We can do this the easy way or the Hartley way

Several days of snow, cold and isolation, and I have a tendency to feel slightly unmoored. The routine doesn’t change much, but I spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with the plenty of fresh clean and, I should add, liquid water.

If I don’t dump even slightly dirty water and replace it with clean and fresh, the goat won’t drink it.

I’m sure there is a better way, probably installing deep water lines and hydrants near the watering spots.

My choice is that rather than spend hundreds of dollars and hours of construction, in the winter I schlep bucket after bucket of water from the kitchen sink to the water tanks and tubs outside.

My philosophy is, what I lack in infrastructure I make up with back muscles. That’s why I’m called “Forrest Hardway” by some.

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The water goes out. The stove wood comes in. Come evening I have pretty much worked “from can until can’t.” I don’t know how to say it in Pennsylvania Dutch, but that’s how the expression came to me.

All this walking back and forth is very entertaining to the animals. Still, I don’t mind the warmer season when one of two armloads of stove wood a day is enough, and water is delivered via a hose.

The other night, I think I had dozed off in my recliner, and my brain was off dreaming about dry cleaning or true bugs. All of a sudden I heard a high pitched scream. I was instantly moored to the dock of the here and now.

It was obviously a baby goat, probably born within the last 10 minutes or so.

Maggie and I were both in our space suits within minutes and running out to make sure everything was alright. Of course it was just above zero and even though the snow had stopped hours before, a small blizzard suddenly appeared.

I had some difficulty toting hay over to the goat yard because I couldn’t see through all that snow with my head lamp. I was in a brilliant, middle-of-the-night windy whiteout.

Goats always want to have their kids on the coldest night of the year, and under the most difficult of situations. This night was no exception, though we have had much colder.

The babies, though still wet and slimy, were being well cared for by their very expert mother, Star. She was licking, cleaning, nuzzling and generally encouraging the two little black babies, brother and sister, into their new lives.

A few days later and the little ones are walking around all cleaned up and bright eyed, admiring all of their aunties and two retired uncles, Fireball XL5 and Nostradamus.

Baby goats are generally the first real action of the new season. Before, everything we were doing was just working to keep the entire place from simply falling apart while we practically lost our ever-loving minds.

Now I am not just meandering through the monotony of winter. My attention has shifted to the growing season. The next step after kids will generally involve trees, sugaring and pruning. From there things just take off as the warm season pushes its way up the hills.

There’s not much chance of drifting off now.

Forrest Hartley lives in Hadley, N.Y. You can leave a message new_americangothic@yahoo.com.

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