Ever wonder why the world seems to have it in for goats?

Why throw them over in favor of the sheep (who are also, I guess, not a good thing)? What did the goats ever do wrong?

Plenty, it turns out.

Look who’s behind Finch, off in the back of the classroom far corner of the pasture, in the woods on the other side of the fence.

That’s right. It’s Team Goat.

You’d think it was a Hieronymus Bosch or something, there’s so much transgression, revelry, and illicit enjoyment (well, actually, more than any of that: Milkshakes’ virid memento from Solomon!).

Instead of staying in the pasture, content with the grass and hay that are there, they’ve decided to make a break for freedom, and enjoy all sorts of forest edibles (the only ones I’m mad about are the ostrich ferns– I’ve had an yen for their fiddleheads since I saw them last spring!). They’ve busted a hole in the welded wire fencing we put up along the bottom of the four-board fences, and scooted underneath it.

As you can tell from their faces, these ladies (and their kids) are not at all repentant.

“We just wanted a little vacation! A bit of adventure!”

Adelaide & Sophie, potamophiloi both, enjoyed a riparian repast.

All there was to do was herd them back in through their hole (which is plenty tricky in the brushy undergrowth, let me tell you) and close up the hole in the fencing.

I guess I should be glad that the goats are healthy, active, and cocksure enough to go out for a daytime escape.

And, in unrelated news, look who else has turned up in the woods!

A flock of mysterious Bonus Chickens! We don’t think they’re our neighbors’, since they 1) sleep in a tree in the woods and 2) just showed up a few weeks ago. Amy told me what kind they are, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. There are about 4 or 5 hens, and a beautiful golden-buff rooster. We haven’t yet tried to adopt them– but should we? They seem to have quite a happy little woodland life already, and we need more chickens like a hole in the head.

Wren

Brooks

Lyra

Finch

Carina

Milkshakes and Mrs. Doubtfire, with Braeburn, Adelaide, & Sophie. They’re probably plotting a followup adventure to their escape into the woods yesterday.

Roquefort, I’d say, is the Platonic Ideal of GOAT– an exemplar of what it means to be caprine.

He’s terribly intelligent in a sneaky, slipping-around-you-and-through-the-gate way, but doesn’t understand getting out of the way of the 900-lb bales of hay we roll off the back of Mr. Hopkins’ pickup (Crushed by food? what a way to go!). He’s very determined (the word dogged comes to mind), and also, as you can see, a little bit crazy.

He was, until this past spring and the arrival of the colored flock, the only colored animal at Juniper Moon Farm. Handspinners fight over his silky grey curls.

Colored angoras are usually darker as kids and yearlings– much in the same way that children with beautiful blond or red hair  gradually fade to mousier versions of themselves– and Roquefort is no exception. He was, as a kid, black-black-black, but it’s mellowed since then.

He, like many other goats, is unable to resist the urge to be the highest thing in the pasture– to take the high ground. Usually, the only thing there is to climb on is the bale of hay, and so he jumps up and lords over the rest of the flock.

Hence the photos, and the name, “King Roquefort.”

He’s been in a few fights– his horns are all crooked in the back from getting in squabbles as a kid– but he’s much more laid-back now. However, he does still enjoy taking cocky youngsters down a peg.

He also has no qualms about jumping up into the yurt.

The above photo is from a while ago, but, yesterday, Zac and I were out doing some work on the yurt, and had our backs turned for about two seconds (“how are we going to get this giant roll of carpet in there??”). We turned around, and Roquefort was in the middle of the room, and had Martin halfway up the stairs, behind him.

Future yurt-stayers, beware! Don’t open your door to this goat, handsome though he be!

NEXT WEEK on SotW: last week, we had lots of requests for poultry. Incidentally, one of our ducks has recently become a STAR Knitwear Model, and, as such, you will get to meet her next week.

as for NEXT NEXT WEEK, keep your requests coming!

Also, lastly, I’d like to share with you all something that my friend Kellen sent me yesterday. (That’s correct. SHEEP YEARBOOK.) If my layout skills ever improve (…begin to exist…), maybe, just for fun, I’ll try and put together a JMF 2012 Yearbook.

Demi expresses her feelings on the rain.

The little lipstick smear of red on her lower lip is loose supplemental minerals. We’re making sure to feed everyone as much as they want– no White Muscle Disease this year!

Liberty

and Lundy. All this rain means lots of mud, which means we’ve got to check everyone’s hooves regularly.

Looks like Miss Emma, a first-time to-be mama this year, has also been by the mineral feeder.

Carina and Brooks

Wren having her minerals.

Mrs. Doubtfire prefers to stay out of the rain.

So does Nanny McPhee. She’s positively grinning.

And Cini holds down the fort.

Oh, Hannah!

How could I ever fully describe her?

Hannah was the first goat I ever really met at Juniper Moon Farm, and the first animal I was able to identify. She was one of the three angora does, and the only one of the three with curly horns.

She was also by far the brattiest, peskiest, and most troublesome out of all the mamas in the maternity pasture– she’d stick her head in the bucket of grain while I was trying to figure out how to latch the gate, almost knock me over by jumping her front hooves onto my back (again, that grain bucket), beeline between my legs to get to the trough (almost knocking me over again), and, when imminent food wasn’t apparent, she’d bleat dramatically: “If you aren’t going to feed us then what do you want?” She also has bad feet.

It took me about 2 days to figure out which one Hannah was.

But that’s her bad side.

The good parts more than make up for her outsized sense of goat-entitlement.

She’s a wonderful mother– attentive, doting, and genuinely loving. Her kids have all done fantastic.

And, despite all of her brattiness– or probably, in part, because of it– she’s personable, curious, and companionable. She comes up for food, but, if she finds out you don’t have any, she’ll stick around to get scratched around the ears and to nibble on your jacket. She’s a very friendly goat, and good company. Since she and her twin brother, Martin, were bottle babies, they’re much more comfortable around humans than another goat or sheep might be.

This is, of course, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they’re outgoing, amiable, and good “ambassadors” for the farm to our visitors. On the other, since they’ve been socialized to humans, the mystique is lost– instead of recognizing (and avoiding) your Other-ness, they treat you like they’d treat any other goat, and so can be bossy, pesky, and total pains.

The other thing about Hannah are her crazy, curled-back horns. They curl to the point where they’re in danger of coming around and (eventually) growing into the side of her head, so we have to clip the ends every so often with bolt cutters. Here’s Muffin and Emily giving Hannah her every-few-yearly trim at this past October at Fall Shearing.

Also, Hannah– well, Hannah happens to look a lot like Julia Roberts. This isn’t to say that Julia Roberts looks like an angora goat. The comparison only works one way, although, honestly, it wouldn’t even be an insult to say that she did– we love Hannah so much, we named a color of Chadwick after her!

Anyway, I hear that it’s rare to see the similarity, but there’s something about the big brown eyes, wide smile, strong chin, curls, and high cheekbones.When you see it, you’ll see it.

She may, in fact, be our reigning JMF’s Sweetheart. To know her is to love her. And she makes pretty darn sure that everyone knows her.

I think that she’s pretty pleased with herself, and she should be.

NEXT WEEK on SotW: Let me know who’d you’d like to hear more about (sheep, goat, donkey, dog, pig, cow, rooster, hen, duck, duck, goose), and I will do my best to REVEAL ALL.

The past few days have been excessively drear. We’ve seen grey skies, rain of all sorts and intensities, and temperatures in the disgustingly-high 60′s. This is the always-winter-and-never-Christmas sort of weather that characterizes this season in the South (although Zac heard a rumor at the gas station– that’s right, we get out sometimes– that there might be an inch or two of snow tonight!).

I think the flock’s had enough, though. Adelaide + Sophie showed up on the front porch this morning (they’re little enough to wiggle through the fences, but usually stay with their mama) and have done nothing but stand there and cry.

“Let us in! It’s wet and miserable out here!”

“Looks like you have plenty of room for a few little goats!”

 Then they try another trick:

“Come outside, then, and sit on the porch for a spell with us!”

They’re such adorable little ragamuffins.

In honor of breeding season, I thought we’d turn the spotlight to Jack, our buck, who is not only wildly handsome, but also blessed with the sweetest disposition possible.

He’s Susan’s absolute favorite goat of all time, ever, and it’s easy to see why. He was born back in Spring 2007, and she raised him as a bottle baby. Here he is at a few days old, towering over Gulliver.

Now, to raise a goat as a bottle baby doesn’t just mean that for 8 or so weeks, you’re running outside with a bottle of warmed-up milk about 5 times a day. It also means that you have made a friend for life.

Whether that friendship manifests itself in a spoiled, bratty way– the goat who’s always jumping up on you, looking for food– or a sweet, affectionate way– the goat who’ll always run up to be petted, and will walk around the pasture with you– that depends on the goat.

Jack is firmly of the latter sort.

This is made about a thousand times more important by the simple fact that Jack is, unlike all the other boys in the pasture, intact. A pushy wether is one thing– a pushy buck is another.

It’s the loads of testosterone that make him so stinky every fall. On the upside, it makes his horns so much more impressive than all the other angoras’ horns. It’s also what’s driving the thousand flirtations he’s been busy at over the past month– standing by the fence and sweet-talking the angora does, then running over to the other fence and sweet-talking the dairy does. That Jack is nothing if not charming.

Did I mention how beautiful he is? This photograph of him is so striking and lovely that, a few years ago, it inspired a colorway of JMF yarn called Jack’s Beach. How often can a goat say that he’s been an honest-to-goodness Creative Muse!?

This year, as for the past 2, Jack’s all ready to go with the ladies– smellin’ bad, lookin’ good, and sweet as ever.

NEXT WEEK on SotW: Which sheep (or goat) would you like to hear more about? Let us know in the comments!

I was thinking that you all might have liked to come along with us as we fed the animals last evening, so that you could see for yourselves how the flock was doing.

We always start with the lambs. We call them over (you yell, “HOE! HOE-OH-HOE! HOE!”, which means, in sheep-language, “Come and get it!” We had a farmstay guest whose little daughter called this, “make the stampede”), and it looks like this:

They really do run that fast.  (Note from Jenny:  AT you.)

Then we feed the dogs:

and then one of the braver and more beautiful chicks from this year (he’s looking like a rooster, but he hasn’t yet crowed & really sealed the deal. We’ve got our fingers crossed.) comes up and tries to steal a bite:

After sitting with the lambs for a few minutes, checking out how they’re acting and how they’re feeling, we leave the lambs’ pasture,

and go over to feed the ewes:

Just like with the lambs, we spend a few minutes watching them after they eat.

They’ve worn a path in the grass between their feed troughs, the hay bale, and the mineral feeder– they’re that predictable.

After that, we go pay a visit to the boys. They aren’t getting any supplemental grain, because they don’t need it, but we always are looking for excuses to spend time with them, since they’re so full of personality. So Zac brings them a few treats, and they go wild.

Jack would like to take this opportunity to say a very sexy-face hello to any lady goats who may be reading this morning (that’s his tongue sticking out. He’s tasting the air.). It’s about that time of year again– he’s smelling quite goaty these days.

And, I know it was foolishness to even try and capture how nice of an evening it was, but, I tried.

We have dairy goats! The white one, Samantha, is an Alpine, and the brown one, Bertie, is a Nubian/Toggenburg cross.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Monday morning, Susan asked me how I’d feel about getting a dairy goat– Zac & I enthusiastically answered, YES!

So, he started putting together this awesome milking stand, and I started reading about the care & keeping of dairy goats. We just have angora goats on the farm, so this is rather an adventurous foray– not only does it mean a whole new set of skills (and chores!), but their nutritional and health needs are slightly different from angora goats.

But, Friday morning, Zac & I drove the few hours to go pick up our new girls. We watched them being milked (they’re incredibly cooperative & patient), then put them in the back of the station wagon and drove them to their new home.

They’re adjusting well– the fact that they’re a pair really reduces their stress levels. It’s a lot of learning for us, but it’s been a heck of a lot of fun so far– they’re just the sweetest goats I’ve ever met.

This morning was our first time milking them, and we got about two quarts! We are SO EXCITED about our new girls– and about all the goat milk & cheese we’ll be eating! Stay tuned!

Hey everyone, it’s Caroline. Susan’s asked me to keep you guys well-supplied with lamb pictures and well-updated as to our goings-on at Juniper Moon. So, here’s how we’ve been doing in the last two weeks (goodness gracious! has it really been two weeks!?) since Shearing Day.

After worming the whole flock last week, we waited three days for the sheep & goats to expel their worms onto the old, to-be-rested pasture (where, deprived of their ovine & caprine hosts, the parasites will die! most of them, at any rate.). Then we moved everyone into the back pasture, behind the house (N.B.: “behind the house.” There is nothing like rolling out of bed in the morning and seeing the animals all lined up along the back fence!). This pasture’s been resting for over a month, and it looks great: fresh, lush, tall, and untrammeled. As you can see, Liberty’s pretty happy with it.

Another good thing about the back pasture is that it’s bordered by woods on two sides, and so it not only affords the animals plenty of good shade, but also affords the goats plenty of fun branch-and-scrub-nibbling. The fancy word (I guess it’s not actually a fancy word. It’s a specific term, maybe? I’d never heard it used like that before.) for brushy-things-that-goats-eat is browse*. All the goats are hard at work stripping the leaves off of whatever branch they can reach.

This is Orion, one of the first three Border Leicester lambs to come to the farm. I think it’s so funny how much he and the other black lambs have changed color since they’ve been here– all the sun they’re getting down South has bleached the tips of their locks! I think his suntan makes him look all the more beautiful, and I am absolutely dying to work with his fleece next year (I tell him this frequently. I don’t think he takes it as a compliment.).

Cini is still lying around all twitterpated for the love of Lucy, and spends nearly all of his time hanging around her, despite her protestations. I mean, we’re sure he was able to get her with pup, but I don’t think she’s too happy about him always being after her. Honestly, though, I’ll be happier (and less irrationally embarrassed!) once Evening Feeding doesn’t coincide with The Canine Family Planning Hour.

And these two charmers are Puffin and Indigo: ex-bottle-babies, escape artists (we had to put up a whole ‘nother roll of woven-wire fencing to keep them out of the backyard!), and all-around dreamboats. Most of the other bottle babies have been entirely weaned, and don’t run up to be fed any more. It makes me feel a little mean to give them the cold shoulder (“tough love!” advise the books on raising sheep), but, in a strange way, I’m a little glad they keep running up to me. It’s nice to be loved so enthusiastically. Even if they don’t love me at all but are only hoping for a little more of that sweet, sweet milk replacer.

And, lastly, 0ur two littlest lambs, the ones who we are still supplementing, are spending the night in the barn tonight, since they’re calling for strong thunderstorms and hail. Scarlett is a lot stronger than she was even a week ago, but she’s nowhere near as robust as the other lambs (however, she’s got everyone beat in the beauty department. I can’t get over how pretty of a little lamb she is.). And Downy had a particularly bad day (he & his sister, Warbler, took a trip to the vet to get ear-tagged, tail-docked, and, in his case, castrated), so we’re keeping him out of the hailstorm. As our vet put it, “He can’t really afford to have too many bad days in a row.”

So, all in all, I don’t guess there’s too much going on at the farm these days. Mamas eating, babies growing, temperatures rising, and thunderstorms rolling in on what’s nearly a daily basis. If this is what summer’ll be like, I’ll be happy.

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* So, guess what, guys? The animal-specific use of browse (“brushy shoots & branches”) is actually the original meaning of the word! Only later, in the 1870′s, apparently, did browse further evolve from meaning “graze upon shoots & branches” to mean “peruse books.” Neat! Also, sort of poetic!