Goatable quotables. . .

Goats are the ultimate source of success in life. 

Dalai Lama

Well then, we have made it BIG!

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On second thought, I think I am more crazy than my goat. 

Remedios Varo

Depends on who you ask. . .

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Politics is perhaps the only profession for which goats are not necessary. 

Robert Louis Stevenson

Although both often drive me to drink. 

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I grew up on a farm. I have seen animals having sex in every position imaginable. Goat on chicken. Chicken on goat. Couple of chickens doing a goat, couple of pigs watching. 

Dwight Schrute, the Office

Capone and his friend, Blackie, aka the penguin chick, all grown up.  The three bucks are responsible for most of the disgusting occurrences around here. 

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Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side. 

Yiddish Proverb

Don't approach Queen Elina at all, unless its for a backrub. 

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I actually would love to live in New York. But I need land; I need space. I'd love to move to a place where I could have a lot of land and a goat. 

Lusia Strus

The longer we're here, the more hermit-like we become. The city is good for only one thing, shopping. OK, two things...eating at a non-chain restaurant. 

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The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who has the goats. 

Anon

We are freaking loaded!

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It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep. 

Cowboy Proverb

But it 'do' take great restraint for me not to alter that quote and change 'don't ' to doesn't. I 'seen ' the mistake, does you?

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 Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

Cicero

Precisely 21. Friends...I'm not sure, they keep moving away! Yes, I mean YOU Tiffany Olsick!

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A dirt and smelly nanny goats is invariably the victim of dirty and insanitary living quarters and of an owner who is too lazy to groom her.

David Le Roi

They look terribly unhappy don't they?  

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All goats are mischievous thieves, gate-crashers, and trespassers. Also they possess individual character, intelligence, and capacity for affection which can only be matched by the dog. Having once become acquainted with them I would as soon farm without a dog as without a goat.

David Mackenzie

Cute, affectionate, addictive.

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Trumpet in a herd of elephants; crow in the company of cocks; bleat in a flock of goats.

Malayan Proverb

Ma-a--a-a-a-a-a. Speaking goat is a lost art. 

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Goats cannot live in a heard of leopards.

African Proverb

Look at that face! It will guard us from leopards, coyotes, poorly-contained-neighbors-dogs...more to come on this topic.

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Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field in hope that the cow will back up to them.

Elbert Hubbard

No, they shall first enter the pen, chase the goat, grab its collar, drag it out, lift its front end on to the suddenly terrifying milk stand, hoist its rear end up next, get farted on, possibly pooped on, wash, wash, massage, massage, squirt, squirt, dip, dip, drink. 

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Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk. 

Shmuel Y. Agnon

Magpie, Luna, Molly, Strawberry, Massie, Marigold, Francesca, Luci, Minnie, Macy, Lunetta, Mallory, Elina, Emilene, Echo, Persimmon, Willow, Stella, Lola, Matilda, Cammile, Cassie, Petunia, Serafina

Eeeeew......barf...

From : Chemical & Engineering News Magazine

Volume 90 Issue 52 | p. 48 | Newscripts
Issue Date: December 24, 2012

Before you pass the cheese plate at your next holiday shindig, molecular biologist Christina M. Agapakis wants you to stop and think about why those blocks of dairy goodness smell the way they do.

Along with artist and odor expert Sissel Tolaas of Re_SearchLab, in Berlin, Agapakis recently explored the relationship between emotions and odors perceived by humans (Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol., DOI:10.1016/j.cbpa.2012.10.035). The researchers did this by making their own cheese—literally. They swabbed their armpits, hands, noses, and feet to collect starter bacteria cultures for cheese fermentation.

Typical cheese making involves a Lactobacillus starter culture that ferments the lactose in milk, says Agapakis, now a postdoc at the University of California, Los Angeles. The lactic acid generated during the process curdles the milk, leading to clumps of fat and protein (curds) that eventually get pressed and aged.

When asked what possessed her to make cheese from body microbes rather than Lactobacillus, Agapakis says, “We were thinking about body odors” and why people are disgusted by them. “Then we were struck by the fact that those same odors and the microbes that make them are actually part of cheese,” she adds. For instance, Propionibacterium is used to make Swiss cheese, but it’s also a contributor to armpit aroma.

Knowing that people already accept bacteria in cheese, the pair wondered whether humans would become more comfortable with their bodily microbes and odors after seeing and smelling the connection. The answer, so far, seems mostly to be no. According to Agapakis, when presented with the experiment, people usually say, “You’ve ruined cheese for me forever,” she laughs.

Agapakis, though, assures Newscripts that body cheese isn’t that bad. Armpit cheese is especially pleasant smelling and tastes like a fresh farmer’s cheese, she says. On the other hand, she warns, “I would avoid the foot cheese.”

Happy New Year!

So far, so good in 2013. The holiday rush is over, the eating madness has slowed down, at least somewhat...we even managed to stay up past midnight on New Year's Eve! Silly string and bottle rockets are artfully frozen onto our back porch as proof. A few highlights from the holidays at Capra Lane. . .

Our lovely tree is no longer decor, but goat food! They love the needles and bark, pine is like ginger for goats, a gut-calmer. They are not so careful to eat around the sap, their muzzles are sticky and crusted with bits of hay and grain, but they are all smiling.

Ever been on www.dogshaming.com? Basically it is a forum where you can post a pic of your embarrassed dog wearing a sign proclaiming what he did wrong that day. Some of them are quite funny. On Christmas Eve morning I had my own opportunity to nominate one of our mischievous own. The night before I had made a batch of torrone, Italian nougat candy with almonds that is a real pain in the arse to make. After cutting and individually wrapping them I packed up all but a dozen or so to bring to my parents house. A dozen I put in a dish on our dining room table because we were having guests the following night. I woke up to this. . .

That is Tinder's bed. Full of one dozen wrappers!!! The 5 pound chihuahua, not the 80 lb weimaraner, somehow climbed up chairs to the dining room table, carried them one by one to her bed and unwrapped and ate them. She didn't even try to hide the evidence, the little shit!

She raced immediately into the bedroom and climbed in bed with Rog. She hates Rog. Possibly more than I hate birds. Can't you just feel the guilt emanating from those little bug eyes? Surprisingly there were no after effects from eating half her weight in buttery nut candy.

To end 2012 with a bang, we cut the cheese. 3 months of sniffing, turning, panicking all came down to this. We pulled the two small wheels and one large wheel out of the 'cheese cave'. The large one, as we suspected early on, was too wet and full of 'undesirables' and smelled a little like feet. And death. After disposing of it we cut a small wheel. Everyone stood back, half expecting it to explode, or creatures to crawl out of it, or for it to deflate like the turkey on Christmas Vacation. We bravely sliced down the center and saw this. . .

It was beautiful! Angels were singing, the goats were rejoicing, the sky filled with rainbows and unicorns and shooting stars. We took the next reasonable step. . . we made our husbands taste it. When they asked for seconds, we tasted it too. Not too bad for rookies! The rind is inedible and scary, but the cheese itself is nutty, buttery, salty and firm. I could lie and say I taste the terror of the land, the homegrown alfalfa, the kelp, but I'd be lying. It was good but in my head I was still a little worried about botulism to analyze it furthur. We'd set out to make a tomme, an un-cheddared cheddar, but ended up with this, something reminiscent of a goat parmigianno. Now that we have at least partial success, we are anxious to move forward. So much so that we don't want to wait until spring, soon I'll try to get a hold of some fresh raw cow's milk and try again.

Mystery meat quiz. . . winner gets a ....squirrel nugget! In the past I've only prepared squirrel in squirrel-pot-pie so this time we went the more purist route. Yes, we eat squirrel. No I'm not a drug user. Yes, I realize  it is a rodent and our freezers are stocked with 'normal' meat like chicken, beef, pork, venison and goat. The squirrel reached our table this weekend after a friends' 6 year old had his first hunt here with his dad and Rog, which resulted in one fat squirrel. Carrying the squirrel home, cleaning it, skinning it and repurposing the hide helped him to realize that meat isn't made in the store. It came from somewhere, from something that was hunted or killed by someone to provide food.

A lot of us refuse to entertain a world that requires people to hunt and fish to survive. However, this was the fact of life for most of human existence, only more recently has farming / agriculture technology allowed us to eat a variety of meats without having to chase after them first. Teaching hunting to children as not just a sport, but as necessity can also induce a sense of reverence for the meat they consume. Learning to hunt wild game will inadvertently teach the child about the behavioral habits of the chosen target, the necessity of controlling the population of predatory species as well as a respect for nature in general. During the brief and successful squirrel hunt, Sam learned about proper handling of a weapon, to respect the animal that was killed by not wasting it by killing simply for sport but by using the meat to feed our families, secondly, cleaning and tanning the hide for warmth and thirdly, he gained confidence by being able to provide this to his siblings and parents.  He is 6, after all, the highlight of the whole experience was being promised the fluffy tail that will someday adorn his cub scouts cap!