Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I got off the farm today for the first time in a long time. Sometimes it seems like I stay up here on the mountain for weeks at a time. I'm not completely isolated, since I do get around up in Grassy and visit with folks. Scott comes by to visit. But it's nice to get in the jeep and drive around.

I took the Foothills Parkway to cross over to Cosby to return Betsy's disbudding iron, now that I have fully gotten my fill of torturing baby goats. It's nice to visit Betsy and all of her familiar critters. I sort of know all of her goats by name if not by sight entirely now. I got to watch her disbud two bucklings and a little Nubian doe. The little doe was Patti's grand-daughter. Patti came to my farm as a hospice case. She was a great goat. She was the first goat I ever had to put down. We knew it was necessary and it was coming, but it was still really hard to say goodbye to her. I remembered the coldness of that day and the icy feel of my rifle as I tried to steady the gun through my tears. Patti's eyes, large and luminous, telling me she couldn't go on like that.

It was nice to see those silver gray ears decorating a new kid. Life goes on.

I met the remaining two Nubians from the group that came in with Didi and Sonya. Betsy was right. They are two years old and very stunted and small for Nubians. I'd be afraid they wouldn't survive kidding the big kids my boys seem to produce. Betsy will probably find pet homes for them. They were very sweet...just really small.

I was distressed by the condition of the forests surrounding the Foothills Parkway. The park needs to do a controlled burn or something. The beetles have killed all the jack pines and they have fallen everywhere. It's not so noticeable during the rest of the year. The dead pines lay thick on the forest floor waiting to go up like a tinderbox. A fire up there would be disastrous.
There aren't a whole lot of ways out of the communities in the valley between that Parkway and the big mountain range it looks to in the south.

I'm sure there are reasons they haven't done a controlled burn there. It looks like it would be a problem. They've had those burns get out of control before. It would probably make the Parkway pretty ugly for a while and the tourists really love to drive up there and take photos. I took my camera with me but the haze was too thick today for good photography. Some days are like that here.

I can't worry about it too much, but it's an accident...a bad accident...waiting to happen.

I stopped off at Carver's and treated myself to a fried apple pie. Sometimes you just need one. You know?