One of the unexpected benefits of living here is the access we have to Fern Grove.
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Watering is the hardest part of the job. Lots of physical labor, hauling buckets, usually getting wet and sometimes cold, always dirty. It’s not the kind of thing most people would enjoy.

But in some ways, it’s my favorite part of the morning routine. By this time, the does have been throwing hay around and their water is totally dirty. And they’re often thirsty. Sometimes as I’m filling the bucket, a goat will put her head down and I’ll adjust the hose so it doesn’t splash. Then she sucks in long drinks as the bucket fills, sometimes raising her head, droplets falling as she blinks in the sunlight, savoring it.

This, I think, is as fine an expression of gratitude as I have ever experienced. It is utter satisfaction, to give an animal a drink of fresh water.

A lot of people pay lip service to gratitude. They make lists of things they’re grateful for, and always remember to say thank you. And that’s all good. But it’s easy to miss the most important part of gratitude of all: experiencing the moment. That’s what goats excel at…being in the moment, all senses completely alive. They are sensate creatures in the extreme, and just being around them helps me get back into the physical world, too, and out of my churning brain. It may be why I love working with them so much; it helps me get back into my own body.

To experience a goat enjoying a long drink of cool fresh water is to experience an expression of gratitude that goes beyond language. Gratitude is not saying the right thing or even about noticing; it is about accepting fully and completely; receiving what is offered with all senses alive.

…………………………………..

Thursday morning started on Wednesday night.

I was away and got a text…“Maple had her kids.” I texted back that I wouldn’t be back until close to ten, but there was a clean pen waiting for her.

When I got home, I stopped at the pens to check and see if the goat and her kids had been safely put away. We let the does deliver the kids in the pasture, then move them into pens where the kids are easier to keep track of and keep warm. But the pen I’d left clean for the next delivery was empty.

I also had a phone message…P said they’d set Maple up in a pen, so I was off the hook for the night. I was grateful…5am comes early, especially later in the week. I catch up on Saturday, “Napday”.

Thursday morning, I head down in the dark for 6am feeding and look in on the mamas-in-waiting in pasture. I see Maple and I’m confused. She clearly hasn’t kidded, so I head for the pens. I find Marilyn Monroe in a pen near the one I’d cleaned. It’s a dirty pen. I’m irritated immediately. I feel like I’m the only one who pays attention to cleanliness and the only one who cares about it from a health standpoint for the goats. So far this year, I’d always gotten mamas and babies into clean pens.

Marilyn and her babies look fine, so I go to the haybarn and start loading up and then feeding. It’s still dark, so everything is done by headlamp. It’s a dark, quiet time of day, and I enjoy working alone with the goats as the light rises.

I get done with the goats in the “patio” (a wood-floored barn) and head for the pens in the “circus” (a tarp-covered shelter). As I’m feeding in one row of pens, an unmistakable feeling comes over me. Someone has died. I know that when I turn around, I’ll find it.

I turn, aiming the headlamp down the row and scanning back. Here it is, directly behind me. Ginger’s larger baby lays dead. Her small, tiny, cute baby lays, still breathing, but with his head trapped under mama. She’s down, and shouldn’t be…it’s feeding time, all goats are on their feet.

I get her off the baby and find him far too weak and thin. I move the dead baby out of the pen, get Ginger to stand, and try to get the baby to nurse. It’s no use; her teats are too tight, too hard.

Since P’s been taking care of the health issues while I do maintenance chores, I decide to finish feeding and watering the rest of the goats first. If P comes down first, she can work with Ginger, otherwise I’ll come back. My irritation grows, feeds itself. If I owned the place, I’d do things differently. But of course I don’t. And I let it fuel my resentment.

I get done before P. comes down and get to work with Ginger. I stuff the kid into my coat for warmth and try to milk her; I get enough milk to fill a syringe and get some into the kid. He is the tiniest kid I’ve ever seen, but was strong just a day ago. He has his mom’s light coloring, very unusual in this herd, and though I know I’m probably only saving him to be sold for meat, I want to try. I get milk into him, and his eyes flicker and he holds his head up. It seems hopeful. When I see P’s car coming down the driveway, I start to cry. I am a wad of emotion and, yes, rage and I know I won’t be able to get my way about things.

P comes down to the pens and tells me what she’s been doing to care for some of these problematic goats. I hold my tongue. No middle ground for me, nosiree…I will either have it all my way, or I will be sullen in silence. I’m working on it, but old ways of being die slowly. And really, what can I do? Am I going to tell someone with almost three decades of experience that I, someone with just barely one year, disagree? It is the curse of intuition…to so often be right, without knowing how, and therefore never quite being able to develop a trust in that knowing. If I can’t explain to you how I know what to do, then how do I ever know that I’m right? Who am I to say “don’t use vinegar for that” or “I don’t think those two goats have the same thing wrong” or even “put the new goat in that pen not the other”?

P looks at Ginger’s kid and pronounces it hopeless. She pulls him out of his mom’s pen, “At least he won’t get stepped on.” I don’t see the logic. If he’s dying anyway, why not let him stay with mom? But I stay silent.

I wait until she leaves, then go back and look at the kid. He’s still breathing. He bleats. Goddammit. I know she’s right, that he is dying, but when something is fighting that hard to live, I can’t just leave it to die in the cold alone. So I stuff him back into my coat, get a good full cup of milk from Condor, grab a syringe, and head for the yurt, while it starts to rain.

He bleats again on the way up. I’ve seen kids fail to thrive and die before, but they never bleated, so I take it as a good sign. I decide to throw a towel in the dryer to warm it and wrap around him. But someone is using the dryer. My anger grows. Why is everyone working against me? I know I’m being unreasonable, but it gets away from me all the same. I throw the towel in with their clothes anyhow and wait. Then I take it out, and head down the stairs from P’s back porch, where the dryer is.

Suddenly, I am airborne. My muck boots, with treads that are so good in muck, are no good on slippery surfaces. My feet fly out in front of me, and I land with a terrific crash, my back onto the stairs.

There isn’t anyone around to hear me cry and curse with pain and more rage. I haven’t killed the kid in my fall; he’s safe in the front of my coat. It takes me a few moments to confirm that I“ll live, too. I race to stand up, just to prove I can.

Those of you who depend on doing physical labor to earn your way in life will understand the sick feeling that goes along with an accident like this…what if it’s so bad I won’t be able to work? Just in case the physical pain doesn’t have enough layered nuances of its own, the brain likes to kick in with some, too.

I know I’ve been brought back to earth, literally, because I’ve been so lost in my head. I try to take stock. What is the next right thing?

I can’t take care of a goat unless I take care of myself. I get the kid under wraps, put the kettle on…hot water to warm milk and to make coffee. Rekindle the fire. Get out of wet dirty clothes and check over my wounds. Already, the largest bruise I’ve ever had is bulging on the left side of my lower back. I find another below my elbow. I know there will be more, but this stopping to take stock of it is new behavior…gold star for me. Usually it takes me a full day before I know where the injuries really are. I’m not not in touch. But I sort it out, get the arnica gel, get the ibuprofen, remind myself to check in from time to time on what I’m feeling in case there’s anything worse. I’m probably lucky in this case to have the extra padding.

Coffee made, milk warmed, I set to work on the kid. I get milk into him, holding him partly under my shirt…feel this warmth, feel another heartbeat, soak up some life for yourself…and I feel hopeful.

I start the other job, late, then give the kid another feeding in an hour. But he seems to be fading.

He dies soon after.

It’s sad, but not devastating. I am more frustrated with myself and my role in the whole situation. And I know I’m in for some real pain that will arrive in the next day or so. But I can feel good about having some courage to follow my own course of action. I will learn how to put down a baby goat if I have to, but I am done with leaving them laying on a cold platform to die.

…………………………………..

Skip to Friday evening.

I’m driving back from a meeting, and the moon is up, shining through the redwoods as I drive, so bright that I think it’s an oncoming car around the curve at first. The playlist on my phone is sorted by artist, and The Clash keeps me company on the ride home. I’m usually dead tired by the time Friday night rolls around, but the meeting was lively and the espresso before it didn’t hurt, either.

As I come out of the redwoods, I’m back in phone range and the sounds of my phone tell me that there is a message. I manage to hear most of it over ”Death or Glory“, which I refuse to mute for the sake of a phone message…Lily struggled and had an enormous boy, but they are still in the pasture.

I roll into the driveway, head into the yurt, stoke the fire, and change back into goat clothes. It’s 10pm by the time I head out the door with my headlamp, but I don’t need it. The moon throws all the light I could want, even with the storm clouds scudding across it. I realize how lucky I am that I don’t have to do this in the rain.

I find Lily and her giant boy; he’s next to the mud, and it will be much better to get them into a pen tonight. I snap the leash onto her, having already fastened the other end to my belt loop, and grab the kid. ”Come on, mama…let’s get you guys safe and dry.“ She’s reluctant to cross the mud at first, but eventually comes along, following me with the kid.

I’m leading her to the pen and realizing that, for this moment, I am happy. Even after this exhausting week, even as the soreness sets in over my left side, even with the anger I still haven’t managed to sort out…this simple act of caring for these two goats makes me feel settled and at ease. I notice the moonlight, the clouds. I notice that my coat is warm and that these muck boots are wondrous things for getting through the mud that is everywhere now. I like being alone out here on the ridge, everyone else asleep, the smell of baby goat against my coat.

Getting water and hay for a single goat, I realize there isn’t anything I’d rather be doing. It is a small act of service to an animal that most people, even here, know as ”9“. But in a single moment, it is everything, and for that single moment I can touch that space of gratitude that opens out, over the ridge, under all of the moonlight.

There are hard days to come. The second set of does are all ones that had problems last year, problems that kept them off the milk line. And suddenly this morning, problems errupted in a fury. Some of the problem goats are going to auction tomorrow to help pay the feed bill, and there will be painful choices for P. to make and for me to help with. We may have to sell the goat that my 7-year old nephew wants to marry. I may not agree with the prognosis she’s been lumped into. And I will continue to struggle with my own head, my own self-will, on top of it all.

But if I can open to it, if I can keep my feet on the earth, there will also be moments like a night under clouds and moonlight. Just do the next right thing.