Day 36: Kicking the beast.

This morning I had to clear two rows of old cucumbers; they lived on the fence-homes that I built a few blogs ago. So I had to cut all of the old vines off of the wire and deconstruct the cucumber apartments. Then we had to clean up a row of zucchini. The leaves on the zucchini have little scratchy-prickly things--it definitely belongs in the desert! They were pulled up by the roots and taken to the other side of the yard, where stuff goes to decompose.

That was five hours of not overly hard work, but it was tough. I liked the change of pace. Don't get me wrong, digging is the king of all hard labor, and I do love it. But taking a day off from it was not so bad. This afternoon I have to muck the goat pens, so I'll be a diggin' then.

I'm in my sixth week here. I cannot believe that this is so, and, yet, this is so. I bought my boots a week or so before I came, and I expected that I would take them home with me. But, just like the boots pictured here on the left, my boots will join the boot graveyard.

Look at the frayed sides. That is the sole
and not fabric.

You can see how frayed they are on the edges from walking over the stones. And they have already torn on the front, but I have no idea how or why. But Merrill should not advertise these boots as sturdy hiking boots because in only six weeks I've broken them. Maybe they are really called light hiking boots?

I guess if I could have a visual representation of where I've been I'd like for it to be the shoes I've walked in. Of course, when I was a kid I remember going around barefooted, much like I do when I'm walking around the farm here now. I'd have to imagine that my feet then were as tough as they are now. I mean, yesterday I stepped on a rock and broke it!

I don't remember when, but I recall my mother telling a story about when I was a kid. All of the

other kids had bikes and I would just run alongside of them or chase them. I remember these days, too. Sometimes I would borrow a neighbors bike and ride along, but I still don't care for bikes even today.

So I don't know what I'd do about the periods when I would go without shoes. When I worked at Eckerd College I would walk around the studio and really the campus without shoes. They didn't really care. I think shoes were made by the devil to separate humans from the earth so that we will forget the touch of God.

This afternoon our tasks were doled out by Tamar while Lulu supervised.

Goat shit.

I got to muck the goat pens. I knew it would stink, but I wasn't offended by the smell. But I am putting all of the clothes that I wore in the basket to be washed. I and my clothes smelled like goat excrement.

This guy, his scale is hard to tell in the images, goes just over two hundred pounds. His head is as big as mine unless you add the horns. Then he wins! And he looks like a maniacal beast.

But he is really such a cuddler. He just wants some love. He gets all of the girl goats, but he just wanted to be scratched behind the ears. All of the goats do, really. One thing that doesn't happen too much around here is loving-up the animals. I don't mind doing it, and the animals like it too.






How many cute pictures do I put of him?





Remember when I said I eat garlic and onions to keep the bugs off of me? It really does work. But Val will tell you that I eat them at home, too, but it works there as well. Plus they just taste good. Well, Mr. BigGoat certainly thought that I tasted good; or, at least, he thought that the pit group in my shirt did.



Really. He was loving me up as much as I was loving him up.

After I finished loving the goats--I scratched the alpha female, too, but she is camera shy--I had to cut some metal to make arches in the garden. The arches are covered with plastic, and this protects the seedlings from being eaten by the birds.