OT Goats [was: RE: [TheForge] Beware the quiet welder] OT

[robert hensarling]

Bless her heart!  Good for her, standing her ground.  A fellow that lived 
here in Uvalde had a goat that went everywhere with him.  It was said that 
he invented the automatic transmission, and was worth millions (which isn't 
much these days).  He would always pay his bills in person, and with silver 
dollars.  This went on for years and years.  When he died suddenly, it seems 
that everyone had an excuse to go to his little house, and "tidy" things up. 
I'm sure none of them looked for silver dollars.  I heard that his goat died 
just a short time after he did.  He was very friendly, until it came to the 
city elders, and he was on their case almost every week.  I was standing 
outside one of the drug stores one day, chatting with a group of people, 
about nothing in particular.  Joe Harry walked by with his goat, don't know 
where they were heading.  One of the old ranchers in the group I was 
standing with made some sort of comment about Joe Harry and his goat, 
something about them "dating", well, you catch my drift.
Old Joe Harry swung around and gave that feller a good tongue lashing, and 
went on his way.  Some of the guys started in on him once again, and I 
hollered at them to let it go.  They went back in to their coffee bar at the 
drug store, and I went on my way.  I looked across the street and there was 
Joe Harry, looking at me for a while, then he winked and said "thanks".  I 
just knew that anyday I'd get a big box full of silver dollars in the mail, 
but never did.  Years later, it dawned on me what happened, one of the guys 
in the group harassing Joe Harry, was the local Postmaster, and I know that 
son-of-a-gun has my box of silver dollars!!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer" <artgawk at thegrid.net>
To: "Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2008 4:02 PM
Subject: Re: OT Goats [was: RE: [TheForge] Beware the quiet welder] OT


> My crazy old aunt moved to the the middle of the chaparral way outside LA 
> and raised her goats and her other kids, who came out quite well.
> Then they ran a freeway through about a mile away and the properties 
> around her began to develop. Her grazing territory slowly contracted and 
> the new neighbors complained. When i last saw her, she was a small, gray 
> haired woman with a pinched face, clothed from head to foot in gray, 
> tattered clothing who would wander from vacant lot to vacant lot filling a 
> bedspread with selected weeds that the goats preferred. The bundle, slung 
> over her back, was often as big as herself. The county was on her case 
> till she died...she clutched her bible to her breast through every 
> confrontation...quoting verse to counter county ordnances...pf
>
> Jeff & Leslie wrote:
>> My girlfriend and I had  dairy goats about 35 years ago and kept em in a 
>> three strand electric fence.  It kept em in pretty well but one doe would 
>> get down her knees and slide the hot wire down her head and back and 
>> crawl out.  Never could break her of it.  The pen was naturally too small 
>> and we'd take the tiny herd for walks in the woods most evenings and 
>> they'd have a big time eating oak leaves, blackberry vines and assorted 
>> other hard plants, really didn't care for grass or hay unless they were 
>> quite hungry.  They did like kudzu and I'd stop on the way home from work 
>> and load the trunk of the old 58 chevy with kudzu vines I'd cut with a 
>> machete.  They'd gobble up the kudzu except for the very bottom of the 
>> pile, as they are too picky to eat the part that was touching the ground. 
>> That's when I discovered that kudzu has a beautiful purple flower that 
>> just doesn't show above the flowers much. Kudzu is known for making the 
>> milk "ropey" , but we didn't notice such, perhaps because it was only a 
>> small part of their diet.
>>
>> Around here herds of sheep are rented out to control kudzu and clear 
>> underbrush.  The city uses em in a couple of places near me.  They come 
>> in and set up an electric fence and leave the herd for a few days and 
>> move it to the next place.  Fun to watch.  They have a huge dog that 
>> stays with em and barks ferociously when you get too close.  Poor dog 
>> carries a heavy weight around his neck to keep him from jumping the fence
>>
>> Jeff Valentine
>>
>>
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