When I was young, if I said, “Hey” anywhere near my grandmother, she would say, “Hay is for horses. Straw’s cheaper. Grass is free.” I had no clue what she was talking about. But, then, she said a lot of old-timey things that didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
“Can’t dance. Too wet to plow. May as well take out your teeth.” That’s my favorite of her old sayings. Although, it really sounds like giving up. But, Grandma took pretty much every opportunity to say “May as well take out your teeth.” After a big meal, sometimes we’d say, “I’m stuffed!” And she’d answer, “May as well take out your teeth.”
Of course, Grandma often took out her teeth at the dinner table after a meal. Which just fascinated me. She didn’t have a full set of dentures. She had what she called “a partial”. It seemed to my childhood eyes as if it was just four teeth stuck together that hooked onto her real teeth, and she liked to drink her tea after the meal, and swish without her partial in, and she liked to dunk her partial in her water glass, too. This is probably too much information, but after all the times I’ve said “I’m finished eating,” and she said, “May as well take out your teeth,” it seems relevant.
In any case, Jan was saying something about the various kinds of hay this week. Our hay guy filled our barn with the last of this past year’s hay. We’ll work through this hay, and then, just as our barn is getting empty he’ll bring some wonderful new hay. Look how full our barn is, though!
But the hay we have now is old and brittle, and it’s less nutritious than the new stuff, so we’re giving more of it to our goats. Anyway, Jan was saying something about how horses get the really high quality hay, and I just flashed back to Grandma’s sayings. I didn’t know that you could feed straw to livestock - like the expression implies. I think it’s mainly used to stretch out hay when you’re short. We never feed our goats straw - we use the straw for bedding and nesting boxes. But, the ‘grass is free’ part resonates now. You can always turn your herd out into a field where there’s plenty of grass - if they're getting other nutrition. This is straw (see how golden?):
This is hay:
Meanwhile, I caught another instance of Lydia standing on someone’s back! Sorry that it’s back-lit. She's standing on her own mother's back this time:
The babies are getting so that they are interested in whatever food their mamas are getting. So, sometimes, when the mamas are crowded around us to get peanuts and animal crackers (I love the irony of feeding them animal crackers - I wonder which animals they prefer?) the babies can’t get close to us because the mamas pack so tightly, so they just jump on their mamas’ backs, and then there’s a bunch of goats pushing to get a peanut or cracker, with an entire second layer of goats standing on top of them, also pushing to get a treat!
And, my milking lessons continue. I’m really improving this week. It’s complicated. First you have to put the goat on the milking stand. They love this part, because the milking stand has a bucket that we fill with oats mounted where their heads go. Once they’re secure in the milking stand, you brush off their udder (to keep hay from falling into the milk) and then you wipe off their teats with baby wipes.
Then you have to get both teats started - which means you’ve just got to hand-milk one or two squirts into the “strip cup” before you can put them on the milking machine.
The milking machine is a crazy contraption, but, it milks them really fast. You just attach one sucker-device to each teat, and then the machine does all the work. You kind of massage their udder while the machine is milking - to get them to release as much milk as possible - and then, when milk stops coming out, you turn off the machine.
You’d think that would be it, but it’s not. The goats want to save their milk for their babies right now. Because they’re still feeding their babies all day long - we are only separating them at night. So, we have to finish up by hand milking them. This is the part that really requires a lot of skill and practice. I am slowly, slowly improving. Today I began simultaneous two-handed milking, which I had not done before.
Previously, I milked with one hand and held the bucket with the other hand. But, if you can milk with both hands it’s a lot faster. Then, you go, “right, left, right, left” in pretty quick succession. As opposed to “right, reset, right, reset.” If you alternate, one hand is always resetting while the other is forcing milk out.
So, I milked with two hands. Which means that, instead of holding the bucket right under the teat so that you can’t miss, you actually have to aim the stream of milk coming out of the teats at the bucket, which is sitting roughly in between the teats on the milking stand. Well, I sucked at that today. Luckily, the guard dogs come and lick the milk off the milking stand when we’re done. Because, really, I must’ve missed the bucket one out of every four squirts. Sheesh.
But, I sure am grateful to our goats for their patience with me learning to milk. And, it’s profoundly satisfying, resting my head against the goat’s side, and milking in rhythm. Thanks, goats! Thanks for your patience, and your gift of milk!