windthread

~Wind~

there is no pic here.  it's too Windy.   there is conversation about Wind, here and there.  right now, the Reality of Wind.  Harsh.  Insistent. Cold.  Throwing sand everywhere, in our eyes, making them tear.  in our ears, making them ache.  Wind.  a harsh wind.  i waited, hoping Wind would quiet, but it didn't. and the Goats had been IN Wind, all day.  lying low to the ground where the experience of  Wind is less.  but now, late in the day,  they mill around, not quite knowing what to do with themselves, no place being comfort~able.  and to go Inside before dark is alien to them.  so, i go out to feed, clutching the grass hay flakes to my chest to prevent Wind from taking them and sailing them into shreads before i get to the Goat bowls.  no easy thing.  and i dump the water bowls because there is a film of sand and scrap across the water.  fill with fresh but as i fill i watch the same repeating. 

today i work at the Old Cowboy's.  cleaning his house, emptying his buckets of spit from his "chew". discussing his new flat screen TV and how postage has gone up YET AGAIN, one penny.  he keeps his home at about 80 degrees.  and then, i go to the grocery store before home.  Both these places are out of the WIND.  home again and this tin box is COLD.  and i start a fire and wait, as above, already said, wait a while.  hoping Wind will decide to rest.  go back into the mountains.  quiet.  Not.  and accuweather does not mention wind tomorrow.  or the next day.  so tomorrow i will go shovel the little round balls of goat poop into the wheel barrow i think.  hang around with them.  We will all be glad that things are Easier and mill about with each other and make sounds.  and  then, maybe Thursday i will go steal those chairs.

 

 

 

the rest of it

an outside No Freeze apparatus for Goat water.  one in front, one in back.  this required that all the water lines under the house be dug up and reconfigured/replaced.

almost finished. 

the Unforseen

those two words are really what's on my mind today.  but i haven't showed you yesterday yet.  and it was yesterday that allowed the Unforseen to rise to the forefront today.  so, yesterday:

the herb garden

watering inside the tree nest she had created

her house.  to me, the most beautiful house in the world ever.

her bedroom

the cheetah in the fireplace

her daughter, Clellan's (who lives in Spain) chair.

kitchen cabinets

i love this house.  i have posted pics of it before.  it's a very old adobe in Magdalena that has slowly slowly been design mended to be so totally and completely uniquely the home of my friend....who does not live there now.  only comes now and again to water the yard she has so equally Care~fully created.  being here with her is a real gift.

from here we went over so i could meet Ann, the other goat woman.  they live a few miles out of town.

she has two does...Nubian... and one buck.  both does are due to kid in April.  This meeting will need to be it's own post.  but it was very very great.  full of promise.  and then on the way back, we stopped at my other friend Janet's house.  Janet was in her late 70's and decided to go back from whence she came...Minnesota.  her home is empty now.  for sale.  cheap.

Janet's back barn where she loved and cared for a small herd of mohair goats.  almost every year at the New Mexico State Fair, she won the blue ribbon for her wool.

back of  her house and my friend Fancher.  this depicts something that has always interested me. what we see here is dried weeds.  Friend Janet has been gone only a year.  prior to that she had all manner of plants, bulbs, little vegetable garden areas throughout.  for all practical purposes, the land has forgotten all that and given itself over to weeds.  hmmmm.

she built this pond.  it had fish and lily pads

one of the rain barrels.  about 3ft tall

a small house, behind her neighbor's house.  a mother in law house.  very common here.

and what might land me in jail.  there are two of these aluminum beauties.  left behind back by her barn.  i want them.  like, really WANT them.  she is gone and maybe uncontactable.  do i just drive my truck up there and take the chance????  it's theft, in a certain way, but in some other way, hmm.

 

 

nothing much left of me tonight

i wanted to say more, show more.  but i am depleted in the moment.  except to put this here:

this is one of the last "dolls" i made.  in a certain way, she was Half Hearted.  but when i went up the mountain today to my friend's home,  where this doll resides, and saw her there on the wall, in this very quiet beautiful home,  i was flooded with .....flooded with a very very quiet joy.  Look.  another flag.  another being with a Flag.  just as the being on the Luring of Crows is.  with a Flag.  to be honest,  i'd forgotten.  i'd forgotten this doll.  i'd forgotten that i had given her to my friend.

How could i have forgotten?

but i do.  what is past often times is just Gone to me.  is that a fault?  or a good sign?  i don't know.  but i will put more here tomorrow and for now just let it all go into the night.

 

looking

Developmental stages...Life Stages...Part III (?)

ok.

the weather couldn't have been better.  highs around 60, lows in the 20's.  Sun shine.  and the first part of the week i figured out how to deal with the Goat feed issue.  Arranged to buy good grass hay (for a dollar more! than the alfalfa was) and researched to see if the addition of goat pellet feed (and how much) and free choice minerals (and how much) would work.  i think we are going to be ok.  what they Will miss is the crunchiness of the alfalfa stems.  Remember, goats are browsers...like deer.  they need crunch.  twigs,  crispy things.  So to compensate for that,  i will need to scrounge downed cottonwood branches in the bosque...along the river.  There.  ok then.  But, this is even More of a commitment.  so i thought it is time to really take a long look at it all.  So i went back to an old "practice" i used to use a lot, but haven't for years.  I sit, as long as it takes, as many "sessions" as it takes and "open" to visualizing my life as a Story.  a novel.  with a central character who is someone a lot like me.  and i watch the story play out....beginning always at the beginning and going through all the stages, the chapters so far.  And the trickiest part is when i reach the present.  How do i see "her" going forward?  What is next for "her"?  and i realized that this novel of mine probably could be said to be in Three Parts.  Birth to young adulthood.  Young adulthood through say maybe mid 40's to the ...............present.  and now, here i am at Part III.   it would be a blank page in the book, with only the black type:  Part III.  So...what's next? 

and what i kept coming back to, of all the possibilities,  was:  keeping goats.  Learning goats.  Learning to make food by keeping goats.   And  growing food.  storing food that is grown, which i've done a lot of in the past but not for the last 2 or 3 years.  And,   ~Cloth~.  

These three things. 

so for 2 days,  i practiced a Perfect Day that included these three things.  and the days Were, yes,  Perfect.   so...i have decided.  done deal.  this of course takes into account the occurance of the Unforseen...."you never know", as the main character in Arundhati Roy's beautiful book, The God of Small Things says.  "You never know.  it's best to be prepared".  and i think for me, the way to be prepared is to always remember that "you never know".

i spent a lot of hours working with the composting of the raised beds:

from just outside the doe fencing

it's already decomposing

the looooong compost bed.  nothing will be planted here.  it's just for making compost.   6x30 ft.

a small space, for climbing beans  8x3 ft

just to the right of the one before, the corner that begins the strip along the house.  shaded, wetter.

more along the house.  again, shaded, wetter by nature.

raised bed.  20x6 ft  right now filled with a few mouldy bales of alfalfa in addition to the manure.

new experimental cold frame

raised bed along the West house yard fence  12 x 4ft

the long strip along the outside of the house yard  3x40 ft.  something there that the goats wouldn't be interested in...maybe onions?  used to be tomatoes.  tomatoe plants are toxic for goats.

and on the floor...a scrap smaller than the size of a dime, but the Perfect scrap for a clump of grass for she who lures crows.

and then...the Unforseen:

so...typepad didn't want to let me reduce size of these pics tonight.  and so it goes.

 

 

 

 

where it's going

amidst it all

it changes.  Luring Crows

Buckwheat's Great and Horrible Day Part 2

it's dark.  it's quiet out there for the first time in hours and hours.  how they have settled things i don't know.  and there is an urge to go look,  take the flashlight and look.  but there's no point.  there would be nothing i could do.  it's cold.  these days till Tuesday, according to accuweather are the coldest, then we begin the upswing.  Till Tuesday.  Cold.  And just before i came in, i see that Just Going has a bloody head.  this would be from being butted by Arctica, Buckwheat's sister.  the only doe with horns.  but it had congealed.  ok.  and  did the does agree that all could sleep inside on the straw, out of the wind?  i don't know.  and Buckwheat,  is he ok alone?  and Just Going again...Lucky Star is her mother.  she still nurses.  how will this go?  and the daughter.  what is She thinking tonight?  how does this world look inside her head right now?  and then...there's me.  who thinks too much.  who wants everyone and everything to be ok and once again, oh once again, learning the lesson of just going.  learning the lesson of not knowing anything at all, really, unless the choice would be to repeat each day in replication of the one before.  and i've never been able to do that. 

and yesterday, Kenny, the alfalfa grower who i get my feed from told me that it's "over".  He has sold all his alfalfa to 2 cattle ranchers from Texas.  semi trucks full.  that today he would load the final bales.  i buy 6 bales a week.  that means 100 bales till first cut in May.  he said he would count, and if he could, save me those 100 bales.  he would let me know.  no word yet.

i am restless.  needed to add this.....

Mo's hope.

 

Buckwheat's Great and Horrible Day

this is a Journal Page.

i was going to just write.  no pics.  but then...here.  Buckwheat in June.

here he is.  still innocent.  still clean.  still fluffy.  the ensueing 6 months have changed him.   he is now rough looking.  thicker, yellower from perfuming himself with his own urine for 6 months.  he is a bully.  but then, someone always is in buck world. 

and today was a Great day for him because Lucky Star was HOT.  she was in the back doe pen,  that is directly across from the buck pen, moaning, calling, begging.  there was tension in the buck pen  with displays galore and at one point,  old Gideon fell flat on his side from his efforts.  and not being able to stop, i worried about Buckwheat's horns.  Sunny Ray challenges him more and more.  Sometimes it's just a whirl out there of buck dance and already,  Tenzen had a bloody face.

also...last week the incommunicado (over 2 months) daughter showed up.  talking Some of things.  she was here a few hours for that talking and then left, as deftly as she had arrived leaving many questions floating.  and i woke in the middle of the night to the oh so crystal clear realization that she had been wearing her "good" jacket and the one the butterfly pin is on.  Not...a goat coat.  oh.  that was a clue right there but it took over a week for me to "see" it.  anyway, at least there was a little goat Talk.  me saying this is the LAST month to breed and asking who to who...her answer was Buckwheat to anyone i might want to milk and then, when we have "used" him, sell him.  He is beautiful and  from a very deliberate breeding.  He will be a fine "only" buck for someone because of his horns.  he was born right within days of her arriving in California and she could find no one, in time, to disbud him. 

Everything is so heavily weighed by ....timing.

So, Lucky Star in heat.  Buckwheat needing to go, a danger to three others.  ok.  and here i am.  how to do this.  to do things with 2 individual goats,  and a buck and a doe in heat, is tricky at best.  the entire herd views these things as a free for all, a communal act with everyone whirring around and enjoying themselves.  but no.  So many small steps.  close the door to the inside of that pen's access to the big doe shed.  close off that far doe pen's access to the corridor that runs behind the shed to the first pen and this involves dragging the truck panel in there and figuring out how to secure it which involved a LOT.  that done,  connect some of the heavy fencing to the outside of the buck pen and pull it across and secure it in the other side.  not easy.  done.  in to the first doe pen and block off the access to the corridor...hard, all 12 of the does wanting to squeeze back and forth.  done.  Lucky is in the back pen now, alone.  waiting, moaning.  Lure Buckwheat out of the buck pen while keeping the other 3 in.  not easy.  Buckwheat is wary but Lucky Star's soft voice works in my behalf.  OUT!...  Open the door to back doe pen, let Lucky stick her head out till he understands he can go In there.  IN!  tie gate.  tie fake gate.  DONE!!  sorta.  So....Lucky does all the things a doe should do and after about an hour of Buckwheat preening and muttering buckly things i give up watching and go split wood, roll baling wire,  just listening.  and by 4 oclock its getting cold and dim and all the rest are miserable at being left out and hungry.  so, it's done.   find the collar and lead, undo the fake fence, go in that pen and bring Lucky out.  tie that pen shut, being sure top and bottom all the while hanging on to Lucky Star who wants to go home. 

and now it's almost dark.  Buckwheat is alone in his honeymoon pen.  the other 3 bucks are lonely for him.  the does all are chasing eachother around being mean because of the tension of the day and especially to Lucky Star because she smells.

So, i don't know.

I really don't know.  but something got done that needed to.