The duck ’n’ buck yard was an immediate dismal failure with the bucks escaping repeatedly. Two of the Nigerian bucks had become a problem. Unlike Mr. Cotswold, they were small enough for me to handle, but they could still be quite aggressive. Eclipse, my oldest Nigerian buck, was particularly hard to manage, as was one of his babies by Clover, Pirate (who was full grown then). I had several other bucks and had sold them all except for Eclipse and Pirate.
Eclipse was jet black, with blue eyes from a recessive gene that was somewhat unusual. He was a gorgeous stud. I’d bought him as a baby from Missy, the same place I’d gotten Clover and Nutmeg, my first goats. Pirate looked just like Eclipse, but with a swordlike marking on his side that had led to his moniker. One of the other bucks I’d had at the time was his twin from the same birthing, Sailor, who had a white top knot like a sailor’s cap. Sailor had inherited the blue eyes from Eclipse, but he was gentle and sweet.
Eclipse and Pirate were a constant nuisance, escaping from the buck yard, breaking into the yard with the does and chasing them around until they were hiding under the goat house or risking life and limb jumping up on things to get away from their aggressive suitors. I risked life and limb tackling Eclipse and Pirate (they had horns) to capture them and get them out of the yard. I had decided to keep only Mr. Pibb, my Fainter buck, and if Eclipse and Pirate got to the does, I wouldn’t know who was the papa if they were bred and wouldn’t be able to properly register the babies or even tell potential buyers what their lineage was, if they were half Fainter (from Mr. Pibb) or pure Nigerian.
The goats didn’t go with a very high price, and those two were so aggressive, I didn’t think it would be fair to sell them without a warning label. As difficult as it had been to find homes for sweet Sailor and the other bucks, finding homes for a couple of “bad” bucks would be nigh upon impossible. They were worth more as meat to feed my family. I was trying to operate a self-sustaining farm, wasn’t I?
Butchering the pigs had seemed easy. I’d had little to do with the pigs. I didn’t feel as if I knew them personally. The goats were different. They were full of personality and spunk, and I spent a lot of time with them.
I decided to take Eclipse and Pirate to the butcher.
I asked 52 if he would eat the meat if I had Eclipse and Pirate butchered. He said, “Yes.”
But he didn’t want to take them to the butcher for me. I knew that I was going to have to take responsibility for what I planned to do. He helped me load the bucks in a crate in the back of my Explorer.
I took off for the butcher, which was over an hour’s drive from our farm. Eclipse and Pirate were noisy all the way, making bleats from the back. When I arrived at the butcher shop, the butcher shop man had me back the Explorer up to a sliding door that led to holding pens. The man helped me unload the goats. Eclipse and Pirate locked eyes on me, bleating in fear.
Turning away from them was painful. I walked through the office door of the shop. I sat down at the desk and the attendant said, “How do you want them cut up?”
I thought about running outside and putting Eclipse and Pirate back in the crate in the Explorer.
Then I thought about how aggressive they were, how Eclipse had nearly gored me a few times with his horns when he’d broken into the goat yard and I’d caught him chasing the does, and how difficult it would be to sell them.
“Mostly ground,” I said.
A few days later, the meat was ready. Eclipse and Pirate came home in vacuum-sealed plastic packages. There were a few small roasts, but as I’d requested, most of the meat was ground.
I put the meat in the freezer, keeping out a pound of the ground. I cut open the package. It looked pretty much like ground beef, red. I dumped it in a skillet, getting ready to make spaghetti. I turned on the burner, and the meat began to sizzle.
The buck scent hit me. Like with a pig, other types of livestock that are intended for butchering are often neutered (in the case of goats, it’s called wethered) so that the meat doesn’t take on a smell. I wondered if the meat would be edible.
I also wondered if Eclipse was going to jump right out of the pan. Smelling his scent made me feel as if he were right there on top of the stove.
Using a spatula, I broke up the meat, trying to shake off the feeling that Eclipse was about to leap out of the skillet at me. Gradually, the buck smell faded until it dissipated completely.
By the time the meat was cooked through, I couldn’t smell it at all.
Over the weeks and months that followed, I cooked with goat meat often. Goat burgers became one of my favorite things. Goat meat, like lamb, is flavorful. I found it to be delicious. Beef, particularly store-bought beef, is bland in comparison. Whenever anyone asks me what goat meat tastes like, I tell them like a cross between pasture-raised beef and lamb, which is the closest I can come to describing it. Goat meat tastes like goat meat.
I decided to wether and raise all future male goat babies for meat. I loved my female goats, and they had a useful purpose as milkers and breeders, and girl babies were relatively easy to sell, but I knew I’d never see anything again but goat burgers when they popped out a boy, and as difficult as it had been to take Eclipse and Pirate to the butcher, I felt good about it. I wasn’t a vegetarian. I ate meat. A farm meant I had the opportunity to raise my own. Pirate and Eclipse had a good life—and one bad day, which was more than one could say for animals in most factory or mass agri operations where meat from the grocery store originates. Eclipse and Pirate lived natural lives on green grass in the fresh air with petting and cookies. This wasn’t anonymous meat wrapped in plastic on a foam tray. I found myself feeling differently about how I cooked and how I ate. Eliminating waste by portioning carefully became more important. To scrape meat off a plate to the dog bowl or in the trash suddenly seemed almost criminal. I had a new respect for my food. Eclipse and Pirate were sustaining my family with their bodies, and I felt a great obligation to honor that in the meals I prepared and how I treated those meals. We’re often so nonchalant as a society about tossing leftovers. When we grow our own food, and raise our own meat, it changes how our minds work. I wanted to embrace that change in myself.
I’d looked in the eyes of the meat I was putting on my plate. It was a connection with my food, and a responsibility to it, that felt right and honest.
There was something both hard and beautiful in it, and as with every other step I’d taken toward a more real life, I didn’t want to go back.
In moving out the Nigerian bucks, I’d also tightened my goat herd. I’d just kept one buck as my herd sire. Mr. Pibb, my Fainter buck. As whip smart as Nigerians were (which, in the bucks, could translate to aggression), the Fainters were gentle souls, even the buck. I had two Fainter does, which would produce purebred Fainter babies with Mr. Pibb, along with my Nigerian does, who would be giving birth to crossbreeds. I’d discovered that I could register the Fainter-Nigerian crossbreeds as 50 percent myotonic (the gene that makes them “faint” or actually stiffen and sometimes fall over when startled) with the Myotonic Goat Registry (the Fainter association). My streamlined herd would be easier to care for on my own in my imaginary 52-less future. I could keep them together in one field, running the buck with the does full-time.
I needed to cut the sheep flock, too. I’d never gone into a field alone with Mr. Cotswold again, and never without a stick or something for protection even when 52 was with me. I wanted to keep a couple of the ewes, including my “pet” Annabelle, the “puppy” I’d bottle-fed on the porch our first year on the farm. I also planned to keep one of the Cotswold-Jacob cross ewes. They were young, and they’d both recently lambed. I’d keep their babies, too.
52 liked the sheep more than I did. I had to convince him that the ram and older ewes needed to go, but finally one evening he agreed to let me give them away. They were all too old to butcher, so that wasn’t even a question.
I put up an ad on Craigslist and by the time 52 woke up the next morning, I had a new home for Mr. Cotswold and the older ewes. I was afraid to give 52 time to change his mind, or time to ponder why I was so bent on getting rid of the more unmanageable or purposeless sheep.
It was like I was constantly dressing up for a party that wasn’t happening because I couldn’t figure out how to actually manage the farm on my own. But I never missed Mr. Cotswold for a second.
I drove to Spencer one day to meet a friend for lunch, a rare outing for me by that point. I stopped in at the Farm Service Agency afterward, then picked up a few staple groceries at Walmart. I didn’t have to do much shopping anymore. We grew or made most of what we needed. On the way home, I swung by Georgia’s house. I’d made some apple butter and had a jar for her.
After knocking on her door, as usual, I just walked in. She was sitting in her chair. I brought her a spoon from the kitchen and gave her the jar.
She’d come across some things while sorting papers that she’d set aside for me to look at, and she had them waiting on the table by her chair. She enjoyed my visits and often saved things to show me. One of those things that day was an old newspaper.
It was the December 1, 1960, edition of the county paper. She’d wanted me to see it because it had an article about the hard-won election to the sheriff’s office of my great-uncle C.W. “Doc” Dye.
Back then, the paper cost five cents.
The article about my great-uncle was actually kind of boring, but the newspaper was fascinating. The movie showing at the Robey that week was Elmer Gantry. There was a big advertisement.
“BLESS HIM! DAMN HIM! Tens of thousands of believers shouted his praises! Three women damned his soul!” Starring: Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons. Costarring Shirley Jones.
The Robey disclaimer:
The Management of the Robey Theatre DOES NOT Recommend This Movie for Anyone under 16.
This must have been before standardized ratings.
The classifieds were pretty interesting, too. There was a listing for a 1947 Dodge sedan. The phone number to inquire was only three numbers. 291.
The headlines were about the recent presidential election. Nixon beat Kennedy in Roane County. The local news was more interesting. A bizarre accident was reported (not to mention the bizarre reporting).
Miss Penny Stephens, a Dental Hygiene student at West Liberty State College and the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Stewart Stephens of Parkersburg Road, Spencer, suffered painful, but not serious injuries when she fell from an automobile near West Liberty Wednesday of last week. She was on her way here for the Thanksgiving holiday. The car door flew open on a curve and Miss Stephens careened to the roadway. The vehicle was traveling very slowly when the mishap occurred, but Miss Stephens was bruised nearly all over from her shoulders to her knees.
“I think somebody pushed her, Georgia. Don’t you?”
Georgia laughed. This was really why she saved things for me, I think. She’d set things aside, then wait for me to come over and start making up stories.
The county extension agent’s column was about apple pie. “What can be a better choice for this season of the year than the tangy goodness of a fresh apple pie?” The column went on to suggest that the secret of perfect pastry is a package of your favorite piecrust mix.
“What is wrong with these people?” I asked Georgia. I was almost ready to throw the paper down. “A piecrust mix? That’s shameful!”
“It is?” Georgia said.
“You’ve never used a piecrust mix in your life.”
“Well.” She looked a little secretive, making me wonder if she’d been sneaking around with piecrust mixes.
And then I found the personals, and that was no time to throw the paper down. This wasn’t “single white female” stuff. This was 1960s personals. Gossip.
Mr. Ralph Carper of Walton was attending to business affairs in town last Wednesday.
In case Mrs. Carper was wondering where he was.
Mr. and Mrs. John Dye and son Carson were visiting in Akron, Ohio, this past week with Mr. and Mrs. H. E. Young.
John Dye was one of my dad’s cousins.
Mr. and Mrs. Clay Miller will leave Thursday for a two-week Caribbean cruise.
Bragging! And, oh, for the innocence of December 1960 when this didn’t represent an invitation to burglary.
Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Moss and grandchildren of Newton were shopping in town last Friday.
And on and on, an entire half page of trivial gossip.
“How does this sound?” I said to Georgia.
Ms. Suzanne McMinn of Walton lunched in Spencer on Friday then attended to some business affairs followed by shopping. Then she ate some pie and went to bed.
“You have pie?” Georgia asked.
“I’m making one when I get home. Then I’m so sending that to the paper.”
Georgia said, “Well.” Which meant she wished I’d made the pie before I came over.
Glory Bee was eight months old that summer and still not weaned. Sometimes she even managed to break out of the goat yard to get to mommy, who was in the field beyond the house. Beulah Petunia was always glad to see her. They’d take off for the hinterlands of the partially wooded cow pasture, clutching plane tickets in one hoof and hastily packed suitcases in the others.
Glory Bee broke out so frequently, I actually became adept at getting her back to the goat yard by myself, which I considered a big accomplishment. We tried putting her in the bottom pasture, but that made things even worse. She broke out one day and ended up in the Ornery Angel’s yard. I figured it was better to keep her closer to the house. If she escaped from the goat yard, at least I knew where she’d go—to her mama. If she broke out from the bottomland, she might go anywhere, including up and down the road.
I was down to milking Beulah Petunia once a day. I’d had a milk cow for over a year. I defined my life in the country into precow and postcow. A cow is a life-altering event, an experience that will push you, even when you’re tired, and make you grow. A cow will test your will and take you on a daily adventure. You will handle a thousand-pound animal every day. The most surprising part of it all was that I loved every minute of having a cow. Even as I streamlined and reduced in other areas on the farm, my commitment to my cows never wavered. I was obsessed with getting Beulah Petunia bred.
I explained it all to my cow. She started picking through her wardrobe, polishing her nails, getting her hair done, spraying on perfume.
Or something like that.
I researched cow heat cycles and started studying Beulah Petunia’s “flower petals” twice daily, looking for signs. A cow goes into heat approximately every twenty-one days and is in heat for about thirty hours. The peak fertile period is in the middle of this time and is called standing heat. When cows first go into heat, they may not stand for a bull. Which, you know, gives you time to go find one. But you can’t wait too long because before you know it they will be out of heat. We would be taking Beulah Petunia across the river to Skip’s farm.
There’s nothing like getting all up close and personal with a cow and her flower petals. The “petals” are right under certain other parts. Did you know that cows moo from both ends? Really, the things you learn when you start spending quality time with your cow’s flower petals.
One morning, Beulah Petunia came up for her feed early. After she’d been milked, instead of disappearing back to the hinterlands as usual, she stayed up at the gate to her field. Bawling. Angry mooing. For like two hours. I thought, Wow, she sure is being mean today. Then—lightbulb!
I had forgotten to even check her that day, slacking on my petal patrol. So I grabbed my chore boots and ran out to her. She looked red and swollen in the important parts, and I thought she was in heat.
I e-mailed 52 at work, and he said he’d come home to help me take her to the bull.
Beulah Petunia started going through her dresses, tossing clothes left and right, trying to decide what to wear. By the time 52 got home, she was adorned with a bright pink blossom behind her ear, attached to her halter. Simple. Understated. It said, I’m happy to be here and this is special, without also saying, Overeager and needy.
Or at least that’s what Beulah Petunia and I thought.
Or possibly just me. I was so excited, you would have thought I was the one headed for a date.
It was only one mile to Skip’s farm, but it was a long mile. I’d been going to Skip’s farm all my life, but I’d never gone there with a cow. Back in my father’s day, Skip’s farm was part of my great-grandfather’s larger farm that went all up and down the road across the river from Stringtown Rising, and my father took me there often when I was a little girl. By the time I was in my twenties, Skip owned it, and together with my father and subsequently my own children when they were little, I’d been visiting Skip for years when we took the “family history” tour on trips to West Virginia.
When we were walking Beulah Petunia over there, I had a moment where I thought back to all the times I’d gone to Skip’s farm in the past and how I would never, and I mean never, have imagined that I would one day live across the river and down the road from Skip and be taking my cow to his bull.
One time when we were visiting Skip, my (crazy) father wanted to walk way, way up to a big open meadow on the hill above the house. Skip would always say, sure, go wherever you want, when we came calling. A bull came running in the meadow and we were all clambering down a steep cliff, hanging on to tree trunks not to fall, to the creek far, far below to get away from the bull. And now I was headed there in search of a bull.
While it was a mile by the road from our farm to Skip’s, Skip suggested it might be shorter if we took her up the road to the family cemetery, over the hill, and across the river that way.
If it was shorter, it was maybe shorter by nothing. It felt like twenty miles and involved climbing. But then, going a mile anywhere in West Virginia feels like twenty miles. We took her down the driveway, out the road, and up the steep, rough road to the cemetery.
We passed through a sunny field of daisies and into a shady path of enchantment as we crossed the hill. Beulah Petunia kept wanting to stop and eat and eat and eat Skip’s tall, tall grass. 52 held her on the lead while I followed behind with a switch to keep her going. I didn’t like to swat her, so that was a bad job. I swatted her really gently, and she didn’t really care, so sometimes I had to push her on her rump.
We finally came down and out toward the river and found the crossing by Skip’s sawmill. We took Beulah Petunia across the river and to the road and on to Skip’s paddock. Beulah Petunia bawled and bawled, letting the bull know she had arrived. She was thirsty after all that exercise, and when we let her out of the paddock and into the pasture, she went straight for the creek. From there, she started walking up the creek, into the shaded distance, and then . . . she was gone.
I could hardly stand it. My cow! I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to go after her, camp out, watch over her, see the action. But it didn’t really seem practical. Beulah Petunia was a big girl. She knew where she was going and she wanted to go there.
The late report that night from Skip was that the bull checked her out but didn’t mount her. Had he not seen her flower?
It was my first clue that getting a cow pregnant wasn’t going to be that easy.
I left Beulah Petunia over at Skip’s farm for two days, and by the end of that time, I was feeling a little frustrated, not sure what was going on or what I should do about it. Even as I was contemplating that conundrum, I was also wondering how I was even going to find my cow on Skip’s big farm full of sunny meadows, shaded creeks, nooks and crannies, and . . . cows.
The last time I’d seen Beulah Petunia, she was disappearing into the woods following a creek. I went back, passed through the paddock and into the field above the creek, looked up at the hill where I knew lay a huge open meadow full of tall, tall grass . . . and called her name, feeling a little hopeless. I figured I was about to take an (arduous!) hike all over Skip’s farm looking for my cow—who was in serious need of milking.
I heard a cow answer me. I thought it was her, but—I didn’t have a bunch of cows. Maybe they all sounded the same. I called her again, twice, and—
She came right out to the edge of that sunny meadow, looked down at me, and started coming.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d arrived at this big farm and called my cow. And here she came!
She plodded in her slow, sure, methodical way, straight for me, off the hilltop and down the bank.
My cow!
She loved me.
Or she thought I might have some goodies.
Anyway, she came!
And she was still wearing her flower!
I didn’t know anything about her other flower. Using a bucket, I hand-milked her on the spot. The ground was uneven and she stepped in the bucket, but she seemed happy to be relieved. The next evening, we went back with the milking machine and a generator set up on the back of 52’s truck to run the vacuum pump by the paddock. I shifted her around to an evening milking schedule since that was when 52 could help me by bringing his truck with the milking machine on it.
A few evenings later, when I went to Skip’s farm to milk her, she had company: Skip’s Black Angus–Gelbvieh cross bull. There was a lot of nuzzling going on.
I was a bit freaked out. How was I going to milk? The bull, whose name was Adam, seemed a little concerned we were going to take away his Eve, and he went to work. Which freaked me out even more and I had to watch. And take photos. And go home and enlarge the photos so I could see if he was getting in there. He was.
52 ran the bull out of the paddock so I could milk, which I could barely accomplish after being blinded by the salacious activity. The bull waited up on the hill until Beulah Petunia was once again available.
The next day, thinking she was surely bred, I brought Skip a loaf of homemade bread and a jar of apple butter and took Beulah Petunia home. This time, 52 drove me to Skip’s and I took my cow by her lead and walked her home on the road, instead of over the hill, with 52 following behind me in his truck.
Walking down a country road leading a cow was one of those events that made me feel like a little girl playing dress-up in farmer clothes, or maybe as if I were wandering on foot through a children’s storybook. Beulah Petunia clip-clopped down the road by my side, the sun shining down, the air filled with birdsong. It was a mile to the river ford. Across the ford, she could hear Glory Bee mooing from the top of the hill, and she knew she was home.
I marked the calendar and started the clock.
Three weeks later, she was in heat again. It was the summer of Beulah Petunia and Skip’s bull, and we spent a lot of time going back and forth across the ford, not just with the cow, but taking feed to the cow and milking the cow, trying to get her bred.
Our farm was near the river ford, and back in the day, the ford was the center of society here. This tiny spot of civilization in the heart of Appalachia, remote and mostly deserted now, was once a busy teeny tropolis of oil and gas activity that brought money and people to this sideways mountain foothills farmland. Back when my great-great-grandfather first came here, there was no one and nothing. By the time his son, my great-grandfather, was growing up (late 1800s), the boom had arrived. My great-grandfather’s house was across the river ford from our farm. He owned over eight hundred acres up and down the halfway paved road across the river. Our dirt road formed a T with that road at the ford.
We were the dirt-rock starving tail falling down from the half-paved top of that T. The river ford was the connection, then and now. The ford was still the center of Stringtown. There just weren’t so many people there anymore.
We’d drive across the ford every night to go see Beulah Petunia. I’d scratch her and pet her and remind her that she was my cow, and half the time when we got back to the ford, someone from the ’hood was on its banks and we’d stop to shoot the breeze for an hour.
I loved our ’hood of Stringtown. It was full of family-style squabbling and family-style help. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and yet we had a ’hood, centered on the ford, as it had always been for a hundred years and more. And for a hundred years and more, not everyone has gotten along, but when someone needed help, the ’hood was there. Every single one of them had helped us at one time or another, and when we could, we had helped them. On either side of the property belonging to the farther members of our ’hood (Sonny on one side, Skip on the other), you had to drive quite a way to reach the next home. There, centered on the river ford, was our little community. The ones in easy walking—or even yelling—distance if you needed help.
And I don’t care what they’d say if you asked them ahead of time, but when the chips were down, even if it was Frank who was in trouble, every single one of them would be there if they were called. Country life in that remote holler was just strange and wonderful that way.