Just ride.
I realize I tend to only write when something terrible happens because the writing process is a therapeutic way for me to sift through the wreckage. It’s probably not a compelling read, not sexy, not terribly uplifting. The last post was about the beginning of our kidding season in which one of my most beloved goats suffered a multi-week illness ending with her death.
It’s not the kind of thing that makes you want to run out and open a dairy, is it?
Well maybe that’s the point. I try to be honest here – for you, for me, for anyone curious enough to peak behind the curtain. What happens on a farm – the daily grit and grind – is so much more than what ends up on the shelves plastered with a shiny label and sanitary packaging.
I’ve been silent here because nothing terrible (knocks on wood) has happened. In fact this season was the Season of Self Care after the past three seasons of Caring for Everyone Else. It burns a person out, you know? Especially when the care given extends so far beyond the dairy and all the animals and cheeses and accounts that need tending, coddling, nurturing. I opened this dairy when my twin babies were one year old. It’s taken this distance of space and time to fully embrace how ludicrous it was to attempt such a thing and such a thing took quite a toll on my patience and energy reserves. Which is to say that I ended 2018 completely empty.
You may or not remember (or care) that at the end of 2018 we brought home horses, a lavish gift to ourselves as a primitive way to enjoy this land and, on a more personal level, to reward the 10 year old horse loving girl who has never quit her deep passion for these animals. It was an extravagant reward for our work here over the past 11 years. And it ended up being an unnecessary challenge, battle, and learning curve so steep that it’s required a seat belt (and probably helmet).
I started this season, and have continued it, relying on others to do the majority of the daily work so that I could take a step away from the business. That’s actually not entirely true since I still do all the account management, most of the deliveries, 40% of the milking, 200% of the worrying/organizing/promoting.
But that’s still about 500% less than I was doing before. I’m not exaggerating the number, I believe it to be a mathematical and prove-able fact. Regardless of the actual numbers, this season I have made the time to do such things as take horse back rides at 10am, to say “No thank you” to invitations for sales opportunities. And the biggest change of all?? Are you sitting down? Are you ready?
In 2019 we are milking our goats not twice daily, which is the convention and industry standard (and has been since the invention of commercial dairy), but once. Just once. Daily. Just one time. Only one time each day. It is risky. It is experimental. It is terrifying. It is luxurious. It is, it can be, it might become – a game changer.
But I don’t know just yet. Unfortunately changes like this are not without their potential complications such as the possibility that the goats’ don’t get enough stimulation to produce milk for a full season (which tends to be roughly 10 months). It can encourage their bodies to stop producing milk (“drying off”) much sooner than we typically plan for. And – most critically – it could cause a stress to their bodies that might result in the shedding of white blood cells, something that the state health department tests for on a monthly basis through a milk test. White blood cells are also referred to as “somatic cells” and the monthly “somatic cell count” or SCC is a numeric value that drives the actions of most commercial dairies. We obsess over this monthly number – well. I do. Two milk tests within a five month period that are out of the acceptable range puts a dairy on a probationary status from sales. Why? Because a high SCC can be an indicator of herd health (such as mastitis). It can also be an indicator that it’s hot outside. That the goats are feeling grumpy or that it’s breeding season (SCC tends to skyrocket during breeding season and in late lactation in the fall). It can be an arbitrary value that we can’t easily control. But it matters in terms of remaining in good standing with the state health department, so it matters to us. This is primarily why milking once daily, an action that can potentially raise SCC, is risky business.
But considering my mission this year to pursue self care and try to focus a bit more on my family – I did not care. I did not care.
Repeat after me.
I. Did. Not. Care.
Because something’s gotta give when it comes to this business which can easily consume a person’s entire life. After the past several years, I wanted my life back. I needed to push the pause button. I want enough space in the weekly grind of work to ride my damn horses.
The reality is that the work, for me, has not necessarily gotten easier but has become a more comfortable challenge, a “known.” For example, I can now anticipate, annually, what I call “the dark season” – which is kidding season. A furious multi-week’s long journey into the pits of hell…I mean…into animal husbandry/midwifery/obstetrics/caprine NICU all done under complete sleep deprivation and fueled almost entirely by frozen pizza and bourbon. It takes me a few months to recover which happens during a period of time in which we host the majority of our farm events. Do you know why? Because PEOPLE LOVE BABY GOATS – a concept I understand completely. My love for baby goats is what got me into this mess in the first place. So from March-May, immediately after kidding season, I am smiling brightly for hundreds (I mean guys, hundreds. I believe we hosted around 500 guests this spring), of folks who visit the farm to get their mitts on some fresh babies while asking me questions about goat history, healthcare, and dairy – answers I am happy to provide while trying to look sentient and normal despite the fact that all I can think about is how I am still nursing emotional wounds from kidding and should probably be in the fetal position somewhere sucking my thumb.
But now it’s late June – it’s almost July. We are heading into the molasses-thick-middle of summer, and I’m just bobbing along, the cruel season behind me, fully into the milking and making grooves we got back into, sweating our SCC values on each milk test. Taking orders, making deliveries, taking the goats on walks. Riding the horses. Riding the horses. Riding the horses.
I don’t know how all of this ends. I don’t know if I can make it through the season without reverting back to milking twice daily for the sake of our SCC levels or for the sake of our milk volume levels. I don’t know exactly how many goats I will breed next year. I don’t know how long I can live in this lap of luxury in which someone else (Victoria, specifically) makes the cheese. In which someone else (Filipa, specifically) does 4 of the 7 milking shifts. I don’t know. But I know that I will take the advice of the woman from whom I adopted most of our horses. Months ago as I was settling into horse ownership and all the quirks and challenges that go along with that new role, she told me the best way to learn is to just Ride, Ride, Ride.
Well I’ll be damned if that advice doesn’t apply to just about every single thing. And so I do. And so I will.
