaps nothing would reunite our divided country better than a severe depression, in which we are stripped bare of all we have. When it comes to watering the potato plants for our survival through the winter, I bet we come together. There is hope in that. 

It’s been a full summer. Here's the update.

Picking up where I left off… Temperance’s kidding was difficult, and the kid who survived, Kasia, had a rough start. At one week old, it was obvious she was not thriving. The vet determined she had floppy kid syndrome, and likely pneumonia. Floppy kid syndrome isn’t well understood, but apparently the gut doesn't work properly and the kid can’t digest the mama’s milk. The milk becomes toxic and the goat quickly declines. Our vet saved Kasia with several doses of a baking soda, vinegar, water solution that reset her digestive system. After two weeks of very intensive care, including a couple of midnight and early dawn trips to our vet’s house with Kasia in the cat carrier, she came around and turned into a silly, playful goat kid. Our vet told us we’d know she’s healthy when she makes us laugh out loud with her ridiculous antics. Kasia definitely makes up laugh out loud. And just look, is she not the mini-me of her mother?

In other goat news, I have mastered a new skill. Three times a year we need to check the goats’ feces for parasites. For the past two years, I’ve done this by standing in the goat stall with plastic baggies, staring at the goats’ rear ends waiting, willing them to poop, and then scrambling to catch at least a few fresh “berries” to send off to the lab. The first two goats always poop right away, but the third will inevitably hold out for at least an hour. It is particularly unpleasant waiting around in the winter, especially because the minute you decide you can probably just sweep up this pile of hay or shovel out that pile of muck (to stay warm more than anything else), the goat will poop and you'll miss it and, even worse, you might not even know you missed it. But there’s another way. A more efficient way. You can go in and collect fresh berries. That is what I did last weekend. In fifteen minutes, I got what I needed. Why did I wait two years to figure this one out?

We have bees! The queen and her 15,000 worker bees arrived in May and seem to be settling in quite nicely. We see them doing their thing around the garden. Dave does all the work of taking care of them and I watch from a distance hoping they don’t (1) swarm, (2) lose their larvae to the bear in our woods (larvae are a crunchy, protein-packed snack for bears), (3) get mites, (4) get too hot or too cold, or (5) die/leave for some unknown reason. Dave just hopes this hobby fares better on the expense/gain tradeoff than my goat hobby. Maybe next year we’ll get some of their honey…

The garden is sadly neglected. But underneath the thick growth of weeds we have a fall harvest ripening: corn, pumpkins, carrots, sweet potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. We also have way more garlic than we’ll ever use. But I have to grow that much garlic in order to satisfy my garlic scape pesto cravings. Tonight’s garden chore is making many batches of tomato-garlic soup.

We said goodbye to our old man cat. Alfred was 18 years old. He came to us off the streets of DC when he was three. He was the best cat ever. He was so great, I’ll hashtag that. #bestcatever. This spring he seemed to lose his spark. The vet diagnosed him with “outliving his kidneys and a touch of kitty dementia,” meaning he couldn’t make it to his litter box if he got too far away from it. We finally decided it was time for him to move on to whatever comes next for cats who, as our kids say, are “all done living.”

We welcomed a puppy into our family (unrelated to Alfred's departure, although perhaps not unrelated to Dave’s limit of two furry indoor pets at a time, implemented after we adopted Caroline the cat last summer). Finn is a sweet little lab-mix rescue (anyone want to guess what the “mix” part is?) from Virginia. He’s a good pup, and even though everyone says puppies are a ton of work, I don’t notice it all that much. It’s just another layer of care on top of our already complex schedule, and Finn's routine fits in quite well. He is good in the car, so he keeps me company when I drive the carpools, gets his exercise at soccer practice, and even has a puppy friend for puppy playdates. What I do notice is that I now see the stars every night (at 1:30am and again at 4:30am), and it is awfully nice to have a small being submit to me, and eagerly at that. Unlike the other three small beings in this house who may or may not listen to me. 

Once Finn learns his golden manners, he’ll be a fine dog. 

Having a dog has also gotten all of us into the woods and out on hikes more often (if Finn goes, the kids want to go). Now that they can keep up with us (thanks to Katherine’s 9-year-old strength, Clara’s stamina, and Alexandra’s sheer determination to keep up with the big sisters), family hiking & biking are turning out to be a lot of fun. Perhaps we are finally entering that era of fun family outdoor activity that, according to Facebook pictures of #blessedfamilyhikes, everyone but us has been enjoying for years.

Temperance had her babies. One survived, one did not.

As we waited for the big day, I imagined announcing the arrival of baby goats on FB and in this space. “Goat kids are here!” “Welcome baby goats!” I was nervous about my role as “goat doula,” having only watched one goat birth and done a rather limited amount of reading, and I am well aware that sometimes pregnancies/births work and sometimes they don't. But still, I let my mind wander ahead to the image of “at least two kids” frolicking together in the paddock. 

Temperance had her babies early in the morning. The first one took a long time to come out – it made me nervous. Dave called the vet and she gave us some advice, which worked. Kid #1 came out. I immediately put her under Temperance’s nose, and Temperance began licking her right away. The kid perked up, responding to her mama’s care.

Kid #2 came out quickly, but was limp. Maybe she was already gone. Maybe she was stunned by the quick exit. I immediately put her under her Temperance’s nose, but she remained limp. I rubbed her all over, though I know now that I should have focused on her face, maybe even helped with the first few breaths. She never responded, and it soon became clear that she was gone.

Had I not been home when the babies arrived, the second surely would have died. If I had had more experience, perhaps she would have lived. I think it is best if I just leave it at that.

We’re all so happy about the kid who is doing well, and very sad about the one we lost. It’s tricky holding both the joy and the sadness at the same time. But this duality is nature at its truest, and it reminds me of two of my favorite quotes.

The first comes from Eula Biss:

“…the use of natural as a synonym for good is almost certainly a product of our profound alienation from the natural world."

As a reaction to the synthetic and processed aspects of our society’s lifestyle, Biss points out the cultural shift towards epitomizing nature as good; the idea of natural has come to represent safe and benign. But natural is not a synonym for good. Nature may be good, but it is not safe.

Which leads me to the second quote.

I came across this one years ago when I read the Narnia Chronicles to Katherine, and it has stayed with me ever since. One of the characters described Aslan, the lion king of Narnia, to the children:

“Safe?…Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.”

C.S. Lewis intended this as a reference to Christianity and God, but for me, it perfectly captures the essence of nature.

Nature cannot be defined by the prototypical duality of good and evil. That is a human phenomenon. But there does exist a duality in nature: the vegetable garden that flourishes, the beetles that devour and destroy; the plants that heal, the plants that poison; the goat kid who thrives, the goat kid who dies. This duality is not the classic good and evil, rather it is one of good and unsafe. Nature is good, but it is not safe.

I find comfort in these two quotes. The goat that thrives and the goat that dies; this experience is the product of a profound connection to the natural world. 

For all those wondering... no goat kids yet. Everyday I check for signs that labor is near, but the only sign is that my usually affectionate goat is avoiding me. When she see me coming into the stall, unless I have grain, she runs away. I've read that goats can get like this weeks before the babies come. Then again, it could be because I've been chasing her around pinching her tail head to see if her back ligaments have loosened (a sign that labor is imminent).

I had hoped the babies would arrive this weekend, but looking at my schedule for this week, now I hope it's not until at least Thursday. 

In the meantime, we've named our farm! Well, it's not official yet, but once the paperwork gets processed, it will be "Kózka Farm." Kózka (pronounced koozka) means "little goat" in Polish. A nod to our Peace Corps days in Poland. We have this great idea of giving all the goat kids Polish names: Kasia, Basia, Magda, Lukasz, Mateusz... I love Polish names. Our human kids, however, object. I'm sure they're thinking up all sorts of original names, like Dora (we had several chickens named Dora) or Dumbledore. Luckily for Dave and me, those who do the barn chores get to name the goat kids.

Hopefully my next post will be about happy, healthy, little goats.

Our wonderful vet, Alison, came with her super cool vet truck to do an ultrasound on the goats to check for pregnancies. After hosting the handsome Romeo Santos for a month, we were hoping at least one of them had kids on the way.

Before I get to the results, let me just say that as far as my (human) kids are concerned, Alison’s visits are all about her pickup truck. She has everything in there: refrigerated compartments, vaccines, vitamins, medicine, tubes and funnels for dealing with rumen aches, a portable ultrasound machine, and even a water source with hose for sanitizing her boots after farm visits… and that’s only what we’ve seen. I’m sure she has all sorts of other supplies and equipment tucked away. Whenever she comes, Katherine, Clara, and Alexandra circle her truck in fascination, oblivious to the vet visit that is taking place. If anyone out there wants to make millions, I suggest a “veterinarian truck Lego set.” Can’t you just picture this truck in Legos? 

Alison started by checking Mabeline. I had a feeling Mabeline wasn’t bred since she went into heat after Romeo Santos left. Mabeline loves the bucks, but if no buck is around, she goes for Clementine, and she was pursuing Clementine a few weeks ago.

I was right, no kids for Mabes.

But I had high hopes for Clementine. I know she “connected” with Romeo Santos, and I also really want Clementine to have kids since we separated her from her two boys (Walter and Caramello) when we first got her. Sometimes Clementine stands in the barn doorway wistfully looking off into the distance, and we wonder if she is “missin’ her boys,” as Alexandra says. Perhaps we can make it up to her if she gets to have kids again, and this time stay with them.

But alas, no kids for Clem.

Oh, the disappointment. As fond as we were of Romeo Santos, how frustrating to have no pregnancies after the work, expense, and stink of hosting a buck for a month.

Finally, Alison asked if we wanted to check Temperance. I almost said no… after all, I was sure she and Romeo Santos never connected. As I’ve said, Temperance seems indifferent to the whole reproductive process. I’ve never been able to tell when she’s in heat (unlike Mabeline, who is very obvious about it), and she never seemed interested in Romeo Santos. But you never know with Tempe. Why not just check? Might as well.

Right away, Alison said, “this one is bred with at least two kids.”

Quiet, subtle, sneaky Temperance will be a mama! Just goes to show I have no idea what happens in our barn. If all goes well, she will birth at least two kids sometime at the end of May.

Our own kids are already fighting over who gets to “claim and name” the goat kids. Fingers crossed Temperance comes out with three instead of two.

We had the joy of hosting a buck in our barn for a month over the holidays in hopes of getting at least one of our does pregnant. If you don't know anything about goat bucks, well, they're stinky. Really stinky. They fragrance themselves with their own urine in order to appeal to the ladies. Their fragrance permeates the barn and travels on the wind so that you can smell it while walking in the woods on a breezy day. If you brush against the buck (or a doe who has been friendly with the buck) while you are bringing them hot water on a bitter cold winter night, then your coat will smell like buck for days, as will your mudroom, and also your car, especially if you forget to switch out of your “barn coat” during the morning rush to feed the goats before you drive the carpool.

If you get used to the smell after a while (as women are more likely to do than men), then your children will remind you regularly that you do indeed still smell like buck. You will start to feel self-conscious at your kid's basketball games because, although you are used to the smell, you get whiffs of it coming off your boots and realize everyone else who is not used to it can probably smell it too. You worry about the carpool kids being so disgusted by the smelly minivan that you'll lose your wonderful carpool arrangement until the smell fades away. You start to threaten your children with timeouts in the barn when they misbehave (and then have a few weeks of very good behavior).

But you really want goat kids and the one-day effort at the neighbor’s farm last year didn’t work. Having a buck in your barn is supposed to help bring the does into heat. Having the buck for a month helps ensure he will be there when the does go into heat.

So, this fine fellow, Romeo Santos, took up residence on our little farm. I kind of wish the smell could travel over the internet so you could experience it just for a minute. 

Mabeline took to him right away, which wasn’t a surprise to any of us. She has a bit of a reputation that way. Don’t they make a cute couple?

I know Romeo Santos enjoyed his time with Clementine as well, although she was never enamored with him the way Mabeline was. We didn’t see any “connection” between Romeo Santos and Temperance, which also wasn’t a surprise. Although Temperance is the most affectionate of the three, she seems rather indifferent to the reproductive process. But who knows? Maybe they snuck in a moment when no one was looking.

It’s been about three months now, so we have our wonderful vet coming this week to do an ultrasound. She’ll tell us if any are pregnant, and with how many kids. If we have several kids on the way, we want to be prepared. But while we wait for her visit, we can speculate: Pregnant? Or winter weight?

Anyone want to place bets?