Driving (and Decisions)

I am going to make signs.

I'll take a bunch of cardboard and popsicle sticks and glue them into neat little handheld signs, then write on them - both normally, and in reverse so that they can be read in a mirror. I will then write things like "The stick on the left - USE IT," "He could run you over and not even feel it, just let him in," "NO ONE is going slower than you - move over!" and "This is not NASCAR!" and keep them in the car for the next time I have to drive on I-80. I don't think I've ever disliked a drive so much. I haven't ever flipped someone off before, either. Okay, I still haven't, but I've never been so tempted in my life.

See, being a dairy goat judge is awesome. You get to look at a bunch of goats, talk about them all - essentially venting your opinion, albeit politely, to a captive audience - and then get paid. It works for me. But, they don't usually come to you, which means a lot of travel time. The closest show I've judged has been an hour and a half away. Today's venue, the Nevada State Fair in Reno, was a tidy 3 hours over some really rough, monotonous freeway, mostly populated by truckers and violent psychopaths. I've never been crazy about driving anyway.

Now, last week I judged in Fortuna - a five-hour drive - and loved it. It was up I-5 to Highway 20, into the hills and all the way around Clear Lake, then up 101 through the entire spanse of Redwood Country to an adorable little town 4 miles from the ocean. Perhaps because I had resigned myself to driving forEVER and getting there at all was a good deal, perhaps because I am utterly fascinated by California's Giant Redwoods, perhaps because Jesse and I were the only ones home while my parents got Rachel safely installed at the University of Hawaii, perhaps because I had a pile of my favorite CD's and a hotel room waiting for me. I'm not sure what made it so much better than today's drive, but I'd go to Fortuna again in a heartbeat...Reno, not so much. Next week I'm going to Idaho, but I get to fly there, so it wins by default.

Okay, I'm off of my soap box now. Back to goats. Breeding season is essentially upon us, and while the boys are on the opposite side of the property from the girls, I'm starting to see some wagging tails and catch the occasional whiff of Eau du Buck - I can't really describe it, but I guarantee that once you smell it you'll never forget it. It's not that bad, really -  I've grown to appreciate it, since smelly bucks are active bucks, and active bucks = babies next spring. It's just not something you ask for in Bath & Body Works.

The only real problem with breeding season is decision making. Which buck should I breed to which doe(s)? Is it worth driving two hours each way to breed to a different buck? Are this year's kids big enough to breed for an earlier kidding, or do they need more time to grow? Mostly the first question.

I start out with a neat list, like this: Breeding List 2010. This is the current version on the website. It's simple. Neat. Concise. Then, I start trying to figure out how many does I have to breed to each buck, re-thinking some of my choices, rearranging does here and there, and I end up with this:

Beautiful, isn't it? I may have it framed. And with the number of goats who will come into heat when I don't have time to drive them to the first buck of choice, goats coming into heat when the buck I wanted to breed them to is being leased to someone else, goats who think the buck I've chosen for them simply WILL NOT DO, etc etc, I may actually get half of these right. Oh, and let's not forget the goats that are left later in the season, when I say "I don't care anymore" and throw them in with whatever buck is closest. And, as often as not, get better kids than the carefully-planned breeding I'd originally intended.

I haven't set anything in stone yet, by virtue of the fact that I haven't actually bred anyone yet. I don't want to have masses of kids in the dead of winter, so I'm holding off for now - any goats bred in August will kid in January. I'm also trying to figure out my school schedule, so that I can insert a two-week break from kidding to focus on studying and finals at the end of Winter Quarter in March. (Ha. Yeah. Right.) But still, it's a start.

Getting the basics

Let's see if I can do this. I have a lot of potential subject material to use, so I'll probably be posting "retroactively" quite a bit. For now, I just want to figure out these bloody buttons. (Just a heads-up, I use non-American figures of speech and other idiosyncrasies quite a bit. It's almost as much fun as sarcasm.)

First of all, the website. Sarah's Own. It's a work in progress - I did at least get it cleaned up so that the only goats on there are goats I do actually still own, and I've updated the breeding list for this fall. It's full of "TBD's" and "subject to change"s, but it's there. (Don't let anyone tell you websites are simple/fast/easy. I love having one but it is incredibly tedious and time consuming to keep it current. Not to mention making sure all the little paragraphs line up and the links work right and the pages get saved when I edit them. Forget brainteasers for exercising your mind - get a website. You'll never feel lazy again.)

Second of all, and most importantly - photos!

"What? Photos?1?"

Okay, yes, I'm uploading these totally randomly, but this is one of my favorites. I don't know what startled this little fellow at the time, but his expression in priceless. This is Scooter, one of the kids born this spring. He was born two weeks early and had some Premie-baby issues - he couldn't walk for three days, but instead scooted around on his belly, hence his name. As you can see, he did master the complex task of coordinating his own four feet, and he has since gone on to a loving pet home.

Here's another, more recent cute baby photo:

"Wait for me, wait for me! Me first, me first!"

This always reminds me of the Disney film The Aristocats - those of you who have seen it will recognize the caption. The little one in the back is Tisane (TISS-uh-nee), with her buddy Bobo on the right and her brother Tito leading the charge. These three are now part of a mob of babies whose current favorite pastime is playing "Knock over the human" and trying to eat my hair.

And finally, another of my favorite photos:

"Who are you?"

This is Moose, a Holstein bull calf. Having all these dairy goats is lovely, but once the babies are weaned I am suddenly inundated with gallons of milk every day. Not just two or three - think 14 or 15. Gallons. Every DAY. Dumping that much milk, when there are children starving in Africa, is downright depressing. We make cheese and things, but even that barely makes a dent in the supply. And wouldn't you know it, goat milk is great for raising calves! So, we buy a couple of bull calves every summer - they happily absorb (pun intended) the excess milk for as long as we have it, then they go out and graze with Dad's huge herd of goats & sheep for a year before going into our freezer the following summer. Moose is soon to be Mooseburgers, but this photo of him noticing his reflection is still pretty priceless. (Someday I'll post a thoughtful discussion on eating my own animals, I promise, but that's a pretty heady topic to try to fit into a bullet-point paragraph, so it'll have to wait for another day.)

I think that's enough, for now. I'll have to come up with some sort of original topic for tomorrow, drat. (And because it seems to be a trend for this post, I'm ending with another parenthetical anecdote. Muahaha.)

Ciao!

Here goes nothing

I've given in. I refuse to get a twitter (I also refuse to capitalize "twitter," since I don't consider it a proper noun) and there are too many ideas running around in my head begging to be let out. If I posted that many statuses on Facebook, I would probably fall victim to a good ol' fashioned lynch mob. Complete with pitchforks. And truth be told, it's almost 2 AM and I can't sleep again, so I'm hoping having an outlet for some of these thoughts will help with the whole insomnia thing.

So. Blogging. Here we go.

I suppose I ought to explain the gabble up there in the address bar. "Gabhar Mire" is Gaelic for "goat crazy." Which, if you know me, is kind of a given. There is nothing sane about my life passion. It does, however, keep me sane (oddly enough), especially after a day of listening to hidebound theoretical professors teach in a theoretical classroom packed with 400 other students, three of which I might actually know. There is something profoundly rewarding about coming home to a bunch of faces who have been waiting ALL DAY to see you and think you are the best thing since sweet cob. Even if they're goat faces. It keeps my inner egotistical maniac in check.

The title also gives a nod to the Irish blood in me. There isn't much of it (although my great-grandmother was a blooded, off-the-boat O'Brien) but I look it. And I'm absurdly proud of that fact. Tourists in Ireland were asking me for directions.

Well, I guess this is a start. I'm sure I'll come up with something entertaining to post tomorrow. (I mean, today. Bogeys.) Maybe once I figure out how to add photos to blog posts, I'll start introducing my "girls." And boys - can't forget the boys. But for now...good night. (Good morning? Oh well.)