Of the Flesh

The baby goats here are getting bigger, shockingly so. We’re going through hay, fast. We know things grow; it happens all the time around us. Things are born and get bigger, this is the way of things. You could probably get clever and chart your hay usage through the season and track [...]

Cultivating the Honest Heart

I remember that in kindergarten, I decided on the first or second day that I really liked a boy named Bobby, and that he would be my boyfriend. He didn’t seem to mind; he teeter-tottered with me on the playground in between playing with his other friends. We sat together on the bus, [...]

Tattered

My on-running joke is that I’m going to start up eco-tours here. Friends have come by and stayed for goat feeding time, filling water buckets and carrying grain. Another split some wood for fun…”I feel so manly!” My brother even helped clean under pens before any of the baby goats even arrived.
Today’s [...]

Missing the Bird

On Sundays and Thursdays, I go to zen groups where we meditate and then hear a talk by a teacher or guest speaker. In zen, there is a lot of talk about the “self.” I’ve often heard a quote from Dogen, “To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study [...]

Seriously

I’m still struggling to know what to write here, although I feel like I do want to be posting more. Sometimes it’s hard to overcome the urge to put a positive spin on everything. There’s an inner voice that wants to leap in, “If things aren’t going perfectly, it’s your own damn fault. [...]

Just Kidding

We’re about half-way through kidding of the two-year old and older goats here…35 of those. And, because the yearlings are also pregnant, we’ve got a couple of those with kids now as well. It’s been intense; there’s a lot of work to do, which is mostly good. I tend to lose track [...]