Wesley The Handsomest stinkiest big boy of all time.

I just came in to warm radiating from the fired up wood stove. I was just outside in the soggy grass walking over the quickly cooling drenched brown earth. New England’s second mud season is truly upon us. The weather has been wretched. I am starting to feel like I am in India. First the electricity cut out half the night and into the morning. Now the internet is off somewhere crapping itself into oblivion. Which is frustrating, But, that is homesteading. At least I have a fire and food to eat. Later I will bake some bread. Many don’t even have that right now. Tomorrow, snap benefits will be taken from so very many people. Many of them children and the elderly. I wish I could wave a magic wand and fix it all. I wish there were a way to ensure everyone on earth was fed and warm enough. I am not going to sweat the first world problems, such as a short term electricity outage and down internet. Not when tomorrow people will wake up hungry with nothing to eat. I feel extremely grateful for the life style I have chosen. It allows me to have a lot of control over my food sources. I wish everyone had a place like mine.

This way of life isn’t as simple nor is it as easy as they claim. It is set back after set back. I have had my fair share lately. We have had a bear taking out our livestock left and right. There has been some hard loss. Loss, that has caused us to reevaluate some of our solutions and make different choices. So some visual changes are currently in progress in relation to fencing in particular. We did mourn our losses. But now, we are moving on. Because the celebrations are so strongly felt when you get to have them living this way. One way we have chosen to do that, is to set ourselves up for a good spring milking season. We have brought in this beautiful guy, Wesley. He is out there in our goat yard, having the time of his life with our ladies. This will ensure babies and milk for the spring. 

I really like Wesley. Bringing in a male goat isn’t free. It costs the same as just purchasing one. So the question now is, will we decide to permanently keep this blue eyed goat Adonis? I would like to. Dr. Farmer Moomin, is on the fence. Both literally in that he is putting up a new one, and figuratively in relation to keeping Wesley. Time will tell which direction we go in. Either way, it is interesting to see him out on the hill in back. He is always doing what I am now calling “goating” with his girls. They have no shame and do not understand the concept of discretion. It is on. All the time. But this is a farm. Lives end here. Sometimes tragically. Lives also begin here. I look forward to that day in the spring. Baby goats, or kids, are some of the spunkiest most adorable sweet little things in existence. Their soft fur big eyes, screaming over dramatics, and their high energy bouncy play are a sight to behold. So I am looking forward to having a few running about this farm making mischief in the spring.

It’s not just goat milk that we are all about. This time of year there is none. This time of year what is going crazy is the garden in the greenhouse. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs green beans, peas, radishes and carrots. All are producing out there. My favorite morning chore after feeding the goats is to go harvest what I need to use for dinner. I wish the greenhouse was larger and that I had enough to feed those in a bad way. But I just have my little greenhouse it isn’t enough space. But in the spring, when I put in the summer garden, perhaps when that is going strong I can find ways to be of help. Winter, is a hard season for growing in New England. Soon, the soggy wet ground I was just walking on with the dog will be frozen. Perhaps soon, the grey sky will be held up by the leafless skeletons of trees, perhaps snow will blanket everything… Already, the wildflowers have gone. The beautiful gem colored autumn leaves have mostly turned brown and have fallen. So much has been coming to an end lately. The green outside, the warm weather… The lives of some of my most treasured companions… Winter is certainly coming…. But, spring, is a certainty and is on the other side of winter and the next New England mud season. 

I have dumped most social media, due to those who own them being the kind of garbage that would give millions to a man that would cut off snap to hungry people. You can still find me on Bluesky. But another wonderful byproduct of dumping social media has been time. I have more of it now. I am discovering who is truly important in my life also. Who cares enough to make themselves part of it when it becomes just a shade less convenient. Quite enlightening.

I have been using the extra time to read even more than I used to, and I have always been a reader. Recently I finished The Way Home by Ireland’s Mark Boyle. It was brilliant and insiteful. It made me more certain cutting out social media so much was a good method as was looking at and changing my shopping methods. But Mark, went far further and I have endless admiration for him and the life he lived. I find myself now considering the toaster, and the microwave, the modern gas stove, the drier, and even the refrigerator. Does any of it really serve us? Every day I feel a bit more sure most of it does not. Right now, I am reading a memoir by a woman who moved to Alaska, and ultimately ran the Iditarod. This Much Country by Kristin Knight Pace, is beautifully written and some of the insights speak loudly to me because I feel them every day and live them here on my little homestead. another I have been reading that I love is called Following Nature’s Lead by M.D. Usher, it is about how to live in and on a dying world. He is very interesting. He knits archaic ancient philosophy with physics and ecological principles. Totally worth a read. I am finding that I am a bit of an Epicurean… Though certain features of the the Cynics and activities of Diogenese, I also see a lot of myself in. Such as begging from statues, a common practice of his to accustom himself to not getting what he wants and needs. I have decided to give up that futile practice. It doesn’t lead anywhere. People with no empathy are in every sense just statues. I have had enough of them, in both my personal life as well as when I look around at the larger world around me as people are about to go hungry because the statue of government just does not care about them. I have not yet finished this brilliant books about philosophy ecology and physics colliding. But, it is one of the most interesting things I have ever picked up. I am very slowly picking away at more of the Fox Fire series I was given last Christmas by my mother. It began as a magazine made by highschool students chronicling the old pre electricity folk traditions in Appalachia. Lastly I am picking away at The Woodland Homestead by Brett McLeod, a professor of forestry. It is a pretty good read also but more of a how to which is what I was hoping for, as I am hoping to find ways to manage and use our woods. 

Beyond reading and just day to day life, I have just been watching the goats on the hill out back. The beautiful figure Wesley, makes as he struts around. What a beautiful goat. I just wish he smelled as good as he looks. My god………. Rancid takes on new meaning when you speak of the fragrance of Wesley. Absolutely revolting. I am finally sitting on my bum again. It only took 2 days. I brought in the vet to give the hill tribe, their vaccinations…. It was an unbelievable drama. Some of the goats screamed and screamed. You would have thought they were being murdered not having some blood drawn and a couple vaccinations. Wesley, was not at all a fan. After it was over when I feed everyone to help them settles he laid into my arse with his horns hard enough that well this is the first time I have sat down in two days. I still absolutely love him though. I hope we will be able to keep him and that I am not begging a Moomin statue for the impossible. But, hey, there is some work that will have to be done to get him set up here. It is perfectly understandable if Dr. Farmer Moomin, is too busy with his actual job for us to take Wesley on permanently right now. But I will miss him if he goes. He has the prettiest blue eyes. I hope the babies get his blue eyes.

Wesley behind the fence.Sending everyone entering a difficult time all my love and well wishes.

Don’t give up. Non violently push for a better world. As a woman I truly adore after reading her book once said, breathe and push. This terrible situation can not last forever. I hope it is fixed before today is over. I can’t believe it is even happening. How surreal everything has become… But I suppose that is what happens when we stop relying on ourselves, and turn over our welfare to a bunch of rich statues who would rather fund a pretentious unnecessary ballroom than feed children. Statues, who every day manipulate the reality of our world. Convenience is not worth the cost of sanity, and reality. It never will be. The only way anything changes is if society stops giving to the statues taking the offerings turning them into money and then funding ball rooms rather than feeding children. 

In this rough time, here at Wildflower, we are counting our blessings and feeling gifted
to have enough to eat. 
Gifted, to have a new friend out on the hill out back,
Gifted, to have great reading material,
And gifted, that spring will be full of new life and a fresh start.
Thank you for reading
Amanda of Wildflower Farm