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when will it END????? oh, eeeeeee.

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so before i could even take a pic of the new little buck who is Grace's son,  today there is Onday's DAUGHTER!!!, a little doe.  oh hooray.  finally.  and here is what my head is like:

it might rain.  Ona and her two sons, Darth Vader and Inky, Onday and Snow bunny are all in that new pen for bitchy does.  However, that new pen does no longer really accomodate a baby.  the little bucks, Darth V and Inky are pushy already as is their mother Ona and then Snowbunny the Matriarch.  SO.  not good to leave Onday and her new one in there for the night.  i need to take her out.  Where, tho?  if i put her back in the large doe pen, how will they all feel?  and Lucky Star has taken over being alfa doe with her three babies, los dados and Just Going.  because Grace is so quiet, she was able to merge with her new buck baby.  Not so with Onday.  eeeee.  and i COULD try it.  but that would mean that during the night would be the comotion and i really don't want to chance it.  I could move Arctica over with Snowbunny and Ona and the boys, but who knows how that would go and/or Barbara, who is VERY pregnant and likes so much to isolate herself on the shelf in the guinnea hen pen.  hmmm and ack.  what to do.  So, what i have done is move Onday out with her new doeling into the inside Albatross area closing it off to the main pen.  All of them will have to sleep outside tonight or in the guinea hen palace and i have no idea what they will all think of that.  and only 2 does  in the third pen and everything always goes better with 3, but ……

the back part of this place now looks like this

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at the far end you can see the only open space anymore.  there will be a 12ft gate there.  maybe tomorrow? , but soon.  and here we have it.  it is extremely Private.  which i love.  really LOVE.  i can sit on that back porch and be in a very seperate reality.    but i have also further insulated myself from my community, passersby.  it's Closed.  i am the only one around here like this.  What does that mean?, i wonder.  But envisioning the goats out here, so much SPACE for them even if it is Space with Walls.  I am dreaming of building them a play structure.  Their lives will be more…FUN.  FUN.  fun is good. yes?  so it's ok, yes?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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24 responses to “when will it END????? oh, eeeeeee.”

  1. deb Avatar
    deb

    I can’t help but think about how goats would manage if there were no structures and no people to intercede. More space, less strife and attitudes? Aren’t goats instinctively nomadic, following the food? I wonder how captivity conflicts with instinctual behaviors.

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  2. roz Avatar
    roz

    choosing and being able to build your own boundaries with awareness …yes!

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  3. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    How does captivity conflict with our OWN instinctual behaviors??????????????????????????????????????
    They would manage very well. They would oh so joyously
    breed and many of their offspring would become Food and
    they would simply and joyously make MORE and on it would go and this thing i am doing here is just KEEPING SPACE until there might, and i now say MIGHT, be a place of MORE SPACE and less FENCE and a different kind of freedom, but which also can mean dealing with less live offspring.
    EVERYTHING CONFLICTS. it all goes back to that wonderful teaching of the Rinpoche at Jewel Heart Temple in Ann Arbor.
    EVERYTHING HAS A FRONT AND A BACK. THE BIGGER THE FRONT, THE BIGGER THE BACK.

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  4. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    OH, HEY!, roz!!! Thank You for stopping by!, and yes, but that choosing and building comes with so much responsibility and CAUSING of Energy….
    Causing. Causing, causing.
    oh….eeeee

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  5. Nanette Avatar
    Nanette

    I love that motherly tongue reaching out to her babe, you caught that moment beautifully. I love too your stream of consciousness writing, what a gift.

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  6. jude Avatar
    jude

    well goat woman, you sure are building a place here.

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  7. dee Avatar
    dee

    my good ness… so many characters! I don’t know about these kind of kids, but I remember being surprised to discover that the human kind of kids actually like limits. can rest in them.

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  8. Hoola Tallulah Avatar
    Hoola Tallulah

    Wowsers, I find it incredible you remember all of their (lovely!) names, I am lost just reading them all. We didn’t have fencing for our goats (they scaled any fences we built anyway), and boy did that upset the neighbours! Goats tend not to wonder far, but I sure wouldn’t want a herd that size ranging freely, as nice as it would be, not so practical really. They are beautiful.

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  9. Leslie Avatar
    Leslie

    Grace lately when I see the goats on the roadside here in Freetown I think of you and your brood….here the goats have no boundaries sadly some meet with a tragic accident for goat and person on the back of a motor bike….but mostly they are seen happily feeding on what green shoots they find on the side of the road….of the animals I see here they seem to be the most hardy and in good condition sadly can’t say the same for the poor dogs and cats! Lastly for this comment – Grace …….you are awesome!

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  10. saskia Avatar
    saskia

    the bigger the front, the bigger the back, lol, yepski I have to remember that one; meanwhile you are very busy with All of these goats, wha ta responsability – I am in Awe- and yet you seem to be able to manage and find the time to blog and move the cloth, amazing Grace!!

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  11. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    You are so caring with your herd of little beasties Grace! A climbing jumping goatie playground would be lots of fun to make and could be aesthetically pleasing too like a sculpture park. Just visited the Art Biennale at Cockatoo Island here’s a link for inspiration-
    http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/arts-desk/sydney-biennale-review-cockatoo-island/default.htm
    I made lots of climbing structures for Ariel when he was a kitten here’s a link to a few pics-
    http://www.bluecatheaven.com.au/Mos%20art/BlueCatDreaming/arielsphotoalbum.html

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  12. Nancy Avatar
    Nancy

    Grace~ I had no idea, when you first wrote of the goats coming…I had NO idea how many they would become, how BIG their personalities would be…or how much care and organization it would become. And yet you manage it ALL and birth cloth as well. Amazing!

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  13. Deb G Avatar
    Deb G

    It won’t, it will just pause. 🙂 Your space will be wonderful for the goats and it is good to have a private spot. Will the front still be open to community?

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  14. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i guess i am. Am I?, yes, i guess i am. like a Theme
    Park or something. When i’m looking at it it makes sense.
    When i am not looking at it, but “thinking”, i really
    wonder. it’s kind of Crazy. Chances are that it will
    only be a couple years more here…but then…a couple
    years is What,like 730 days give or take? that’s a lot of days.

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  15. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    well…the young goats, Maybe, but the grown goats i see as really, my peers. they are Adult Goat Entities. not a lot of different than me, sentience wise. so we uhhhh
    find wasy to Accomodate, Cooperate. and since i am the
    Unpenned one, i have more responsibility to try to understand. More on this next post tho.

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  16. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Hoo… I’m guessing you had Nubian or maybe even Boer goats? That’s a lot to do with the choice of Nigerian. They tend to be more content where they are. I will
    remain ambivilent about Fences. I’d rather not. but
    i live where i live and well, i live where i live. and
    i brought them here. My dream still is to be somewhere
    much more SPACIOUS in the not too distant future. So,
    then…..
    Thank you for finding them beautiful.

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  17. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Leslie…THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING BY!!!!!!!!!!….
    i OH SO wish i could just let them carouse the countryside. but there are so many loose dogs…it would be a nightmare. But it would be so wonderful. They are
    so good about coming home for the night.
    and i need to say again, THANK YOU for coming by…Love,

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  18. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    S…it somehow is all the SAME, and i don’t know how to say that yet…or maybe just still too much happens, so i can’t sit long enough to find words. But things in the past have seemed to compete for time, emotional energy, creative energy. Nothing here competes. it’s just the
    same. and i am finding that surprising and very very
    gratifying.

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  19. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Mo…the Cockatoo Island made me laugh. I can see it all!
    We’ll see. anything that they can investigate, better yet, investigate by climbing UP is met with such pure
    joy…
    i stopped by a place i pass on the way home. they had
    been building a great fence with the outer rounded pieces
    of branches, trunks, i don’t know,,,,but the edges that
    are sawed off so they can cut straight boards. Bark still
    on. don’t know if that gives you a picture? anyway
    they had a pile near the road of what looked to be scraps
    from their project. i stopped and left my phone # in case they end up not wanting it. Who knows?????????????

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  20. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Nancy…only because i’d listed for 3 years to daughter
    and watched her when she was still in New Mex. Yes. they are significant members of this little eco system. Each no less than me. but as i said somewhere above, it somehow is Right. and so it goes. I should say, tho,
    that there will (hopefully) (knock on wood) never be an
    event again where so many does are impregnated randomly.
    So many babies should NOT be expected in one season. This is too much and to be avoided.

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  21. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Deb…i’m going to take a pic from down the pasture road
    tomorrow so it all makes more sense. the one half has always been fenced like this. now, the other half is.
    so this is an acre of wood fencing, now. instead of half wood half just wire livestock fence. Now it’s all kind
    of closed…some refer to it as the Fortress.

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  22. Hoola Tallulah Avatar
    Hoola Tallulah

    We had Angora/Pygmy crosses, both bucks, the papa was big and curly and could scale a face 2.5m high without even a run at it, his son was more pygmy and couldn’t scale a fence if his life depended on it. So, we built fences, he jumped them and destroyed them and eventually we gave up. I couldn’t cope with him in the end, he was impossible to contain and just wanted to be in the house (MY house). Every morning he would be standing on the windowsill hammering his hooves on the windows to get in… not good. So, yeah, keep those fences! Roaming goats are stressfull!
    All that said, even though he frequently made me want to shoot him, I loved him dearly, he was a beautiful.

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  23. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    HI!, Nanette…they have all been such good mothers.
    This is lucky, some are not so much. Snowbunny is in
    heaven. She was not intended to be bred again. She
    loves her babies and when she doesn’t have any, has
    been known to try to steal someone elses. This
    will be her last go round.
    Stream of consciousness, yes. and i’m relieved that
    it is received ok…it’s just what i do anymore.
    THANK YOU for coming!!!!!

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  24. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i can easily picture that…hammering the windows. They
    do not hold back. When daughter had them originally,
    (not so many) and someone would not latch the back door,
    she would sometimes wake to find them all bedded down in
    the Laundry room. When i had my goat Ebie, years ago, a
    Nubian queen, i lived in a kind of a wooden work room
    shed. mattress on box spring on floor and Ebie would
    “sneak” in during the night…fold her legs so carefully
    and lie next to me in the night. i would wake to see
    her all slit eyed, quietly chewing her cud. I loved
    her, but she was a terror, like yours.

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