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.
