Barnyard chaos

For the last week, every day when we get home we find this.



Well, usually, it's just Bert with his head stuck in the feeder. Ernie gets his head wedged in there too but has learned how to wiggle himself out (except when Bert's head is in the same hole as his, as in the photo above). Ernie was the goat baby who used to get his head stuck in the fence when he was little, so maybe that taught him to be more careful or at least more Houdini-like about it. But Bert just seems to be stubborn. I have no idea how long he just sits in there every day, getting jostled by other goats, trapped in a small space waiting to get rescued. And everyday, he yells for and then fights the rescue efforts, expresses some happy thanks once they're completed, and goes on to do the very same thing again the next day. I really would have thought he would have learned by now.



Goat personalities, like human personalities, are weird. Bert is stubborn, like his dad Ed. Both of them want to be wherever you are so as to chew on you or jump on you or destroy whatever fence or gate or opening is closest by. I would suggest that this might be a result of too permissive an atmosphere as babies (allowing Bert and Ernie to jump on our heads, for example), but that really doesn't seem to be it. Ernie, Bert's brother, equally bottle-fed, is chill. He comes over, jumps on a lap, then leaves and minds his own business. And Ed wasn't a bottle baby at all, so he never jumped on our heads in the first place -- and he's just as crazy as Bert... but note that his sister Gigi is not. Crazy random personality quirks plus genes plus environmental factors I guess, but it's strange.

Aside from goat personalities, the biggest source of barnyard chaos these days is probably inter-species interactions, interestingly enough. Our alpacas, cute though they are, have not really gotten used to being with non-alpacas. Added to that that Moppy (the older, white one) is (maybe) going blind, so she comes up to everything curiously to smell it, then gets freaked out and gallops away with abandon, creating a path of chickens jumping out of her way... Usually everyone gets out of her way quickly enough and no one is worse for the wear. Except the other day when she came over to smell my cheek and then coincidentally sneezed in my face (I'm pretty sure it was a sneeze and not a spit, but at the time I wasn't convinced). And boy, alpaca sneezes and their accompanying spittle smell terrible.

Anyway, this brings up some new issues, namely that it might be unwise to have easily spooked 175-pound runners sharing a barnyard with, say, a toddler (I know I know, babies take a while to get to be toddlers, and you're not allowed to house toddlers in the barnyard anyway, but still...). The goats are pretty gentle with kids, and also good at getting out of the way of running alpacas, but the triple combo may require some adjustments (alpaca adoptions anyone?).

The chickens have also gotten a bit crazy recently. Not sure if winter was too long for them, or if everyone's just excited for spring, but they have decided that rather than eat their food, they'll just throw it around the barnyard. And even though we don't give them more until they clean it up, we've nevertheless developed a floor full of feed plus poop plus straw that really could use a good cleaning out. And meanwhile, of course, the goats have discovered that if they push hard against the fence that separates their area from the chicken area, they can move the bottom of the fence enough to stick their tongues through and eat up spilled chicken feed from the ground. Not so good for them. And not so good for our fence. Suffice it to say we're really due for some barn cleanup and perhaps a little re-engineering this spring once it warms up (which will probably be soon).

One neat idea that we saw recently (which doesn't really apply here, but still) was in visiting friends who are part of a goat co-op. Rather than one family owning goats, the goats are housed in a joint location and milked on a rotating schedule. Whoever milks each day keeps the milk. Keeps the animal care from becoming overwhelming for anyone, but of course brings up those communal property system questions (who cleans up when, who's responsible for what when push comes to shove, etc.). But it seems to work pretty nicely. Here are pictures of one (of the two) goats,



plus the friends we were visiting...





This visit was part of a larger, really fast and ridiculously whirlwind (as usual) weekend trip to Arizona and New Mexico to visit Mike's old haunts from Phoenix and my old friends from MN. It was fun to be in a new place, even if just for a couple of days. Here are some pics from town (Silver City, NM)



including a puppet parade,



the nearby creek,



and the view from the outhouse above Eric and Maria's place (yes, they have an indoor toilet too).



Oh, and a big pit mine.



And last but not least, a Wenatchee-twist-on-an-old-favorite, rhubarb/cherry/walnut hamentaschen (cookies for the holiday Purim which was just this past weekend)... they ended up a little more bready than cookie-like (probably the whole-wheat-ness of the flour), but very yummy nonetheless.