Tough Tuesday

The river runs fast today.  When I got in my car at half past seven the sky was the color of lapis lazuli and water struck my windshield in a violent percussion.  The road from my house to the farm, Route 228, runs east from Halsey, a small town across the I-5 to Sweet Home, an economically depressed logging community with a large man-made lake and a number of fast food chains.  The Santiam river runs along the edge of town, south to the city of Lebanon.  In recent years the students of Sweet Home high school, where the community pool is located, have acquired the deadly habit of heroin abuse.  A special-ed teacher at the school busted some of her students smoking junk in the bathroom off a piece of aluminum foil.  Aluminum causes Alzheimers.

When I arrived at the farm it was almost light out and I was greeted by the sweet, albeit neurotic border collie Babe.  But I call her Baby.  Baby helps me milk the goats and although she is untrained, her instincts are strong.  My friend's childhood dog, a border collie named Daisy, died when she was run over trying to herd the milkman's truck.  Often I fear for Baby's herding instinct.

The goats were challenging this morning.  Forty hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred pound animals, they are not easily persuaded to do anything against their will.  Larry helps me get them into the pen nearest to the milking parlor.  I do my best not to raise my temper at them, for their sake and mine.  This morning I lost it for a moment.  The milking process, with all its steps and emphasis on the proper order of things, requires a clear and sharp mind.  Today on three occasions I caught a goat's foot in mid-air before she could kick off the inflations, large metal and rubber suction cups that coax milk from her teat.

I hate getting angry with the girls, frustrating as they can be.  And when I am forced to grab one by the collar to lead her onto the milking platform, I am always sure to apologize to her after and give her some scratchies behind the ears.  I talk to the goats.  For the girls who have a high somatic cell count, I have to rub lotion on their udders after I milk them out by hand.  The lotion contains peppermint and eucalyptus oils to help cool that sensitive, over-worked part of their bodies.  I enjoy this part and they do too.

This morning I discovered the ultimate in foodie, coffee-obsessed culture.  I bring a large thermos of hot black coffee to work and when the girls are all cleaned and stripped and ready to be milked, I pour myself a half a cup.  Of the eight goats on the milking platform, I choose whose energy I want most in my body (I did this a number of times today, sometimes choosing a big, strong, stubborn girl and sometimes the meek and pretty one) and hold my cup of coffee about a foot away from her teat.  With my right hand I close off the top of her teat between my thumb and index finger, tightening my grip down to the tip.  Milk sprays in a foamy flourish to land in my cup.

Half a cup of milk and thirty seconds later I have what I have dubbed a Capriccino.  Darn, google informs me that I was not the first to invent this excellent term for a foamy goat-milk coffee drink.  But I'll tell ya, straight from the udder, there's nothing like it.  Drink and repeat as necessary.

The Capriccino, foam already ingested

Me, my thermos and far away eyes