Smokey Mountain Breakdown

The youngest of this year's crop of kids joined us on Friday. Betsy came over with two new Nubian does, Sonya and Didi, and brought Phoebe as well. Phoebe's mom, Harper, was supposed to come along, but is still recovering from an udder injury.

Phoebe is a bit young to be leaving her mom, but I said to bring her along. If I couldn't get her to take a bottle, I could always take her back. And there is the size of "Li'l" Phoebe. At one month, she's the size of a two month old. She's frankly enormous. Harper herself is rather outsized and both of my boys seem to throw really big kids. So Phoebe got a double dose of the really big goat gene.

She's the color of cream shot with espresso and has a coffee colored stripe down her back. When I was a child, my nanny would bring me a cup of hot milk in the morning with a little bit of coffee in it so I could feel like part of the family who were busy drinking coffee and getting ready for work. Phoebe is that color. You can see from her picture that she has adorable goat lips.

Phoebe spent her first night on earth curled up with Betsy's daughter, Dori. Dori says she whispered her name in the way baby goats do sometimes. Now that I've met her, I must say it suits her. And it appeals to me since it is another name for Artemis, meaning "the bright one."

Her sweet and easy personality has quickly won me over. After only a few tries, she was eagerly slugging down bottles of milk. Despite her size, she's fairly well behaved in the house. Bridey and BossyToe have been largely banned from freely roaming the indoors due to their tendency to jump on the furniture...including furniture not built for jumping on. Phoebe placidly follows me around and will curl up on the floor at my feet. She comes when called. We did her disbudding this morning and she was very laid back about the procedure and quickly forgave me for hurting her. She seems to have transferred her affections fairly easily over to me and doesn't seem to miss her mom much at all. She is bonding well with BossyToe and hopefully will not become too corrupted by my current bad girl.

I've been very busy with farm work the past few days. This morning I woke to a dusting of snow. I realized while I stared out from my balcony how the snow seemed to fall upwards, driven by the winds coming up the cliff from the holler. It really did look like a snow globe.

Scott came by to visit Friday and Saturday. Saturday, I saw his truck drive up and he seemed to be taking a long time coming inside. I went out to grab a stick of firewood and find out whatever he was doing out there.

The wind was howling and making the windchimes sound with loud music.

Scott was standing in the yard facing the wind. His face turned upwards and his arms outstretched. The wind had blown his shirt up exposing his belly. His hair, almost always perfectly in place, was flying away from his face. The expression on his face was like that of a Renaissance saint in sculpture.

A more pure example of a religious experience, I have never witnessed.

It's why we live on these high places.