Posted by Suzanne McMinn @ 5:05 am | Permalink
Daily Farmhouse Journal
Clover talks to me. From morning till night, she talks to me. She hears me when I first step my foot on the porch in the morning with my coffee. She bleats and lets me know that I should not sit down in my rocker and enjoy my coffee, not without bringing her a bowl of food first and opening the gate to let her out of her night pen. She talks to me when it grows dark. She wants her food so she and her babies can go to bed again in the night pen. And she talks to me all day long. I love how she talks to me.
She watches for me on the porch. She runs to the house and gazes up at me. I love how she looks at me.
“I would like a cookie,” she says.
And often I go down the steps and around to the gate. She meets me there. She wants a cookie.
I say, “I would like milk and cheese and cream and butter.” Then I give her a cookie and she lets me pet her. I want her to get used to being handled, to get comfortable with me. Or maybe I am the one who needs to get comfortable with her….. Soon, I’m going to start milking her. In fact, as soon as I finish laying in the necessary supplies and equipment. Hopefully, that will get accomplished over the weekend. I have the supplies to make my first cheese-citric acid, cheese salt, cheesecloth, a dairy thermometer, and rennet tablets. I can make fresh mozzarella! I just need some milk. And a seamless stainless steel milk pail and a milk strainer and filters. And that milkstand needs finished. I have glass quart canning jars to store the milk. I’m ready! Almost.
I told all of that to Clover and she said, “I would like another cookie. And I would like more gym equipment.”
Okay, Clover, my darling, whatever you want….. Those logs have been sitting in front of the gate for a long time now. They have one pile of logs already, which they enjoy, but their favorite spot is under the tree, and this new supply of logs was intended for a playground under the tree. So yesterday afternoon I hauled them into the pen. Anything for cream and butter!
Unfortunately, turns out logs roll downhill. Two of them tumbled right down.
Clover said, “I would like all of the logs as promised, please. Fetch them.”
And so I traipsed down to the fence. Wow, it was further down here than it looked.
It looked really far back, too.
Coco kept me company. Not that she was helping or anything.
I don’t think I’m cut out to be a farmer. I’m too delicate! Nobody told me I’d have to roll logs uphill!
Clover and the babies were gonna love these logs, though. I just knew it. They’ll clamber and scamper and fly off them. Endless entertainment for my viewing pleasure from my porchtop perch. So I got all the logs back up the hill and got them all together in a nice neat arrangement near the gate. Cuz, you know, that was as far as I was taking ‘em. Forget the tree! That tree is all the way across the enclosure. I already pushed these logs uphill. Haven’t I done enough?
Clover?
Nutmeg? Honey?
“Okay, I know this isn’t your favorite spot. I know you like it over there by that tree.”
But it is a long way over to that tree!”
“Did somebody say something about butter?” Clover said idly.
Me: “I rolled logs uphill for you! Now you want them all the way across the yard?”
Fine. Be picky.
I started rolling. One log, two logs, three logs…..
Clover jumped up to certify the new arrangement as satisfactory.
Then Nutmeg.
Then Honey.
“This is just right,” Nutmeg said.
Me: “I’m milking you next year, missy! You’re gonna give me a lot of butter for this!”
Nutmeg: “I will want twenty more logs next year.”
“You can stuff those twenty logs up your-”
“Did somebody say something about butter next year?” Nutmeg said. “Because I’m not feeling it.”
OKAY. TWENTY LOGS.
These goats are killin’ me.
The view off my porch………..
Flying Goat:
Okay, that was worth it.
