Herdsmen

A regular goat has to spend 22 hours a day foraging for enough random weedy rifraff to keep itself alive. That's just to make meat. But a dairy goat that gets fed only has to spend 3 hours eating for subsistence - that means that the rest of the time, they're making milk. High summer in Khovsgol Province in Mongolia, powerbar slices of dried yak kurd solidify on a string over the stove. One window overhead in a yurt. Raw energy for some sunless frozen day.

I've been mending and gating a Tennessee goat's paradise lately. Expendable opposable thumbwork calories exchanged for portable goatmilk calories. We do the foraging for them, they make the juice that makes the cheese. Hurray for animal husbandry.

The Gizz

A crack of thunder, then last night a storm. Everything was thirsty. The tin roof of the shack drummed in crescendoes with water. I stuck my camera in a plastic box and we went for a walk down the creek. Fiery Gizzard Cove is full of doomed hemlocks and slouchy water. No clear gossiping brook, but it's hard not to love.

Founding Fathers

Abe Lincoln might have known what he was doing, making sure there was one American Empire on this continent instead of two. I'm out of grandfathers, but Aunt June Frederick is 91 and reminding us all how to be. My maternal grandmother's older sister was a demigranma when I was little.

At that age, I didn't know that it was Independence Day because my Dad used to throw what he called The Fourth of July Gonzo Party. I just thought the rest of the country was copying him like I did. Fireworks. As they say in Montana, 'celebrate the independence of your country by blowing up a small part of it.'

Happy 4th