These here are ‘fainting goats’ – they fall over, all stiff limbed, at the slightest surprise.

Got to admire their tenacity – when they grow up, they learn to deal with their incapacity and just run like they’re wearing splints.

I find these goats hilarious and was literally laughing out loud watching this video. Maybe I am just weird?

I’m feeling around at writing about motherhood.  It’s become my taboo.  I’ve written everything there is to write about sex.  In fact, I kind of feel like that first post here on this blog was a cop-out: more about sex than about motherhood.  I’m good with my feelings about sex now.  I’m okay with my feelings about love.  I am less comfortable lately with who I am as a mother. 

I’ve been feeling selfish.  I lie in Little Boy’s bed a night, cuddling him, but  thinking about men.  I don’t feel like playing with him.  I see the cold sore on his lip and I become angry and short. 

I’ve heard it said that depression is anger turned inward.  In my case, I think my shortness with Little Boy is depression turned outward.  But I don’t want to give in to this. 

This morning my mother told me about the fainting goats.  Apparently, when these goats sense danger, they fall down in a dead faint.  A few minutes later, they get right back up and go on with their day.  My mom said she was a fainting goat because sometimes life knocks her down.  She falls, but then she gets right back up again.  She told me I was a fainting goat too.  I guess maybe I am. 

My blogging style has always been to end posts with an unsure, but vaguely optimistic paragraph.  I’m  not going to do that now.  I’m struggling with this.  This is a struggle. 

UM…Unknown Mother

Those of you who have been in contact with me recently most definitely have been subjected to my rambles about the wonders of fainting goats. They are what you would expect from their common name- goats that “faint” when startled. That is, when they experience a stressful or suprising situation their muscles inconveniently contract so that they tumble over, stiff-legged. In some cases they actually fall onto their backs with their legs straight into the air as though they are praising the heavens with their little hooves. Wikipedia tells me that this characteristic is caused by a hereditary genetic disorder called myotonia congenita, so it actually is kind of a sad reality. Still, there is something very disarming about little goats toppling over at the slightest commotion.

I’m intrigued by these goats not only because of their comical physical displays but also because they are what is called a heritage breed of livestock. The folks at Sutainable Table , a New York non-profit based around food education explains heritage breeds as “traditional livestock breeds that were raised by farmers in the past, before the drastic reduction of breed variety caused by the rise of industrial agriculture.”

I had never really thought of the importance of preserving our livestock breeds before falling in love with fainting goats, but as I’ve read more on the decline in livestock variety I can’t help but see parallels to our vegetable food systems. The great majority of our grocery store produce comes from large-scale farms that grow one cultivar of tomato, one cultivar of corn, one cultivar of bell pepper and so on. We have lost a great deal of diversity over the years in exchange for hybridized, disease resistant, kind of bland tasting (my opinion), products. Our taste buds aren’t the only things suffering at the hands of this streamlining either. From an environmental standpoint it seems a little foolish to “put all our eggs in one basket,” so to speak. By significantly limiting the cultivars of crops we are growing, we are also making our food production more vulnerable. It feels like only a matter of time before pests and bacteria begin to adapt to the “resistent” genetically modified crops. When this happens I can only imagine they will have a field day decimating the  acres and acres of identical tomato, pepper, and corn cultivars.

It isn’t all gloom and doom, though.  I think one of the greatest benefits of urban agriculture is that you get to grow your own crops wherever you live, allowing you to experiment with many, many types of vegetable cultivars. This year alone Ann and I started seedlings of over 10 cultivars of tomatoes, many of which were heirlooms. Choosing different cultivars adds a sense of adventure to gardening. Will you find your new favorite eggplant? Will a Green Zebra tomato really have stripes like the catalog promised? Can I really harvest a TWO pound potato? (We did).

I like this kind of thoughtful interaction with my food. It makes me think that I should now go out and buy a fainting goat.

Buenas Gurizada!

Essas cabras são foda…rsrs. Embora pareça algum tipo de problema, é mto engraçado!

Dá uma olhada!

Ao que parece esta história não é nova e está relacionada com um problema genético destes animais… mas não deixa de ter sua graça!

Yesterday we installed a gutter on the side of the goats’ house to catch rainwater. They were naturally curious about what this big, black tub was, not to mention the gutter itself. Here’s a video and some pictures. done

Here’s Sky trying to figure out why this thing isn’t petting her back and why she can’t seem to eat it. She’s wondering what good is it?

Here are some pictures of the kids enjoying watching Dad work.

The goats enjoyed saying hi and getting some attention from TJ –

Excellent, Dad you made us a shower!

They are hysterically funny to watch!

I started this blog a little over a year ago, mostly as a way for me to journal the trials and tribulations of moving up here from New Jersey. It was my little space to release the thoughts rattling around in my brain and give me some sanity. When I first did it, no one read it, nor did I care. Now – a few days over a year later, I have almost 4,000 hits and it astounds me. I still do this for my own sanity, but also to keep friends and family apprised of what transpires up here with our gang on the hill. A year has made a difference in a lot of ways – the boys have grown much bigger, taller and stronger and I have become accustomed to a much more simple way of life. I must say that I am happy, this was a good choice. The boys seem happy and despite their occasional teenage grumbling (which would happen wherever we lived) I think that they truly love it here. That alone makes it all worthwhile. We were discussing this morning, that we didn’t imagine in our wildest dreams being parents to 21 chickens and 3 fainting goats, but now….I can’t imagine not having them. (The White Dog, mind you I can still do without  - I would be more than happy to train Phoenix the Goat to take over for her). Still….it is hard to believe that I have been blogging for a year. It seems such a normal part of my life that I honestly can’t remember what it was like before it.  I feel compelled to write something every day….which is good– for me and for you.

I took Camden and Rory to Mom and Dad’s last Saturday to see the new baby chick. These are “silky” chickens which is why they look so fuzzy. Camden and Rory love going over there to see all the farm animals. Here is some video from our last visit.

Apparently this is now is an epidemic on college and university campuses affecting students’ ability to take notes and start their research.  A terrible affliction.  Some intrepid researchers, non-student researchers mind you who must be resistant to this virulent strain, have found some striking…findings.  Consider the following preliminary symptoms (among several) and decide whether or not they may be related:

• Students used words such as “angst”, “dread”, “anxious”, “stressed”, “disgusted”, “confused” and “overwhelmed” as the one word that describes their reaction to receiving a research assignment.
• The majority of the students we intereviewed did not start on an assignment – thinking about it, researching or writing – until two or three days before it was due.

Mutually exclusive?  My thoughts exactly. More to the point, I gleaned this fascinating grain of psycholuminescence further down:

On the downside many participants considered formal library instruction of little value to them – not because it wasn’t helpful or informative but it was hard to recall what was learned when it was needed for an assignment.

Hmmmm, signs of neurological stress and memory loss, particularly during sessions of library instruction.  We need some test subjects and further research.  Hopefully our note-taking abilities we won’t be afflicted.

I read about these cute little creatures in my devotional and thought they had to be a figment of somebody’s imagination.  But no, God our Great Creator, made all kinds!  I wonder if they fainted on the Ark, LOL!

Are you like the goat and “faint” when you encounter problems?  Or do you forge forward and face them head on?

It’s like Ungulate Week over here.  It’s not quite as exciting as the Discovery Channel version, but there are a lot more hooves.

Anyway!  Julia asks:

That seemed to be what the goats were saying. The goats were on the porch today and would have been quite happy to come inside the house if we let them. Skye has an affinity to climbing as you can tell. She also decided that she was quite comfortable hanging out on the loveseat with Tom.

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty, after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be silence and hope are but speculations after all
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions and the real something has yet to be known . . .

. . . When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I require nothing further

Reading Leaves Of Grass out loud to the goats this morning, thirty-degree air crisp like a wafer you could snap before breathing in, finally gloriously dry, the ground solid, sounds carrying up to our field from all the way down in Emmaus, and the crunching of Rocky and Peter eating hay inside the goathouse while Dusty stands outside grinding feed and staring up at me from time to time as I speak. It is difficult — untellable, I suppose — for me to say why I like this so much, because I don’t understand why. I don’t even have any guesses.

How I feel when someone jiggles the handle on the bathroom. Knock people.

If you Google “Executive Jacket” what you are most likely to come up with is a type of Amazon Kindle book cover.  Apparently, people are less than thrilled with the cover that comes with the Kindle, and this ubiquitous leather “executive jacket” is everyone’s first choice, instead.  Kind of reminds me of when carrying a leather Filofax was the “in” thing.  That was before the iPhone.  My Google search also yielded results for “executive chef’s jackets”.  I got no results for a jacket even close to resembling Queensboro’s new Sueded Microfiber Executive Jacket. If Kindles deserve executive jackets and chefs deserve executive jackets, do not executives deserve executive jackets?

What Kind of Executive are You?

Sueded Microfiber Executive Jacket

Queensboro’s new executive jacket is the stylish and sensible choice of outerwear for today’s executive.  It’s affordable, comfortable, and looks much more expensive than it actually is.  That is appropriate, because today’s executives need to take a different approach than executives of yesteryear—or even yesterweek.

According to the Washington Post, Richard S. Fuld Jr., former CEO of Lehman Brothers netted over $40 million last year, which included over $4 million in bonuses. On Monday, he sat in a congressional hearing investigating the collapse of his company.  Remember L. Dennis Kozlowski?  He’s the former Tyco CEO, the infamous executive who spent company money to buy a $16,000 umbrella stand.  From what we’ve been hearing, none of our executive customers can do that right now.

Entrepreneur or Executive?  Or Both?

You’re the owner of a new business.  You and your husband or wife operate out of your house, providing goods or services.  You’ve found your niche.  You need to grow.  You need local PR coverage, credit, and customers.  You need to spend time networking.  As the owner/operator of your business, you do everything from packaging goods for shipment to meeting with loan officers.  You need to look sharp without spending a bunch of money.  Tough times mean that you have to work harder and look more professional than ever to inspire confidence in your customers and your investors.  Lucky for you, Queensboro has been serving the needs of small to medium sized business owners and executives for over 25 years.  In addition to the new Sueded Microfiber Executive Jacket, Queensboro offers tons of professional, affordable apparel ready for customization with your company logo.  (Despite our low prices, we are definitely not a racket!)

Friendly to Small Businesses

Queensboro is lucky to have a lot of interesting small businesses as our customers.  We’ve profiled a few of them here on the blog (Flying J Fainters Fainting Goats, Roth Electric Sound and Al Melvin, a Keller Williams agent), and will continue to highlight more. Many of our small business customers send us emails expressing their delight at being able to order affordable, quality logo apparel in small quantities so that they can compete, image-wise, on the same playing field with much larger companies.  We love to hear from our customers.  If you have any suggestions for us to help you and your business grow, be sure to email us!