A hug and a slice of toast

After such a nourishing breakfast, there was trouble in the barnyard. It was a day of separation. The baby goat with one horn was left alone in the pasture. Her mother was tied up on the other side of the barn, near the donkey. Little goat is being weaned, we get more milk for our seven or eight daily cups of tea. The donkey, on the other hand, apparently always feels separated. When he brays it sounds like uncontrollable sobbing, like he will actually die from heartbreak. Maybe he will. He probably wouldn't be the first.

But the most traumatic events of the day belong to the pigs. There are two sows, one pink one, one black one, each with a litter of piglets, curious mud-snouted flop-eared things. Pink lady has three little guys (bonhams) that haven't been sold yet, and the other has six. These young chaps were supposed to be weaned two weeks ago, so it was high time for what happened today. It took a lot of coaxing with barley and odd scraps of food, and several mad dashes at little hooves that squealed when you grabbed them, but at the end of the day each of the ladies was locked up, alone. The sounds made by a mother pig whose last piglets have disappeared are something like an axe murderer grunting just on the other side of the bedroom door.

Mike said I was being too sentimental about it, and this is probably true. For my first time out, though, I think I did okay. How could I help feeling just a bit stressed out when there was a donkey ripping his heart out over here, while the purest white and most unicornesque baby goat bleated pitifully for her mama over there, and an angry sow nearby was trying to hoof herself over the fence to gore me with her pigletless snout, and two gaggles of scared bonhams were bravely and loudly trying to battle pink against black in a dark room in the barn? I could not.

What did I do to calm myself down?

Fed my little horse her foal pellets from the plastic mixing bowl, went inside and made myself an amazingly delicious quesadilla.