Simple Hobby Homesteading

From the desk of Ella,

What you think a goat shouldn’t have a desk? Well, let me tell you, I have plenty of needs for a desk. Where else would I keep my massive stationary collection? Hey, that stuff makes a great midnight snack! It is also quite comfortable to hop up on top and taunt the young kids and old goats who aren’t as agile and mountain climby as I am… yes, my desk is my own personal mountain. Go ahead, be a little jealous. Get yourself a desk and you can have your own mountain too. We can be mountain goats together!

I have to be quite honest with you… things around this “hobby” farm can be quite boring when there are no visitors. Besides, what is a “hobby” farm?  Am I being led to believe that I am nothing more than a hobby to these people? I don’t quite know how I feel about that as I ate the dictionary pages d-tr and therefore have no idea what “hobby” even means. Should I be flattered or insulted? Seriously, someone please tell me, I’m losing sleep over this.

So I get bored. A girl can only chew cud and scream like a woman being murdered (go ahead, YouTube it… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlYlNF30bVg  )for so long before even that becomes just plain boring. When I get bored I tend to make up fun games for myself and any other hoofed (or is it hooved… I really wish I would have read those dictionary pages before I ate them) critter lucky enough to have my acknowledgement for the day. Recently, I have been trying my hand at a new game, “Escape from prison.” It’s actually quite fun and gets more and more challenging each time as the fences get higher, electric tape and wire is added, holes get mended, and less and less volunteers let me climb on their back to hop over the gate. Why is it all about keeping us behind fences for these hobby farmers? Do they not realize I have a few boyfriends over in yonder enclosure? Perhaps they are training me for the next “goat ninja warrior”… I would rock that hardcore!

Today I was able to not only escape my own enclosure but I was able to break INTO the great hay room of dreams. Seriously, all the hay you could eat and it was the good stuff… alfalfa, orchard grass, a lot of clover and some divine fescue… like eating candy… if candy was dried grass. I ate, chewed my cud, dropped some berries and ate some more… it was magnificent! Admittedly I am not holding this girlish figure very well after that little escapade but wow was it worth it and the boys in yonder enclosure are still giving me that “come hither” look so I must wear the extra weight well.

Now, don’t think I don’t get fed often without breaking into the hay loft and feed room. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression… I get fed well and often. It’s just that the other goats tend to eat from the same spot I do and they slobber all over and lick every piece of hay and that is just plain disgusting. It’s not like I want to live in a bubble free from all germs and coodies but I  have to draw the line somewhere and having others slobber, lick, and even look at my hay makes it… well… it just makes it unappetizing. Don’t judge me.

Another fun game is one I like to call “kick the bucket.” I get up on the milk stand, start eating my grain like a good little goat, let the lady farmer start milking and singing sweetly to me (she’s totally tone deaf but seems to delight in singing to us goats), and then just as my udder is almost empty I take my back left hoof and kick the milk can right off the stand. It is HILLARIOUS! Of course the singing stops (a blessing if I ever had one) and sometimes the lady farmer even totally gives up emptying my udder and lets me loose to run off and tell all the other goats how much fun I just had. Sometimes she gets a second can and empties me out which actually feels good so whether I partake in this game or not is a toss up every morning and night.

We are on a break from milking for a while as the lady farmer has announced that it is “breeding time.” I’m not sure what that means but the last time she talked about breeding time I got super duper fat and five months later I ended up with a loud mouthed little kid (the visitors all swooned over him) with a huge head! It will be interesting to see what happens this time during “breeding time”… perhaps we will eat raspberries all day or take long hikes at sunset through the woods. We’ll see, I’ll keep you posted!

~Ella