Here Comes the Sun...

The goats say "hi":


Hey! Much better today! The sun is out with some serious enthusiasm, so it's impossible to not feel more energized. My friend Bridget recommended a (work)book called The Artist's Way that I've been working through the past couple weeks, and one of her lines in this week's reading felt especially relevant to my ups and downs lately:

"The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."

Despite the downs, I've not been able to help but feel the delight (don't you just love that word? we don't use it nearly enough...) in so many aspects of life here...and I can see why so many artists flock here for the air and inspiration - being near these mountains nestled down in this dry, yellow valley, one can't help but feel the urge to paint or draw (or interpretative dance? anything!) super-cliche landscapes. I'm going to buy some watercolors and colored pencils this afternoon at Walmart. :)

Chores were freeeezing this morning. My fingertips were Iowa-cold in a few minutes, but I just went out a few hours later now and I had to take off my hat and gloves and coat! The sun is not messing around. All the goats are laying down resting, all cozy and cuddly with each other... The cuteness level dropped a bit when I went out to check on them and fill their water (camera in hand) - they perked up and some stood expecting me to provide snackage, or perhaps my camera- but before this picture they were all a big nuzzle-puddle.



In the picture above you can see Rhino - he's the buck standing in the center with the curled tail. He's not a bad looking goat, eh? One of the other ones though... who is creatively named Buck, is probably one of the least attractive animals I've ever seen... I think he is what people think of when they think of the whole "goats-go-to-hell" thing. He's big, smelly, obnoxious...constantly eating and getting into things...patchy fur and weird bald spots in places where he's rubbed too much. I'm sure he's got a great personality...but he just looks morally bankrupt. If I were a young doe I would avoid him like the plague. Eew. You can see the damage he's done to this (and every other) tree on the property. I'm seeing the deer relation here, no?






And because I thought you might be interested - here are some of the creamery machines. I could pretty easily climb into all of these. This is a big mixer/heater thing. It probably has a technical name... but we pour all the raw milk in there and there's a big mixer attachment and you can heat and cool and stir at different settings/timings for different types of cheese... and then there's a big grate that you curd it with - to break it into chunks...and a drainage plug at the bottom so you can get rid of excess whey which they pump out to the donkeys and dogs.

This is the pasteurizer... I think.

tank for holding milk prior to being made into cheeeeese:

More random goat pictures...
These must be litter-mates. Siblings tend to stick together a lot it seems... Kind of interesting.
There is a male goose (I think?) who basically lives with all the yearlings. I don't know if he's been kicked out of the goose club, or if he just prefers the yearling lifestyle...but he's there in the pen with them allll the time, and gets excited at feeding time and messes around with them... Puzzling, but whatever floats his boat, I guess.

That's all for now... Sorry it's a bit of a jumble. Miss you all. <3