Farm Fresh Blog

On occasion the stage tilts and as actors in this great play of life, we reach and flail in a desperate attempt to grab hold of something stable to catch ourselves as we slide into the abyss. On some days we are chess pieces on a board shaken by an angry child. Some would argue the child is merely a misunderstood, downtrodden victim of society. The media would have the world believe that we have brought this temper tantrum upon ourselves, that the child is merely acting out in defense, that we are the cause in this shift.

We watch helplessly in anger and disbelief as one by one our brothers are tossed into the air and smashed against the wall. The media provides round the clock coverage, fueling the tantrum of violence. We watch the stories ourselves and shake our heads in wonder as more fuel of lies and half-truths are tossed on the flame, and sheep dance with wolves around the fire. When did the sheepdog become the enemy?

The sheep mock and jeer at the very men and women who have sworn to run through the flames to protect them. Wolves peek from underneath sheep's clothing as they whisper and shout that all sheepdogs are really wolves with badges. We sheepdogs find ourselves running a game of defense before we can even ferret out the wolves in our own ranks. And even as we hunt, our brothers are smashed in pieces on the floor by wolves, their deaths cheered by sheep.

The sheep may stare in brief horror but their attention is soon diverted by the wolf's whispers. We sheepdogs quietly bury our dead, put on a badge the next night, and go out again to protect the sheep. Our world has recently become one big Mardi Gras parade of drunken sheep and wolves dancing behind masks as the confused sheepdog tries to sift through the shouting and chaos to find the truth.

This wildly spinning drunken parade weighs heavily on those of us who wear the badge and carry the responsibility. I know these sheepdogs. I am one, so is the single mother with the new baby who lives in a state of exhaustion to provide for her child, so is the young man whose wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer, so is the student who goes to college during the day and fights crime at night, so is the old man who has lost years of baseball games as his children grew up while he was out protecting your children.

The wolves paint us all as nameless, faceless soldiers hiding behind raid gear, bent on world, and sheep, domination when the truth is that we just want to get up in the morning, enjoy our lives, provide for our families, and protect yours. I ponder all this as I milk a goat in the early mist. Yes, we all do have lives outside of world domination; I am also a farmer. The chaos on CNN and FOX News is slowly dulled by the pinging of milk hitting the side of a bucket. I have a brief respite from the media storm raging outside as the goat patiently chews her grain.

Time slows as the bucket fills and the milking becomes silent meditation. I am lulled away from the chaos of an artificial world of concrete and hatred to a simpler place where sheepdogs are black and white collies and wolves don't wear sheep's clothing.

Sunday we drove over to another pasture to pick up the sheep and bring them home. Lily came along to load them. Mesa came along to watch, and maybe play a bit. The sheep haven't been worked by a dog in a long, long while and so even the "knee-knockers" had forgotten that Knee Knockers do less work. Lily ran out, picked them up, and jogged their memory.

Sheep who come to the human and stay close to the human (i.e. knocking your knees) are safe from the black & white devil. (Border Collie) and don't end up running as much as sheep who attempt to hook it for the back pasture. Running only works when used against the cripple dog with the bad back who cannot outrun fast sheep. If used against the Red Troll Dog, it is futile, and there can be, and usually is, a running penalty. (This is why the Red Dog is not often used on sheep. Human gets VERY angry when the Troll dishes out a running penalty.)

Because the paddock the sheep were in was small and Lily was handy to clean up the mess, I let Mesa in there to see what she'd do with sheep. At first she bowled right through them like she was trying to pick up a spare. Sheep went everywhere.

But the day was hot, and no one was really into all that, so in very short time the sheep and the pup got into the groove in a loose accumulation around me.

We peeled Mesa off on a good note and she'll be put up for another month. She is pretty interested but I want to dog-break the sheep some more and move them into a round pen before she tries her hand again when she's older. She isn't ready for formal training yet and I don't want to put a bunch of pressure on her since she is still a baby with lots of growing up to do.

I just want to get her used to the idea of dogs helping with chores. As she gets older, and gains more control over her body and her impulses, she'll get more freedom to accompany me while I do chores. I didn't do this with Trace. We kept him locked away from the stock because he was so bad about sneaking out to work them on his own. Lily was always by my side and it shows in her approach to working stock. She immediately tries to figure out what the job is and what she can do to help. Trace was a lot slower about doing this. Mesa doesn't show as much eye and serious obsession as Trace did at this age though. She is still very much a bumbly puppy chasing bugs in the yard, and there is nothing wrong with that because she IS still a puppy.

Working stock is hard work and it can be very serious life and death work, so I'm in no rush to hurry her into it.  Sheep and goats can be fun and games, but cattle are the Big League and since we have all three species here, Mesa needs complete control over both her body and her impulses before she jumps into the deep end of the pool.

Photographing dead people was my bread & butter for many years. You can actually get kinda artistic with it. More than once we joked about making a Crime Scene calendar for the unit where we selected our best shots of the year to submit. I distinctly recall one of my favorite shots was a picturesque view of the bayou winding its way to the skyline of the city with the afternoon sun behind the buildings. It was a Chamber Of Commerce shot. And if you looked really closely, you could see a body floating in the bayou. It was some of my best work.

(No, I can't show you.)

That said, there are a lot of things more fun than taking pictures of dead people, for instance, taking pictures of soap. I know. I know. The lighting is better. The smell is better. You can rearrange things the way you want. I mean really, what's not to like?

One of the best parts of selling soap is photographing the individual fragrances. Frankly, one bar pretty much looks like another with slight variations in color or shape, but I like to compose a still life to represent each fragrance. I'm going to have to start over again with many of them because I lost the laptop that had the original photographs and all I had left of some of those shots are grainy photographs that I took with my cell phone. (But you still get the idea!)

 Take just plain soap,

and jazz it up with some props!

Rosemary Mint -

Cucumber Mint -

Barbed Wire -

Lavender & Oatmeal -

Sweetgrass, Cedar, & Sage -

Fred, the garden gargoyle, helped me take these shots for my Dragon's Blood fragrance:

Just clean soap porn! Can't you just smell it?

I'm really thankful for Clover, my first dairy goat, who introduced me to the world of making goat milk soap and a different angle on ranching. When I was raising meat goats, the babies were sold and probably eaten. (which can be a downer) You raised a baby or two from one mother and your profit was just the price of the baby. With dairy goats, not only can you sell the babies, but you can make much more money through the sale of dairy products or soap.  They require a lot more input and care for your profit, but the profit is greater and the time spent is far more pleasant.

Sometimes a bittersweet milestone is a hurdle that you expect, like when you carry a cardboard box out the door of a job that has defined you for years. Other times, that milestone is really a tombstone that you unexpectedly stumble over. You catch your breath, and fight back a tear. Yesterday I stumbled over a Tombstone Milestone.

I was making soap and reached into the back of the refrigerator to pull out a Mason jar of thawed goat milk when I read the label: Clover 3-7-14

It hit me like a punch in the stomach. I dug around in the back of the refrigerator. Nope. No more jars. I ran to the chest freezer, and like a four year old flinging toys out of a toy box, I tossed frozen food around in a vain search for another jar. Nothing. The stark reality was there before me. There was no more milk. No more Clover.

She was my very first dairy goat. We learned to milk together. We learned to make soap together.

Clover invited me into the wonder world of dairy goats.

And then I lost her to parasites. Nasty bastards. But as long as there was a stash of mason jars in the freezer, I still had a part of her. Until yesterday.

I almost didn't use it, but what's the point of keeping a jar in the freezer where it can break, so I soaped it up. In my mind that batch is Clover Reserve - Very Special Soap. I will keep a bar for myself. Maybe I'll put it in a shadow box with her picture.

Clover was a special goat. She was my Humming Goat.

The Farm Collie

A good dog is not defined by a rule book, a set of standards, or anyone else's opinion. I may cuss Trace and call him a Troll, but he is Other Half's little buddy and proof positive that if you give a good dog a job, and believe in him, good things will happen. Other Half takes that little dog everywhere with him, and like a sponge, Trace soaks up everything he sees. He has a doctorate's degree in watching Other Half.

This week the boys went to the ranch while I stayed home to tend the farm. Because we have the cattle locked away from the ranch house the wild oat grass was so tall it was over the dogs' heads. Other Half and Son spent a good bit of time mowing. There is plenty of grass on the rest of the ranch too, but this is "special" grass and the cattle would love nothing more than to get into it. We don't want them to discover it even exits, because if they do they will destroy fences to reach it, and then hang out around the house, no doubt damaging a $30,000 water retention system and scratching their asses on the window unit air conditioners. The very idea of losing 20,000 gallons of fresh water, or window units being ripped out by itchy, shedding cattle sends me over the edge, therefore, we are quite vigilant about closing all gates that might allow cows access to the ranch house.

Until yesterday . . .

Other Half drove the truck down in the meadow below the house. Since he was by himself, and the dogs aren't good at opening gates, and the cattle were nowhere to be seen, he assumed he could safely leave the gate opened so he could drive out later. After all, he wasn't going to be long.

He was down at the bottom of the pasture when he saw cattle emerging from the forest and trotting toward the gap in the fence. There was absolutely no way he could beat the cattle to the gate in a pickup truck. Other Half looked around for Trace but only saw Cowboy. Trace was nowhere to be seen. He cussed the dog for wandering off and went to stop the cows himself. As expected, they beat him to the gate. But unexpectedly, they didn't enter the gap. The whole group was crowded at the opening, but no one was brave enough to enter -

because there in the gap was a little red dog with piercing yellow eyes.

Trace had apparently assessed the situation as it was unfolding, raced away from the truck, ran 30 acres uphill, and then hooked it across the tree line to emerge at the gap before the cattle could arrive. And he did all this without Other Half even seeing him.

Once again I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have a good ranch dog. I'm not talking about a dog that sits in the kennel waiting for you to practice the sport of herding. I'm talking about a real ranch dog. I'm talking about a dog that sits in the truck and watches everything that goes on around him. Only when they know what is normal, can they know what is abnormal. These dogs aren't Lassie, and they aren't Rin Tin Tin, but they are highly intelligent and they've been bred to work closely with ranchers. Trace isn't exceptional, he's just a normal farm collie with little to no formal training. Imagine how handy dogs with formal training are if they get to go everywhere with you!

This week Other Half helped one of our neighbors get out of the mud and found himself driving the guy's tractor. He climbed up into the enclosed cab and discovered a Border Collie inside! Sister had been in the tractor with Richard. Sister is always by Richard's side. I don't think I've ever seen him without her. One of the reasons why these dogs are so handy is because like Sister and Trace, they are always there, watching, studying, and waiting - waiting to be needed. That's what sets the farm collie apart. A dog like that isn't created in a kennel. It's not created sitting at the house. It's created in the truck beside you.

A lifetime ago, before I went into police work, I taught Science to a generation of children born before The Discovery Channel was common viewing. Always in a hunt to enrich the education of my students, I ended up learning as much as the kids did. And from time to time, it still pops up. For instance, this week I was vividly reminded of a group of people living along the Amazon river. They have houses on stilts with big porches because the river floods every year and the porches allow them to move their pigs, goats, dogs, and chickens onto a raised area, where everyone lives until the water finally retreats.

After weeks of almost daily rains here, I have become a member of that tribe. Ours is a life of mud, where you must wear rubber boots just to walk to the back yard, and the dogs must be hosed off before being allowed inside the house. Three of the five outside dog runs have flooded, leaving only two raised concrete kennels. This means two dogs to a kennel when I leave the house, and no one wants to bunk with Aja because she's a loud-mouth who poops in the kennel and then trots through it. Although the kennels are covered, a driving rain coming in at an angle leaves the dog who doesn't fit into the dog house very wet. Ask Lily.

Except for short free-play time in the yard, the goats are living in the barn. It's dry, but dusty, and not an ideal place for baby lungs to grow. They think they want into the yard, until they get there and discover that it is as wet as it was the last time they demanded to come out but then stood in a dry spot beside the gate calling me in hopes that like Moses, I could part the Red Sea and give them dry passage.

Despite all the rain the cats appear to have adapted well. Being feral, unlike the goats, the cats don't expect me to solve their problems. They deal with it and so instead of complaining, they become masters of ingenuity.  They live in and around the barn and have developed a series of catwalks on barn roofs, trees, and the dried top edges of a deep ruts in the pasture left when I drive the mule out to feed cattle.  I really admire them. Unlike the cattle, who suffer in silence, or the goats, who complain about every wretched moment, the cats silently adapt.

So you can imagine who badly I felt when it happened. What happened? Well, I had one of those moments you wish you could take back, where you do something without thinking and as soon as it happens, your mind extrapolates the result at warp speed, and you instantly regret your actions, but are powerless to stop the chain of events once set in motion.

It happened that I was checking on goats and noticed that someone had pooped in the water bucket, as goats do. Little soggy cocoa puffs were floating at the top, like a twisted Halloween carnival version of bobbing for apples. The goats were busy eating so I opened the stall door, snatched up the bucket, and slammed the door again before someone decided the world outside the stall was better than the feed in the trough.  Without another thought, I slung the contents of the bucket out the barn door like a slop jar. My bucket had reached its apex in flight, the point of no return, when I glanced out the doorway, and saw one of the barn cats sitting on a dry patch of earth with her back to the impending doom.

Despite my whispered pleas of "No! No! Nononononononooooooooo!" I could not recall the arc of water as it dropped in slow motion onto the unsuspecting feline.

Despite my profuse apologies the poor cat had no clue where the assault originated.  She scanned the roof top and the heavens with an accusing eye. Hmmmmmm. . . I'm not proud of what I did next.

I just went with it. She thought God had smacked her with more water from the heavens, and so I just went with it. Since I was not a suspect, or even a Person Of Interest, I disappeared into the barn and let God take the blame. He has broad shoulders. On the other hand, if a large bucket of water comes out of nowhere and lands on my head, I'll be sure to listen for God giggling.

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

                                                                            Friedrich Nietzsche

Border Collies are known to be quirky.  People less understanding, call them weird. I prefer to use the above quote. Perhaps we just don't hear the music they hear. Perhaps they are in a world of Dr Seuss and Horton really does hear a Who.

So when Mesa began chasing invisible things in the yard, my first thought was that she might be chasing shadows, but her movements were too quick, too erratic, and often over a mud puddle.  I soon realized that Horton really did hear a Who, or rather she saw one.

Mesa's newest sport is chasing tiny flying insects that are so small I cannot even see them unless the lighting is just right. She spins and pounces and snaps in her hunt of the elusive "no see 'em."

 I watch her in the yard, darting here and there at apparently nothing and I think about the lesson I can take from this. Don't judge others. Perhaps they can see beyond us. Perhaps they can hear the music.

As I type this the thunder rolls outside and four dogs are playing WWF in the living room. I doubt they can even hear the thunder outside as their paws thunder a looped path through the dining room, into the living room, then into the foyer, and back into the dining room again. Lily barks madly both at the storm outside and the other dogs. She is the Fun Police and they are having too much fun.

On a spinning, drunken carousel, Mesa, Dillon, and Aja continue their panting, grunting, growling orbit. Locked away from the fun, Ranger barks orders behind a closed door. The rain pours down outside as frightened Cowboy and Trace huddle in a dark bedroom while Other Half sleeps.

The house smells like a kennel. A fine spray of mud has misted the walls and I've seen cleaner carpet in crack houses. It is simply impossible to keep a house clean after two weeks of rain, so we pick and choose our battles. Today the battle is simply getting seven dogs exercised while more rain comes down outside.

I am thankful I was able to get the farm chores done without getting struck by lightning, but will readily admit to sending out a steady stream of prayers under my breath as I tossed out cattle feed.  The dogs have taken a break but the floor of the house continues to shake under my feet as the thunder rolls outside.

And still it rains. Disconnected newscasters smile and tell us we need the rain. Really? Do they have to wear rubber boots just to walk out the door?  Clearly they live in a different world, one where they are not hustling to juggle chores in the mud, before racing off to a full time job in a land of concrete.

Other Half and I talk more and more about retiring. It is a tempting dream in the mist that I reach for but cannot yet grasp. How much money is enough money? Like most Americans we are caught in a ludicrous gamble - we struggle to earn enough money today so that we can enjoy a life tomorrow. It is a gamble, and with each passing year, the odds change. Are we working ourselves into the grave before we can enjoy the life we have worked so hard for? Is the security of a paycheck worth this gamble?

Investment bankers would argue that we should stay and make more money to play the odds in the stock market, but I lean toward a different kind of stock market - the livestock market. As a person of faith, I tend to believe that God will allow the animals and the land that we have cared for for so many years to take care of us.  For I believe there is more to wealth than figures on a piece of paper. Wealth is about good friends, and good health, and giving back, and having the time to enjoy it all. Wealth is not about having things, but enjoying the things we have.

Trace's minion is growing up. Mesa has a strong sense of self, and prefers to be with the Border Collies even though Cowboy hates her, and Lily just tolerates her. Trace seems to enjoy her company and Mesa can finally keep up with him.

I limit their time together because he is a troll, and she is already slightly bent toward the troll direction herself. She rages in her crate at meal time so badly that I've had to place a screen between kennels so she doesn't intimidate poor Ranger. She is Trace Jr. If she emerges as a full-fledged Troll Dog, I'd like to think it was genetics rather than modeling Trace's behavior. So although Mesa prefers to be a part of the Border Collie group, the bulk of her time in a pack is spent with Dillon and Ranger who model canine good citizenship. (Wow... I'm certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel to say that Ranger has canine good citizenship skills. Let's just say that he doesn't behave like a Troll, and leave it at that.)

Since I've announced many times in both public and private that Lily is The Perfect Dog, and since Mesa is related to Lily, one would think that Lily's perfectness would rub off on Troll Jr, but I haven't seen it yet. Nope, Mesa likes Bad Boyz and Trace is just soooo fine!

So who wants to hang around with a tight@&$ like Lily when you could be riding with a Biker Boy like Trace?

And she does love to ride that bike.

Mesa is ready for a leather jacket and a studded collar cuz Sister wants to be a Biker Chick.

When the clouds parted the moonlight reflected on the road ahead of me as I walked down the highway in full police uniform leading a goat on a leash. Not only did it light up the pavement, but it illuminated the absurdity of my life.

Who else does this?

And here's the most baffling part. As the goat walked beside me, I couldn't help but think that she heels better than my Border Collies do. I know. God forgive me. I thought it. I was thankful that we didn't encounter any passing motorists, for even in our rural community a cop leading a goat down the highway at midnight might raise a few eyebrows.

I know why this happened. It happened because Other Half went out of town again. Drama always finds me when he's out of town. I had just arrived home from work and was moving goats from their outside pen to a stall inside the barn. They greeted me in the dark and everyone filed into the light except one. A big pregnant one. A big, big, very pregnant one.

I heard her calling me in the dark and mentally calculated her due date. Since her sister gave birth a week early the idea of her giving birth two weeks early wasn't outside the realm of possibility but it sent shivers down my spine. So I hustled everyone else into the barn and went back for her. There she was standing in the dark, calling to me - on the other side of the fence.

Somehow she had managed to go over, or under, or perhaps like a vampire, she turned herself into a wisp of smoke and blew through the fence. Nevertheless, we had a problem. She had managed to enter the yard of the rancher next door and although he wouldn't mind, he has a large pack of Black-Mouth Cur dogs that have been known to chew the ears off cattle, so I didn't even want to consider what they could do to a pregnant goat. Since the goat was still intact, I imagine she got in there after he had let his dogs run and returned them to their kennels for the night. That meant the only other occupant in the yard was an Australian Shepherd who would be okay with the goat, but who might bite me if I enter the yard to retrieve said goat. This is the part where it's nice to have neighbors who understand farm animals.

I called the rancher at midnight to inform him that my goat was trespassing. He offered to come outside and help. I told him I'd be happy if he just called the dog inside to keep it from biting me, but by the time I walked through my gate and down the highway to his gate, he already had my goat in hand, and she was happy to see me. The neighbor and I both noted the upside to having tame goats. Clipping a leash on a goat and walking it down the highway is a lot easier than trying to chase down a wild goat at midnight.

The most difficult part of the whole adventure was getting the goat back through the main gate while an overexuberant Livestock Guardian Dog was trying to give an unwilling goat a health inspection. Imagine trying to close and lock a gate while a large white dog is trying to sniff an appalled goat. Think Melissa McCarthy in "The Heat" trying to stick her nose up Audrey Hepburn's butt.  It was a culture clash.

And that pretty much sums up my attempts to juggle a full time job and a farm - it's a culture clash.