March 12, 2008 – I went outside tonight because Rose was growling, and I heard some strange noise and I grabbed my .22 and went outside to check. I was nearly stopped short by the cold and wind, and then, right in front of me,  I saw one of the goats – Murray, stuck in the fence, and flailing frantically while the other two goats races around in a panicky circle. I called Rose – she always comes flying like a volunteer fireman –  ran up the hill to the fence, crawled through a lot of snow and ice, and couldn’t see, as I didn’t have a flashlight.
  I got Murray back inside, put some iodine in his scraped leg, and some bandaids on mine  – I can skip the details, but I thought of this wonderful e-mail I got earlier in the day from Heidi, who has a small farm in the Pacific Northwest and wrote me that she relates to the rewards and challenges I sometimes write about.
  “I know that hole in the soul feeling when you come home to find an animal down or a hole in the fence and an empty pasture, (she might have added frozen water lines, open gates, circling coyotes, downed power lines), I also know that deep satisfaction of (finally) sitting down in the evening knowing everyone is warm and safe and happily munching away at dinner.” Like me, Heidi loves donkeys for the old souls that they are and goats for the free spirits they can be.
  “Some days it all seems too much and as I’m knee deep in muck in the driving rain trying to catch a loose critter or tend to some injury I can’t help question who’s takeing care of me, but you know what? I wouldn’t trade this life for any pampered high rise existence and I suspect you feel the same way.”
  I do feel the same way.
  Hole in the soul is the right way to describe nights like tonight, when you see an animal struggling piteously and painfully and you are falling on ice, and crawling through snow in bitter cold, unprepared for the weather or the dark or the fence you have to somehow get up a few inches, and surrounded by anxious, bleating creatures and there is absolutely nobody to call who can get there in time, and help you out, and you just have to figure it out, and quickly. There are always scrapes, cuts, bruises, muck.
  This happens all the time on a farm, and while people tend to focus on the beautiful and idyllic moments with animals that farm life offers, Heidi is eloquently right in pointing out the hideously uncomfortable and frightening dramas that erupt continuously, in places where there is really no 911 for farm emergencies, and your neighbors are either faraway, or in no better position than you are to figure it out. And the responsibility for helping that creature out or turning off that water line or patching that fence or driving away some determined predator seems awesome, and quite lonely.
   Somehow, you do figure it out, even if you sometimes have to figure it out in a way you don’t like, and having Rose around surely helps. She pitches in, as she did tonight, nosing and nipping at Murray to encourage him to move through the hole I was making, and to keep the other worried goats away, and from kicking or trampling me.
  Then it is nice to see everyone safe and sound, and come by the wood stove and settle down. The farm gives much more than it takes, and like Heidi (thanks for the great message), I will not accept my destiny and head South or into a high-rise or condo, not while I can walk on my own.
  I wouldn’t trade this life for any other, either.