Another pic

Here I am with the SalesCow at one of our farmer's markets in Las Cruces!

Teensy update

Hi, y'all! I know, I know, it's been, like, forever....I am married now and living in New Mexico - we're in our first house (we don't even have a COUCH yet) - the cows and the goats and the dogs are all doing really, really well, and we're doing really, really well. Yeah. Actually, I'm happy as all get out - this was so unexpected, and so fast, and so fun, and we're having a ridiculously good time, despite periodic flat tires, the down economy, and puppies that like to eat laundry.

Above is a pic of us (that I love!) that Heather of CraftLit took at a restaurant in Tucson where we met for lunch.

My friends keep telling me I need to write all this down, this whole courtship/whirlwind/insanity thing, and they're right - maybe I can record it? And transcribe it later? Thinking about it....This is just too good to waste. (:

Big news

So. I'm getting married on June 3! Put that into your pipe and smoke it....Pretty exciting, huh? And then moving to New Mexico, like, right away (Lord willing - if the USDA, my vet, and the New Mexico Livestock Board will all get their stuff together and let my goats in). Uh - yeah. You cannot even SEE how hard I'm smiling right now. Happy! He is, to put it succinctly, a complete and total bad-ass, and it's going to be awesome. Seriously. Yep.

Directive, by Robert Frost

This was in the Saturday/Sunday Wall Street Journal, and my heart just about stopped when I read it. It is now my gift to y'all, to celebrate me girding up my loins, so to speak, and getting on with the whole goat thing instead of just wishing. I'm tired of wishing for things and not DOING them!

********************************************************************************

Directive

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry--
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast
northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-
believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them
glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they
mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s
playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

-Robert Frost

New blog

FYI: I've decided to stop messing around and get serious about my goats and my dairy. I've sold Toffee (one of the Nigerian bucks), Mom has acquired Blossom and Sesame from me (though I will be milking Blossom after I wean her kids), and I've purchased a Nubian buck, Leo, in addition to the two Nubian doe kids Elanor and Dandelion. It's time for the goats to start bringing in some income, even if it's just to pay for themselves. In pursuance of this goal (she said, grandly), I've started another blog, Woman's Touch Dairy Goats, to give myself a web presence, however small, as I prepare to start selling cheese and kids. I'd love to see any and all of y'all there, even if you're not close enough to be a customer. (: Thanks for your support!

ETA: Incidentally, this also means that goat and dairy news and photos will appear on the Woman's Touch blog, not this one. Since I've also started working on my writing again, this may become a place to blow the cobwebs out of my brain for that purpose as well. We'll see; things are certainly going to be interesting from now on, that's for sure.

Nougat's kids

I'm a little late putting these up since they were born a week ago, but hey, it's been a crazy week (she said, in a massive understatement).

Nougat delivered three, and for the first time, I let a doe keep more than two. Long story - I've had much advice from many people, and a lot of my herd policies were formed that way, but now that I've got Willis, Mr. Livestock, questioning me on why I do things the way I do (and finding that I don't always have an answer that stands up), I decided to give it a shot, and see if a doe could do it. I'm glad I didn't with Blossom - she's such a fluff-head that she took 2 days to figure out that her kids were hers, but Nougat was bathing Baby #1 before she'd even had the other two. Good sign. Anyway, all three are nursing and growing well, and I'm pretty happy! Two bucks and a doe; have gotten Blossom's kids disbudded now, and the two little Nubian doelings are here and already bonding well to me. In the pic below, the left-hand baby is Dandelion (those spots will turn white), and the right-hand one is Elanor (points if you get the LOTR reference). On the whole, it's been a danged fine week.

More Willis

Darn it, I HAVE to share this photo, too....Willis! In my dairy!

Meet Willis

Ta-da!