Strawberry Fields...for Emerson

This story has two parts - my goats, and my husband. Somehow they will merge into one explanation of why, for many goat-owners (as well as musical spellers), "Life is pandemonium." (It's fine if you don't get the reference. Go see "The Putnam County Spelling Bee" if you ever have a chance.)

First, the goats. Finicky to a fault, they do have favorites. Along with orange peels and sunflower seeds, they eagerly devour thorny wild roses, cabbage and kale leaves, poison ivy...and strawberry plants. Oddly, they disdain fresh strawberries, but find the leaves a succulent delicacy, a fact I discovered last summer when they once got loose in the garden.

Now, the husband. Master Gardener, Grower-of-Award-Winning-Produce, Weeder Extraordinaire. This is the man who measures out the green bean rows with a chalk line, who sees each weed as a personal affront, who as a small child apparently had to work in his family's garden ten hours each morning before he could swim in the neighbor's pond after lunch. (Yes, he is descended from those same great-grandparents who had to walk twenty miles barefoot to school in the winter, uphill each way.) His garden is flawlessly organized, immaculately maintained, and generously fertilized (this year with six truckloads of horse and cow manure, carefully measured and blended). Tended with meticulous care, the plants flourish - gorgeous tomatoes, squash, kohlrabi, beets - all but the strawberries, which inexplicably yield only a paltry few small berries. My husband, frustrated by their rambling nature, ferociously digs them up every year and replants them in straight rows, to no avail.

Now, the goats. Every morning I walk them from their shed by our house to a fenced weedy field to graze for the day. Creatures of habit, they always follow the same trail - past the wooden bench, avoid the scary tire swing, stop to pee. Jump on the low stone wall and walk to the end, run to the field, get a treat. Same routine, same path, every day. In the afternoon, reverse direction.

Now the husband. A few weeks ago, I saw him pushing a wheelbarrow from the garden up the hill toward the low stone wall (yes, where the goats walk every day, twice). He informed me that he was replanting all the strawberries along the stones, directly along the route I have worked so hard to train the goats to follow. His reply to my obvious question?

"Well, you'll just have to train them not to eat the plants, won't you?"

Yeah, and maybe I'll keep a bowl of dark chocolates on the coffee table and see how many times I can walk past them. Good luck with that...Elliot is actually rather distractable (kinder than calling him stupid), but wily Emerson discovered the plants right away and now makes a nasty game of trying to knock me over to leap into the berry patch whenever we go by. I'm not sure what's worse - the devastation to the plants or my bruises.

So if anyone has extra strawberries this year, I'll trade for fifty pounds of jalapeno peppers, or a twenty pound squash...or two very obedient goats  (hey, I always try!)

When is expired food too old to eat?

After helping Grandpa with a long-overdue cleanout of his food pantry, I was inspired to search the dark corners of my own cabinets, and soon the counter was covered with boxes of expired food items. Here is the quandary - for "non-perishable" edibles, how far past the label date can you safely consume them? We decided to sort into two piles - "throw away" and "eat soon."

Shoestring beets, 2010 - hmmm...do they always look that scary? Trash. Kidney beans four years past date - surely beans keep forever. Eat soon. I opened a box of dried plums, freshest by Sept. 2003 - let me tell you, there are rocks in my driveway fresher than those nuggets! We discarded a jar of pickle relish (2009) with a grayish-green hue, dried cranberries sporting a suspicious fuzz, and creamed corn more brownish than yellow. Always looking to shave a few dollars off my grocery bill, this process became increasingly painful for me, especially when my husband pushed a canister of soup crackers toward the discard pile without even opening the lid. 

"You didn't even check them!" I shrieked, snatching them back. "I might make soup tomorrow!"

Silently he pointed at the plastic top - BEST BY AUG 2001. Clutching the cylinder, I struggled for an intelligent response. Could we really eat something that expired the year my daughters (now in college) started kindergarten? Even in the NEW! Stay Fresh Canister?  But then I knew...

"The goats can eat them!!"

Here's the truth. While it is clearly a myth that goats will eat anything, there are an awful lot of really awful things they do eat. Look, brother, I found this perfectly good grapefruit rind in the compost pile! The locust pods they crave emit the pungent odor of turpentine...Emerson loves to raid the recycling bin on trash day, and last week we had a ferocious battle when he found a discarded and stained fast food bag in the woods and was determined to eat it. Not much is too foul for a goat.

That evening I crammed a dozen or so of the fancy "Mandlen" crackers into my coat pocket, along with the usual ration of dried orange peels. Elliot sniffed and turned away from my hand, but Emerson chomped down a handful of treats - then gagged and regurgitated a slimy cracker back at my feet. After some revolting choking sounds, out retched a wad of orange peels as well. He gulped at least a quart of water, scowled at me, and fled into the darkness of the yard. 

Further inspection of the container revealed that the primary ingredient in the offensive crackers was "whole eggs" - I concede that fourteen years just might be a bit too long...and now we know the answer to the question in the title of this blog. When is expired food too old to eat?

When even the goats won't eat it. (Hey, maybe I can hire them out as food tasters!)

Speed Scrabble - Goat Style

I saw a news broadcast recently about how classic board games are making a comeback - who's up for a quick game of Speed Scrabble? This improvised version is played with only the tiles and works well on your kitchen table. When my daughters and I played, we awarded extra points for "goat words,"  so here's one for Em and Ellie...

Walk This Way...

Frustrated that the goats had trampled down the grass between the driveway to the shed, my husband asked if I could train them to vary their route each time so that the grass could grow back. Instead of always taking the direct route, perhaps they could learn to sometimes take the long way around, or to use a different path for different times of day?

Sure, let me post a schedule on the fence...

One Saturday I noticed Mike driving the tractor back and forth to the creek, hauling several loads of rocks up to the yard. Goats, you see, absolutely hate getting their hooves wet and muddy, and they love climbing on rocks more than almost anything else.

Who's the smart one now?