Jumping for joy!

Life is Goooood! I just heard from Deb Burns at Storey that I have until September 15 to finish Get Your Goat! I am so relieved. I want to do an especially good job with this book (after all, I want folks to read it and come away as enchanted with goats as I am) and have felt awfully harried these past few days.

The folks at Storey Publishing (http://www.storey.com/) are awesome. I’ve been writing since 1969 and have never worked with a nicer group. I enjoy writing for Hobby Farms magazine (http://www.hobbyfarms.com/) too, of course, but writing books for Storey is a dream come true.

Many years ago I bought a copy of Cherry Hill’s book, Becoming an Effective Rider. It's a terrific book—great content combined with beautiful design and quality printing. I said to myself, “One day I want to write books just like this one.” Now I do!

I am a slow writer—I wish I was faster but I’m not—and Storey has been wonderful about working with me and flexible deadlines. My editors are always cheerful when I need more time, despite the fact I know they’re probably tearing out their hair. If any of my editors are reading this, thank you, I really appreciate your kindness!

Storey’s Guide to Raising Miniature Livestock will be published in 2010, then Get Your Goat! As soon as I’m finished with Get Your Goat! I’ll be updating Storey’s Guide to Raising Meat Goats (my first book for Storey, written under my pseudonym, Maggie Sayer), then I’ll start writing Have a Cow! That should be fun to write as it isn’t your usual cattle book. Instead, it will cover topics like keeping a household dairy cow (and making yummy things with her milk) and teaching a cow or steer to ride and drive. I’ll also talk about selecting a breed (including alternate ‘cattle’ such as yaks and water buffalo ) and small-scale cattle keeping and the book will be packed with tons of fun stuff too.

Now, back to work on Get Your Goat!—but at a more comfortable pace (hurrah!).

Nokomis' Rules of Karate (as practiced by goats)

Twenty years or ago I worked with a remarkable woman named Audrey Wyman, a.k.a. Nokomis (no-ko-MEES; Ojibwe for “grandmother”).

Audrey almost singlehandedly raised 14 children after her husband left home; went back to college to get her degree so her family wouldn’t have to accept welfare, then taught school on one of the northern Minnesota reservations for many years; and in her late 60’s was still canoeing solo in the Boundary Waters. What an inspiration!

Audrey was also into karate. One day told me something that’s stayed with me lo these many years. These are, she said, the three basic tenets of karate: don’t be where trouble is; if trouble comes, run; and if you can’t run, fight. Tonight Moople and Edmund demonstrated what I’ve come to call "Nokomis’ Rules of Karate" to a T.

Here is Mopple, intent on breeding Edmund, who was not at all amused by his friend’s antics (“Don’t be where trouble is”).

So, he tried to leave trouble behind (“If trouble comes, run”).

And, because Mopple is just so doggoned insistent, he finally said, “Enough of this!” (“If you can’t run, fight”).

Not that it impressed Mopple the tiniest bit.

Lemonade!

Remember the saying, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” (we’re old hippies, we remember when it was the saying du jour)? We did exactly that this morning.

I got up at 6:30 AM, took bottles to Mopple and Edmund, let Martok and Uzzi (our Nubian buck and his wether friend) out in the yard for walkabout time, then came in to write until time to feed and milk. Shortly after 7 AM the power went out. So I read until feeding time and then did the chores but the power was still out at 9:30 when I put the bottled goat milk in ice water to cool. Since we live in a mobile home and this being mid-August in the Arkansas Ozarks, things were heating up pretty seriously. John suggested we put the dogs in the outdoor dog yard to stay reasonably cool, stop by the post office to see if my paycheck was there, and then go on to Batesville to buy my wagon.

So we did. I fed the guys their second bottle a little early (I’m feeding Mopple 12 ounces of goat milk, four times a day), made sure they had plenty of cool water (I plopped in two Philly Cream Cheese container ice cubes to be sure) and loose hay, and off we went.

It’s 80 miles to Batesville from here (Batesville is the closest decent-size town), so we had plenty of time to chat, then we enjoyed a fine lunch at a Chinese buffet we’d never tried before (mm-mmm, noodles!). Then, off to TSC.

TSC had three wagons in stock: a humongous silver model, a medium-size green one and a smallish red wagon. While red would’ve been nice to match the harness, the wheels on that model were awfully close together, so it didn’t seem stable. The green one is a good size for an adult goat or Mopple-size sheep to pull and the tires are set much farther apart, so that’s the one we chose.

So, John started pulling it toward the front of the store. Wait, I said, they won’t let you take the floor model, we’ll have to take a boxed one and put it together! Sure they will, he replied—just watch. And darned if the cashier didn’t let him have it. She not only let him have it (without charging extra for assembly), she followed him out to the van to help him load it. Who’d have thunk it!

Now I have a wagon (as soon as John makes its shafts) and a harness; it’s just a case of figuring out which goats to train to pull it and then, training them.

By the time we got home at 1:30 PM it was 94 degrees with the humidity really cooking (though mercifully the power was restored and the air conditioner humming), so I’d best wait till tomorrow to work with a goat.

I think Uzzi is the way to go but I’ve never worked with him separate from Martok, so we’ll do some leading refresher training out in the yard (with increasingly smelly Martok back in their paddock) before introducing something new.

An alternative might be Morgan the Sable though he doesn’t ‘do’ heat at all well (he has to pant a lot); he does, however, love attention (and food rewards!) of any kind.

Kes, our Boer herd queen wants to be a working goat (I’m going to lose some of you, I fear, when I admit I learned that via animal communication) and she’s cute, short and very, very blocky and strong, so she’s on the agenda too.

So many goats—so little time!

My harness came today!

John just came home from work with a package from the post office—my new wagon harness came today!

For those of you who don’t know, I entered this picture of Teasel (she’s telling sheep jokes: “Hey, did you hear the one about the six-legged ewe from Albuquerque?”) in the goat photo contest Marna Kazmaier hosted at her Working Goats Website (http://www.workinggoats.com/). It was judged on the number of votes each picture received during the entire month of July. The prize: one of Marna’s neat goat wagon harnesses.

I asked my family and friends to vote and it snowballed until about a million people were voting for Teasel’s picture every day. However, Diane in Kentucky (if you’re reading this, Diane, I’m sorry—I don’t know your last name) had an enormous following too. Our pictures battled it out all month long. As the contest closed, Diane’s cute picture of two packgoat kids crossing a wooden bridge captured 13% of the votes and Teasel, 12%. I didn’t win the harness.

So imagine my surprise when, two days later, Marna e-mailed to tell me an anonymous benefactor purchased a harness for me! I have no idea who it was but I’m very grateful (if you see this, again, thank you very much!).

So, the harness came today and it’s exactly like the prize in the photo contest: red with black trim. And such nice workmanship! Unlike my leather driving harness, it’s lightweight and beautifully stitched—perfect for a goat hitched to a utility wagon.

Tomorrow, book deadline or no, I’m going to take time to try it on one of my goats. Since it’s a standard-size harness and my Boer-Nubian wethers, Salem and Shiloh, are behemoths, I think I’ll fit it to a heretofore untrained goat. I’m thinking Uzzi would like to learn to pull a wagon and eventually, Kes, our Boer herd queen.

And, (yippee!) it’s the perfect size for Mopple when he's all grown up—and won’t red look splendid against his black and white coat!

When my next check comes, we’re off to TSC in Batesville to buy a wagon. I plan to convert one exactly like the setup in the picture below (the picture is compliments of Marna Kazmaier).

Racing toward a deadline

The Red Brothers, Meegosh and Hutch, watch Edmund and Mopple playing in the yard.

I won’t be blogging much for the next two weeks as I enter the home stretch toward my Get Your Goat! book deadline. Somehow I thought it was due on September 15 but it’s due on September 1, so it’s going to be a rush to the finish!

Mopple and Edmund are becoming fast friends. I keep Freddy, the puppy, indoors for several hours every day and let Mopple and Eddy out into the yard. Edmund stays with Mopple now instead of hanging out along the fence with The Red Brothers. He and Mopple have also learned which of the sheep and goats will and won’t butt them so they sometimes hang out with their milder-mannered older and bigger peers.