Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

Human-Goat Apres Dinner Workout

Today I meditated on straw-lined ground inside the Funky Butte Ranch goat corral under slightly less than triple digit 9 a.m. temperatures while its residents, my Pans, crunched a sampling of the new batch of moaningly-good hay with which I had spent much of the previous day and evening stuffing the barn to the rafters. (I don’t know how anyone living the Rural Good Life manages to get homeowner’s insurance: a barn is basically kindling stuffed inside wood and adobe, with a chainsaw gas can nearby.)

Even before I learned how high alfalfa is in Vitamin K, Natalie and the very pregnant Nico made their breakfast sound so irresistibly tasty –- like a hot, perfectly-crusted pizza with all their favorite toppings -– that it was all I could do to maintain my Empty Mind and inflexible-dude’s semi-Lotus and not join them at the feeding trough. When I say they moaned as they ate, I mean audibly. Think “I’ll have what she’s having.” It’s immensely satisfying — worth an entire day’s work — to hear anyone or anything so enjoying a meal. I felt like a five star chef when the Michelin Guide comes out.

The grower of this new stash, let’s call him Juan, is a friend of a friend of a local midwife, and his product is green, leafy, organic (technically I should call it “organic style” since although it is Everything Bad-Free, the pony-tailed grower is of the “why should I pay the government to certify me?” school) and all around what a college stoner would call Kind.

This is not an idle comparison: I’ve related elsewhere in these Dispatches the Lady Macbeth-esque un-wash-off-able dynamic associated with choosing a lifestyle involving goats. Indeed, just the other day the postmistress shot me a “Sure it’s just alfalfa” look when in the act of pulling out my wallet I deposited perhaps half an ounce of my previous goat feed on her counter.

But I’m concerned that in the past I might have mistakenly conveyed the impression this “perpetually glued with Funky Butte Ranch hay, grain, milk and eggs” wardrobe look is a bad thing. It does cause me to have a particular scent which no shower erases. Yet when it comes to the Big Picture olfactory reactions that matter, forget trying to bathe it off. I’m thinking of patenting it.

In practical terms (take careful notice, Chanel researchers), the scent is transmitted daily because at least one gnat, biting fly or skeeter attempts to Twilight my neck per milking session, meaning I dab my carotid artery with a nuanced if potent combination of coconut oil, organic alfalfa hay, bits of organic grain (bound by molasses), and a dusting of goat fur and skin.

Generally I’ve been milking for between three and eleven minutes when I apply my Eau De Chevre. Then, a shower or three later, combined with an ensemble of just-recently-enough-line-dried clothes, well, that’s my scene, my scent, my look. Whether I like it or not. And I like it, and not just because I’m so used to it that I hardly notice it, nor because it’s unlikely to be plagiarized by the good folks at Chanel or any of their Zoolander-like models (Europeans invented perfume explicitly so people wouldn’t smell like livestock), but for one major reason: you might call it The Big Picture Reason.

The Big Picture Reason is best encapsulated by the first words I heard last night after I drove two hours home (yes, that’s local in the American West) on vegetable oil-power, luckily not pulled over, since at 10 p.m. when I finally had the Funky Butte Ranch barn stacked and smelling so delicious that I was almost myself moaning for the three cheese pasta waiting for me inside the Ranch house, I had once of those “can’t believe what I see when I look in the mirror” moments.

That’s how covered in green, Kind, leafy material I was. It was fastened to me by sweat and goat milk. I looked either like a major Mexican drug importer or a man who has put in a solid day’s work. Or, as my sweetheart put it when she hugged me despite my sweat-glued unintentional camoflage, “You smell nice. Like outside.” This is the The Big Picture Reason. Suddenly I didn’t mind being human/vegetable matter Velcro. It was a ten-hour job, bed to bed, in order to feed my goats locally and organically for eight months. Unfamiliar back-of-my-arm muscles ached. I hadn’t eaten since I crossed the county line. And all I remember is that “you smell nice.”

And even beyond the unexpected olfactory payoffs embedded in my lifestyle choices, it gives me a rush of pleasure to be able to feed my goats (and thus, indirectly, myself and my family) from such a delicious, local, organic source. OK, maybe this newest batch is a little loosely baled and flaky, to match the reachability of its grower (to be fair, Juan was facing bone-dry triple digit pre-Monsoon weather). But a bit of efficiency loss is more than worth it. Not only do I know the rancher responsible for my goats’ current culinary boat of moaning, but I saw his fields, his pesticide-free process and even his antiquated baler.

And there alongside the acequia, Juan, my new hay dealer, had warned me that this second (but still pre-Monsoon) “cut” was “a little dry.” You see, when you peel off a piece of a hay bale, it’s officially called a “flake,” usually an inch or three thick. That’s how the baler presses (mushes, really) the alfalfa together in the field. Ideally there’s just enough moisture in the plant at harvest (and Juan explained that this is an art, a dance with nature) that the flake itself holds firm. The flake is sort of the atom of the hay bale: the basic unit.

Turns out Juan hadn’t been kidding that these flakes would be a little…flaky. Meaning carrying what briefly was a flake from Funky Butte Ranch barn-cum-fire hazard to goat corral this morning made me look like Hansel and Gretel leaving a breadcrumb trail in the forest. But I feel safe saying that the quality of this stash far outweighs the quantity, judging by the fact that now, as I make notes, the goats are sounding like they’re sampling melted Belgian chocolate dipped with a fresh-chilled strawberry.

Indeed, I notice that enticing purple flowers are embedded and crushed as in a scrapbook in this Kind hay. OK, so efficiency isn’t the name of the game when it comes to healthy, local living in general. Yes, industrial hay might be baled slightly more solidly. But the nutritive benefits in this hay — the love that goes into its cultivation, the absence of pesticides and synth-genes, and it’s overall freshness — make it more than worth the amount lost in the field. Not that any of it is really lost; the Funky Butte Ranch chickens and ducks are already at work on it, which I hope didn’t happen to Hansel and Gretel. Indeed I firmly believe my goats are getting twice as much nutrition per flake as they do from feed store McHay. Let’s put it this way: they ain’t skinny. And Natalie, two years in, is still giving nearly half a gallon of milk per day.

It’s a good thing this hay is so vitamin-packed, too, because during this morning’s milking, which occurs each day just prior to feeding, my son’s romping in two waiting flakes while I milked Natalie quickly reduced them to a mineral-rich pulp, forcing me to relocate him and request he choose another form of entertainment for the duration of the milking. The game the two-year-old mini-Me invented, by the way, was “tracking thirsty lizards.’ I could hear him laughing to the side of me somewhere in the meadow, with the smaller of our reptile friends moving heard but unseen as they, like the rest of us, pray that Monsoon is soon to arrive.

“Hay,” by the way, was one of my son’s first words, along with “cheese” and “mbbah.” It gives me immeasurable satisfaction that, strange as it sounded at first, the “OK, son, put away the chicken feed and wash the duck shit off your sandals — it’s time for your bath,” line I hear myself saying most evenings, believe it or not, is one parents have been uttering to the kids as bedtime approaches for far longer and with much greater frequency, over the course of human history, than they have been saying, “Stop texting and turn off that XBox — it’s time for your anti-Bacterial hand sanitizing.”

In fact, listening to the lizard investigation, I quivered with pleasure at the realization that my son is going to be one of those kids who knows every tree, critter and water source in his entire valley. This was education when he was a kid, according to the Yup’ik elder Philip Moses I met in Western Alaska in 1998. Because it comprised biology, nutrition, geography, climatology, history, math, myth (AKA Literature) and even psychology and philosophy. Plus you could get home safely in a white out after a hunting trip — there were no bad sled drivers in Yup’ik culture. Not for long.

Now, I should say the Goat Crazy from whom I first caught the caprine bug (sorry, from whom I first learned my affinity for the endearingly special characteristics of the goat mind) during a bout of ranch sitting earlier this Millennium, told me when I moved to New Mexico that, given the Funky Butte Ranch’s forty-one acres of delicious native vegetation to sustainably munch on (not to mention my roses, their favorite delicacy), I hardly needed to supplement my mischievous Pans’ diet with purchased alfalfa hay, at least not for most of the year.

To be sure, I love the local dining in which Natalie and Nico partake, but given that they provide the majority of my family’s protein, I like for them to live the caprine equivalent of the Good Life. That is to say, I spoil them a little. As you’ll see in the video that opens this Dispatch, in addition to meditating with them every morning and feeding them the best flaky organic hay local networking can acquire, I also give them a bout of thrilling exercise in the cool pre-Monsoon evenings.

So when I do buy hay once or twice a year, I prefer it to be New Mexico grown and GMO-free, needless to say. What’s good for the human is good for the goat. And scoring this new source was a matter of immense persistence. The only way to contact Juan is through his compulsively chatty and friendly wife (I keep telling myself the make-time-to-know-your-neighbor aspect of rural life is a good thing, not just a time-killer).

There is no texting Juan. It was a solid two months before I managed to call at a time when he was home, which just happened to be exactly one day before he baled his “second cut” of afalfa -– the cut, incidentally, ideal in nutrients for goats. In pursuing the rumor of Juan’s alfalfa, I felt like an undercover RICO cop working his way up the narcotics distribution ladder: even getting his number was a deep exercise in regional trust, and then convincing him to squeeze me in for thirty bales of his always-totally-sold-out crop made me feel indebted to the point of perhaps buying him and his wife a Caribbean vacation. Not least because there’s no way he’s making a lot of money for what he charges.

The best part about my new Kind Green Hay Dealer is that he does it because he enjoys it -– you can tell by the way he talks about alfalfa when you show even a sliver of interest in the process (I got the full tour, including a ride in the ancient Deere baler). Nearing conventional retirement age, providing small scale livestock nutrition to a select clientele of locals keeps Juan outside and thus happy and alive. Noble goals, in my view. I know the feeling. It certainly doesn’t seem to be doing him any harm -– he’s one of those fellows who doesn’t seem to have a bad word for anyone, except maybe Sunday drivers.

Living in a hopefully temporary GMO era (one in which one has to pay a non-Poison surcharge simply to procure food not tainted with known carcinogens), I learned quickly that I have to get organic hay when and where I can –- never mind what previously important family or career commitments I might have on a given day (and yesterday I had both): when Juan requested I drive several hours over a mountain pass to load up my truck with the Kind Green Alfalfa, I didn’t hesitate. Normally, middle of the afternoon in June is not my preferred time to touch, let alone drive a molten truck in the Southwest U.S. Desert.

The weather often determines my schedule on the Funky Butte Ranch — it’s one of the things I so like about life here. For example, there’s no afternoon hike pre-Monsoon: human life doesn’t thrive in full sun (forget about while exercising) under clear 112 degree skies. Dry heat or not. But hay called, and so I found myself treating the R.O.A.T. steering wheel like the egg frying surface it is during daylight hours at this time of year, and facing a long, unintentional sauna. The things I do for my goats.

Visiting Juan’s ancestral ranch, coupled with now finding myself living on a ranch where I get to see where so many of life’s essentials come from, and what goes into them, I go through the Seven Stages of Grief when I see how much they so often cost in retail grocery stores. Ricotta, for example, is nothing –- it’s a by-product of making Mozzarella. It should be free or they should pay you to take it. Organic, as many readers will know, it pushes five bucks for six ounces.

I had sort of the opposite reaction (the Seven Stages of Bliss?) when realizing that with a mere ten hours of extreme driving and lifting, I can get organic alfalfa hay for seven bucks a bale. I mean, this fellow Juan has to grow and water it, cut it, bale it, including investing in baling twine, then engage in the muscle work of stacking it, all so my goats can moan in pleasure as they eat Extremely Kind alfalfa leaves and give my family our massive dairy fix as a result. This, of course, is just a corollary of the Lesson of Time in every day –- how long my morning meditation with the Goats feels, whether I give myself over to Breathing Outside of Time but in fact remember to set the alarm to wake me out of it back into the day — that’s the kind of clock to which I pay attention. And using that clock, Juan’s hay feels very, very inexpensive.

Speaking of time loss, by the way, besides the moaning-while-dining, I could tell the goats viscerally appreciated the months of investigatory effort and hours of driving and stacking I (not to mention Juan) put forth to bring them their five star breakfast. How could I tell? It was subtle, but it was in their overall aura when, four years after they became part of the Funky Butte Ranch family, not an hour ago they entirely devoured one of the new grapevines that was to be the centerpiece of my big Solar Feng Shui Gazebo Project. They accomplished this impressive culinary feat in less than five minutes –- in the time, to be specific, it took for me, having left the Southern Ranch gate open after feeding the goats and loading the truck, to say a proper goodbye to my family before today’s Town Run.

The briefly-open gate in question sits nearly an eighth of a mile from the goat corral and was cracked open perhaps three feet. The Pan Sisters therefore had to know to listen for the sound of that gate’s distinctive-because-older hinges. There’s no way they could be watching me.

The Open Ranch Gate Incident could be considered a set-back of sorts, examined in one kind of light. I mean, you move to Planet Earth, you know all its creatures are going to live on it –- you in fact welcome that reality as far superior to gate-to-cubicle living, from the potentially dangerous microbe to the mountain lion somewhere out there, hungry at sunset. What actually takes adjustment is having to play defense, in some cases, against members of your own ranch family, if not your own species. (And certainly I’m not only talking about goats here: just yesterday I was an hour late in stringing some chicken fencing around my herb garden — goodbye admittedly delicious basil). With the goat mind in particular though, the human has no choice but to adopt a “fool me seventeen times, shame on you, fool me eighteen times, well, that’s just how goats think” philosophy. This morning’s pandemonium was simply another episode in our epic and maddening debate over ranch landscaping.

Right from the start I kept a smile on my face and looked at it as one of life’s Sudoku puzzles. Even further, I would’ve considered the ensuing extended chase and round-up a great, even superlative mental and physical workout (being at the time late for a business package’s Fed Ex deadline notwithstanding) except for the entire lost grapevine, which had not just been crawling in lovely fashion up the local wood-and-bamboo structure I had built, but which I had just spent several hours further training and weeks lovingly watering.

Among other lessons of the somewhat loud twenty-minute goat round-up, I learned a few new tricks for wrangling the soon-to-be-milking, wily, strong and somewhat wild Nico. Sure, at first glance, that five-minute lapse in gate-closing procedure appeared to have set me back two years (which translates into a five-to-seven-degree temperature effect on the indoor climate of the Funky Butte Ranch House).

But even if that initial damage assessment had proved to be true, I was still feeling appreciation for my goats, not just for all the years of milk, yogurt, cheese and ice cream (probably pushing a ton by this point), not just because I get to put “Shepherd” under “Occupation” on my tax return, but for keeping me home with everyone and everything I care about most for another twenty minutes. Before I finally left for town, even more plastered in hay and goat hair than usual (at least, I thought, it matched both my day’s outfit and mood), I released Natalie and Nico from their corral house arrest, even thanking them for a worthy, fun and spiritually enriching workout and feeding ‘em some bonus grain.

I made the Fed Ex deadline by about three minutes.

Then, when I got home early this evening (just prior to another milking/hay-moaning session), it was once again proven that the universe appreciates a win-win scenario, even where goats are concerned. I saw that my caprine gardeners not for the first time proved to be skilled pruners: turned out they had mainly trimmed the northern side of the grapevine — the side further away from the gazebo post — to make my bamboo training all the easier.

With that move, my Pans achieved a level of sophistication that, for instance, the Grateful Dead did with the transition from minor bridge to major chorus in the song Eyes of the World as they performed it from 1973 through 1978. (I try to work toward a similar degree of nuance in my milking technique, incidentally. Based on a solid if open-minded technical foundation, factored over experience and the psychology inherent in every organic interaction. Least I can do.) The lessons keep coming — too fast to note in real time. So I must end this Dispatch and return to the Now. Which is itself another caprine lesson.

6 Responses: