Smokey Mountain Breakdown

For Friday Ark

at The Modulator

I went out yesterday and sat in the pasture with my camera. I was alone for a little while. It was really warm and everyone was shacked up in the cool shelter where it is dark and sunless. It takes a while for the goats to get used to the heat. They pant like dogs, eyes glassy. I'd freshened the water earlier but everyone just wanted to stay out of the sun and keep cool.

Soon, they all gathered around me. The adults thoughtfully munching my hair. The babies playing "queen of the mountain". I am the mountain. I end up with pictures like the above shot when that happens. They can't get close enough to me, despite the heat.

I've got everyone but Vi-vi and Bridey off of the bottle and teat. Blinkin' is weaning her lot off slowly. Bridey is tall and thin so I don't mind her still downing so much milk. She is using it to grow more. Vi-vi needs to be weaned but I've come to rely on her for getting those last bits of milk out when my hands hurt too much to milk. My lupus has made my hands grow sideways and they freeze in position sometimes. The milking is good to keep them from freezing up. I knit for the same reason. As long as you can keep joints moving it's a good thing. But sometimes my hands hurt.

"Vi-Vi!!!" I call. She knows the drill so well by now. She's mother's little helper.

But I feel sort of guilty. Vi-vi is getting fat. She has little spare tires behind her widdy elbows.

She's become something of a terror around the does. She just wanders around snatching a guzzle of milk from any of them that get cornered in a tight spot. I'm wondering if I need to enroll her in some non-food related goat activities.


Phoebe is the youngest and the biggest. She's really huge, but very sweet. Her mother, Harper, spent last summer here. Harper is a giant of a doe who is a prodigious milker. I have really high hopes for Phoebe. Harper was supposed to come here from Betsy, The Goat Yoda, in trade for Maggie, "the bitch". But Harper got an udder injury and I am forced to hang onto Maggie, "the bitch", a bit longer. Hopefully I can get a doe kid out of her. Though Maggie has been suspiciously sweet recently. Except for eating my hair.

Take a bow, Phoebe.


I have closish neighbors again. My neighbors who have a cabin above my place have moved back after an absence of several years. They use my upper farm road to get to their house. Nice folks, Jeff and Phyllis.

Guess I'll have to stop mowing the grass in the nude now. I'm considerate that way. Really I am.

I've been getting together a basket of goatie goodness for them. A quart of lebneh, a gallon of milk, some homemade soap and some fudge.

I just developed a new goat milk fudge flavor...Coffee and Cream. It's every bit as good as I imagined and that's what I'm going to take to the neighbors. I don't have it up on my order page yet. But if it strikes your fancy, you could just write it in.

Maggie "The Bitch"