Post by bestyet on Jul 20, 2017 13:08:57 GMT -5
Here's another essay from my archives--these "little girls" are now 17 and 19! Thank you all for your kind comments on my last one about liking cows. It is heartwarming to know there are so many other families out there enriching their children's lives with livestock.
Lessons from a Baby Goat
Winifred Hoffman August 29, 2004
I haven’t seen much of Martha and Miriam this morning. Since the little girls got up, they hardly stuck around in the house to get their hair brushed and have their cereal, then they were out to the goat shed to hop in the pen and pet the new goat kids. Last night I had to milk the cows by myself because most of the rest of the family was busy checking the doe as she brought forth two new kids. I didn’t really mind, because I knew the girls were learning untold volumes from the experience, accompanied by their Daddy and big brothers.
Last spring my husband wisely took the girls to visit a goat breeder and see about some milk does. The girls climbed in the pens full of baby goats and held them, looking forward to when they would have some of their own. They picked out some open yearlings to be bred for August, then had to wait months to bring them home, confirmed pregnant. When they went to pick them up, Miriam stood among the 5-month-old kids, and tugged on Daddy’s sleeve asking to see the baby goats she had petted in March. The reality of how fast they grow sunk in as it was explained to her that these were the same ones.
This whole project, like all of farming, gardening, and anything else having to do with living things, is full of reality lessons. Lessons about how we rely on production and reproduction for our daily bread and milk. Food is not produced on grocery shelves, and animals are for a useful purpose, created for man to produce food and fiber while at the same time he learns from tending them.
For weeks the girls have been waiting for the kids to be born. Every day when they would go out to take care of the goats, they would check eagerly with anticipation. But there would be just the two pretty brown does, merely innocently looking to their keepers for fresh hay. Their udders and bellies kept getting bigger, but no other sign of babies.
Then two weeks ago, when we went out in the morning, there by the smaller doe was a perfect little doe kid, up and around on her own tiny long legs, having already found her mother’s milk. She was a tiny and adorable copy of her mother. She would bleat endearingly and the mother would answer with a lower, gentle bleat.
Even our teenage sons who had wondered why we needed to get goats when we already have a pasture full of cows were nonchalantly eager to see and hold the baby goat. They have watched in amazement the last two weeks as it has grown—some say it has doubled in size. Now it likes to bound around and play, nibbling the girls’ hair and licking their hands. Martha makes it her purpose to spend time with it each day to make it tame so it will be easy to work with and milk when it grows up.
How could anyone say that the miracle of continually reproducing life developed by chance, even if chance operated for millions of years? Chance is still chance, meaning random and disorganized, while amazing and organized design calls for a designer.
Lessons from a Baby Goat
Winifred Hoffman August 29, 2004
I haven’t seen much of Martha and Miriam this morning. Since the little girls got up, they hardly stuck around in the house to get their hair brushed and have their cereal, then they were out to the goat shed to hop in the pen and pet the new goat kids. Last night I had to milk the cows by myself because most of the rest of the family was busy checking the doe as she brought forth two new kids. I didn’t really mind, because I knew the girls were learning untold volumes from the experience, accompanied by their Daddy and big brothers.
Last spring my husband wisely took the girls to visit a goat breeder and see about some milk does. The girls climbed in the pens full of baby goats and held them, looking forward to when they would have some of their own. They picked out some open yearlings to be bred for August, then had to wait months to bring them home, confirmed pregnant. When they went to pick them up, Miriam stood among the 5-month-old kids, and tugged on Daddy’s sleeve asking to see the baby goats she had petted in March. The reality of how fast they grow sunk in as it was explained to her that these were the same ones.
This whole project, like all of farming, gardening, and anything else having to do with living things, is full of reality lessons. Lessons about how we rely on production and reproduction for our daily bread and milk. Food is not produced on grocery shelves, and animals are for a useful purpose, created for man to produce food and fiber while at the same time he learns from tending them.
For weeks the girls have been waiting for the kids to be born. Every day when they would go out to take care of the goats, they would check eagerly with anticipation. But there would be just the two pretty brown does, merely innocently looking to their keepers for fresh hay. Their udders and bellies kept getting bigger, but no other sign of babies.
Then two weeks ago, when we went out in the morning, there by the smaller doe was a perfect little doe kid, up and around on her own tiny long legs, having already found her mother’s milk. She was a tiny and adorable copy of her mother. She would bleat endearingly and the mother would answer with a lower, gentle bleat.
Even our teenage sons who had wondered why we needed to get goats when we already have a pasture full of cows were nonchalantly eager to see and hold the baby goat. They have watched in amazement the last two weeks as it has grown—some say it has doubled in size. Now it likes to bound around and play, nibbling the girls’ hair and licking their hands. Martha makes it her purpose to spend time with it each day to make it tame so it will be easy to work with and milk when it grows up.
How could anyone say that the miracle of continually reproducing life developed by chance, even if chance operated for millions of years? Chance is still chance, meaning random and disorganized, while amazing and organized design calls for a designer.