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Update ~ Goats

i was going to put words to each of these pics but it's too much.  so, just the pics.

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ok.  this is one afternoon.  November 30, 2012 in the BackFront. 

What am I DOING with these goats?   Answer:  I don't know.

Acey said this to me about her experience with goats many years ago:  " They often seemed to me astonished or vexed by things I could not decipher.  They have such a mix of herd instinct and utter anarchy."

So…i milked for a while when i had to give the 9 little boys away to the world.  but just enough to ease their mothers, but also find out that i could easily get a quart of oh so GOOD milk per goat, milking only once a day.  This is a LOT.  But what i decided was more important at this time was to establish relationship with them, individually and as a herd.  So, this is what we Do.  When you want a goat to do something and make it known to them, the reaction is often " WHAAAAT????!!!!!" Screaming and running away.  and if you stand there, just stand there and wait, maybe 10 minutes, the goat will come back and say " ok, What?".  there is no immediate "obedience".  Goats are NOT obedient.  So, for me and for them, i needed to work at making the request and response as smooth as possible.  I need them to be as trusting of me as they can be.    People really make no sense to them, i think.  Food and Sex make sense.  Babies make sense.  but, all the rest?, not so much.

and then, add to the mix the fact that my daughter, to whom these Goats belong, has been incommunicado for a while.  like totally.  UN accessable.   so the other part of the I don't Know. Having returned to school full time, working full time, maybe she is having Second Thoughts?  I don't know. 

So…we live our life here waking up and having a Day and when it gets dark we go to sleep.  to wake again when SunRise turns the world coral/copper/pink glow.   What i do know is they have changed me.  Out there is Them.  in here is Cloth.  Somehow, moving back and forth between feel very very good.  But….who knows.

and last, here is the  cairn so far.  the round thing is a copper float from a livestock water tank.  Birds came the other day and ate the chrysalis.  i have planted garlic there.

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32 responses to “Update ~ Goats”

  1. nance Avatar
    nance

    very nice shrine… that you are calling a cairn. which i think of as shrines. the goats and you? you are a lot like the goats… just replace babies with cloth. xo

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  2. grace Avatar
    grace

    you’re right.

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  3. ali Avatar
    ali

    what I see here in these pictures is you–sitting, pondering, photographing goats and cairn, considering garlic. it makes me smile, and I can almost smell and feel those wild creatures. there’s really something to be said and learned from their willfulness, their lack of obedience.

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  4. nemo-ignorat Avatar
    nemo-ignorat

    I get the impression you’re relaxing into this kind of life. Happy goats and I hope happy Grace as well. Your words and your pictures feel good.

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  5. saskia Avatar
    saskia

    food and sex make sense to us too, as do babies, and shelter! and you offer the goats shelter and I’m guessing being surrounded by goats, they offer you shelter as well; oh my the sunshine you enjoy over there, we had wet snow yesterday: chaos on the roads, a grey day and by the time I drove home it had all melted and you feel a wet cold….so grateful to be indoors with family and a fire in the woodburner, glowing orange. offering shelter.

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  6. Michelle in NYC Avatar
    Michelle in NYC

    I’m so happy for this…the pictures and the words…especially the “I don’t know” which is how I feel most of the time, even when I’m busy getting things done…there’s a day and a night, but no goats, and hardly any cloth work either. A little writing with my group (years with the Amherst group)…thoughts about when NY will sink…then forgetting that and going on doing, being. I’m part of a poetry event this weekend…but before that two days of bulb planting and garden mulching at the church…then back to Massachusetts for solstice and the holidays maybe even into January. There will be cats but no goats. I do love your ‘cistern’-thought that word referred to a well-maybe yours is a well of potent magic, like you, your cloth, and these goats..

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  7. patricia Avatar
    patricia

    goats and people aren’t too different now that i ponder your words. my grandson says no, goes off to think about it, then comes back and says, “ok let’s do it.” my agenda is not his. the goat’s agenda–how lucky they are that you’ve figured this out. well, in fact how lucky you are!

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  8. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Who knows, quien sabe, the Spanish way of asking the same thing and I go from quien sabe to wabe sabe and I see an answer in the definition of “the beauty of things modest and humble, of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete…” cairns, goats, a woman who weaves cloth and goat stories, it’s all here, no more is needed…

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  9. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Just to clarify: the way I spelled wabi-sabi in my comment was intentional. Also, for the record, I got my name back, hopefully, no more uie…and I blush in embarrassment to say how easy it was. All I had to do was type over the letters but I had done so before and it didn’t work and now it has…quien sabe!

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  10. Deb G Avatar
    Deb G

    I think you have described what I like about goats. And toddlers too. The cat and chihuahua I live with are like that. Briar not so much, she is a people pleaser. Which direction does your Cairn point?

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  11. dee Avatar
    dee

    Even though I live in a suburb of Boston, in a tidy, fenced 1/4 acre with no horizon in sight, there is much that feels familiar here. It is just so apparent that these goats are your teachers and you let them be as much. How Grace is that?! The daughter incommunicado, the boys given away, the smooth requesting, the skittering away and returning — and, how you hold it all. thank you Grace.

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  12. dee Avatar
    dee

    WHAT feels familiar?! – feeling uncertain, one child in Montreal who won’t communicate (with his parents, anyway), another who must have goat in his genes he is so oppositional, the impulse toward shrine-building…

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  13. jude Avatar
    jude

    it is good to see the goats. i think they are part of the building.

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  14. grace Avatar
    grace

    willfullness is such a good word. and applies a lot.
    but then, there is something else. like they are just
    so surprised that you think something is a good idea.
    Acey’s word, astonished. and then there’s another
    response…they just can’t imagine something being good.
    i realized today that i need to approach the Goat Report
    differently. not as a group, but individually, or pairs
    maybe. they are all very different.
    AND, i am hoping they change as we go along. no way to know.

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  15. grace Avatar
    grace

    we are good here. we do the days in a good way and for me,
    that’s a Life worth living.
    i have done it different in the past, with Growing. and
    that was good. as it goes, i am back working at that too
    with readying the raised beds for spring planting. i
    spent some time the other day wondering what i’d rather
    be doing?, rather be Devoting the days to? and there
    was nothing i’d change. and that’s something.

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  16. grace Avatar
    grace

    this next week will remain blue skied but after that we
    are supposed to get rain, a little snow even. if it goes
    as “Usual”, these things are only partial days, there is
    usually, always sun. it’s what i love about it here.

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  17. grace Avatar
    grace

    cistern??? what?????
    i missed something????
    do you always go away so much in the cold months????
    love,

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  18. grace Avatar
    grace

    we share the luck. there’s a lot more going on that i
    was too tired to write yesterday. i should have waited.

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  19. grace Avatar
    grace

    and it’s in the living of it

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  20. grace Avatar
    grace

    i kinda liked the other one…

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  21. grace Avatar
    grace

    it points East and receives end of day blessings of the
    West.

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  22. grace Avatar
    grace

    it Gives a lot, so makes me want to hold it well

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  23. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes…familiarity…yup.

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  24. grace Avatar
    grace

    i need to do better. this does not honor what All they
    really Are.

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  25. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    you seem to know plenty for not knowing. trying to remember the last time that i ever felt like i knew what i was doing? ever? i could do with some time next to that cairn. & can’t stop looking at that sky of yours. so blue and big.

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  26. grace Avatar
    grace

    that’s what New Mexico is. Sky. Blue and Big.
    we have one more week of warm before any precipitation.
    then some rain, maybe snow. the snow ordinarily
    melting by noon or mid afternoon. moisture though.
    otherwise, it will be a Very Dry summer.
    the cairn. the cairn says, i am here. i am here
    mindfully. it is a cairn of Intention. a marker mostly
    for me not to forget, even for a moment. not to get
    lazy, even for a moment.

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  27. Suzanna Avatar
    Suzanna

    I like the way you put the pictures right up against each other, no space between…it feels peaceful and quiet, like we are there too, all quite natural…

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  28. Michelle in NYC Avatar
    Michelle in NYC

    I misREAD something—“and last, here is the cairn” (noun
    1 a mound of rough stones built as a memorial or landmark, typically on a hilltop or skyline.• a prehistoric burial mound made of stones.)—It’s my eyes again, and maybe my muddled brain as well.
    I’ve been traveling since the storm…it’s more than usual, though I almost always get up to friends in MA at the Winter holidays…just this time for longer. And, by the way, it’s hardly cold here YET.
    Love too. Lots!

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  29. Michelle in NYC Avatar
    Michelle in NYC

    Intense.

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  30. yvette Avatar
    yvette

    intense..yes intense

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  31. grace Avatar
    grace

    Suzanna…thanks for this thought…i wish i could
    develop a little skill with posting pics in a variety
    of ways..
    it is peaceful. i want to portray that even more..
    and
    GO LOOK at Martine’s blog Ateliercolore.blogspot
    …her sister’s felted piece, exquisite and you will love it….
    xoxo

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  32. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes…they are fully present to themselves, the herd and
    their environment at ALL TIMES…constant….

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