My 33 Goats Part 3
This is the story of my 33 goats. This is the story of how I came to hold the dream of my urban homestead I call Zinnia's Way. It is a documentary in 8 parts. Welcome to Part 4 - The Climb. Stay tuned for subsequent episodes. Hopefully, at the end of the 8 episodes, you will gain a deeper understanding of why I feel called to do what I do here. Hopefully, you will find some inspiration in what I have strived to build at Zinnia's Way. Thanks for tuning in!
In 2016 our goat journey began. We got our first two baby goats, little Dorothy Quincy Hancock Sutton, and Ella Fitzgerald. We call them Dorothy and Ella for short.
I remember the ride home from the farm where we got our sweet little girls. We'd brought a dog crate for the goats to ride in on the way back home. When we got in the car, they seemed a little scared and nervous to be leaving the safety of their mammas. So, we decided to hold them on our laps instead. We made it about halfway down the driveway when Ella, who was on my lap, started pooping on me! We quickly decided to stow them away in the crate for the rest of the ride. We heard little pellets dribbling all the way home!
Flash forward. Our puppy was growing and growing and growing. The chickens were flourishing. The ducks were doing their thing. Little Dorothy and Ella ate some weeds and brought us so much happiness.
I had initiated my own climb 365. I started doing more art shows and making more art. I was taking care of all the animals. I was gardening. I was volunteering in the community.
This was the life I was searching for. This was the homestead I had dreamed of. But I didn't recognize it at the time.
I would lie in bed at night as I drifted off to sleep, seeing everything I wanted to create. Flowers. Barns. Gardens. Pathways. More barns. More flowers. Garden Art. I was proud and felt satisfied in all that I had created...but there was still so much more I wanted to do. I could see it. I could do it. And I would.
Enter stage two of my dream manifestation plan. What did I see? Goat yoga and an Art Barn. What did this mean? I needed more baby goats...and money. So, in 2017, I created a vision board.
A vision board is a type of collage, a collection of images that represent our goals and dreams. It can include cut out pictures from magazines and can include words that help inspire you to manifest your goals and dreams.
Research suggests that vision boards can help us more easily reach our goals. This may be due to how they help us gain self-awareness and self-reflect on what is important to us. Vision boards can help us imagine what a positive future could look like for us.
I wanted to be able to "see" where I was going and easily see where I wanted to go. I wanted to be able to glance at my vision board and remember what I was creating. I wanted to be able to immediately envision how my beautiful urban farmstead would look when it was complete.
But building and beautiful project take resources. Lots and lots of resources. Yes, I could save all the trash I wanted to build my garden art, benches and goat feeders, but some things, some projects just take cold hard cash. Buying baby goats, in the world we live in, just takes money.
So, I began the committed search to find ways to make money. I thought maybe I could monetize my hobbies in order to fund my larger dreams. I thought making money would help me prove my self-worth.
As a stay-at-home wife and mom, I felt guilty using family resources to pay for MY dream. I was continually searching to find a way for the dream to fund itself. I wanted to find a way for ME to fund my dream.
But isn't there an old saying somewhere that goes, "You have to spend money to make money"?
GOAT YOGA
I guess you could say I believe in the law of attraction. I believe in the art of manifesting. I believe in goal setting and affirmations and making your dreams a reality. I have believed in this for a long, long time. That's why I created my prayer book. That's why I made my vision board.
I heard about goat yoga and did about 2 minutes of research on it when I decided it could be a way for me to finance my farm.
I was trained as a yoga instructor back in 2002 so I had the qualifications to teach. It was now 2017 and I had two sweet but adult size goats. I knew, that for goat yoga to be really cute and fun, you need some babies.
ARE YOU HORNY?
In a rush to get this goat yoga endeavor started as soon as possible, I went on Craigslist to look for more baby goats. Pickins were slim so I started to panic. I imagined never being able to find baby goats for sale again like we had just a couple of years ago. And I was up against a clock. I wanted to be able to have babies and do goat yoga that summer, while the weather was good.
I needed to be able to host my goat yoga sessions outside since I had not yet raised the money to build my Art Barn, where I envisioned making and selling art and hosting indoor goat yoga classes when the outdoor weather was rainy, cold or gloomy, like it often seemed to be on weekends in North Carolina.
So, I took the first two babies I could find, two little fawn-colored girls who I was told were sweet and could be good for goat yoga. They certainly looked cute and adorable enough in the pictures. I was busy and distracted, however, by other happy family life events going on and I missed one little detail regarding these new baby goats. There was one tiny, which turned out to be a huge, question that I forgot to ask before I made the agreement to purchase these two little kids.
It was akin to the straw that broke the camel's back. You could say it was "the horns that brought down the homestead."
When we arrived at the farm to pick up our new little goats who I had already named Toffee and Carmel, they were all ready for us and stowed in a dog crate awaiting our arrival.
When I reached in to pick them up and meet them and transfer them to the dog crate in our car, we realized #1, they weren't friendly. They were terrified, and very skittish. And #2, they had horns...of which the lady said, "no problem," the vet could probably have them removed.
I now realize that in addition to naming the goats before I got them, I also made 3 other mistakes that day that cost me dearly.
#1 - I gave the lady the money for the goats before I saw the goats. (Know what you are agreeing to)
#2 - I didn't take the money back when I saw that the goats were skittish and had horns and were not what I had expected or needed for goat yoga. I didn't know how to advocate for my greater good. (Say what you want)
#3 - I believed the lady when she said the horns could be removed. (Do your own research)
The whole trajectory of my beautiful little urban homestead was forever changed that day.
The other strange thing that happened to me that day is that I felt like I had an obligation to take the goats. I had agreed to it and so I felt like I should. But I wasn't quite sure if the obligation I was feeling was to the lady who sold the goats, or to the goats themselves. In hindsight, I think it may have been more about the goats. But we'll get to that a little bit later.
We got Toffee and Carmel home, but we couldn't even pet them, let alone did we expect them to be interested in interacting with strangers and doing goat yoga anytime soon.
I also contacted the vet and showed him pictures of our girls' horns. He said to remove them would be very invasive and leave a hole in their skull that would have to heal. The goats would need to have their heads bandaged and tended to for about two weeks if we decided to have their horns removed.
I didn't get to do any goat yoga with those two baby goats, but now I had 4 goats and 2 of them had horns, a natural thing for goats to have, but a hazard and a liability on our small urban farm.
Why didn't I just sell the goats, you say? Well, for one, I didn't think anyone would want them. And secondly, I couldn't help feeling that there were greater life lessons to be learned here. The babies did eventually warm up to us and have turned out to be two of our most affectionate goats. But their horns were causing a pile of problems and the fallout from that was costing us a ton of money.
Stay tuned for Part 4.
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