The Goatman Cometh

Ryan joins Phil and Ben at the Cork Farmers’ Market, and it’s raining so hard homes are flooded; Ireland stays brilliant green. I’m back at the farm with Chris and the water pump which busted this morning, so we’re busy making sure all the animals have water. Sarah, the daughter, lives down the road and brings water buckets which we use until the evening when we fix it. In addition to cheese, those at the market bring jam and lemon curd from Sarah’s farm.

Then comes the horror. A goat pen is bedded with straw and, as nature takes its call, we tenders spread more clean straw on top of it. Ideally, the straw should be replaced rather often, and the dirty hay carted to our neighbor’s field, which he uses as fertilizer. Yet the weather has been so foul that the straw has been building up like an old city, layers on top of ruined layers, until it’s a fine, eighteen-inch tel with a goat on top. On the surface, it’s clean straw, but by the bottom it’s solid ammonia heavy and brown with goat urine.

We have done a stinky job, and there’s one more bed to do, but it’s done and needed desperately to be so, then Ben fixes the water pump. Huzzah.