"Goat" is French for "OH HECKO"

basil still life

Last night I went out to the field to shut up the chickens for the evening. There was a lovely half moon, a gentle breeze...the soft rustle of grass as I moved past the silo, staring up at the clouds, accompanied by our devoted band of kittens. Think Cheezy smooth Jazz music, cliche'd and yet still moving....

My heart was full- the way all hearts are "full" when the hot and stiky days of humidity break for a spell of cool clean breezy days which cheer the heart and clear the head. I looked out over the fields we had worked in that day.

Hundreds of feet of beans picked...tubs upon tubs of tomatoes piled in....bunches of basil bucketed. My gaze scanned the neighboring pasture, combing the sheep and the goats. Hmmm. The goats looked somehow...taller. I kept walking. I looked again. I stopped walking. I ran back to the veggie fields.

"Hey there!" all 4 of them brazenly bleated. It was getting darker but I still maintain that I saw them blink at me. Several times. Nonchalantly. There they were, Ginger and her two babies doing a tap dance ON TOP of the broiler chicken tracotr IN the veggie field, on the OTHER SIDE of the fence from their pasture. Dixie was grazing the new beans coming up.

our new potatoes with thyme in olive oil

I raged. I fumed. I snorted in contorted anger. I moved mentally through all the profanity I have ever known (or read.) I envisioned roasted leg of goat, goat-skinned hand bags, and stuffed goat with new potatoes....I stomped through the rows of veggies in the moonlight, collared Ginger and Dixie and made my way back to the gate all the time, through clenched teeth, muttering the most potent cuss word I now know: "GOAT GOAT GOAT GOATS!!!" In the dark, as we (all 5 of us) tripped over row upon row of drip tape, I looked up to see 2 white shapes standing in the gateway. As we neared them I saw that they were my two girls "unable to sleep", bawling their eyes out in the dewy grass. As they trailed after me SOBBING, with a dairy goat to the righ of me, to the left of me, and two behind, all the "sighing heart-swelling night of peace and contentment"stuff became DISTANT memory. I did have the consolation, however, of finally solving the mystery of our hefty broiler chicken feed bills: fence scaling, tap dancing, midnight snacking DAIRY GOATS.

OH HECKO.

a little flower farm tomato harvest