The quality of mercy

A suspect has been detained in the case of the murder of Mama-san and six of her chicks, whose story was celebrated here before the crime took place.

I seriously considered the ultimate penalty against the offender, although I guess technically by the rules of evidence I would need further proof that it was this raccoon and not another one who did the crime.

At this point, I'm leaning towards telling it to "go (far away) and sin no more."

However, none of this would have happened if Arpad the Magnificent was still alive.

It's a sad fact that when the good guys go, the predators move in.

How to pick up (literal) chicks

A great deal of time spent on the farm has to do with what I call animal politics, which is the intricate web of relationships between the (four legged or feathered) animals and between animals and humans.

One example is the Darwin game which we play with the indeterminate number of chickens. In this game, the humans want the eggs to eat them, while the hens hide them to reproduce. I'm not sure how much of that is conscious on either of our parts.

The latest winner of the Darwin game is a gray hen who laid her eggs in a niche in our garage. She sat on them long enough for them to be viable, which meant I couldn't use the punching bag in the garage for three weeks so as not to disturb her.

The eggs hatched night before last, which meant I had to get Mama-san and chicks into a safe chicken tractor. I tried shutting them up in the garage but the little Houdinis got out. Then I looked for them to no avail with a flashlight after dark.

In the morning I found Mama-san sitting on the babies. I thought I'd put a box over the lot and then get them in the tractor somehow. She did not concur.

Instead, she flew at my face several times while the chicks scattered. Which led to plan B. I put the chicks I could find into the tractor and waited for their peeps to attract the mother. Then I rounded up the stragglers.

All but one. I heard some peeping underneath a huge BMT (big metal thing) in the garage. Too heavy to lift and not enough space underneath

That's when my long past fire department training kicked in. I remembered when we were practicing auto extrication how we used pieces of wood for cribbing to stabilize the vehicle so you could get the people out. A pry bar and some scraps of 2x4 later and the mother and child reunion had occurred.

I think there are eight of the little buggers now with Mama-san in a fairly safe place. Haven't gotten a lot of gratitude from her though.

I realize that crows and other tool-using animals perform more complicated feats every day, but this was pretty good for me.

Urgent baby bird picture edition (including green herons)

OK, so 2016 has been a downer year for humanity so far. No arguing that. On the other hand, it's been a pretty good year for baby birds at Goat Rope Farm. Earlier this sprint, a baby great horned owl was hatched up on our hill.

Last week, five baby phoebes who had nested in our goat barn fledged. This took some intervention by the Spousal Unit, who had to intervene to persuade a black snake to seek meals elsewhere.

Even better, we've noticed for a good while that a green heron was hanging around our pond a lot. How cool was it to see that she hatched four babies (big uns at that!):

On top of that, we discovered that a broody hen managed to hatch two baby turkeys, one of which is shown below. The other didn't recognize a photo op when it had one.

So there's that anyhow.

New resident

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled program to announce a new resident/visitor to the farm.

It's a green heron that built a nest in a tree beside our pond. It's the heron equivalent of a hillbilly living by Golden Corral. Photo credit: the Spousal Unit.

Requiem for a goat

It is with heavy heart that I must report the passing of Arcadia Starlight Venus, doyenne of Goat Rope Farm and the initial inspiration for the name of this blog. She died at nearly 15 years of age, which is pretty old for a diary goat.

I still remember when she first came into my life. I had gotten back late on a Saturday night from a work trip around April Fool's Day 2005. My wife woke me up on Sunday morning with words that have sometimes caused me trepidation, to wit "Honey, come see."

There she was in all her glory.

From my earliest infancy, it has been the height of my ambition to be the partial owner/caregiver of a pregnant Alpine dairy goat. Imagine my delight in this first encounter. (Note: that was mild irony.)

My first thought was, who on earth would name a goat after the Roman goddess of love? But then I got it.

Venus turned out to be a delight, a sweet affectionate goat,  a good mother and grandmother and a good milker. Yes, she had that Alpine contrarian attitude, but she was a heart-breaker in her way. I must admit that she was the first goat I ever kissed...

(It's probably not a coincidence that according to Greek mythology Zeus, father of gods and men, was nourished in his infancy by the mother goat Amalthea. Or that the Norse god Thor rode in a chariot drawn by goats.)

Among her descendants at Goat Rope Farm are son Cornelius Agrippa, daughter Pina, and granddaughter Honeysuckle.

This song is for her.

I like to think that Venus has gone to the place where good goats go. I don't think it's very crowded, since in my experience there aren't all that many good goats.

Anna and I are sad tonight. We can only say, "Goodnight, sweet princess: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Introducing Bo

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming to introduce the latest addition to our menagerie, Bo, a three month old boxer rescue puppy. In the words of Goat Rope's official movie, i.e. The Big Lebowski, sometime's there's a man...

Much diminished

One annual ritual at Goat Rope Farm this time of year is the shaving of Arpad, our Great Pyrenees security chief. After a winter of running around, barking all night in the woods and brambles and eating rotten deer carcasses and getting sick--in the line of duty--his coat is rather nasty. Plus, he's so hot that all he wants to do is lay around.

We take him to a place with a dog whispering groomer who does the job, which usually takes more than two hours. When it's all done, we learn that he is mostly composed of hair and the summer product is a fraction of the dog he used to be.

Although I'm sure the procedure makes him more comfortable, he seems self conscious for the first week or so and doesn't like to make public appearances. I hope he won't mind this exception...

The (feather) harvest is heavy, but laborers are few

Sometimes people use the word "harvest" as if it was a once a year thing. I suppose that may be true of monocultures, but at Goat Rope Farm, harvests of one type or another go on throughout a good chunk of the year.

Thanks to a cold frame engineered by the Spousal Unit, we've harvested lettuce and spinach for a good chunk of late winter and early spring. Garlic is midsummer. Now we have a scary invasion of summer squash.

But the agricultural product of the moment is....peacock feathers.

Our guy, Woodstock, is shedding them at this time, leaving them all over the vicinity. It is one of my tasks to go on walkabouts to retrieve as many as possible. Their eventual destination is the classroom, where said Spousal Unit gives them out as favors. Most popular, of course, are the ones with eyes. The more drab ones, however, make excellent cat toys. Such is life on the cutting edge of post-modern farming.

JUST ONE LINK, BUT IT'S A GOOD ONE. Here's an exciting article about how WV's new Feed to Achieve is being implemented. The long term goal is to ensure that all WV school children enjoy at least two free meals per day (and, we hope, more), but already progress is being made. This article is about innovative ways of offering school breakfasts that should increase participation.

And let me just say that the WV Office of Child Nutrition, which operates under the WV Department of Education, rocks. They are doing a wonderful job every day of trying to ensure and improve access to good food for all the children of this state and they have a passion for it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Good turkeys gone bad

I think the free range turkeys of Goat Rope Farm may have committed a federal crime this week by blocking the road in such a way as to prevent a mail carrier from discharging her duty. The Spousal Unit was able to intervene and chase the flock off the road before too much damage was done so I'm hoping they avoid prosecution. Previously, they did the same to an electric company truck (gas trucks are fair game). They have also chased away dogs and deer.

I'm not sure they're very smart but they have great self esteem and are living proof of the power of acting in solidarity.

Introducing....runner ducks!

We are pleased to introduce Goat Rope readers to the latest additions to the menagerie, i.e. two runner ducks from my sister-in-law's farm in Vermont. These two enjoy paddling around in a kiddie pool but are painfully shy and hard to photograph, with "runner" being the key word here.

Their main function is to run around and be cute, a task they seem to have mastered. No names have been issued or discovered as of yet.