Willow and his Goaty Girls are a family

Well, I'd say my plan for keeping a horse and goats together is working out as well as I could possibly have hoped.  Willow has become quite fond of his little GGs.  The last several days I've gone out in the mid-late afternoon and surprised the three of them taking a siesta together!  It is so sweet to see the three of them curled up close to each other in the hay.  I think it's really being good for Willow to have them here, because I actually can't remember the last time I saw him lie down.  I've read that sometimes a lone horse may become short of real rest or deep sleep, being reluctant to lie down alone, or with no one on watch.  I'd never thought about it in reference to Willow but now that I have, I'm concerned that he has perhaps felt this unease.  I've hardly if ever seen him lying down since Woody died over a year ago.  He stands around dozing a normal amount, completely relaxed, but never flat out, or even on his sternum.  He rolls occasionally, so I knew he doesn't have any problems getting up or down.  Of course, I'm one of those people whose heart speeds up unpleasantly at the sight of my horse ever lying down, and I only restrain myself with difficulty from checking to be sure they're alright.  Too much experience with colic to view a reclining horse totally calmly.  But seeing Willow napping in the hay with the GGs this week is a wonder.  It makes me feel like I've done something right for him, even if I can't afford a second horse anymore.  Although I will say that I see no evidence that any of the three are 'keeping watch', but I guess it's having company and friends that counts.  The real trick has been to try to get a shot of them before they realize I'm there and get up to see what treats I've brought for them.  Most of my shots look like this:

Over the River and Through the Woods...

 

Every November I head west to Phoenix for Thanksgiving with my sister.  She’s in assisted living, and doing pretty well but basically marooned from family. When I realized how the holidays bothered her I got in the habit more than a decade ago of spending Thanksgivings with her.  I visit her a couple of other times in the year as well, but Thanksgiving is a given. 

 

Barbara moved to Arizona from Virginia, and while she loves Arizona I know she also misses the greens of her native state. To that end I usually go out into the woods the day before I leave and pick her a mess of running cedar. 

 

Running Cedar is a grows along the ground and is an evergreen plant.  It’s a “ Clubmoss”, which isn’t really a moss,  but more of a fern.  It’s very short and  has straight stems with tiny flat branches which spread like fans.   Running Cedar grows mostly in the woods where there are a lot of dead leaves on the ground.  It often grows in harmony with Partridge Berry, and they look lovely together. 

A bank of running cedar is beautiful, but it grows so erratically that it takes an awful lot to make a wreath!  It would take more patience than I’ve got to make one from nothing but running cedar, so I just wrap and wire it around Barbara’s regular Christmas wreath to add a little natural greenery to her door.  Wish I had some mistletoe, but I’m not that good a shot!

If I didn't know better, I'd swear the wood peckers around here must be armed with machine guns!

I'll leave you with the winter sunset that we were blessed with tonight.

The New Meaning of Fall

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Fall has always been my favorite time of year.  Each year I grind my way through the seemingly endless summer, holding on to the vision of cool and color like a mirage in the desert.  This year has been different.  Since hunting is now allowed, in fact encouraged as a private hunting club has bought a lease for it the days have lost their lustre. 

Our farmlet is in the middle of the leased land, so we can't help but be very aware of the presence and movements of the hunters.  They are all great guys and make every effort not to disturb us.  They're not allowed to shoot within a hundred yards of our line and I am telling myself that people live by hunting preserves all the time and rarely get shot.  It's not really myself I'm thinking about, though.  The first things I did on hearing about the hunting rights being sold, back in the spring was to buy Willow a blaze-orange halter and a blaze-orange horse sheet.  I couldn't stand the thought of him out without them.  Unfortunately, they didn't hold up very well and while you'd think a blaze-orange halter would be easy to see, I can only think he must've buried it.  Maybe I'll find it in the spring.  And, the sheet is already in shreds.  Sigh. 

What really disturbs me though, is the knowlege that now fall may come to mean the season of death.  My mother and I have always been completely committed to providing a safe haven for wildlife, but in the end we had to make some major compromises in order to find a buyer for the farm.  My mother's and my main wish was that the land never be developed.  It took ten full years to find a buyer who shared that philosophy and was also willing to let us live out our lives on a little parcel on the lake.  So we had to make a deal with the devil, and while I know there was nothing else I could do, I'll still never stop regretting it. 

So far, the hunters have had a very gratifying season.  They've taken seven bucks already; at least they don't kill does.  My logical mind keeps telling me how over-populated the deer are here, and they do cause many more auto accidents than they used to.  I know culling is probably necessary, but I do so love to watch them.  In my mother's last years I got a salt block that we put in her back yard, with a wildlife camera focussed on it.  We got to know whole families of deer.  The buck with the droopy horn.  I wonder if he's still alive.  Damn.  I must be reasonable.  The hunters offered us some of what I'm sure is very fine venison.  We accepted it in the spirit it was intended and even tried it.  It was fine, I guess.  But it sure didn't sit well with my conscience.  We gave the rest away.  Last week I looked into the dead eyes of a buck in the back of their Jimmy.  Why did I put myself through that?  Somehow I hoped it would help me come to terms with the killing, but all I could think of was how much more beautiful he would've been standing alive in the forrest. 

Now it's duck season and that's even worse.  There's no way the wood ducks and ring necks and the others are over populated.  In order to shoot away from our house the hunters must have their blind near it, so as to point their guns away.  I've always loved to see the ducks come in at night, and every one is a jewel-colored treasure.  The iridescence of the drakes and the subtle, tweedy shades of the hens.  How can it be right to take the light from their eyes?  While the deer are hunted with single shots, flocks of ducks bring volleys.  I swear, I know how over-dramatic it sounds but I feel like my soul flinches with every shot, as if it was killing something in me.  I hate to see the ducks come in now.  And I wonder if I'll come to dread the fall, as it begins to seem like a season of death. 

 

How the Goaty Girls came to Shadow Lake---the Conclusion

 

 

We had so much going on with construction, renovation, moving and Mom’s estate that I planned to get my horse his very own goat some time this winter.   Probably after the first of the year.  I wanted things to settle down and our existing family to all settle in first. I think it doesn’t pay to ask animals to accept too many lifestyle changes in quick succession.   We had sold the farm, but retained lifetime rights to live in a little three acre keyhole in the middle, on the lake.

 The biggest shocking change to us is that hunting rights to the farm, which is mostly thick woods, have been sold, or leased to a hunting club.  This is a very hard adjustment as ducks, deer, geese, squirrels and all other wildlife have had a safe haven here for over fifty-five years.  More about that later.  However, the hunters are very nice and as accommodating as they can be and still kill for pleasure.  The head man raises goats, which was some little comfort, as I figured at the least I could pick his brain about practical goat keeping, and at the most, I might be able to negotiate for a goat. 

At our first meeting I raised the subject, and showed him my set up, and told him of my studies.  Waylon was very open and friendly, and it was clear he loved his goats.  Eventually, (probably five minutes later) I inquired about the possibility of getting a goat from him or someone he knew sometime in the future.   His main concern was that a single goat would be lonely, since goats are herd animals.  I tried to explain that my plan was that the horse and goat would form their own little herdlet.  I could see he was skeptical, and he mentioned that he just happened to have two little half-grown girl kids that he might be willing to let me “have”.  Once again I made my argument about a horse-and-goat herd.  Pretty much the next thing he said was that he might just bring me some goats (??) one afternoon.  Ahem.  What could I say?  “Thank you, Waylon”, seemed the best answer! 

Late that afternoon the dogs raised a ruckus, and here came Waylon’s pickup with a large crate and two very unhappy goats in the back!  “Um, thank you, Waylon”.  He drove into the pasture and extracted them from their crate, while I tried to keep my very curious horse at bay.  Willow thought this was the best entertainment in days and was already too charged up by the strange smells and sounds to be caught, so I was reduced to playing horsey keep away, with limited success.  Eventually I conceded and he snorted his way up to the truck.  The little goats were horrified and immediately climbed up on the truck’s roof, where their tiny hooves made a racket as they stomped anxiously.  Waylon couldn’t stay all night, and I caught Willow so he could leave.  The goats followed as fast as they could behind the truck as it went to the gate, baa-ing piteously.  They were a sorry sight, and I felt worried for them.  I held Willow for a while but I wanted them to have plenty of opportunity to get acquainted before dark.  When I turned him loose he wanted a much better look at them, but they were having none of it.  Thank goodness there were two of them, so they could each catch their breath a little!  Willow’s used to playing tag with the dogs, it’s enjoyed by both species, and since the new fence kept the dogs effectively out, he was spoiling for a game.  He’d already been fed, so I couldn’t really distract him.  To be honest, I was afraid I was going to have to call Waylon the next day with some bad news, as Willow pursued the girls at a high trot.  Several times he bore down on them, and I thought he’d trample them for sure,

snaking his neck with pinned ears.  I guess I should’ve given him a little more credit though, because each time it seemed they’d be goat-burger, he carefully avoided trampling as he overrode them. 

When it got too dark to see, I retired to the house, muttering dire warnings to my horse.  I’d like to think they mattered, but I know they sorted it out themselves, as animals usually will do if given a chance.  By the next morning an uneasy truce was in place, although it was days before the Goaty Girls, as we’d begun to call them would occupy the same space as Willow.  Within a couple of weeks they had formed a little herd, usually to be seen in the same quadrant of the field as my good gelding.

The happy herdlet now

How the Goaty Girls came to Shadow Lake---part two

So, three excellent goat husbandry books later, I was as sure as I could be that I had a good idea of the requirements of a palace for horse and goat.  Fencing would be mesh from ground to top,  eliminating the possibility of danger from coyotes and dogs., as well as goat escape.   A board across and eventually a hotwire on top of that. My three-sided turnout shed would be very roomy, both big enough to accomodate an extra horse (you never know), to be converted into a hospital stall should the need arise, and certainly adequate for a horse and goat to both have their own space.  I decided on 12x20 for that, south-facing.  A virtual Graceland for Willow!  Goats love to climb on stuff, and fortunately our land is plumb littered with boulders.  Everywhere.  You want to build a shop?  Sorry, you'll have to move it 4 feet to accomodate the boulder that surfaces, too large to be dug out.  A barnlet?   Same situation.  So we just had the  contractors roll one of the large rocks that they'd had to move for the fence anyway out into the center of the pasture.  A thermal waterer like I'd always wanted.  Finally, we had wire welded securely onto both gates and had them hung as close as humanly possible to their posts and the ground.  The only advice I wound up not taking was to build a raised 'goat bed'.  It was in all my original plans, to be in the most protected area of the shed, three feet off the ground in a generous triangle with the bottom closed off to prevent snakes from making their home there.  I figured the contractor would put it in last, but inexplicably, he didn't put it in at all.  Faced with having to get him back out to fix it, which I knew could take weeks due to his schedule, and seeing if it was really necessary, I chose the latter.  I also knew it would cost more, and we'd already gone WAY over budget.  I'm glad I did it that way, because I can't see that the goats miss it at all.  I guess they've been bedding down on the straw of stables for centuries quite happily. 
Here's how everything turned out:

Fence, gates and shed.

Goat rock

Thermal waterer

 

How the Goaty Girls came to Shadow Lake Farm---part one

 

I always assumed I'd have at least two horses for the rest of my life.  A 'riding horse' and probably the previous riding horse, now retired.   As a child I had an 'only horse' for years without thinking about it, but I rode a lot more then and my horse had a lot more interaction with friends.  Now, riding time has decreased tremendously and it's rare indeed that a friend's and my free time coincides for a few hours. 

Scott and I are as close to perfect for each other as I think it's possible to be, but it would be nice if one of us had a 'financial bone'.  I haven't balanced a checkbook for at least two husbands--- finding my best results by listing all deposits as $25 less than they really are, and all debits as at least $5 more than actuality.  Pathetic, I know, but it's like I've got dyslexia with numbers.  They never come out the same.  Drove my math-teacher father to distraction.  Aaaanyway, we've been making a concerted effort to grow up and be responsible adults, and high time too.  I still can't balance our check book but I'm trying.  For months we have been crunching numbers to try and find a workable budget.  My work as a pet-sitter is erratic and Scott can't work now, but that's another story.  After Woody passed on last year Willow was fine on his own and I was in no hurry to get a replacement.  I figured the answer would show itself.  And, did it ever.  No matter what I did with the numbers I couldn't make the costs of having two horses fit into our resources.  Now I was in a quandry, because my horse's welfare is always my first concern, and horses are indisputably herd animals.  While some, like Willow live very well and apparently contentedly alone I know in my bones it's not right for them. 

Other equines, such as ponies, minis and donkeys are certainly easier keepers, right?  I struggled with the donkey issue, because Carson's over at the 7MSN are incredibly sweet and endlessly entertaining.  What tipped the balance away was that I'd still have pretty much the same veterinary and hoof-trimming costs.  Theoretically, I could learn to trim my own.  My wonderful bare foot trimmer Marilyn Gilligan has generously offered to teach me, but I worry too much about hoof angles and wouldn't want to trust my kids to my faulty eyesight. 

 

Pigs, and chickens I considered and discarded because I just didn't see them forming a herd with Willow.  Sheep are high-maintenance with their coats and I didn't see me making use of the fruits of my extra labors with them.  Hmmm, goats have been keeping race horses company in their stalls for hundreds of years, haven't they?  Many a hot-blooded thoroughbred, too nervous to live well in a stall has shared it happily with a goat.  So, obviously the inter-species bond is good.   And goats have such funny, endearing little faces.  The blogs I read definitely tipped the balance for me, convincing me that goats can make very good pets.   I had very little real  life experience with them, a childhood friend had one on the farm, and there was one at the stable where I learned to ride, but that was it.  More research was definitely called for.

Three goat husbandry books later, I was as sure as I could be that getting Willow a goat was the best answer for all of us. 

Introducing Stacy and Hannah, the Goaty Girls

This is Stacy.  Her blazed face makes her easy to spot.  Stacy was born in March, and was a triplet, so having to stand further back in line for her share of milk, she's a little bit smaller than average.  Currently she's about like a medium-sized dog, maybe a bit bigger.  She'll grow some, but probably always  be a little stunted.  She is very active and tempetuous.  The first thing she did on arrival was to jump on the goat rock and begin leaping in the air, turning a 180 before landing on the rock facing the opposite direction. We were captivated!   She also likes to rear up like a little horse, actually more like a levade, because she can hold her balance for a couple of seconds.  She'll rear at the drop of a hat if she wants a better look at something, or if she wants to appear intimidating.  I say, "wants" to appear, as it's a little like being threatened by a teddy bear.  Stacy was the pet of the farmer who bred her, since she was a  little thing, but oddly she is very particular about what she eats.  I haven't been able to persuade her to eat any treats except alfalfa yet, she turns up her patrician little nose at carrots and apples!

And now, meet Hannah.  Isn't that a darling heart on her forehead?  Hannah is Stacy's big sister, technically a half sister since they only had the same sire.  She was also born in March, but as a twin is bigger and more robust than Stacy.  Hannah is more of a pet and more willing to investigate and try new things.  She's also aware of the size difference and never hesitates to push Stacy away from the goat feed; fortunately Stacy is quite persistent and determined to get her share.
 

Aren't they adorable?  We were enchanted, especially Scott, within five minutes of their arrival.  Stacy and Hannah are Boer goats, which means they were bred for meat (we have never told them this), and will grow up to be relatively large and heavy.  From what I've read, they should top out between 210 and 265 pounds, but they are VERY easy keepers, so I think it will be a challenge to keep them at a healthy weight.  They have the loveliest little Roman noses and sport adorable yellow earrings (FDA tags) in their right ears.  I kind of hope the tags eventually fall off, since they are well out of the FDA's reach now and forever.  Their horns are shortish, and follow the curve of their skulls back.  Boers originated in South Africa, and are particularly hardy which suits me, as I am pretty much of a laissez-faire parent.  "Less is more" is my motto, though it's not written in stone.  Anybody that needs extra care will get it, but it's nice to know Boers are naturally strong and relatively low maintenance.