We had to move Leroy and Roger this week. Last week we put them in with Pete. Pete is a buck. Leroy is also a buck. Prior to putting Leroy in with Pete, we didn’t have any pens that had more than one buck. We thought it would be alright, since most goats like babies, and Leroy and Roger are babies. But it wasn’t alright. Pete harassed Leroy and Roger more and more every day. So, this week, we pulled them out of Pete’s pen and put them in the old Pygmy Goat pen.
Jan has a Pygmy Goat pen because Kinder Goats, which is the type of goat we have on our farm, are a cross between Pygmy Goats and Nubians. Nubians are enormous goats - they’re dairy goats. Pygmy Goats are small - the does average between 35 and 50 pounds - and are meat goats. When making a Kinder Goat, you generally have a Nubian mother with a Pygmy father. In any case, I think Jan created some of her own first generation Kinders.
The Pygmy Goat pen is, in my opinion, one of the loveliest pens on the farm, although it’s the smallest. It has a small shelter - here’s a photo of Roger standing in the door of the shelter.
Here’s a photo of Leroy, seemingly photo-bombing another photo of Roger.
Their pen is right next to Jordan’s pen. He’s our supreme super-hero buck. He’s big, he’s shaggy, and filled with testosterone. Here’s a photo of him:
Jordan is Leroy’s father. The cool thing about putting Leroy and Roger in the Pygmy Goat pen has been that often when I go back there, Jordan and Leroy are both leaning on their common fence - sometimes just lying in the sun together. Sometimes Jordan and Leroy have their noses together. Jordan seems to like Roger, too, although his father is Sam, a goat who lives next to the hay barn.
Meanwhile, yesterday I solved a mystery. We had been getting significantly fewer eggs from our chickens than we thought we ought to be getting. They had been laying about a dozen a day, and then, suddenly, there were only six or seven each afternoon when we checked the chicken coop.
We stopped letting them run wild between all the goat pens, hoping to force them to lay their eggs in their coop. But, they didn’t. A couple days ago, Jan found three eggs under the pomegranate tree, but after she found those eggs and took them, the chickens wouldn’t lay there any more.
Yesterday, I was about to sweep the chicken coop out, and I was looking for the bucket that we sweep all their poop into, and suddenly I saw this nest full of eggs:
When you see how close it is to the door of the chicken coop, you wonder how I could ever have missed seeing it. I guess it’s like that video that’s associated with Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Blink”. Remember that video? People are playing basketball, and you’re told to count how many times they pass the ball. At the end of the video, they ask you, did you see the gorilla on the basketball court? And, of course, you didn’t. So you go back and watch the video again, and you’re amazed that you could’ve possibly missed it. It’s a freaking gorilla walking across the basketball court! Well, a person in a gorilla costume. The point of this is really that we see what we expect to see. And we miss what we don’t expect to see. Even if it’s completely obvious.
Well, that’s the way it was with those eggs. We didn't see them, even though we were looking for them. But we weren't looking for them there. Because there were so many of them - they looked like a treasure in an Easter Egg Hunt - we had to test them to see if they were good, or if they were spoiled from lying in the sun for days. Jan filled a pan with water and put all the eggs in. Good, fresh eggs, just lie on the bottom of the pan. Older eggs rise - the big end of the eggs lifting off the bottom of the pan and heading toward the top. This is because the eggs develop air pockets on the big end, which increase in size over time. Eventually the air pockets grow to the point that the entire egg will float, and you've just got to throw it away. Who knew?
Another big piece of news this week: Robert, our hay guy has promised that he’s going to harvest and bail the new crop of alfalfa this weekend. We can hardly wait. Our last few bales of alfalfa are dried out and horrible. Jan went to the tractor supply store yesterday and bought two bales of alfalfa just to tide us over. The new bales are dreamy! Green and fragrant! I took a photo. The old bales are on the right, the new ones on the left. Just look at the difference!
Finally, I notice that my eyes have changed. I spend a lot of time just looking now. You know, looking at the goats. But also, just looking at the sky, the trees, the mountains. Really, it’s like that old joke about the farmer out standing in his field. Often, I just can’t help standing, looking. It’s so beautiful here.
I remember when I first came here, I thought, why don’t those farmers pick up all that rusty junk that’s lying around everywhere ruining the pastoral scenery? All those buckets, all those tools. But now, I don’t see ugly junk. I see things with a purpose. I used to think, why don’t those farmers get rid of all those awful chain link fences and put in something pretty? Some nice picket fences, or maybe redwood. But now, I see fences that keep animals safe, and can be seen through. If an animal gets into trouble, you can see them and get out there and help them. Also, you can train green beans and zucchini to climb up the chain link fences, and then they become green walls of abundance.
I’m amazed how much more beautiful things can seem when you understand their purpose. My eyes have changed.
