Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer McGaha

Author:Jennifer McGaha [McGaha, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2017-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

Molasses Cocktail for Finicky Goats

Mix 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses with 2 cups warm goat’s milk. Pour into an empty, clean soda bottle fitted with a nipple, or if your goat is extra finicky, onto a plate propped on an overturned soup pot. Gently massage baby goat’s ears while she drinks.

Chapter Twelve

The milk of Nigerian dwarfs has a high percentage of fat, which means their milk makes rich cheese, and because they are small, they need less space than standard breeds. David and I had watched hundreds of Nigerian dwarf videos online. The babies were playful, precocious, adorable. They ran through and over and under obstacles, chasing each other, jumping on the backs of dogs and donkeys and other goats. Every goat owner I talked to loved Nigerian dwarfs. However, they were all quick to tell me that Nigerians could be stubborn, and they didn’t give a lot of milk. And so, duly noting both the charms and drawbacks, one Saturday in May, David and I set out with Alex, who was home for the weekend, to get the pregnant doe.

The farm was in rural South Carolina, somewhere vaguely near Spartanburg, past megachurches and dairy farms and the occasional McDonald’s. After several wrong turns and some backtracking, we were finally there, at a place that more closely resembled a petting zoo than any farm I had ever seen. There were turkeys, chickens, and a sow with a new litter of piglets, all in immaculate pens, and there were handmade wooden rabbit hutches with stoops where young visitors stood to feed the bunnies.

The farmers, Harry and Jill, were chatty. Harry told us about his children, his first wife and the farmhand she ran off with, the beef cattle he used to raise back in Pennsylvania, the heart attack he had the previous year. Buying a milk goat, I was learning, involved more than just cash exchanged for an animal. It was a delicate dance in which each party sized the other up, gauged the other’s character. Has this farmer taken good care of this animal? Can I trust what he is telling me? Will this buyer take good care of this goat, or does she intend to turn her and all of her babies into goat curry?

I had taken a fair share of social work classes in college, so I knew a little about active listening, which came in handy now as I told Harry I could imagine how hard it had been when his wife cheated on him, how I bet the heart attack must have been really scary, but all the while, I could feel David getting impatient. He was not a chitchatter. He paced around, clearing his throat repeatedly, while I threw him furtive looks. Stop. Stop being impatient. Finally, he could no longer contain himself.

“Where’s the goat?” he asked.

“Oh!” Harry said, as if this had just occurred to him. “This way.”

He led us through a grove of oaks and pines to a broad gate that he unlatched. Inside

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