Ready, Reset, Go

Guess who missed me so much when I was gone? Hint: NOT GAR

You'd be surprised how much can happen in a week on a goat farm. Whilst I was away, a significant swath of the cheese inventory in the cave was sold, and in reshuffling and organizing things, I can really see where all the holes are. You might think that having markedly fewer cheeses to flip would make what was once a three-plus hours task whiz by in a much shorter time. Of course you'd be wrong. I really can't fathom what it is that takes me so damned long -- possibly the fact that I'm now washing 100 Crawfords lightly for their first weeks of life to discourage certain molds from forming, or because I had to keep running upstairs to grab things I forgot, like new buffer solution for the pH meter and a strainer to mix the morge. Or maybe I just got distracted listening to Marc Maron interview Michael Moore. WHATEVER. Point is, there's less cheese, and since we decided to turn the fan off last week, it'd decidedly more humid and therefore requires more floor squeegeeing. BRACE yourself, it's only gonna get more exciting from here out. 


In my absence, boss continued to check things off the massive(ly annoying) to-do list, which left my poor, put upon co-worker to tackle it all on her own. One of these tasks was to re-seal the floor in the cheese house, so yesterday after morning chores, I was charged with "resetting" it, ie moving all the equipment and junk that we'd moved out of the room back in and washing the vat and draining table. I did my best to replicate what my mind's eye told me the cheese room had previously looked like and was made to realize, not for the first time, how inattentive I am to the details of my daily life. Sure, it had been a week since I'd been IN the room, but being that I have spent more time at work in the last three months than anywhere ever in my life, you think that the basic topography of a room in which I have spent hundreds of hours might have imprinted itself into my brain. AGAIN YOU WOULD BE WRONG. 

As an aside, I'm intermittently aware of just how dull my powers of observation are and try to put them to the test so as to get in the practice of noticing things. While I was home, I took my dog for a walk around the block and realized that if called upon, I would never in a billion years be able to draw or describe the appearance of houses on my block. I began to look hard at them as I let Lucy sniff at a suspicious looking snow bank, willing myself to remember their physical details, as if some criminal investigation might hang in the balance of my account of the Indiana limestone ranch house with painted white wrought iron fencing. In other news, I made that shit up because I would be hard pressed as I sit here in Vermont to describe ANY of the motherfucking houses in a 2 block radius of my ancestral home. Is there a word for this specific sort of mental spot, besides just dumb?

The real changes, however, are in the barn. Before I left, the doelings were still finding their footing in the herd and were pretty hopeless when we attempted to get them up the gang plank into the milking parlor for their once-a-day graining. It was a two person job to get them and the increasingly bowling ball shaped big girls to go inside and tolerate being squeezed together for minutes at a time while awaiting their turn to go up and eat, partly because they were so hyper and freaked out that they refused to go in and partly because, once inside the parlor, they needed to be forcibly placed into the headlocks and trained on how to remove themselves from them once it was released. 

In a week's time, this has winnowed down to being a one person job, albeit a DIFFICULT and FRUSTRATING job -- seriously it is a good goddamned thing goats and goat babies in particular are so fucking cute because after fifty billion hours trying to herd nine furry little delinquents into the holding area after they have insisted on escaping to a) eat hay b) drink water c) pee d) stand on a tree stump, even the most tenderhearted animal lover feels like clobbering them on their tiny heads to knock some motherfucknig sense in to them. I keep having to remind myself that they're not trying to be dicks, they're just animals and they sometimes don't do what you want. 

As all (except for Tracy, Olympia and Crispy) are progressing with their pregnancies, we're upping the amount of grain they're being given steadily. It's T-minus five weeks til the first girls pop, and while I feel less generally anxious than I did last year, being that I've done it once before and also I can count on WAY more instruction and support than last time, I am nervous about the inevitability of some complications and loss of life. In related news, if you or anyone you know wants some cute baby goats for free, please holler at me. Even if you don't want them for milking! They're great pals. 

And speaking of GAR (btw the correct pronunciation of Gar is that it rhymes with "bear," because it's short for "Gary," and not a prehistoric fish), I have perceived that, once the lowest doe on the totem pole, Gar is connecting with her inner social climber and starting ALL manner of shit with the doelings, because she's just big enough to boss them around. So while I tut tut her in a disappointed way when I see her walloping Selna or Briony just for kicks, I am also somewhat pleased and proud that my little Wattlesworth is fighting her way to the (lower) middle. She IS the goddamned American Dream, I tell you what!