Beat Up by a Sheep (For the LAST time)

Sometime this past winter, my sister gave us a sheep. A ram, actually. She and her husband raise Jacob's sheep, a heritage breed that is believed to be one of the oldest breeds around. They typically have four horns, and some even have six. They are not large, for sheep. They are a dual purpose breed, bred for meat and wool. They didn't want this particular sheep, my sister explained, "because he is an asshole."

Not ones to look a gift horse (or sheep) in the mouth, we said "thank you," and took him home.
Soon enough, we found out why they didn't want him around. Every time we went into the pasture, he would charge us like a deranged... well.... ram. Although he only weighed about fifty pounds, it still hurt like hell when he bashed into the side of my knee. And he didn't back off when I fought back, either. I took to carrying a stick, and once I hit him hard enough the nose to make him bleed (yes, I felt bad afterwards) but it made no difference to the sheep. He charged regardless.

The obvious solution would have been to kill him immediately, of course, but there were a variety of reasons we didn't do that. Firstly, we thought we could fatten him up. Secondly, the freezer was already full of beef, pork, and salmon. And lastly, Homero just didn't have time, and he is too cheap to let me schedule a professional to do any job he is capable of doing himself.

So we simply lived with the crazy aggressive sheep. I lost track of the number of times he knocked me down, but one instance stands out in my mind. It was mid-winter, and the ground was frozen solid. Over the past few days, it had repeatedly snowed, thawed, and frozen, and so there were a couple inches of ice in the barnyard, with hummocks of frozen dirt and gravel sticking up, and holes here and there as well. Treacherous ground, on which anybody might turn an ankle, irrespective of the need to fight off mentally impaired ovines.

The hose was frozen, so I was filling five gallon buckets directly from the spigot, precariously standing bent over on the ice-slick that surrounded the water pump. The sheep hit me from behind; I never saw him coming. I fell down, of course, and floundered around on the ice, unable to get up. The sheep backed up and charged again. He hit me in the hip, and I sprawled on my belly. I rolled over on my back and wildly flailed my legs trying to fend off his next charge. This ridiculous and humiliating scene went on for some time, until I managed to grab him by the horns and immobilize him. I still couldn't get up, however. My boots slid helplessly on the ice, and I didn't dare let go of the sheep to grab the fence for support. There were a few minutes of detente, the sheep and I frozen in an absurd tableau, catching our breath.

After a while, I managed to stand up, using the sheep himself as support. I lugged him into the barn and somehow closed the door between us. Then I limped back to the house, determined that the sheep had beat me up for the last time. Not so, alas, not so. Over the next few months, the sheep kept me well supplied with bruises. The children could not be sent out to do chores. We more or less lived in fear of this stupid, obstinate animal, himself apparently the victim of an overdeveloped instinct to attack everything that moved.

Recently, the grass finally being grown enough to provide forage, we moved the sheep by himself into the orchard, where he wouldn't interfere with daily chores. This worked fine until yesterday. Yesterday, I took the goats out to browse, and the sight of them moved the sheep to heroic efforts. He escaped, and as soon as he was free, he charged me. This time I saw him coming, and I grabbed him by the horns before he could hurt me. Holding on, I yelled for my husband. While I was waiting for him to run over from the shop, I noticed that one of the ram's four horns was curled back and growing straight into his own skull. As far as I could tell,  it hadn't yet penetrated the flesh, but it was surely uncomfortable, and soon would be downright painful, if it wasn't already. When Homero arrived, I showed him the situation, and said "we have to kill this sheep today."

Luckily, it was a fairly nice afternoon, and so Homero quickly dispatched the ram via a bullet to the back of the head (never the front; the bullet will ricochet off the shelf of thick bone). Within a couple of hours, the evil ram had been reduced to his constituent parts and was fulfilling his ultimate purpose of providing us with tasty protein. According to our personal system of division of labor, Homero deals with the slaughter and the icky parts of skinning, cleaning, and gutting, and delivers the meat to me inside in the form of large hunks - what I believe are called in the trade "primal" cuts - whole legs, shoulder, ribs and belly, back. I take it from there and trim and cut the chunks into reasonable portions as best I can, which isn't all that great since my only education in butchery is a thin book I bought called "home butchery of livestock and game."

The ribs (both sides) went into the oven, slathered with barbecue rub, and cooked on a moderate 325 degrees, covered in tinfoil, for about five hours until they were falling apart tender. That was dinner last night. I broke down the back legs into butt and haunch (I know those aren't the right terms) and packaged four nice roasts for the freezer. Then I took all the rest - shoulder, neck, back - and packed them into my giant tamalero (basically a gigantic spaghetti pot; a steamer) to make broth.

Today I strained the broth, ladled it into gallon ziplock bags for the freezer, and shredded the meat off the bones to be packaged in quart sized ziplock bags in the freezer. Except, of course, for the meat we are using tonight to make tacos de barbacoa de borrego.

Tacos de Borrego:

Make the broth

In a large steamer pot, pack all the mutton pieces (shoulder, neck, ribs, butt, whatever)
add:
1 large onion
1 head garlic, separated
10 chiles guajillo, torn into pieces and seeds shaken out
1 tbsp whole allspice
1/4 cup salt
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns

1 gallon water

cover, seal with foil, and steam 4-6 hours, until meat is falling off the bone

Strain broth and save for another purpose. 
Shred meat off bones and serve on a platter with:

Fresh hot corn tortillas
minced white onion
minced jalapeno peppers
quartered limes
minced cilantro

Raw Green and Cooked red salsa

Green salsa:
10 raw tomatillos, peeled and rinsed
3 serrano chiles
1/2 white onion
cilantro
lime
salt
blend in blender until fairly smooth

Cooked Red salsa:
10 chiles guajillo, toasted, soaked for 1 hour in boiling water
1/4 cup neutral oil, heated until shimmering
1 tsp whole cumin seed
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
salt

Blend soaked chiles, garlic, and vinegar in blender until quite smooth
heat oil in saucepan, add cumin 
pour blended chiles into pan; be careful, it will spit. 
Stir, add salt too taste

To serve:

lay out a platter of steamed shredded mutton, minced vegetables and herbs, quartered limes, hot tortillas, and cubed avocado. Have simple boiled rice on the side. 

Doing Chores in Winter Wonderland (Too Old for this Shit)

It is snowing. It is snowing sideways. It has been snowing sideways for the better part of four days. There is a foot and a half of snow on the ground and more is coming down every minute. Some of the drifts are three feet high. All the sliding glass doors are iced shut. School has been cancelled again, and the children are stir-crazy.

I feel like Gene Wilder in the old version of Charlie and the The Chocolate Factory - just picture me with my hair standing up and my eyes bugging out as I intone, in a voice that slowly rises to a shriek, "It is snowing, snowing, SNOWING... and it shows no sign of SLOWING... there's no earthly way of KNOWING... just how long it will keep GOING...."

I am old as dirt. I am rickety and fat and I have a nasty head cold. My knees sound like a bowl of rice krispies even just walking around indoors. I am getting too old for this shit. I just went out to feed the animals, and what is ordinarily a ten minute job is a half an hour slog, beginning with putting on my socks - not as easy as it used to be - and carefully stepping into one gum boot, and then the other, holding on to the wall because my balance ain't what it used to be either. Then I have to pick up the five gallon bucket full of slops for the pigs (kept inside the playroom so it doesn't freeze) and there's no handle on this bucket so I have to hug it with one arm and try to open the sliding glass door with the other while my giant, idiot dog leaps around me like a deranged jack in the box.

On the sixty-yard walk to the barn, I had to set the bucket down to rest three times. I am more out of breath than usual, due to the aforementioned nasty cold. The snow is heavy and has an icy crust on it. Haku runs lightly over the crust, but I break through and sink up to my knees with every step. I haven't put on a hat and my hair is whipping around, blinding me. The snow hits my face hard enough to sting, flying at me sideways from the north-east. Finally I make it to the field shelter, where Haku is leaping up against the fence, barking at the ram. The ram is charging the fence over and over again. I yell at Haku and he runs off to bother the pigs. I throw the goats and the pony and the ram two loaves of bread and then give the pigs the slop bucket.

There are very few chickens left. The chicken coop came unroofed in the last storm and we haven't been able to fix it yet. The chickens took to roosting in the main barn, but thats where the pigs are - and the pigs caught and ate several chickens. Horrifying. I've never had a pig do that before (although once a pig chased a mama hen off her nest and ate up the day-old chicks). We are down to three chickens. Some of the others have just disappeared. Hopefully, they have found their way over to the neighbors, who has a nice, cozy coop, and integrated themselves into his flock. We are going to have to address the chicken-attrition at some point, but not today.

The hose is frozen, so I am watering with buckets. I can't lift a full five gallon bucket over the fence, so I have to fill it halfway and pour it into the trough over the fence and repeat several times. There is an ice slick around the water pump. On my third or fourth trip I slip on it and crash, landing heavily on my hip and - though I don't notice this until later - cutting my arm on the sharp crust of snow. In my slippery gumboots, it takes me several tries to stand up.

The last job is getting hay for the pony and goats. I grab an armload of hay from the mama barn and trudge towards the field shelter, eyes closed as much as possible to keep out the flying bits of hay. I am in a whirlwind of snow and hay particles. I really ought to go into the sacrifice area and put the hay inside the field shelter, but I can't open the gate because it is stuck inside a frozen drift of snow two feet high. So I heave my armload of snow over the fence and at least a third of it flies right back at me. "Fuck it," I think, "They'll live until tomorrow."

My dog has disappeared. He's white, therefore pretty well camouflaged. I yell for him all the way back to the house, and then stand there yelling until he finally comes prancing through the curtain of snow into visibility. By the time we both make it into the house, I am exhausted.

Days like this I want to give up. I want to just throw my hands up and say "it was a good run, eight years of farming, it's time to retire." But of course I don't really want to do that. The goats are pregnant and in a few months all will be green grass and flowers and baby goats. I'll be milking and making cheese and loving life.

Besides, I can't give up. We need this farm now like never before! Our new commander in chief is determined to start a trade war with Mexico (among other countries) and they provide forty percent of our winter fruits and vegetables. If the Trumpster succeeds in antagonizing all our major trade partners, it won't be long before we all feel the results in the price of food. And that's just the beginning. I think the possibility of something awful happening to economy - like hyperinflation maybe - within the next several years is not out of the question. It could get pretty Mad Max around here before too long. I'm putting in a much bigger garden this year, and planting more fruit trees. Homero has taken his sustainability projects up a notch as well.

So there's no rest on the horizon. I better start taking care of my knees - maybe I can schedule surgery on my other knee while I still have health insurance. Inshallah.

Hellifino (Perimeter Patrol)

Yesterday, our neighbor with the hotel-sized-house (the HSH) called to tell us our goats were eating his garden. Luckily, we were home, and we ran right over and herded them back in before they did any major damage. It wasn't immediately obvious where they had jumped the fence, but we definitely saw a few saggy spots, so we hitched up the trailer and hurried down to the farm store before they closed to buy cattle panels.

Twelve cattle panels, a couple of hours, and $450 later, we thought we had taken care of the problem. Not so. As the sun was setting, we got another call. The goats were in the garden again.
This time, we rounded them up and put them in the more secure sacrifice area. We know this small area is secure against adult goats because we have been keeping the buck in there, separated from the does, and he tries mightily but fails to escape. The babies, however, might still be able to squeeze through the space been the gate and the hinges. I didn't think they would wander far without their mother, however, and so it proved. In the morning, all goats were still contained.

Perhaps foolishly, we let the goats back into the big pasture to graze. There's absolutely nothing to eat in the sacrifice area except poisonous tansy, and I was afraid they would all eat it and die. We carefully walked the fence line on the HSH's side of the pasture, and finding one more potential low-spot, dragged another cattle panel out and tacked it up. The morning went by; the afternoon was well advanced and still - the goats were causing zero havoc. It looked as though we had solved the problem. Homero left to go to the junkyard and I took the kids and went to my sister's house for dinner.

An hour later, when each of us were an hour away from the house in opposite directions, Homero got the call. The goats were in HSH's garden yet again, for a third time.

Let me pause here to describe the garden a little bit. HSH is a retired Indian gentleman, and his garden is his main occupation and evidently his pride and joy. HSH spends at least two hours a day and often more out in the garden, which is something like 60' x 80' and laid out in beautiful rows, each straight as an arrow and meticulously free of weeds. He grows onions and garlic, collards and spinach and lettuce. He grows potatoes and squash and cilantro and carrots. He grows tomatoes and chickpeas. He has a lovely little hoop house wherein he grows all sorts of colorful chiles. He has a tall stand of corn, just coming into tassel. His family really eats out of the garden, and he is generous with his substantial surplus. It amazes me no end that one elderly gentleman can maintain a garden of such size and splendor, while I, a full twenty years younger, struggle to raise anything that can outcompete the weeds. Anyone would be annoyed to find his neighbor's goats had devastated his garden, but HSH has more to lose than most.

Homero sped home at a breakneck pace, no doubt roundly cursing goats the entire way. When he arrived, HSH had already put our goats back in the pasture. HSH was nowhere to be seen. Most likely, he had retreated into his home so as to avoid the temptation to punch Homero in the face. Taking no chances, Homero decided to hobble the goats. He used twine to tie their front feet together, so each goat could only take tiny little steps and could not possibly jump. He then walked the fence line, searching in vain for any place the goats might have done a Houdini.

When I got home, I decided to do my own perimeter patrol. I had been thinking, and I had come to the conclusion that the goats were not jumping over the fence at all. My does don't jump much, especially Flopsy, who is hugely obese and spends most of her time on her knees. Yet, Flopsy had been out with the others. It seemed to me most likely that the goats were escaping under the fence rather than over.

But when I walked the perimeter, I saw that there was no way they were going under, either. The grass in the pasture does not get mowed or cut, ever, and so it has grown up in a thick mat over the bottom of the fences and more effectively tacked them to the ground than we could ever do. I was pretty much at a loss. Nothing looked mashed down anywhere. Hell if I knew how they were getting out.

But on my second time around, I found it. I can't blame Homero for not seeing it - it was pretty invisible. Along the bottom of the pasture, not on the side facing HSH, right about in the middle, there was a breach. The goats had gone neither over the top nor under the bottom of the fence. They had gone straight through. Right alongside one t-post, the welded field fencing had come unwelded vertically and had a slash in it like a curtain. The top wire was intact, as was the bottom, and so it was not obvious at all. There was simply a slit through which the goats had slipped, single file, and then gone marauding.

I found the breach just after sunset. I only had time to grab some baling twine and tie it closed. Tomorrow we will patch it with a new section of fence or with yet another cattle panel. In the meantime, the goats remain hobbled. Let this be a lesson to me that I must resume perimeter patrol. I used to be in the habit of walking all the fence lines every month or so, but I have slacked off shamefully. This isn't the first time I have found breaches in the fence: they are a pretty regular occurrence. Fences must be constantly maintained, or else periodically repaired.

Just like neighborly relations. I have no idea what to offer HSH, beyond my abject apologies and, come fall, a nice fat leg of goat. I'm thinking a real, handwritten letter with a gift certificate to the farmer's market.

Cow Caper (Good Neighbors)

Yesterday as I was returning home with a car full of girls from their various lessons - gymnastics for some, English for others - I got a call from my next door neighbor with the giant house.

"Your cow, she is on the road," he said.

"Oh no!" I yelled. "I'll be right there, I'm two minutes away!"

For those of you who don't know, the road in question is a state highway that runs from I-5 on one end ten miles west to a major refinery on the other. The speed limit is 50 mph, but in actuality big rigs full of gasoline, propane, and god knows what other fossil fuels careen down the highway at 65 plus, all day long. I thought of one of those trucks hitting my poor stupid cow and smashing her to a paste, then erupting in a giant fireball, or jack-knifing and spilling 10,000 gallons of oil all over the hillside. I pictured a ten car pileup. I visualized the next day's headline: "Imbecilic farmer loses livestock; causes worst tragedy in years."

"Keep your eyes peeled," I told all the girls, but nobody saw the cow during the three minutes it took us to get home.

As I pulled into the driveway, I saw the cow being led back into the paddock (the gate was wide open) with a small crowd of neighbors behind her. I screeched to a halt and began a dance of gratitude, thanking everyone around me abjectly for catching my cow and thereby avoiding a terrifying accident and a lawsuit of hideous proportions.

My good neighbors chuckled and told stories of escaped animals from their youth. They waved away offers of reward. They headed off across the fields home, leaving me standing there feeling foolish and grateful.

I have no idea who left the gate open or when. Statistically speaking, it was probably me.

Gimpy Goat and No More Milk

This is Django. She is one of the original three goats we bought when we moved here, and now she is the only La Mancha I have (La Manchas are the earless goats. Nobody cut off her ears: it's just her breed.). Django has always been a good goat - good mother, good milker, about as easy-going as a goat gets. She did get terribly ill a couple of years ago after getting into the grain, but she recovered and has been pretty healthy ever since. She had triplets this past year.

Yesterday when I went out to do the chores, I saw something awful. Django appears to have a dislocated shoulder. One of her shoulder blades is depressed downwards and if I lay my palm on the place where it ought to be I can feel the bone socket. Her elbow is rather radically displaced - down and to the side. Nonetheless, she is getting around okay. I called the vet, of course, and as I was trying to explain exactly where the dislocation was, Django kept running away from me. As James Herriot said in his wonderful book All Creatures Great and Small, if you can't catch your patient you've probably got little to worry about. She was browsing normally and later on chewing her cud. She didn't cry when I manipulated the joint.

The vet said that he's seen this before, and never had any luck trying to manually replace the bone. He said an operation would be the only option. Well, I said, it's not an option for us... do you think she'll recover on her own? Is this a very painful condition? He said that it was unlikely the joint would "pop back in" on it's own, but that over the next few months she would develop a false joint and be more or less normal. She would look funny and probably never quite keep up with the herd, but once the joint stabilized she would get around fine. It's hard to tell how much pain a goat is in, they are very stoic animals, but it's a good sign that she's chewing her cud. He said it's a good thing it's the foreleg; hind leg displacements are more problematic and could interfere with kidding.

So we aren't going to do anything. This morning she jumped on and off the milking stand just like usual. She is interacting with the other goats and seems pretty normal, except for that weird elbow thing. I'll just keep an eye on her and watch for worsening mobility or signs of pain. If she does get worse, we'll have to make a decision then.

Also, all the goats are more or less dry. I got about a cup of milk from each one, and that's just not worth it. Most likely they are all pregnant and so I'll just stop milking until next spring.

Cheese season is over at last!

This Is What Poor Pasture Management Leads To....

I was trying to turn over a bit of the compost pile today - something I had no business trying to do, in light of my three fractured vertebrae - and I tripped and sat down rather heavily. No harm done, except that I sat down in a patch of burdock. Three thousand burrs immediately leaped off the plant and into my hair. It was a case of insta-dread.

One hour and one bottle of conditioner later, no harm done. But still and all, it wasn't very pleasant. Just one more reason for vigilance against the weeds. Just one... small... reason.

Spinal Progress Report ("I Am Not a Weenie")

Five days after I fell out of the hayloft and broke three vertebrae, I am actually doing okay. Much better than I would have guessed, if anyone had asked me, as I lay moaning and weeping on a gurney in the emergency room thursday night, to make a prediction.

As I told the ER nurse, I am not a pain weenie. Yes, those were in fact my actual words: "Just so you know," I said, "I had my babies at home without drugs. I am not a pain weenie. If I'm crying, it's because it hurts worse than labor."

"I believe you," said the nurse. "Thanks for telling me."

Then they loaded me up with Dilaudid and Atavan. As they warned me would be the case, these medications did very little to reduce the pain I felt when I moved, but they did reduce my "at rest" pain to something close to zero. After looking at my X-rays, the doctor told me I had broken three spinous processes, and that there was nothing they could do for me surgically. Somewhat like broken ribs, they would heal on their own (or they wouldn't, was the unspoken subtext). He said that whether I went home or stayed in the hospital overnight was a matter of my pain level; if I could move around well enough to go to the bathroom then I could go home, but if my pain were so severe that I was immobile, they would keep me overnight just so that they could continue to give me intravenous pain meds.

With the maximum dose of Dilaudid on board, I made it down the hall and peed, so they sent me home. There are a lot of questions that I wish I had asked (Which three vertebrae are broken? Are the spinous processes broken all the way OFF or are they just lightly cracked? How long can I expect my recovery to be? What activities are safe and what should I avoid?) but under the influence of the drugs all I could remember to ask was "how much is the Dilaudid helping right now? Am I going to be in a lot more pain later tonight?" The answer to those questions was "A lot" and "Yes."

The next couple of days was pretty bad. They sent me home with 15 Percocet, but I avoided taking them, thinking that that was a fairly small number of pills and I'd better save them for serious pain situations. I made do with Ibuprofen. I started taking one Percocet at bedtime because I found that my back ached terribly in the middle of the night, waking me up. It still does, but if I take a Percocet I can at least get four hours of sleep before the pain wakes me. I have limited my activity to the minimum a farmwife can get away with, which means I DO

1) stand at the sink and do dishes

2) cook

3) go shopping

4) milk goats

but I do NOT:

1) pick up a 50 pound sack of dog food while I am shopping

2) cook a 20 pound turkey

3) wrestle goats

4) muck out the barn.

I would say that I am - now, five days out - running at about 60% capacity. I can sweep the floor. I can vacuum. I can get in the van (it ain't fun) and take the kids to school and pick them up. I haven't tried, but I bet I can lead the horses around to the smaller pasture. I haven't tried, but I am about to see if I can let the goats out to browse and run herd on them. I can do laundry, although it hurts pretty bad.

A few years ago, we took my Dad (who is hemiplegic post-stroke) to Oaxaca to attend our daughter's baptism. At the party, he got drunk and fell down, whacking the back of his head hard enough to crack his skull and wrenching his back badly. He spent a few days in the hospital. I remember asking the neurologist if he could still go on expeditions - could we take him to Monte Alban? Was it safe for him to ride the bus to the coast? This might be, I told the doctor, his very last trip abroad - could we still take him out to see the sights? It might be his last chance.

In true Mexican fatalistic fashion, the doctor seemed a little confused by the question. If he wants to go, let him go, he said. Take him, if you want to take him. Who am I, he seemed to be asking, to tell your father that he should or shouldn't go see Monte Alban? That's not a medical decision - that's a personal decision.

That's kind of the feeling I get from my injury. What I decide to do or not to do is up to me: it's all a matter of how much pain I am willing to endure. I will go and see a regular doctor to follow up, and I will ask the questions I was too doped to ask at the ER. But I don't doubt that the answer will be some variation of: Do what you feel is right. It's your back. It's your pain. It's your farm. It's your work. It's your kids. It's your life.

That's right.

Mine.

The Aftermath (Tomato-ology)

Tomatillos

Green Tomatoes

So my swap meet was kind of a flop. It certainly didn't help that I broke my back two days before, but I think it would have flopped even so. I didn't promote it heavily, because - cool poster notwithstanding - I couldn't decide if I wanted a large community-wide event or a basic get together with friends and family that happened to include a few trade goods.

I got the latter. My mom, my sister, my cousin, and a few friends came with stuff to swap. A couple of people from church dropped by for a minute. Because I hadn't specified a time, some people were leaving as others arrived. We mostly spent the day hanging out on the lawn and waiting for folks to show up - which never happened. But hey, at least it was an absolutely gorgeous day, probably the last sunny, 70 degree day of the year. There were a lot of children present, and they had a grand old time running around and being crazy.

As the day drew to a close, we lit a big fire and barbecued ribs and chicken. We had baked potatoes and coleslaw. And plenty of beer. A few people stayed well into the night, drinking and talking around the fire, until it began to rain and drove us all indoors. Then we ate fabulous coconut cake that my cousin brought.

I did do some swapping- from my friend Deb I got some great clothes and shoes, and my cousin brought me a whole bunch of produce from her garden. My sister brought a breadmaker and my mom brought toys and books. I had cheese, of course, and pear sauce and ketchup.

One of the things I gained last night was a ten pound sack of green tomatoes. I know people eat green tomatoes, but I have only done so a couple of times. The only thing I know to do with them is batter them and fry them. That's good, but I don't think we could eat ten pounds of fried green tomatoes. Probably not a good idea. I've heard of green tomato chutney, but never tasted it.

Some people confuse green tomatoes with tomatillos (see above photos) which they are not. Tomatillos are a completely different genus of plant. I DO know what to do with tomatillos (Remote Post: Salsa Verde With My Bro). I wonder if green tomatoes can be used like tomatillos in salsa verde? Briefly boiled and then pureed?

Guess there's only one way to find out.

Ouch

Fell out of the hayloft yesterday. Emergency room. Three broken vertebrae (not bad, just the sticky out parts, doc says they will heal on their own). Now pretty much laid up with a fistful of pain pills.

Hope the swap meet can go on.

This may seem obvious, but....

Don't carry eggs in from the chicken coop in your bra.

Why would I do such a dumb thing? Well, in my defense, it's not so easy to carry ten or fifteen eggs in your pockets, but as you can clearly see, there's ample room in the lingerie. I need two hands to open the gates, work the latch on the barn, and feed the goats. Feeding the goats was the problem. I really should do it first, before stuffing my underwear full of raw eggs. That way, when the goats leap on me, I'll just get bruised and muddy. 

Near Miss

Does anyone else out there have a husband like this? My husband apparently thinks it's funny to clip two of the goats collars together while he's out doing the chores. Now, I've never seen him do this, or I would have given him what for a long time ago. He did this yesterday morning when he fed the animals before he left for work. Friday nights he spends in the city, doesn't get back until Saturday night. And he forgot to unhook them.

Well of course I fed the animals last night, but I did it a little late, it was already getting dark, and I didn't notice that Django and her baby Valentine were standing unusually close together. They were able to get around well enough that I didn't notice anything strange, hurried as I was. 

This morning was a different story. They were lying down and they didn't get up to eat. That means something is wrong, so I went over to see what. Valentine looked pretty normal, but Django looked terrible. She was looking up with her neck bent at a funny angle and bubbling at the mouth. Just because of how they were positioned (and perhaps slowness on my part), it took me a couple of minutes to see the problem. Django's collar was strangling her, the two collars were wrapped around each other and clipped together. It couldn't have happened by accident. 

I was confused and kind of frightened. Was this some sort of prank by local assholes, the kind who go out cow-tipping? Had somebody been on my property? Could the kids have done this? Rowan, when I asked her, said "this sounds like something papa would do," and so it did.

He freely admitted it when I called him to ask if he had done something so incredibly idiotic. He fell all over himself apologizing, but I am still mad enough to spit tacks. It's a good thing they are both going to be all right, because I don't know how long it would have taken me to forgive him if he had killed my favorite goat with such a stupid pendejada.