Goaticulture

Spent the day putting up 16 foot galvanized hog panels and getting the hay feeder, salt lick, shelter, and shed ready for the goats. We have a smalll pasture in the northeast corner of the ranch that's just perfect for livestock. It's 80x80 feet. But the old fencing surrounding it is a little raggedy. Hence the hog panels. We're getting two female kids tomorrow. Both Alpine goats. We were thinking of getting a Nubian, as well, but they get pretty big. The kids are pretty young, one's still on the bottle for another week. They were bottle-fed by a couple of 4-H girls in the neighborhood, so they'll be very friendly. They're really just pets, but they do have a job to do. We need them to keep the grass down. We're also going to get a few chickens for the eggs. We could milk the goats, Laura Burstein says I should start a goat cheese business, Chevre de Laporte, but that's most emphatically not part of my three year plan. Right now I'm making Hunter's Chicken for the family while listening to great old country music on The Cowboy Cultural Society. It's my current favorite Internet radio station. Last night they had a GRITS festival - Ghost Riders in the Sky. Hee yah! I installed Windows XP on Friday night for the first time - Release Candidate 2 which is pretty close to the gold master. Its Windows 2000 heritage is very clear, and I like the new UI pretty well, although it's a little gaudy. But I ended up deleting it because for some reason my beloved Sony Clie can't sync in XP. It works fine in 2000, but not at all in XP. Which makes me think that XP won't be quite as compatible as one hopes. So I ended up trashing it. I think I'll stick with W2K for a while.