Longing

I’ve heard parents speak often about the bittersweetness of watching their children grow up, how things they take for granted or even dread are suddenly rendered poignant when unexpectedly relegated to the rearview mirror.

Every spring for the last eleven years, spring has struck fear and anxiety in my heart, as it has meant the onset of kidding season, a fraught, dangerous and miraculous see-saw of life and death. I have not allowed myself to enjoy the musky scent of thawing soil, the lengthening days, the liberating quality of going outside without the near-immobilizing layers of sweaters and coats and snow pants. I have fretted and planned, prayed and laid awake as due dates loomed, and have been thrust from the relative calm of regular operations into the all consuming vigilance of postnatal care, baby feeding, disbudding, weaning, and on and on. When things go sideways, the constant worry untethers me from the sheer, defiant beauty of nature waking up around me. And even when all is well, the breathless, barreling momentum of daily tasks propels me forward without so much as a glance or a sniff. For a person whose work is so enmeshed with the natural cycles, and whose environment is almost vulgar in its raw natural beauty, I can scarcely let myself take it in once the switch is flipped and the high season commences.

This past fall, I decided not to breed any does. The choice was primarily guided by the limits of my own barn space and the possibly laughable standard of care I feel obligated to offer my animals. I could not in good conscience add more to my numbers without getting rid of some animals, and having had very few opportunities to rehome my goats to suitable situations, I knew how unlikely it would be to free up enough spaces to make room for a new generation.

It has also been increasingly difficult for me to justify putting my animals through the strain and emotional distress of kidding, which is in fact the cornerstone of my — of all — dairy business. I entered into this work without a full appreciation of what was required. As I learned from other farmers, I was expected to accept that a certain amount of suffering and death was the cost of doing business. While I would never suggest than any of the people I worked with previously did not care deeply for their animals, nor that they were not affected by their deaths, this unpleasant reality was something they had more or less come to terms with. I have tried to steel myself against this foregone conclusion and have come up short time and again.

I thought that simply being a no-kill dairy would assuage the guilt and unease but it has in fact heightened the discordance I perceive between the nourishment and subjugation, the care and extraction I exact on my animals. I am aware that the human-goat relationship has grown into one of symbiosis after many generations of interdependence, but it’s difficult to use that as a salve when I am forced to bear witness to the strain and suffering my goats endure as a consequence of breeding, labor and lactation. For the last several seasons, I implemented long lactations in an effort to limit their exposure to this risky business, but the big picture has yet to mitigate the gruesomeness of the small, every day details.

I have been inundated with Instagram stories chronicling the alien, magical births taking places on goat farms across the U.S right now — the telltale amniotic bubble making its way out of the goat’s vagina, with the goat’s face scrunched up against the interior like a mutant, caprine Glinda the Good Witch, the slimy, gangly babies struggling to their feet as their mothers lick them clean, the potent miracle of birth and motherhood retaining its novelty and wonder ceaselessly.

I will soon be drying off my herd as I shift my focus toward launching the non-profit I’ve dreamed of but have thus far not had the time or energy to commit to in the midst of the dairy operations. I will miss not just the heightened emotion of kidding, but the daily rhythms of milking, of the time I get to spend with each individual goat when they’re on the stand, cradling their heads after they finish and giving them some extra grain for good measure as I sniff their ears and scratch their cheeks. I will miss the warm, clean, milky sanctuary of the creamery, stirring my beautiful milk and imagining all of the people that will be nourished by it that I’ll never meet. I will miss straining off whey to feed to my old gals, the only ones in the barn who really have a taste for it and lap it up with relish when it’s warm enough not to chill them to the bone.

I don’t yet know if I’ll return to dairying in some capacity. I have put so much into this business that it would seem a waste not to. But I suspect that the next few months will tell me what I need to know about the path ahead, and whether I can return to it with fresh eyes and fresh energy or if it’s run its course.

I’ve been so tied up in the busy-ness of every day that I have scarcely had time to look back on all that’s transpired since I began this experiment seven years ago. It feels almost too tender to revisit those early days when I was so naive, so much younger and more hopeful that I could really do something different and also sustain myself. I find myself pining for the things I did without realize that they were the last time I would do them. But there is a beautiful symmetry to the things I am looking forward to returning to in this interim period, chiefly having the time to spend with my animals. I have lost one of my three founding members, but several senior correspondents are alive and kicking. The prospect of meandering slowly with them in the woods, of letting them feast on the brush and scrub of the property I myself have had few chances to explore in the four years I’ve lived here, feels like a fitting bookend to the last seven years of exponential growth.

I do not know yet what the future holds. I am trying to be patient and trust that things will unfold as they should, which is a deeply uncomfortable position. Thank goat for the lengthening of the days.