Highs and Lows.

I have had this quote on my facebook for a while and it is more true now than ever. "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." -Kurt Vonnegut

Although I am a little exhausted from the extreme shift in highs and lows, I am not sure if I would be any happier in the middle.

High: House sitting job that comes with this view...

Low: Billy-the-goat died Friday. Cleveland let me cry on his shoulder and then helped me bury my little friend in true farm style, with a backhoe. I had to leave work early and I couldn't bring myself to come back until Monday. He will be missed. I am thankful for him teaching me so much about goats, I just wish I had learned it all before it was too late.

High: A whole weekend off (this is a rarity for me)...starting with a house-cooling party... I somehow managed to have zero pics of this fantastical day but close your eyes and imagine a steady flow of friends, dogs, and children... swimming, playing lawn games, sharing food, and laughing. Then Dan and I spent Sunday making food, sharing drinks, swimming, playing video games, and napping.

Low: Medical Bills.

High: Storm-clouds heavy with much needed rain.

Low: Temperatures up to 100 degrees with 100% humidity and heat index up to 120 degrees.

High: Dan got free tickets to see Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes...

And why not one more High: Best email subject line ever... thanks to my awesome Mom...

Freeeeedom!

http://www2.scnow.com/scp/news/local/grand_strand/article/wild_chickens_roam_georgetown_streets/228853/#comments

Goat Update

Some of you are wondering how Mr. Billy is doing... and I am still not really sure. He has been hiding out in the chicken A-frame shelter, hiding underneath the roosting bars for the past two days, as seen above. Twice a day, every day, I force him to get out and walk around, drink water, and try to eat. Yesterday, Kipp from Burden Creek Dairy came over and gave him once over. His rectal area is extremely inflamed which is clearly making him uncomfortable but he does not have a fever or diarrhea, so there is a little hope. His stomach area is also still swollen but I realized that he might have a urine blockage. Since I needed feed and supplies anyway, I headed out to Tractor Supply where the manager Durwood showed me some basic vitamin "drenches" to give the goats as well as a great website: www.tennesseemeatgoats.com. After talking to a few locals, I found a woman named Casey Price that is with Jeremiah Goat and Dairy on Johns Island. What a wonderful, intelligent, goat loving woman!! She was extremely helpful in talking me through the symptoms and invited me right out to her farm to give me some tools to help the goat. After a lot of discussion, we decided that the most likely problem is Urinary Calculi which is basically a blockage in the urethra. Unfortunately, it is a little late in the game to be diagnosing this and ammonium chloride can help in the early stages but he may already have a severe blockage and need veterinarian assistance. He is still eating and drinking which is good, except if he has a blockage and continues to drink, his bladder could explode! I cannot handle this helplessness! Here is a diagram of the male system:

The crazy part about goats is that they were one of the first domesticated animals and are currently raised for milk, meat, and skin in almost every country but there are few people in the United States that are professionally trained in medically treating goats. In Charleston County there is only one vet that handles goats and most people do not use him because of the costs. Everyone I have talked to has taught themselves and learned from experience which is crazy considering the goats often suffer. There is a 90% chance that my goats illness is due to uninformed care taking... just today I learned that I should not be giving them corn, too much (if any) feed with molasses, peaches (or any pit fruit), and that they need baking soda/salt mixtures out in their pen. Apparently branches, leaves, and bark are suppose to be their main food (of which I have been given them zero) and they are forages partially to regulate their stomach. They don't even have teeth on the top of their mouths since they are not grazers! Goats are susceptible to so many kinds of diseases, I don't know why people would ever keep them as pets unless they had some kind of training or experience handling them first. This is definitely becoming one hell of a learning experience.

Goats with bloat.

Billy, Peanut and Bob (Black, Tan, White).

Every morning I spend an hour or more playing with my three darling goats at Josephs. I never have quite enough time to build them the palace they deserve but I try to spoil them with greens and horse feed. Sadly, my little guy Billy hasn't been feeling so good. When I came in on Saturday he didn't come running with the other two and just stood wobbling looking a little drunk. By the time I got into the pen, he had laid down and was coughing. His little tummy is so bloated I feel like he might pop! I have spent the last three days trying to figure out what is wrong and what I can do to help him. The kind folks at Burden Creek Dairy have been helping diagnose and treat the little guy...but its still a mystery. Taking care of goats is so intimidating because there is so much that can go wrong. I have to admit I considered taking him home so I could check on him during the night so I won't stay up thinking about him. Hopefully he will pull through, so keep your fingers crossed for my little darling goat friend!

Articles to Share.

Here is a little ditty about women in farming:

http://www.rodale.com/women-farming?page=0%2C0

Where are all the farmers?

My new favorite magazine:

http://www.urbanfarmonline.com/

City Farms in Detroit

And finally, if you are in the south and looking for a great Newsletter... check out this one.

Playing catch-up

Sadie, the goat whisperer.

Obviously I do not have a lot of time these days to sit down and write, which is unfortunate, because I have so much to share. The past few months have been a time of change, adventure, learning, and the occasional hurdle. Alas, I am forced to try and fit many weeks of stories into a handful of entries :-) In an attempt to get things rolling I will start with a little bullet point action.

Things I have learned, in no particular order:
- radish seed pods are tasty when they are fresh
- it is next to impossible to get a student loan forbearance without excessive amounts of paperwork, some determination, and A LOT of patience. This also applies for food stamps (now called SNAP benefits). In the end, I got them both. YEAHYA.
- rutabaga and turnips look almost identical to the untrained eye (and yes, I sold "baby turnips" to some chefs without any of us knowing any better.)
- chickens LOVE melons
- sharp knives ARE more dangerous than dull ones when applied to your finger. So, when you are hosting a baby shower and the mother-to-be is taking a pre-party nap, do not try to cut tomatoes with freshly sharpened knives, because you will cut your finger to the bone and end up at an urgent care. See picture from last post.
-my dog will fetch random over-sized vegetables and toss them into the air and sometimes hitting herself, which in turn makes the field workers laugh
- tomatoes exposed to irregular watering will lose calcium and develop blossom end rot.
- the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo books are addictive. I am on the last one and I would read it while driving, showering, eating, and working if possible.
- the amount of edible flowers and "weeds" is unreal
- part of my endless stomach problems have been caused by stomach ulcers (after an endoscopy and colonscopy).
- anesthesia from said procedure made me laugh uncontrollably as I was going under and apparently I grabbed a nurses arm while he was trying to put the oxygen tube in my nose and said " Isn't this HILARIOUS?". I mean, why are there not more comedies centered around colonoscopy and endoscopy? Apparently they are a hoot :-)
- cutting a goat's hoof is not as scary as I thought, but still very intimidating
- there is a dwarf pig that is not potbelly but something with a mohawk (they have them at Legare Farm... and I want one
- no one works harder than a farmer. Seriously. My boss is up at dawn and awake till midnight. He drives to Columbia, Asheville, and Savannah every week to sell his produce while also working six local markets. Pick, prep, pack, load, unload, sell, re-load, unload, maintenance, planting, and repeat. Six days a week.

So thats is just a brief list to cover a few points. A lot of people have been checking in with me lately because I have once again started to disappear. The reality is, the program I am in only pays me enough to cover a minimal part of my bills, so I spend a lot of my time working other jobs. I garden, I babysit, and I build things. The program also has me in a class called FastTrack for first time entrepreneurs, which is phenomenal, but the homework is yet another responsibility that I find myself juggling. While I am learning something new almost everyday, I feel like I have learned very little about actual plants and farm animals, so moving forward I am going to actively seek resources to learn about cultivation. I have been making contact with a number of people that I want to learn from and so far, so good. Hopefully in the near future I will be learning more about chicken manure, propagation, grafting, soil treatment, pest control, indicators, and even sheering sheep.

As far as my "plan for the future", well, that is a work in progress. The other day, I sat at lunch with two of my favorite ladies, as we discussed the complexities of life in your late twenties. All three of us are hard working, driven, well educated women with the ambition to take over world, but all of us find that we are simply lacking the opportunity. The same conversation has taken place amongst a few of my other friends that also find themselves working themselves to the bone for meager wages and no job security. Are we all victim to a bad economy? Is it self inflicted? Is our inability to settle causing us more harm than good? What is the "right" choice, job, or city? And in the end... who the hell keeps getting the jobs I want?

When faced with growing debt, I ultimately have to make decisions that are financially sound but I know myself well enough to know that I will never settle for a well paying job I hate. My currently temporary solutions for the near future include being a nanny, building farm buildings, and working farmers markets. So these are not exactly resume goldmines but for my personal health, sanity, and bank account, they are the best options at this point. In the meantime I will celebrate the wealth that I have in my family, boyfriend, and friends while enjoying the ride :-)