Kids' Stuff

There was only one family raising Goats where I grew up, and of course their kids (excuse me, children) got endless grief from their peers. Kids (that is to say young people) are always hard on anyone who's different, and Wisconsin was very much a Black-and-White Cow monoculture back then.

Goats were smelly, we'd heard. They butted your butt, and ate tin cans and three red shirts from off the line.

Much, much later I learned different, from a college classmate with a milk allergy, whose family had sold off the Holsteins in favor of dairy goats. Goats are clean, clever and friendly, and do a lot less damage than cows do when one steps on your foot during milking. I always visit the dairy goat barn at the the Lane County Fair with my sketchbook, and thanks to the intervention of a couple of committed caprine collectors, I paint goats on dessert plates, pie plates, baking dishes, batter bowls, and the occasional special order of soup bowls and coffee mugs. Generally Nubians, though lately I've been asked to paint Alpines, Boers and Toggenburgs.

Not baaaa-d, eh?