the first

I wanted to make my next post about making raw milk tomme, massaging the curd as it cooks with arms immersed in warm whey up to the elbows; the dinosaur sounds those tough lady goats make when they are fighting over their grain feeding; and maybe even some things I have learned about honey bees recently...

but a more important event has come to upstage all of that, as you can see:

goat babies! the first ones so far, from ms. gracie (via sundance)-- two girls.

I discovered them this morning when I went out for chores-- cathy says they were only about an hour old. gracie had given birth in the loafing shed, which has a pretty dense layer of manure, so the little kids were very dirty and a little shivery from the cold morning. cathy washed them off in nice warm water, then we dried them off and put them into the kid stall that I had prepared last week with new straw and hanging heat lamp. we brought gracie in with them, and tried to get them to find her teats and latch on and eat. the black-and-white one is a bit stockier and stronger, catching on quickly to the feeding process and standing up first on her shaky legs. but the little reddish-white one is doing well-- still needing to work with her to help her find the udder and latch on to a teat for milk.

they're beautiful and perfect and so tiny and soft and still wobbly and floppy, still learning about their legs, which are just a bit too big for their little bodies. but everything happened just about perfectly as it should-- a good beginning. so exciting!!