Chook, chook, chook, chook,
“Good morning Mrs Hen,
How many chickens have you got?”
“Madam I’ve got ten,
Four of them are yellow
And four of them are brown
And two of them are speckled red,
The finest in the town.”
Every Day They Save Us; Sometimes We Save Them.
Help Us Help You
The New York Times, "Why Doing Good Is Good for the Do-Gooder," October 2017. Emphasis ours. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/well/mind/why-doing-good-is-good-for-the-do-gooder.html
"Volunteering is linked to health benefits like lower blood pressure and decreased mortality rates."
Read morethe Creativity of Bees
Our bees made this sculpture from bits of comb floating in honey placed in the hive to feed them over the winter.
"Untitled," beeswax, Capering Goat Dairy Bees, 2017.
A particularly beautiful specimen from 2014. WHIT DESCHNER/GREAT SALT LICK AWARDS // From the article "Perhaps You’d Like to Purchase Art Sculpted by a Cow" COPYRIGHT 2017 | ATLAS OBSCURA | 61 GREENPOINT AVE, BROOKLYN, NY 11222
Then we learned of a fundraiser for Parkinson's research held in Baker City, Oregon where curated salt licks are entered into an art contest with the winners auctioned off to the highest bidders. “Goats and deer are more realist,” [contest founder Whit Deschner] says. “Cows are more impressionist. The horses aren’t artistic at all.”
While the adjacent photo isn't attributed to a particular ungulate (guess it's not a horse, though), notice the striking similarity to our bees' work?
A nice reminder of how creative living creatures are when given space, time, and sound materials.
What Mammals Need
Goat in a Tote
Sometimes they're so cute, you just have to take them with you.
Favoritism
There are drawbacks to being in a farmer's family (very few movie nights, for example), but the perks are lively and, like this here milk, alive.
A Milking Poem
In spondees, equal weight to each (udder).
SILENT POEM
backroad leafmold stonewall chipmunk
underbrush grapevine woodchuck shadblow
woodsmoke cowbarn honeysuckle woodpile
sawhorse bucksaw outhouse wellsweep
backdoor flagstone bulkhead buttermilk
candlestick ragrug firedog brownbread
hilltop outcrop cowbell buttercup
whetstone thunderstorm pitchfork steeplebush
gristmill millstone cornmeal waterwheel
watercress buckwheat firefly jewelweed
gravestone groundpine windbreak bedrock
weathercock snowfall starlight cockcrow
Character Building
This courtesy of The Female Farmer Project: From our friend Blair of Madstone Farm... "The tender absurdity of farmy mama [and grand-mama] multitasking. Can't say it is easy but I imagine it builds character on all our parts --bovine included."
To motherhood -- in its many farmy forms.
Milking Postures
Equality on the Farm
Equal pay for equal (lamb bar prepping) work: milk, meat, honey, cheese, love.
Did he who made the [vole] make thee?
[Farm] Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the [safe inside the house] forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake's version can be found here.
What the Happiest [Human and Goat] Kids Know
We at Capering Goat Dairy (coincidentally owned by a Hollander?) just discovered (thanks to a New York Times Travel feature) the Netherlands are full of farms called kinderboerderij, or children's farms, where children can pet, play, and feed the animals: “It’s very healthy to bring your children into contact with animals in farms; then you have stronger and healthier [human] kids...Children have a natural bond with animals anyway, so it’s good that they’re being given a possibility to explore that.”
Naturally, we agree.
And when it comes to the goats, Corine Riteco, who with her husband founded a goat farm in the late 1980's to demonstrate the benefits of organic farming to Amsterdam's urban population, says "We liked the goats because they’re such pleasant animals, and they like the attention of people who come in, and of course the baby goats are very cute.”
Well we agree with that, too.
New York Times Travel, "The Dutch Way: Tulips,Windmills and Barnyard Animals," Nina Siegal, March 21, 2017.
Here's Bandana with her first baby, who will get to play with lots of goat and human kids.
How to Pick Up Chicks
Why, what did you think we meant?
Thanks to Red Hen Farms for our one-month-old spring chickens!
The standing hold (with Black Astralorp).
The seated hold (with Americauna).
Our early spring is off to an auspicious start.
Cocoa Puff delivering, and us gals caring for, goat babies on International Women's Day.
A baby girl no less! (Standing first).
It's not always work, work, work...
Some of us have a sense of humor.
We'll miss you, Pumpkin!
Easing The Bees Along
This is the winter hive insulation set-up a few years back. This winter they've got tarps wrapped round instead of hay bales. With a few supplemental dishes of honey (with crushed up comb to stand on), so far, so good!
We don't harvest the honey unless a hive doesn't make it, in which case there's a sweet side to the otherwise sad loss of hard-working lady friends.
Being bee guardians lets Capering Goat Dairy's organic garden (and every other pollinator-dependent plant everywhere), flourish.
Hoofprints to Heartbeats
Farming takes a lot of love.
so much depends
The Red Wheelbarrow, by William Carlos Williams - and Capering Goat Dairy
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
...and upon the little farmer who pushes it.
The Ice Bucket View
Even the cold mornings of winter provide their entertainments, their beauties, their little windows on the world.