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Farewell, Goat Farm

This is the final episode of The Goat Life. My niece and I have bought a house in Longmont, Colorado, and will be moving in two weeks. The Denver area has the densest population of my family members, and Boulder is the epicenter of my Buddhist community (in the U.S.).


Although I am terribly excited about our new adventure, I want to take this final blog to ruminate on the things I’ve loved, the things I’ve learned, and the things I’ll miss after two years on the goat farm.


Things I’ve loved:


Getting the day-old chicks in the mail. I loved how happy the postal workers were to help get them to us safely. I loved the sound of the chicks peeping (we raised them in Kat’s bedroom during her pandemic absence). I loved the girl-power nature of creating their coop with Jan.



Our dogs! From the herd-guardians Vera and Clark (Clark adamantly believes that he was meant to be a lap dog) to our fierce dachshunds Coco and Snoopy, our dogs are a constant source of entertainment and love.



Socializing the kids. There are not many beings on this planet as full of joy as a baby goat. I love the way they jump: twisting and kicking mid-air. I love how they leap onto their mother’s back, riding atop her until they slide off.



My cousin’s companionship. There is no one I would rather have lived through the pandemic with, lived through the 2020 election with, lived through my transition into retirement with. Her humor and intelligence were a gift.


Things I’ve learned:


The gulf between humans and birds is not as wide as I previously believed. You can communicate with a bird. Birds recognize different humans, and will interact with the ones they like. Although they seem like dinosaurs most of the time, and have an amazingly wide range of utterances that I don’t comprehend, chickens are fascinating intelligent beings with opinions.



Never wrap the rope around your hand. Whether you’re on hot-air balloon crew, or leading a goat. This probably applies in some other situations.


So many goat-originating words. Bellwether, Capricorn, Tragedy. So many goat oriented phrases. Just kidding. Get your Goat. So much mythological goat lore - especially Thor’s goats who drew his chariot and provided his dinner every night.



You can’t suffocate weeds by shoveling the muck you dug out from a pen on top of them. In a couple of days, the weeds just poke on through, healthier than ever.


Gratitude for our food supply. Farmers never get a day off. There is no telling your goats (or cows or sheep) that you’ll milk them tomorrow. There is no staying inside during a storm when your animals need food and water. Farming is relentless brutal work, and I will never go to the grocery store again without giving silent thanks to all the hundreds of farmers watering and weeding my grains and veggies.


Things I’ll miss:


The profound stillness of the farm. A silence that allows me to hear layers of crickets in the fields around us - some close and some distant - a fantastic depth of sonic field.


The sandhill cranes whirring overhead in the winter; the barn swallows swooping past my head in the summer.



The goats, nearly knocking me over every morning as they try to be close to me. Especially the goats who’ve developed a special way of getting a peanut from me during either the morning or afternoon feeding. Many of them have a unique time during the feeding that they break away from the others and nudge me for a treat. It’s our little thing - each particular goat and me - and a moment that I cherish with every single one of them.


The smell of the hay barn when it’s newly filled with alfalfa hay.


The loved ones we lost: Zuli (my beloved feline companion of twenty years), Little Ida (Jan’s rat terrier), Domino and Dancer, Big Red, Stripey, Poofy Face, The Roo, the Glorious Black Australorp, Pete, Spotty, Not-Spotty, Phoebe, Triscuit, Lezlie’s baby, Sugar, Ray, Molly, Sam, and Madam. I loved every single one. I miss every single one every day.



Some years ago I went on a (mostly) silent meditation retreat in Nova Scotia. It’s astonishing how close you become to the other participants on a retreat like that. You’ve never spoken with them. You don’t know where they’re from, what they do, what are their politics. And yet, you sit together, work together, eat together. The bond between you is palpable. At the end of the retreat, there was a big final dinner, and the group spontaneously burst into a song: Farewell to Nova Scotia. It was a tearful, emotion-filled moment. I don't normally think in terms of the sadness of leaving a beloved place.


I feel as if I need a song to sing for leaving the farm. A song I can sing to the goats when I feed them in these last few mornings. I’ll be thinking about it in the next days.



Thanks for reading my blog. I have loved sharing the goat life with you. I hope your futures are filled with wonder.



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