It’s a popular belief that goats will eat anything if given the time and opportunity.  I am here to tell you that this is certainly not the case.  They will certainly eat things that you don’t want them to eat – I have a friend who has a house goat that counter surfs and really fell in love with my homemade bread when I brought it for dinner the other night, but turned his nose up at the peppers he was being offered that had already dropped to the floor.  I have a dog that does the same thing but is much less picky.  He will grab the bucket of scraps meant for the chickens right out of the kitchen sink and eat the scraps and the bucket.

The goats really like animal crackers for a treat (and they should always heave treats).  Currently I buy them in bulk at Sam’s Club.  I usually have to explain why I am buying six gallon sized tubs of animal crackers to the girl at the check out.  I’m not sure she believes they are for the goats…

Before I discovered this abundance however, I could not always find animal crackers in a large enough container to make financial sense.  I figured if they liked animal crackers, they mike like other snack food.  Goldfish come in large cartons now.  Thi was not a popular substitution for the spoiled goat creatures.  I decided to hang on to them for “emergency snack needs” if I ever ran out of animal crackers.  The other day I decided I needed the extra room in the barn more than I needed emergency snacks, so I dumped the container out in the goat feeder.  Goats still don’t like goldfish….

When I was much younger I was really concerned about my appearance.  I had a huge crush on this guy in med school.  We had our surgical rotation together and I would get up at 4 AM just to curl my hair and put on makeup before rounds.  I thought that if I was just pretty enough, he would notice me.  That was almost 30 years ago.

I have become much less high maintenance since then.  I rarely wear makeup unless I am on stage, and my hair gets brushed and put up in a clip mostly.  I get up in time to milk goats and jump into a quick shower, usually only washing my hair twice a week.  I don’t much pay attention to mirrors as it would mess with my internal view of myself.

So taking care of goats includes feeding them alfalfa in the morning along with their grain and milking them and processing the milk.  The alfalfa comes in flakes, but they don’t always stay together well, and when the wind picks up it flies all over the place.  I also have to lift it over my head to get it into some of the feeders.  I can be an entertaining process.  Alfalfa down the shirt is itchy and doesn’t taste very well.

Then it’s a rush to shower and dress for work.  Not overly worried about the details….until I walk into work and my office manager starts picking hay out of my hair.  Guess I’ve come a long way from trying to impress people with my looks.

Goats…

My dad grew up on a farm in a very rural part of South Dakota, and somewhere in the universe, there exists a picture of me riding a cow when I was about 2 years old.  I know…I’ve seen it.

Maybe that’s why I had this affinity for starting my own little farm thing out here in Rural AZ.  I saw myself riding horses, gathering eggs and yes, milking goats.  What I didn’t see in my short-sighted little brain, was the work that went into these creatures.  What I really need are house elves…

I started with a few chickens and a chicken coop that DID NOT come pre-assembled (what??).  Those first few came fully grown and also quickly disappeared thanks to some local predators, however, I was not deterred.  It was an exciting day when Mark found our first fresh eggs.  “This isn’t so bad,” I thought.  Jacob made me a new and better coop and soon we had dozens of chickens running around, laying eggs and acting like birds.  We also had a very mean rooster that needed to find a new job, but that’s another story.

Well, what should we add to the menagerie next?  Well, first I tried a garden, but the kids thought I was just going on a killing spree as I have never been known to keep any plants alive (if it doesn’t make noise I forget to feed it – luckily my kids were the demanding sort).

Well, what goes good with eggs but milk (go with it – it’s a theme).  But where to get a goat – yeah, no clue.  Somehow we managed to find 2 whether’s (ahem – males without all of their male type parts).  Here’s a hint – they don’t produce milk either.  They were very friendly as their previous owner was keeping them inside as pets.  They were replaced in not so quick succession by an Alpine and her son, a Pygmie and her 2 daughters all of whom became pregnant by a Toggenburg that showed up.  The details are not important, but suffice it to say that it was a learning experience.  Fortunately, in suffering through that, I met a wonderful family that rescued me and have become my very best friends.

Hazel got into goats a number of years earlier and had no reservations about telling my daughter what an idiot I was and all the mistakes I was making (I was on both counts but did not want to hear it from a 16-year-old girl at that point).  Fortunately, I knew her mom, Wendy enough to chat with her and that connection led to the best friendship ever.  They held my hand and supplied me with bigger and better goats (I had been getting only a quart a day from the pygmies).  They took me through drawing blood, breeding, birthing, raising babies and all the little issues in between.  Hazel is a wiz kid at all of these things.  She made it look easy…..then she went to college.  Of course, first, she went to give out crutches and wheelchairs in Africa just when I needed her to help birth goats (seriously, where are that girls priorities – she already knew I was an idiot), then she went to college!

This wouldn’t have been so bad since the school was only 2 hours away, but then a bunch of little things came up.  I now know how to draw blood from a goat (although she is much more efficient than I).  But then the goat’s hooves needed trimming (badly – think Willem Dafoe in Shadow of a Vampire).  And Hazel had schoolwork (priorities right?).  So I figured I’d do the deed.  I’d seen her do it and even gotten the advice of wetting the hooves (guess what – they don’t really like that).  I had all the right tools and even had help getting Astra into the stand (she is huge and waddles better that she walks).  Those things were tough.  And thick.  And hard.  And attached to a goat that really did not have the slightest interest in getting a manicure.  Several hours later after struggling and sweating and swearing, we managed to get the job done very poorly on 3 goats.  So whatever I was paying you for trimming hooves Hazel, it’s not enough.  Please come home.  I miss you.  Your parents miss you.  But most of all the goats miss you.

PS – this is not to imply that I don’t miss my own daughter, but she doesn’t trim hooves…

So let’s start with the fact that the picture I have of me in my head looks nothing like me.  In my head, I’m several inches taller and much thinner.  It’s why I hate looking at photos of myself.  It’s like whoa…reality…put that shit away, you’re scaring the children.

One of the reasons that I like the stage is that I get to be someone else.  I prefer comedy roles probably because if people are laughing with me then they are not laughing at me.  I’ve always had a dream to have a starring role, but even as early as Jr High was never chosen.  My mother had a great voice and I have old pictures of her winning “Miss Youth Week” when she was about 16.  Apparently it skips a generation because my daughter also has perfect pitch.  When she was a toddler, she would put her hand over my mouth when I tried to sing her a lullaby and say “top it mommy, ‘top it.”  Talk about my worst critic.

While apparently I can’t carry a tune in a paper bag, it hasn’t stopped me from belting out songs in public at the least provocation.  Whether I remember all the words or not.  As I was looking in a little child’s ears this morning, her parent jokingly, if I could see her brain…and “If I only had a Brain” popped into my head and out of my mouth.  Good things most of my little patients are less discriminating than my daughter.

I got to renew my love of theater and performing when I ran across a local community theater back in NJ thanks to my ex-husband (see he had his uses).  There were auditions for a kids production of Peter Pan, and knowing my oldest son’s love of theater, I managed to get the kids there.  I walked in and was recruited to do make-up for one of the performances and never left…at least until moving to AZ.  The Smiling Rhino Theater became my second home for 6 years.  I got to play Mama Mae Peterson in “Bye Bye Birdie” which really allowed me to stretch my comedic wings.  Fortunately, in this version of the play, she doesn’t really sing.  Oh, by the way – that mental image I have of myself sings much better than the “reality” image.  Oh well.

I’ve really enjoyed being able to be back on stage and am currently rehearsing at our local community college.  I’ve got a great meaty role, but really don’t want to look in that mirror and see the short fat old woman that stares back at me.  My mental image allows me to do my thing on stage and not think about how ridiculous I must look.  At least I am having a good time.  I also really enjoyed being able to share a lot of my theater experiences with my children.  Lizzy practically grew up at the Rhino and now enjoys being involved at the college level where she is a sophomore.  I have shared the stage with 3 of my 4 children.  It’s been a great bonding experience.  My only child that has no interest is “on the spectrum” and has no interest in theater.  He’s much more interested in sharp objects and vows to protect me from the zombie apocalypse…but that’s a story for another day.

I’ve had food issues forever.  The problem is that those issues seem to have affected every other area of my life.  It’s not just the food.  It’s the whole fear of never having enough.  It’s why I have 10 goats, 40 chickens (give or take), 6 ducks, 2 turkeys, and a peacock – not to mention the dog and a couple of cats.  I really don’t need that many farm animals….plus, did I mention I was lactose intolerant.

So I now have 30 dozen chicken eggs in the fridge and the turkeys and ducks have recently started laying as well.  Those eggs don’t fit very well into regular egg cartons.  I also have 3 gallons of goat milk – not bad since I just made cheese and used up 6 gallons over the weekend.  Did I mention the lactose problem?  I also made soap, because one can only make so much cheese and I have lots of goat milk.  And this isn’t even my full-time job.

About 15 years ago I had gastric bypass surgery because food and sugar were my drugs of choice.  I didn’t realize they were addictions or even really understand what an addiction was.  I was always told I just ate too much and didn’t exercise enough.  I was also told, “you would be so pretty if only you would lose weight.”  What a crock.  Food had a power over me that I didn’t understand until a few years ago when I went to rehab.  Yeah – they don’t send you to rehab for a food addiction, but wine is just fermented grapes and that’s just another sugar.  All of these things were my unconscious attempt to fill a hole inside my soul that I could never seem to fill.

So now I try to fill that hole with other things, hence the goats etc.  And did I mention the dragons…but that’s a blog for another day.

I told my daughter that I would write a book someday.  Maybe this is the beginning.  Maybe it’s just whistling in the dark.  I just know that I have lots of stories to tell.  And if anyone tries to tell you that food is not an addiction, try eating one potato chip or one Thin Mint.