At the start of the famous video game, Legend of Zelda, a helpful old man says “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this.”
Surprisingly, the protagonist is then given a limited selection of technologies to use, so that they can then proceed, alone, on their adventure. I suppose the whole point of a video game is to push the limits of your character. If you mess up the worst outcome is waste a life.
Over the last several years I often wondered about the dynamics of the system I was building around me. Dairying animals in particular are a big commitment that need daily milking, with rare exceptions. Many times I had to grit my teeth and keep squeezing with an injured hand for days at a time. Fair is fair, I would say, since the girls would have to do the same if they had a scratch on their teat. Often I had to drag a sore leg around the paddocks for a few hours to move a fence. Only once did I have to skip milking when I was in the middle of a proper bout of flu.
Cropping is a little more relaxed in its timing, though without irrigation the window for sowing can pass from too wet or cold to too dry in a matter of days during some seasons. Harvest windows can be as long as fortnight for staple crops to a single morning for fruit (though the season itself usually lasts a week or more). All types of harvests have been missed at times and ended up either rotting on the ground or inside bellies smaller than mine.
My main point here is that this farm has a single choke point in the form of one delicately built middle aged man, and when I am out of order everything is left to run on momentum,, and dairy animals are an especially demanding component of that system. As anticipated, that major interruption that I had been imagining finally arrived.
A week ago I started feeling chills, which intensified the second night. We just started making goat yoghurt again, so I suspected food poisoning and threw out the batch to be safe, assuming I would slowly recover in a few days. The third night brought on a cracking fever, which should have been my first sign something very different was happening. During this time I had two young doe kids to bottle feed, so I kept dragging myself out to milk to keep them going. By the next day I had been unable to eat or drink much for long enough that I couldn’t keep the activity up any longer, so I reluctantly stopped milking. A huge pile of overripe bananas had to be given to a neighbour since I couldn’t stand to smell them.
A friend finally suggested a probable cause- Q fever. This is an intercellular bacterium that is common in goats in my region. It is of unknown origin, but sets up as a fairly harmless species in goats that occasionally jumps to humans (usually from birthing fluids). The timing of the first kidding lined up with the incubation period before my symptoms. Most humans become immune without any symptoms, but a few end up with serious illness like I was experiencing that could linger 2-4 weeks. A minority also end up with a chronic form of the disease, which in rare cases can lead to heart damage. I knew all of this when I got goats, but figured I would be among the majority who don’t have problems. Once I figured out the likely cause I should have gone straight to a doctors to get on antibiotics to at least shorten the course of my symptoms, but rationalised I would somehow fight it off in no time (I’d just been reading a direct account of life as a San woman, living in a culture where a simple illness is a matter of recovery or waiting for an honest death with dignity). In my defence my brain was thoroughly scrambled by this stage.
The weird thing about that scene in the video game is that going with other people is never offered as a defence against the world. Instead a piece of technology, designed for solo use, is the only option. I think this reflects a lot of our modern mindset to challenges in life. Perhaps I had forgotten to notice that the San bushmen cared extensively for each other when sickness struck, while I was refusing my partners urgings to get proper help.
As I got sicker I worried most about the kids. After a day with no feeding a friend with dairy goat experience took them. One problem off my shoulders. A traditional goat farm would have consisted of a group of people who all overlapped in their ability to raise, milk, herd, manage illnesses and injuries, cull, process, make yoghurt and cheese and tan leather etc. Whenever one person became ill or injured they could lean on the others for a while until they recovered. The goats would not have to suffer. Only a major catastrophe like a plague every few centuries would rock the foundation of a culture. Individuals would always be maturing into or aging out of different skill sets, an inevitable form of replacement and redundancy that accompanies mortality. The modern world sees isolated individuals like me trying to juggle it all on the head of a pin, following whatever guides we can scratch together on YouTube. My friend said they wished they could have helped sooner, but they live about an hour’s drive away, but offered kindly to come again if I really needed them. I said thank you but understood the inconvenience.
I don’t have a lot of genuine community around me. They are mostly very suburban types, even the eco-aware consumers and permaculture tinkerers. People who ooh and ah when you mention goats then keep buying supermarket milk since nobody has time to buy a single seasonal perishable ingredient (which tastes weird). But it is worth being grateful for that canny friend who pointed my feverish brain to the probable cause. That is an example of a real network which proved incredibly useful. I am also incredibly grateful to my partner who was there to help me get the assistance necessary to start my recovery.
The goats limped along, udders bloated, for several days until I could organise for someone else to take the whole herd today (an older couple who grew up on dairy farms who promised to let me visit one day). I’m not ashamed to admit I cried saying goodbye to my favourite, that I can still remember how tiny she was when I was bottle feeding her. This decision to stop raising goats may come as a shock to regular readers. I think I shocked myself with the decision to move on from having any large livestock on the farm again (full reasoning in a future post plus a reflection on all my experiences over the years on this front). The end result will be a period of peace to reflect, clear house and decide where to prioritise my energy in the future. I only have ten good years of cropping, then ten years of tree monitoring left in me, so I have to be ready to make the most of them.
Шукай сили в ранковому спогляданні нестомності бджоли та безпорадності мухи в путах павука.
Швидкого одужання! Ясних думок та відвертої саморозмови.
"Якщо коріння міцне, немає причин боятися вітру" Африканська мудрість
Іноді я сумую сидячи перед горою кропиви, яку потрібно позбавити листя та підготувати до закваски, і мрію про велетенський холодильник з купою готової їжі :)
Іноді ловлю себе на думці, що я травмую свого сина, який не бачить мультиків про свинку Пеппу та ніколи не катається на дитячому електромобілі. Картаю себе, що ми не можемо відлучитися далі ніж на 100 км і про поїздку в гори чи на море, скоріше за все можна забути...
З нашої сім'ї відверто сміються та крутять пальцем коло виска, але кожного разу біжать просити поради щодо вирощування чи купувати наші надлишки.
Хоч нас 4 дорослих, я ніколи не займаюся прибиранням чи шиттям/ткацтвом( хоч і планую його освоїти)
Також я досі не опанував багато теслярських практик, і напевно не встигну опанувати всі...
Нам так само хотілося б щоб була хоча б ще одна сім'я, яка займається господарюванням...під час хвороби, особливо дружини чи матері, усвідомлюєш, яку велику частку праці вони віддають спільному благу.
Сім'я та родина це все! Бо ваші життя реляційні та когерентні...Одна сказати що сім'я одиниця соціуму, той "індивід" в якому кожен є "органом"...
Одужуй і не жалкуй ні про що!
In the end, community is everything. This is a lesson we're slowly learning as well right now, although thankfully not the hard way.
The first years on the land we were able to distract ourselves with hard work, toiling to grow the fundament of Maslow's pyramid of needs as quickly as possible. But now that the workload slowly decreases, we do feel that it would be nice to have neighbors (who don't exterminate every living being they can't sell, that is). It makes a lot of things so much easier.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the current age of separation is the destruction of the traditional community & household (with at least three generations). Everything gets so much harder without it, especially if you don't have the funds to pay strangers to do stuff for you.
Tight-knit community is the socio-ecological niche we evolved in (and for) over millions of years, and I think it is one of the things that's at the bottom of "the void" that so many people are feeling right now.
Damn, it would be nice to have kids around sometimes. Or wise elders whom we could ask stuff and have deep conversations about the important things with.
Very sorry to hear about your goats, but all things considered I can empathize with your decision. I wish you a speedy recovery! To the next chapter of Zero Input Agriculture! (How about ostrich ranching? 😉)