Things are still very brown here in NC, but all of the trees are starting to bud. When you look into the forest things have a reddish glow at the tips of the branches. Daffodils and cherry trees are in bloom. Ema and I sat down and finally ordered all of our seeds from Fedco last week. The seed catalog has such amazing descriptions of everything. Everything sounds good and yummy. I think the pumpkin we picked out was described as making a rich and velvety pie. This time of year I feel so gullible for the garden. It is like women with childbirth, you forget the pain and want to do it all over again. You forget about July when the weeds and overwhelming work pummels you, and then come March you are eagerly are drooling over the seed catalog. Barbara Kingsolver said something similar in her new book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” which is a non-fiction tale of her family attempting to eat only local food for one year. I just finished this book, and I highly recommend it.
The other Spring-like event that is on the horizon is that our goat Sparrow is due to give birth tomorrow. This is our first kidding, and we are all very excited and nervous. We are all hoping for baby girl goats. Typically male goats are either drowned at birth or eaten at six months. To keep a male around (unless you castrate him) is an extremely stinky affair and one we are definitely not interested in partaking in. Could we really swallow (no pun intended) to eat our baby male goats? This is the troublesome reality of farm life and life in general for anyone who eats animals. Many of us are of the opinion that we would provide a loving home and an honorable and humane death for the goaties which is more than I can say for even some of the meat I eat. It is very complex and very basic at the same time. Which is why we are hoping for girls the first time around.
Goats have a 155 day gestation. I will include some photos of Sparrow's journey down the road to get studded to a giant La Mancha (they look like they have no ears) named Hermes Wings!
1 comment:
Sounds exciting. We, too, are very ready to garden, though we know that we will be busy with weeds soon enough. There are some weeds up already!
Go go go go for goat!
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