The Daily Goat at Marley's Run

Someone recently asked me to write about what goats have meant to my wellness. Hmmmm!
When I was hurt with a pesticide...I had a life...a family, a home, a potential new career, plans, a church, a community...with the ability for service to all, with mobility and potential to enjoy life wherever and whenever I chose. Life to me felt rich and exciting most days.
After the termite poisoning in my home by a professional exterminator and repeatedly going back into the home after recommended time periods and recommended clean up routines without success and with resulting exquisite pain, each and every part of my life was effected and pulled apart, in a shredding type fashion by the chronic chemical sensitivities that followed this allowed-by-our-government and advertised as safe by our trusted and valued big businesses. And I am saying this because instead of proving that I was sick and maybe getting a settlement along with a gag order as several people I had interviewed at the beginning of this lengthy, hellish journey had done, I say what happened to me in America. I thought I was the first or at least somewhat unique...after all both the manufacturer and the applicator said this rarely happened or never happened...I found out later both were lies...and if they had treated the mis-application as the virulent health crisis it was for me....I may have gotten by with a few weeks or months of detox...instead of the topsy turvey life threatening, life changing experience that God allowed and used for our benefit and His Glory!
As it turned out...it has been sixteen years and we left the family home we had planned on staying in through retirement years, surrounded by friends and family and near my husband's aging parents.
So, what do goats mean to my wellness?
When we 'bought the farm' so to speak in the year 2000, several months after my poison, Dursban TC was taken off the residential market by our government, conceding it May hurt children and that Dow Elanco had hidden many cases such as mine instead of reporting them, I thought I was coming here to die.
While it is true I had finally found diagnosis and treatments for what ailed me, the battle weary body was depleted and just wanted to rest and be left alone.
So, happily and with a secrecy that was unlike either of us, we travelled out of our 4 generation home state and
bought first a broken down old barn with more acres than we ever imagined we could afford...then a few months later buying the old farmhouse across the street because it had the water and electricity we needed to begin cleaning up the place...and it would protect me from close chemical assaults by neighbors...something our suburban neighborhood had happening every day.
So, what did goats have to do with my wellness.
We mucked the barn, we propped the barn...we chased wildlife from the house...and cleaned and removed tired iron.
And the story goes on...for a couple years....then one day...feeling much healthier from the fresh air and having decided to live full time at the farm, pesticides wafted over the hill and up the valley, sending me once again running from chemical assault...I got into my truck and drove to the next county to the farmer's house where we had been befriended. The farmer's wife and son got into the truck with me and showed me some back roads away from the chemicals and we had a nice ride in the country.
Up over a dirt road and past a sign "Brown eggs and kids for SALE"
Turning around, we pulled into a driveway with a neat trailer and a big fence...goats were tethered on the lawn. A woman came out and told us it was okay to get out of the truck that the dog off lead wouldn't bite.
There were many dogs tied to dog houses behind the fence...and they sang and sang until she told them to be quiet.
Ferret and chicken cages lined the inside of the fence. And there was a milk stand near a pen with many beautiful goats. I fell in love.
After we bought the eggs, the lady showed me the goats for sale, the beautiful bucks with their sweet inquisitive faces and then the doe.....my sweet Lacey...we left with Lacey on Clinton's lap and the farmer's wife wondering what Bob would think..she had had a goat before and knew what we were in for.
Bob, at first was reticent...but said I could keep her. So into the garage she went. And that was a beginning.
Lacey, Marley our cattle dog, and Kit Kat, our tiger cat made a little family. We worked together and took walks together and had fun together.
The animals helped me to get stronger,as their warm bodies brushed against me and the routine care and feeding helped me to move when I didn't feel up to moving.
After a year or so, when I felt I might be able to milk a goat, I looked around for a buck and found a 4H Buck,...a beautiful white alpine named Nigel...and we took Miss Lacey for a conjugal visit.
And as they say, the rest is history.
But what place does the goat population in my life play in my wellness....Therapy Goats, Therapy Farm!
Goats! Lacey has been a girlfriend. She stood in the corner for three weeks deciding whether to live or die after we had her dehorned along with the cows the farmer owned and that were using our barn. We used cayenne pepper...and prayed. Lacey decided to live...and in a Victorian way, let us know whenever her head hurt from the affront.
We thought we were following good farm protocol. But as with MCS protocol, it wasn't right or good or helpful...and might have been deadly, if Miss Lacey had decided.
So, Lacey was mated and had twins...Light and Love...Baa Light and Love because my husband calls all of his goats Baa Baas. That year, Retired Farmer Jones came to help me learn how to milk. And Retired teacher, extension worker, farmer's daughter and farmer's wife, Estelle Evans, with her Masters in Food Chemistry from Cornell, gave me encouragement. The ORGANIC VALLEY farmer who hays our fields and whose cows also got dehorned told me about the cayenne for pain and the fact that milking the goat...the ACT of milking the goat would strengthen my immune system and help the lymph glands to clear.
The fact that all were living for the LORD Christians was not lost on me, nor did I figure it was a coincidence. We were well prayed over on our journey to Marley's Run Farm...a name given to our place by our Brother-in-law Bob when he saw how our cattle dog Marley ran the place.