Snippets

Lily has managed to do the impossible - turn Wilson into an early riser. In fact, they have developed an early morning (approximately 6 a.m.) game I like to call "Thundering". The rules of the game are difficult to determine, but the sequence of events is as follows: Both dogs race through the dog door as fast as possible (extra points if they squeeze through at the same time), across the porch, down the stairs, a quick lap around the property (this is just a guess as I'm still trying to pretend to be asleep at this point), back through the dog door and in to their beds. The winner is apparently whoever makes it into the bed under the dresser, kind of like musical chairs. After a brief pause to catch their breath, the loser initiates another round by crashing through the dog door again. It's like having an alarm clock without a snooze button. ;)

You would think that because goats sort of look like deer and spend their days doing the same basic things as deer, that they, like deer, would be most active at dusk and dawn. Not so. Joe rises quite early and usually transfers the goats from their pen to the pasture first thing. Rather than jumping right into the important business of grazing, they spend the first hour or so standing end to end, heads drooping, almost motionless, like goat statues. If they had thought bubbles over their heads, I'm sure they would say "Why am I not still in bed?"

The other day, Joe called me at work to ask me if you could make yogurt with buttermilk. Hmm...all kinds of red flags went up. We had bought milk a few days before but had lost our yogurt starter in the move from Va Beach, so it sat in the fridge a while before we could make it into yogurt. Joe desribed the milk as "chunky" but not smelling bad. He decided to give it a try. As a lesson to anyone who would want to attempt such a thing in the future, here is a photo of the result. Wilson and Lily loved it. (Of course, they've been enthusiastically dragging around chunks of old deer carcass for days, so you can't say much for their food reviews.)



Joe is happy to be able to return to his favorite form of transportation.


Joe is also very happy about our over-wintered spinach patch!


Happy hay-eating goats.


A couple more pics of little Lily. She always has her ears turned inside out. The better to hear you with, my dear.


"I'm only half listening."