The Goat-Owning Problem-Free Life

So I haven’t gone on about this yet, but this past weekend was shearing weekend. And we went out Saturday morning, a beautiful day, all gung ho and set to shear as many goats as we could… and Columbia’s face was COVERED in blood. In the barn we found a POOL of blood. She had suffered a grievous horn injury – and not the first time; in February 2020, her other horn had come off right in Xopher’s hand. And horns bleed a LOT.

Ouch!

I almost felt like I wanted to pass out, but Xopher was relatively nonchalant.

The next day he tells me he wants to saw off what’s left of the horn she just injured. It was really long and curly, and we don’t know exactly what happened to her Saturday morning, but having a really long curly horn is just going to be really prone to getting caught on things, knocked around, and injured.

He assures me that horns are only alive for a few inches, and most of the horn that we see on an adult goat is just like hair or fingernail. But I’m totally squeamish – sawing off an already injured horn. Ich! Ugh! But what can I do? I put the whole thing in his hands. I sat there and did my part to hold her down while he sawed away. First he was using an electric rotor saw but it fell and got busted early on, so he had to resort to a manual hacksaw.

I sat there trying to mentally check out as much as possible. And I thought about this passage:

“Most of us treat the problems we encounter as doubly problematic: first because of whatever specific problem we’re facing; and second because we seem to believe, if only subconsciously, that we shouldn’t have problems at all.”

Really how many times do you tell yourself that? Usually it’s in the context of how much money we have, and how “first world” our problems are. We start ticking off all of our blessings, and literally say to ourselves, “Hell I shouldn’t have any problems at all.” But of course we have problems!

So I sat there thinking about how the problem-free life will never happen – certainly not the goat-owning problem-free life. And here holding a goat down while my husband saws off her injured horn – it’s just one more of those problems, those problems that always have been and always will be.

And reader, that helped.