I hate my college food.
I feel like someone took me and blew in my bellybutton and blew me up like a damn balloon. Seriously I feel like I am about to float away.

Oh...my college...kamikaze squirrels....power out half the day.
"So a squirrel throws itself at a transformer box right?!"
Apparently there were sparks and all and it is a semi-common occurrence. Squirrels go all crazy suicidal at it and take half the school's electricity with them.
That was fun.

Happened right after I got off the phone with my mom having an extensive conversation about sustainability an the current economy and things.
My mom is buying goats again (I AM SO EXCITED!!!) and some chickens and plans on replanting a garden so we can be more self-sustaining. I am actually really happy about this.
I may end up working on a farm myself this summer. But it will feel good. I do miss it a bit now that I have been away from it. There is something about the earth in your hands and the sweat on your back. There is the good pull as your muscles lift a hay bale and you smell the calm, natural smell of goats and manure and straw. There is the peace you find as you sit on a milk stand, hands pulling away at the teats, head on the stomach listening to the rumen gurgle in your ear and the sound of the doe chewing her cud after she's finished mowing down her sweet grain.
I mean a bit of my life was spent hauling frozen water buckets in from outside or awaiting the tell tale distinctive sound of a new baby goat's "mah" (it's not "bah" with a goat, it's mah) over a baby monitor.

I used to sit out there for hours with my goats. I might sit up on the fence or the stall wall with bare feet and rub them all over a goat sitting or standing beneath my feet. I'd scratch them in all their favorite places as they froze up and give me the dopey expression of "I love you soooooooooooooooo much right now." They always had their afternoon rest time when the whole herd would lay down.
My goat Sarge used to make a sort of rythemic "eh-eh-eh" sound as he rest and chewed his cud. He was such a comfy goat. His skin was so stretchy and soft and bouncing like a really dairy doe. But his dam never produced a doe ever.
Unlike in the world of humans in the dairy world it is more desirable to have a doe and be more so on the matrilineal side. Bucks are important as far as coming from good breeding stock and producing dairy does but otherwise...damn they are just smelly.
Have I ever written that bucks are probably the reason most goat cheese has that semi-sour taste? Well it is. I can tell when goat cheese tastes "bucky". It is because at large dairies they leave the buck in with the does all around and bucks STINK. Like a male buck in rut is like...a freakin' skunk in terms of the power of his scent. That scent affects the milk that does produce and in turn gives it that strange sour taste. Most goat cheese I have had has been a home made soft spreadable chive and garlic that goes like wildfire when company is over. It is not bucky but super duper smooth and good. Mmm...oh yeah.

Anyhoo I almost forget lately what a huge part of my life goats were. I had had them since I was five or six. When I was cute and little with a big head of blonde ringlets I made the cover of the local newspaper twice during Fair time. I was just there in my whites getting ready to show my goat. Showing goats was more like...public goat wrestling at that time. In one picture that everyone in my town seems to know me for I have my apricot colored first goat Gerta and I have her head against my chest with my arms around her neck. She is looking at me and I am looking down at her. My lips are slightly pursed and my long curls are all down my back. It looks like I am about to kiss Gerta. In actuality I was giving her a firm talking to for not wanting to walk nicely. Haha. But it is a very nice picture. I was six or seven at the time and a pretty cute kid before I needed glasses and my hair straightened strangely to being just plain farking poofy and wavy.
It was about around the time when I started on journalscape that the last of our herd was gone. I couldn't remember exactly until I remember that John and I used to be in the barn with Sarge looking over the stall wall as we made out.
Erm.... *whistles innocently*
Yes mom, laugh.

It's been about five years since we have had goats at our house. The sign of the culture of goat-life has been removed from me visually I think and when people look at me they are not of the perception that I was a hay bale hauler...but it is a definite part of who I am. Although I won't be a major part of the goat stuff since I have school for half the year it will be nice to go home and to see them. I love my dogs but...herbivores...they are quite special to me. My entire soul vibrates on a different note when I am around them, like the bass keys on a piano played in an adagio. I slow down to their pace.

But wow. This has been quite the tangent.
I need to get my ass going!
Adios.
Peace.
~Lo

12 days of YFAT
4 days until The Warded Man