Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I couldn't resist doing this forever, I guess. This will be going up on The Friday Ark at the Modulator. Lolcat translations courtesy of Speak Lolcat. Nod to I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? If for some odd reason you want to use any of these on your own blog, go ahead, but give me a linkback. The new Technorati is murdering my blog.

I give you--The Baby Lolgoats--courtesy of Betsy at Glastonbury Farm where I spent this afternoon getting my baby goat fix.

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Oh, Wook! It Toofy de Cwissmas Beaver! What Toofy doin' today?


He be chewin' up lots o' sticks 'cause he gots lots o' company comin' fwo Cwissmas. All he family comin' and dey gonna dwive him cwazy! He busy.



How busy be he? He vewy, vewy busy.



I've been trying to catch at least one of the architects of the dams that have sprung up on Big Creek for some time now. Parks and Wildlife reintroduced them to the area some years ago. They've settled in quite well. There are stretches of the creek that would have been completely dry this summer had not the beaver dams held back the water in places. Near the Pink House in the Holler is an impressive series of dams.

Today was overcast and as I drove by, there he was. Now that we've had a few rainfalls, the dams need some work. He's much smaller than I imagined. Given the amount of wood he's cut and stripped, I thought he'd be bigger. Only a small section of his industriousness is shown. He had stripped wood up and down a 75 foot stretch of creek.I think he had accomplices, but they weren't out.

So...I'm driving down The Old 15th this past week, a long one lane road that they are very gradually blacktopping, and I come across a loose horse.

I believe I recognize the horse and decide I will try to gently nudge him back home with the jeep. I'm not sure why I thought I could do this...it would have worked with my horses that I had these many years ago. Of course my horses just galloped around like crazy things every time they got out. This guy was just placidly munching on the verge with his butt sticking out in the road. And anyone who has spent any time at all around horses knows the butt end is the one to watch. So, I eased the jeep forward a bit and rolled the window down.

"Hooo...Horse!" I called. "Giddup!"

This is the point at which most horses would snort at you and take off trotting in the opposite direction. But Horse had different ideas. He turns around and affectionately starts nuzzling the hood of the jeep, planting himself firmly in front of the vehicle.

At this point, a car comes up behind me...on this remote stretch of country road. And there I am with Horse completely blocking the road. I get out and pet him and kindly ask him to move to the side of the road.

Horse blows me a raspberry and affectionately rubs horse snot all over my t-shirt.

I weakly shout back to the car behind me, "I can't get him to move!"

Never mind that I've sort of caused this predicament by misguidedly trying to get Horse to move down the road in the first place.

Horse is very good natured about all this though, and allows me to sort of shove him over a bit.

So I get back in the jeep and Horse follows me and puts his entire head in the open car window. He seems to want a sandwich or something.

Meanwhile, I'm imagining the driver behind me gradually working himself into the rural version of road rage.

I give Horse a few hearty pats of the sort horses enjoy then give him a good-natured shove. I'm finally able to navigate the jeep around him though not giving the hind end as wide a berth as I'd like to.

As I look behind me in the rear view window I see Horse wistfully watching my jeep escape.

And I wonder what other hapless traveler he's going to hit up for a sandwich before the sun finally sets.

Get on The Ark....at The Modulator.

Everyone's lined up to stuff their faces.

And Yes, Mutton and Chops (the sheep)....That outfit DOES make your butts look fat.

Poor ole Fat Buddy!

He loves to steal food. My food, mostly. It's necessitated all sorts of security measures concerning food stuffs around the house. Past disasters have included 5 pound bags of sugar, flour, eggs, many many sticks of butter, and I don't know how many loaves of white bread. White bread is his favorite.

But every once in a while, depending on availability, he likes to eat healthy. Fresh cucumbers are his favorite and there have been many years that I got zero cukes from my vines. Fat Buddy would guard the cucumber vines like they were steak and growl menacingly at the other dogs if they tried to come near. They unfortunately give him gas.

He scored himself a yellow squash from the kitchen counter the other day. I'm certainly not going to try to take it away from him.

Well, the farm is covered with the damn things about now. I went out to load some bags of feed for the goats up on the hill today. The heat is sweltering.

I turned over the barrow and found a nest of them.

When I was at Pastor Jimmy's church, I mentioned that the "deadliest thing" on my property was the black widow spiders. "Deadly thing" is a reference to what the signs followers call the strychnine water they drink in the course of their worship.

Jimmy, who handles deadly serpents in the course of the practice of his religion, deadpans at me...

"You need to spray for those things."

Anne asked about the goats...and it's true, I haven't posted about them in a while. So...Here are some photos of the "babies", who are now a strapping six months old.

Still full of beans and mischief as always.

Everyone is weaned with the exception of Bridey...who still is finding it hard to get off the udder.

This guy stayed really still for me. He's a bit bigger than most of them out this summer. The rabbits are everywhere. The dogs aren't even paying attention to them anymore.

They look on in boredom as the hippity-hoppities pretty much run rampant all over the place. Guess I should get out my live rabbit trap plans. When I was a girl, my grandfather built me the most wonderful rabbit traps. During the Depression, he trapped wild rabbits then put them in hutches and raised them for food for his family. I think my grandmother passed off hare for chicken more than once at the boarding house they ran in Savannah, GA.

If you'd like to try building your own live rabbit trap....and it is an awfully fun thing for the kids to do....the plans for the same sort of trap my grandfather built me can be found HERE. Check first with your local fish and game department to make sure you are allowed to do this.

Well, we are approaching the second kidding storm.

Betty Goat, who delivered a preemie after gorging herself and making herself sick, is up first. It will be really good for her to have a live birth and a kid to take care of . She was really very sad after the little golden preemie didn't make it. This was the baby that died the same day that Aegis died. She is buried with Aegis.

So, we are keeping snacks away from Betty Goat, and hopefully she will deliver a healthy kid this time. I've been calling her the "Uni-Udder". Only half of her udder has developed. If it doesn't fill out after she delivers she will have to leave the farm. It's a shame since she's a stunning goat otherwise.

The babies are huge now. They are quite capable of knocking me over in their rush to get attention and snacks. But they are starting to be more goaty. Which is a good thing. I'm not sure how they are going to handle this new crop of brothers and sisters.

With the heat, everyone has been hanging out in the shade or in the shelters. I still haven't sheared the sheep and I need to get to that. They look hot under all that fleece.

The youngsters are still at the age where they like to jump up on things. Bridey is on top of one of the shelters. There is a bit of shade there. I don't know why they don't go hang out under the trees. There is some nice shade in the pasture for those who want to avail themselves of it.

In other animal news, I just dropped a wedge of dough on old Babe this morning. He had a really bad ear infection. The vet listened to his heart murmur. There is nothing but murmur there now. It goes off of the scale. If you feel under his left elbow, you can feel the murmur ripple along his chest. We aren't sure what is keeping him alive. He really shouldn't be. He's also walking on a leg that the vet says shouldn't be functional. But he's absurdly happy and bouncy. I'd say, "it won't be long now," but we've been saying that for two years now.

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My buddy POH, was shocked to learn that not only were goats used for food, but their meat finds its way into our mysterious American food chain in a number of sneaky ways like in pepperoni and other hard sausages.

Indeed, chevon is the most commonly consumed meat in the world. Beef, is actually the weird food. More people in the world are munching down on some goat more than anything else.

I just wanted to make it perfectly clear that my goats are milk goats. There seemed to be some misunderstanding about this. I don't raise meat goats. All of my goats have names and are very tame. You don't generally name meat goats.

Breeds of both cattle and goats are usually geared toward meat or milk. For instance, a Black Angus is a breed of cow that is specifically bred to produce meat. They carry all of their weight in their muscle mass. A Holstein (the black and white cow) is a breed of dairy cow. They carry most of their weight internally and have rather bony frames with large wide bellies.


Same with goats. Maggie has scrawny little legs and a big belly with a low center of gravity to carry around all that milk. She's a Saanen. All of my goats are dairy with the exception of Blinkin' who has a bit of meat in the woodshed.

Being a dairy goat isn't too bad of a life for a goat. I can think of worse things than sticking your head in a bucket of food and having your breasts massaged at the same time. I mean, just think about that for a second.


Just so we are clear on that.

I'm not quite sure what has caused my fascination with the "long-ears" at this stage of my life. Perhaps it was meeting Aurthur Bullington, our famed local muleskinner.


Every spring, Aurthur hitches up his two mules, Blackjack and Sadie Mae and ploughs up his garden. As far as I know, it is the only workout the two mules get each year. Every once in a while, Aurthur will get a wild hair(or something!) and rides Sadie Mae down to the Big Creek Market, but mostly he's in his old truck.

Trust me when I tell you, that you do not want to be behind Aurthur in his old truck if you are in any sort of a hurry to get down the mountain.

Trust me on this.

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But they start out like this....

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Well...it's that time of year again. Time to plant de seed taters.

Actually, it's a bit past time, but I'm still awaiting tractor man to come and plough and disk the quarter acre I call the garden. This year my neighbors Jeff and Phyllis are going in with me so I won't be killing myself like I did last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that.

Jeff has already built a martin house to put up and I'm pulling my seed stock out of the freezer to go through. The crow problem has gotten really bad since the goats arrived.

The dogs go a little crazy when I pull that 50 pound bag of seed potatoes out. I plant Yukon Golds, though I'm thinking about doing Inca Blues this year. Dogs love seed potatoes. If you don't like to eat them...they are evidently ball-shaped enough to play with.

That is Babe in the photo. He's going to be 18 this summer. I took Babe in as a hospice case in the rescue. He didn't have long to live since he has a stage 5 heart murmur. That was almost three years ago. He's happily senile and appears determined to live longer than any of us...if only so he can pee on more of my stuff. Friend Scott says he looks like an old "stoner".

There is a really funny story in the archives called "Who the Heck is Joe?" on this same dog and potato theme if you'd like to read more.

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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.