Slow Skills

("warning": some mildly "graphic" goat post-birth photos)

we had baby goats!

Murielle cleaning off just-born baby

and they lived this year!

first baby, ready to try her legs out

i don't think i ever wrote about last year's goat trauma, and that's okay. it was definitely a Trauma.

up and at 'em!
(our doeling, which we kept)

we had some minor tragedy this year, but most of the babies survived--three in all--and it's been a blast. i've been on the fence about whether even to keep the goats, but this has definitely tipped the scales in their favor.

two!

i did sell our white doe, Ivy, to a goat farm a bit down south (Down Yonder Farm), and i couldn't have asked for a better home. she seems like she's doing far better there than she did here, in fact. then my friend decided to take our two bucklings as bottle babies, to wether and use as brush clearers. since she's so close, we decided to milk my other doe, Murielle, for the babies, to make the transition to bottle-feeding easier for everyone.

when i first got our goats two years ago, i got them just as brush clearers. i ended up getting triplets, because they threw in the buckling, a bottle-fed runt, for free, and lowered the price on the two does. i ended up with milk goats because, again, they were cheap. i thought at the time, "oh, it will be nice maybe to milk them, some day. at least i'll have the option." despite the babies, i don't know when that would have happened--no time is a good time!--but then these babies needed milk, and her husband made a stanchion in an afternoon (!!!!!!), and she brought it over and set it up and there's Murielle, with her head in those bars, and my friend's son and i milking her . . .
i'm milking my goat!
that's really cool! i'm really excited! i'm getting really into this! i'm gonna quit buying milk; i'm gonna make soap; we'll be even more Self Sufficient!!!

then i read how i'm getting less than half of what even a "freshener" should give, and it was tempting to get really discouraged. and it got me thinking about these slow hard skills of the land . . . we lost the babies last year, and we had to wait another year to try again. it wasn't like getting a car fixed. i've messed up with my garden in numerous different ways, and each year i need to wait, to think it out differently, to plan better, for the next year. and now, with milking, it isn't like i can run out and "practice" whenever i want. i have to go one day at a time, trying to figure out what i'm doing wrong and what to do better for the next day. in a world of notorious Instant Gratification, and the more recent explosion in Everyone Can Be a Virtuoso, these slow skills are hard.

but it's worth it. and i hope it travels to the rest of my life: to be patient with the slow, slow growth of my children, of my marriage, of my soul. because our God is not a God of haste. He moves slowly, and it is hard to wait on Him. but waiting upon Him builds strength, makes us strong enough to mount with the wings of an Eagle. and it is beautiful to see these lessons in His creation: to wait, and be patient, and keep working, a little bit every day, to get a little bit better.

Robin Hood, Little John, and Maid Marian inside on a single-digit night