Goats

The end of summer

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
Tomatoes in the greenhouse, still going strong...for now.

Tomatoes in the greenhouse, still going strong…for now.

And here it comes…the Metservice forecast for tomorrow…

A few spots of early rain, followed by fine spells and scattered showers with hail, and possible squally thunderstorms. Snow lowering to 400 metres from afternoon. Cold southwesterlies, becoming strong about the coast in the afternoon.

It’s time to batten down the hatches, rescue the last tomatoes and zucchini, and bring firewood to the porch. I gave the goats some extra bedding (and will do the same for us, too!), and I’ve tucked down the edges of the small tunnel house in the garden, in the hopes of eking out a few more peppers and eggplants.

I’m ready, as I usually am by mid-April, for the summer to be well and truly over. I’m ready to let the chickens loose in most of the vegetable garden, to control the weeds for me over winter. I’m ready to stop frantically preserving the summer’s bounty and start eating what I’ve saved.

Not that there isn’t gardening to do in the winter. My “winter” vegetable garden is bigger than many people’s summer garden, but it is still less than a quarter the size of the summer garden, and feels like a holiday. I’m looking forward to starting that holiday soon.

City Mouse, Country Mouse

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
See a beautiful goat kid? Beauty belies the truth: manually pulled from her mother, bottle fed because she was two weak to stand, then put down at 3 months old because of an injury.

See a beautiful goat kid? Beauty belies the truth: manually pulled from her mother, bottle fed because she was too weak to stand, then put down at 3 months old because of an injury.

I glanced down at my shirt as I got out of the car. Damn. Frayed on the hem, and stained with something dark—blood, probably. I sighed. Once again I would be the worst dressed parent at school—the country mouse among city mice.

It was easy when the kids were at the local rural school. Most of the parents showed up in manure-splattered gumboots and dirty coveralls there. But now that the kids are at school in the city, I feel a vast cultural divide between myself and the other parents.

They walk in wearing impeccable make-up, high heels, and dry clean-only clothes. They sport jewellery and labour-intensive hairstyles. Meanwhile, I’ve thrown on my least decrepit pair of blue jeans, hiking boots, and a t-shirt of dubious cleanliness. If I’m lucky, I’ve combed the hay out of my hair.

When these city parents find out I live on a lifestyle block in the country, they wax lyrical about how someday they want to live “the good life” in the country. I look at them dubiously. Those high heels wouldn’t work well in a muddy paddock. If they persist, I describe for them my daily routine, beginning at 5 most mornings. I enumerate the hours of hard labour in the garden, the DIY vetting (not for the faint of heart) that comes with owning livestock, the never ending struggle to maintain a rotting 125 year-old house.

It’s worse when city folk come to visit. Of course, other than at kidding time (see Worst Hostess of the Year), when visitors arrive, work stops. We make sure the garden is weeded, the grass trim, and the usual mess of half-finished projects is cleaned up before visitors come. We serve the fruits of our labour—homemade cheeses, fresh fruit and vegetables. We relax with a glass of wine. Visitors get the impression it is always like this.

The truth is much dirtier and sweatier, and it’s visible in our clothing. No matter how careful I am, eventually I find myself trimming hooves, treating an abscess, or tying up tomatoes in my “city” clothes. I sweat every day. I am regularly splattered with blood—my own or a goat’s. None of my shoes is reliably without manure on the soles.

So while the city folk see only the romance of rural subsistence farming, we live the reality. Are there moments of romance? Yes. In the silence of early morning milking. In the evening strolls around the property, when the day’s work is done. In the daily sweep through the vegetable garden to pick dinner. In the frolicking play of goat kids in the paddock. But it takes long, hard work to create those moments of romance, and the romance probably isn’t worth it unless you also enjoy the work. And, of course, if you don’t mind being the worst dressed parent at school.

Making the most of our mistakes

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

cheddarsmA couple of years ago, I was making a batch of cheddar cheese. It was a recipe I’d made many times before, and I was cruising along, not paying enough attention to what I was doing. I sterilised my equipment, warmed the milk, and stirred in the cheese culture. As I put the package of culture back in the freezer, I realised I had used the wrong one! I’d used my mozzarella culture for cheddar! After a moment’s consideration, I carried on with the recipe as usual, making a special note in my cheese records that this one had the wrong culture.

Three months later, with some trepidation, we cut open the cheese. It was incredible—the best of mozzarella and cheddar, all in one cheese. It was a delicious mistake.

I made a note in my records. We named the cheese Bishop’s Corner (a local landmark—a tiny cemetery at a 7-way intersection), and I’ve been making it as one of my staple cheeses ever since.

There are so many cheeses and variations of cheeses, I’m certain that’s how many of them were originally developed. Someone made a mistake, and just carried on in spite of it.

It’s not the only mistake to make it to our dining tables. In 1898, the Kellogg brothers accidentally let some wheat get stale while they were trying to make granola. Instead of throwing it away, they rolled it and toasted it, thus inventing the first flaked breakfast cereal.

Dr. Spencer Silver made the most of a mistake, too, though not with food. In the 1970s he was a scientist at 3M, trying to make a stronger adhesive. He made a mistake and ended up with an adhesive that only stuck lightly. It could easily be peeled off surfaces. But he carried on, eventually using his “mistake” to create the now ubiquitous Post-It Notes.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes that don’t turn out well, but sometimes, in trying to salvage a mistake, we come up with something better than we originally intended. I like to think that our mistakes aren’t inherently bad, and that perhaps it only takes a bit of creativity or perseverance to turn a mistake into a great idea.

 

Worst Hostess of the Year

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Just on their feet, the triplets Ariana, Albus and Ableforth.

Just on their feet, the triplets Ariana, Albus and Ableforth.

Our visitors were scheduled to arrive for lunch at 12:30—a colleague of Ian’s visiting from overseas and some members of her family. Lunch was in various stages of preparation at 12:15 when I got the call from my vigilant children that my goat Artemis was in labor. Leaving the production of meal entirely to Ian (with quick instructions as to what to do with the muffins when the oven timer went off), I dashed outside, pulling my boots on as I went.

It wasn’t long before our guests pulled in the driveway. I greeted them in my blood stained coveralls (from Ish’s kidding last week), leaving the paddock only long enough to explain my predicament and hand them over to Ian.

Back in the paddock, Artemis was looking decidedly uncomfortable. She leaned into my leg as I scratched her back. How Ian was getting on with lunch and guests, I didn’t know. After a while, her contractions seemed to slow, and I was starving, so I took a break for some food. Everyone was relaxing on the porch, food and drinks in hand. I raced to fill a plate and a glass, and sat down, apart from the group, where I had a view of the paddock.

Less than a minute later, I was up again, shrugging on my coveralls, lunch left mostly uneaten on my seat. The first kid was coming, but Artemis was lying down, and the big boy she was trying to deliver needed either gravity or me to do some pulling. Artemis refused to stand, so I pulled her first kid out and proceeded to wipe the mucous off him while she ponderously got to her feet to check him out. I called out his gender to my children, nervously waiting in the yard.

Number two (a girl) was already visible, but she was breach—coming out back feet first. She, too, needed some help. While Artemis licked one, I towelled the other. I called out the gender of the second kid to the children, and they cheered and raced to tell Ian (we’d been hoping for a girl from Artemis this year).

Artemis still looked awfully round, and I was pretty sure I could feel at least one more set of legs in her belly. Labor had stopped, though, so I ventured back to the house, covered in fresh blood and all manner of birthing fluids, to see if I could finish my lunch during the lull.

I had just enough time to finish my dried out bread and cheese and my wilted salad before kid number three made his appearance. He was out by the time I got to the paddock.

It took another hour or so before all three kids were on their feet and nursing well. I waved to our guests as they drove out.

When I finally stripped off my coveralls and washed up for the last time, I asked Ian, “So…who were those people?”