I like to think I prepare myself to be flexible and adaptable, always at the ready for strange and unforeseen opportunities that come my way. Like a corporate executive smelling out opportunity from the morning news or a grandma in the kitchen when someone brings a surprise box of rhubarb or peaches to process and can. In my head, I can take what comes my way and run with it like I had already planned it.

Then there’s reality. I get excited. I accept the challenge of the new opportunity. And I spend the next week going crazy in reaction mode trying to manage the mess I’ve gotten myself into.

In other news—completely unrelated—we now have three goats.

Without even thinking, seemingly as though she had already planned it, my wife was presented with these three goats that I accepted, and within SECONDS named them Larry, Curly and Moe. Curly is a curly-haired Alpine, which goes with his name. Larry and Moe are Lamachas, who mostly look alike, but Larry has darker brown and a deep black stripe down his back, and Moe can only be defined as Mrs. Hill’s new favorite. Don’t worry, they all get love. 

What would we do with three goats you ask? Meat. They were originally offered as meat animals but we determined they were not nearly ready to be worth the time. After a few minutes of mathing and planning, we decided we could rear the three bucklings as wethers in a market experiment for our business. In the meantime though, they would serve as great pets for the boys and great practice for them to help take care of something besides the chickens. 

The way out here means learning that your farm animals aren’t here forever, but that shouldn’t stop you from naming and enjoying them. What it also means is more work for this farmer, starting with a new pen and barn. Well, perhaps less of a barn; more of a hut or run-in.

I was fortunate to lean on the open stalls at the butcher shop for a few days, but eventually they were needed once more for their intended purposes. Thus, the procrastination and/or daily demands with which I had been faced were suddenly moot when I found myself staring at a Saturday and a few piles of recycled materials. 

Things have been lean on the farm, so this was not going to be a job for spending any kind of funds. We got the goats for free and we were going to build their house for free, by thunder! 

We sorted our materials, argued about how big to make it, and eventually managed to erect one of the better-looking DIY pallet structures I’ve seen in my travels. I’m a little biased, but hey, it takes a small degree of skill to string a half dozen or more pallets together and make them strong enough so that when you pick the whole thing up with a skidsteer it doesn’t snap apart. 

I’m sure my hubris has earned me some small measure of catastrophic karma to come, but I’ll take my little win and be sure to write about my trials when the bill comes due down the road. As for the current project—well, it wouldn’t be a true Hillstead farm project unless we were finishing in the dark. I’ve often joked with my wife we should have named our farm Moonlight Farm or Candlestick Farm given all the nocturnal work we seem to find ourselves doing. I guess that’s what happens when you have day jobs, though.

As for Larry, Curly and Moe, they love their new digs and are living the high life as the newest members of Hillstead Farm. For as much as Mrs. Hill has been smiling, I’m sure they won’t be the last goats in the new accomodations either.

The way out here, that line between business and pleasure gets real blurry when our coworkers are our pets and everything we do is a labor of love.