Goatscapades

Note: This is one of two posts created today (wowsers), so if you're just logging on, scroll down for more below.

Escape

I’ve started running again. I had stopped for a couple of years because my knees were complaining. And then it took me two years (and some nice but not fabulously helpful physical therapy and chiropracty) to realize that if I just bought some knee braces at the drug store, I could run again and be pretty okay. But I’ve also found since that starting to run again, after two years off, is hard. Even the short distances that were routine over ten pretty-consistent years hurt more now. But I still like trying.

In any case, I went out one Sunday morning for a little run, probably a couple months ago now. And as I was coming home, the neighbors’ kids & grandkids were driving down the hill in their van to church and stopped me to tell me that Frosty was out of the kennel. I went to the backyard and sure enough, there she was outside the fence, hanging out and eating some grass. I went inside the house and got Mike and we went out to do some goat herding. Of course chasing Frosty didn’t work, as she is still smarter and faster than even both of us together. And so we went for the “leave the kennel gate open and sneak up behind her to encourage her to go back in on her own.” It worked, and we closed and locked the gate back up.

But we were confused. How did Frosty get out in the first place? The kennel had seemed pretty secure with the gate closed… well, except that the wire that had been tying the gate shut was actually much looser when we put Frosty back in than we had left it the previous day. Maybe the neighborhood grandkids had come over to play with the goats and had decided (unsupervised) to open the cage and go inside and then didn’t know how to close it well. Hmm….

Just then the neighbor grandpa drove by, rolled down his window, and let us know, semi-scoldingly, that Frosty had gotten out the day before as well, when we weren’t home, and all the kids had spent a good while chasing her and putting her back in the cage. So that Frosty-retrieval explained the loose gate tie, but still, how had she gotten out in the first place?

We went inside to think. Maybe the kids had gone into the cage earlier that day to play with the goats and didn’t close the gate well, which had allowed Frosty to sneak out later and that’s why they had had to chase her down. We didn’t want to get them in trouble, and we didn’t know for sure it had been them, but we couldn’t really figure out any other explanation. We decided it’d at least be important to know if our theory was plausible, to stem future escapes… So we resolved, finally, to go over and talk to grandma. Out the door we went, on a mission, only to find that… well, somehow Frosty was out again. So much for blaming the grandkids, this was definitely our problem, not theirs. And so much for blaming the loose gate tie – Frosty was out through the newly tightened gate just as easily.

We again opened the gate to herd Frosty in. But this time we forgot to tie Clay up first, and so of course, before Frosty could find her way in, Clay found his way out. (Oh, by the way, we’ve been considering spelling Clay “Cle” after the town of Cle Elum not far from here. Maybe I’ll try it on from here on out). Now, Cle (hee hee) isn’t quite as fast or sneaky or skittish as is Frosty, and so I could get close enough to him to reach down and try to grab him. But he turned out to be a little faster than I had hoped, which meant that as I reached for him, he jumped away, and I had to dive to the ground and tackle him in order to catch him and put him back in the kennel (sorry, no dive tackle photos available).

Anyway, we eventually got both goats back inside, and decided to stay and watch for Frosty’s escape route. She didn’t wait very long before sticking her nose between the horizontal bar of the bottom of the kennel and the chainlink above it, pushing the two apart and squeezing herself outside. See the following first attempt from a few weeks prior.

Obviously, there was too much chaos to actually get footage of the escapes themselves. You’ll just have to use your imagination.

So we dug out a bunch of wire from the shed that we probably should have used to tie the bottom fence bar to the chainlink long before, and we (i.e. mostly Mike) tied the two kennel parts together every six inches and eliminated the newly discovered escape route. Safe.

Leashing

The episode did however, make us wish again that the goats had more space. Even though we move their kennel every couple of days onto fresh grass and build climbing hills out of cinder blocks, they don’t really have the kind of room to run around that they would if we had a fenced yard. Anyway, in absence of a fenced yard, we figured that if we could train them to walk on leashes we could at least take them out to visit the obviously greener grass on the other side of the fence.

So one Sunday we marched into the kennel and, as usual, Frosty and Cle hid inside their house. We reached into the house to clip the leashes onto their collars, and Frosty started screaming bloody murder. Not just regular bleating here, but tortured yelling. Terrible. She stopped once we clipped her in and let her go, but still, terrible.

After a little prodding they came out and ventured, leashed, outside their fence. And then they freaked out again. Feeling us following them, they started to run, which meant we either had to restrain them or run after them. Restraining them elicited these terrible coughing choking sounds, and running after them just elicited more running on their part and then more running on our part and soon we found ourselves just running around and around and around the outside of the kennel following two tiny freaked out goats.

After a couple minutes of this, we figured it was enough for the first day. Back in their house and off the leashes, they calmed back down. In search of at least one positive experience to associate with leashes, we brought out some grain, which they love, and are even willing to eat out of our hands. Frosty was tentative, but Cle was excited. He was so excited by the food that he even let us pet him while eating and he started walking on top of us in order to lick the hand that had the leftover grain molasses on it. Apparently he had gotten over the leash scare. Frosty was still another story, but at least she appreciated the snack.

Baby steps

The next week we came out with leashes again. While the goats still resisted being clipped into them, there was no screaming this time. And we were able to put a stop to the desperate running, and just have them stand or walk at the end of the leash chomping grass while we sat on the ground. They even seemed to be learning how to untangle themselves from the leash rather than freak out because they had inexplicably tangled themselves up in it while turning around in circles. Progress.

By now, actually, they’re quite comfortable on leashes. Frosty still won’t go on voluntarily. She still runs into her house and you have to reach all the way to the back to clip her in. But once she’s on, she happily trots out for snacks.

Cle, on the other hand, stands next to the gate and tries to sneak out as soon as you open the door. No more fear. He can’t wait to go for a walk. In fact, you have to grab him and block the doorway while putting him on the leash in order to prevent premature leaving. Still makes us wish we could fence part of the yard (we’re considering it), but at least it means they get more variety and more socializing time. Cle even allows hugs now once in a while. He allows you to pick him up and untangle his legs from the leash.

Frosty is still skittish, but bit by bit it’s getting better. Both of them have even taken to biting my finger when I stick it through the fence… although that started hurting as they got braver with the biting. Even so, they figured out when I started complaining (or when they realized I wasn’t made out of food) that the biting wasn't so helpful, and so now they just smell and nibble and say hello.

Confusion

We’ve also taken to putting the goats on leashes and tying the leashes to a post in the yard when we’re outside. They like being out without necessarily having us hold onto them. Once, though, while they were on the leashes tied to the post, the neighbor grandkids came back over to see them. The older girls are quite good with them, but the younger boys don't get the whole “if you run at them they startle” thing. Which meant that anytime one of the boys moved, Frosty would freak out and bleat and run like the wind to the end of her 6-foot leash only to get whiplashed back from around her neck and crash into the ground.

After a couple of rounds of this and a muddy nose for Frosty, we and the older girls figured it’d be better for all the kids to go play somewhere else for a while and let the goats calm down. The kids got up to go, and the goats, rid of what had looked to us like something they had hated, walked after them to the end of their leashes and started bleating after them – don’t leave us, please. Hmmm.

Needless to say, then, we’re making some slow but sure goat progress. And now that it’s fall we’ve been able to take Frosty and Cle out to the neighbors’ lawn as well to eat their leaves. It’s a win-win – the goats love the fallen leaves and the neighbors love not having to rake.

We’ve also been having a bit more rain lately, which has meant goats sticking inside their house and getting all their straw wet and stinky. But they’re still cute. And we’re entering the time of year when the grass stops growing and we start feeding hay (which they seem to like quite a bit actually). We'll just have to wait and see how winter treats them.

Meanwhile, there has been a request from anonymous blog fans for goat videos, so here goes.

Picture posts

I'm going to try to post twice today, so stay tuned. First some leftover pictures and updates.

1) I have started swimming with the Wenatchee masters swim team. The upside is that I like swimming. The downside is that they swim from 5:30-7am in the morning. But even that has some advantages. On my way to the high school pool one morning, I saw a whole bunch of kids in dark clothes playing out in the middle of the road. Dumb and scary. But then I got closer and realized it was actually three deer walking down the street.

2) As fall turns towards winter, I figured I'd post a series of pictures which are, essentially, my walk to work -- pre-snow. We haven’t actually had snow in the Wenatchee valley yet, but we’re starting to see some dusting of the hills on the edges of town. And that impending snow has meant going and getting studded snow tires for the car (mountains plus snow apparently equlas everyone in town switching to snow tires for winter) -- go figure. Anyway, here's that walk to work, starting on our block and ending up at the research station.

3) Also, here are a couple of pictures from the “Some Enchanted Eating” benefit dinner put on by the CSA that Mike has been working for, which we spent a Saturday a few weeks ago helping to decorate and serve food for. Fun (and apparently the dessert was yummy).

4) And lastly, Mike & I just came back from a quick weekend trip to Houston visiting old friends and also my bro, who is playing masked carillon in the country's biggest Renaissance Fair. Here's a taste of the slightly odd but creative energy that goes into the loose re-creatings of medieval times that currently characterize Plantersville, Texas (including a movie of Yoni playing -- ooh... (hope it works)).

"Small" town living

Wenatchee is not a small town. With 30,000 people, it is a city, officially classified as an urban area. Sure, it’s within a rural county (which means we vote by mail – no polling booths here). Sure there are some goats and horses and chickens and orchards sprinkled around town. But there are also restaurants and auto body shops and schools and a mall and traffic lights with left turn arrows. Nevertheless, Wenatchee still thinks like a small town. See the following examples.

Example 1

When I first came to Wenatchee, I had dinner at the house of Jim, who was on my hiring committee. His wife Carol, who works for community health and has since taken me out to farm worker camps for outreach trips, suggested I get in touch with their neighbor Judith, both to see if Mike & I might be able to live in a small house in her backyard, and because she likes goats, and because she too works with farm workers, as a legal advocate. I left a few messages, but Judith and I never ended up connecting.

JUMP SCENE.

More recently, I went to a meeting of a committee that works on water quality issues in the Wenatchee River. Makes sense – I work on pesticide reduction, part of the benefit should be improved water quality. At this meeting a disagreement broke out between Dave, a public works guy from Leavenworth (the false Bavarian tourist village up the mountain),

and Ryan from the Department of Ecology over how to lower phosphorous levels cost effectively.

JUMP SCENE.

At the small small community-led Yom Kippur services here, Kyle, who rock climbs with a guy that just retired from my workplace, introduced me to Judith, who occasionally comes to Jewish community events with her kids. Of course, this did turn out to be Judith, legal advocate, neighbor of Carol and Jim. Judith invited Mike & I to her house the following week for a discussion she and Carol were hosting with one of the candidates for County Commissioner.

JUMP SCENE.

Mike and I arrived at Judith’s house on a Wednesday night. Her husband answered the door. He turned out to be Peter, who had been at the water quality committee earlier that week with Dave and Ryan. And speaking of which, there was Dave from Leavenworth (false Bavarian village) public works at the house as well, still frustrated about the phosphorous treatment plant discussion. And Jim and Carol. And Laurie, who I had met at the local foods group and at Carol’s workplace and at the Sound of Music performance in Leavenworth this summer. And Peter turns out to work in environmental engineering, waste water, and septics, like Mike used to in Minneapolis. And he may need some work help, which Mike might be able to provide. Meanwhile, Peter’s networking computer consultant is Norby, the German husband of one of the ladies that Mike works for part time at the CSA, who we just saw perform in a Bavarian dance show at the Oktoberfest, yes, in Leavenworth this weekend,

after which he and his wife Sherri took us mushroom hunting.

Example 2

Mike has been working part time with our neighbor Dave the carpenter, who is building a house in the town of Plain (for the mom of the guy who made the documentary about the apple industry that my advisor had suggested I watch before I interviewed for my job here). Dave has a degree in divinity and almost became a priest, but decided he’d be better as a carpenter. He is married to Sheryl, a psychologist who teaches at the community college with Bob, who used to drive the CSA truck during the summer but handed off the job (to Mike) when the school year started and he had to go back to teaching.

Last year, Dave and Sheryl volunteered at the high school with a mentoring program where you are matched with a student who is the first in his/her family to want to go to college, to help him/her through the application process. Dave and Sheryl asked if we wanted to volunteer this year. Susan, the woman who runs the program, also coordinates much of the environmental education in the valley, which is the field that Mike would really like to be in. Anyway, we decided to do it. Susan, by the way, coordinates alongside Alejandra, the woman who had previously arranged for me to give a presentation on pesticides to the farm worker parents of the toddlers at the migrant headstart center where she had previously worked before moving to the high school.

The day after the mentoring orientation, I found a thank you card in my box at work. It was from Susan. Turns out she also coordinated the Awesome Apple Adventure, a program where all the second graders in the valley come to the Tree Fruit Center (where I work) to spend a day learning about fruit research and apple picking. All the employees volunteer to run stations. My station had been the harvesting one, and Susan was the person sending thank-yous to all the volunteers. Of course, the harvesting station was a popular one, as all the kids got to wear picking bags, pick apples, and dump them into an apple bin.

Lucky for me, it was also easy to learn how to teach. And it happened to attract the attention of the Wenatchee World journalist who did a story about the event the next day... And who also happened to show up to the apple cider pressing party Mike & I went to a following weekend, because he was the father-in-law of the sister of Marya the party host.

It's all so circular. No anonymity. Everything comes back around. The down side is that a lot of town functions in a “who you know” sort of way. The up side is that it’s pretty easy to make friends, and that these friends all wear multiple hats and show up in multiple places. So in that spirit of multiple hats and purposes, Mike & I have decided to start multi-tasking in our household as well. So for a week earlier this fall, the goats who live in our backyard pen also lived in our… sukkah! (which was a makeshift moving sukkah, so that the goats could get to new grass every couple of days). And the branches for the roof of the sukkah, which came from Marya the cider party host, have also had a transformation. While the goats did not want to eat them when we presented the branches as food, they became irresistible for pulling down to eat once we presented them as roof.

Oh alright, maybe that’s a stretch – our household is not quite as small and coincidental a world as the larger Wenatchee community… yet. We’ll have to keep trying.

Hiking

It's fall here. The leaves are changing color. The irrigation canal that brings water from the Columbia river to all the orchards, and green to everyone's otherwise-would-be-desert-like-lawns, has been shut off and aired out for winter. Salmon are swimming. Some mornings there is frost. So rather than risk getting into winter before I even post about summer hikes, I'll just fall back on the "picture's worth a thousand words" cliche and keep it as a photo journal.

These first pictures are from a little hike near Leavenworth (1/2 hour from Wenatchee) in July.




An August weekend in Twisp and Winthrop, about 2 hours from Wenatchee.

September weekend in Stehekin (a 4 hour boat ride across Lake Chelan into the North Cascades) with my mama, papa, and grandpapa.

Back to the drier side of the lake.

From the North Cascades highway going west (Washington Pass and Lake Diablo).

Snoqualmie Falls, on the west (wet) side of the mountains nearer Seattle.

And... as a treat, some Seattle pictures (mostly Pike Place Market), again when the mama, papa, and grandpapa were here visiting.

Last but not least, a few more (silly) Seattle pictures courtesy of Gretchen, from when she, Tom, & Edith visited in August.