Never was the expression more true than in a farming community. Good fences make good neighbours. If you have any dream of homesteading there are two aspects you have to establish. Water! Fences! The rest; is minor details if you don't have sufficient water and good fences! Of course the first thing you have to establish if you hope to keep goats on your dream homestead is that; if water can get through the fence - so can the goat!!!
Because we have spent a lot of time and even more money on our boundaries, both internal and external fences, we seldom have problems with our fences or our neighbours. But there will always be the exception. Earlier I was horrified to gaze over the fields and notice pretty white specks floating around the neighbours field. He doesn't have goats. But he does have a whole field of onions going to seed that he will soon harvest. I quickly grabbed the binoculars to search the field where my goats should have been. They weren't. Scanning the neighbours field through the binoculars I saw that those lovely white specks were my naughty goats!
Immediately I started to run - rather sprint - across the fields. At the same time calling in reinforcements over the two way radio. Reinforcements being FarmerBuckaroo. I wasn't sure which was worse. The goats in the onions or my husband getting hold of the goats! I arrived first. His truck shortly afterwards.
My goats saw me coming. I always giggle over imagined conversations between my goatie girls; "She's seen us! Keep your horns down! Don't make eye contact!" Thankfully they were very far from the actual onions. Despite their mischievous inclinations - despite what my husband may say (or threaten) - my goats are really good kids. After calling them by name a couple times they came frolicking over. As if they had just been going for a stroll. Innocently.
Once they were safely back in the field we returned to the onions to make sure they hadn't actually begun the feast. Goats are browsers, not grazers like sheep. They had been after the thorn trees and the wild veld shrubs. Phew! Onions? What onions? They had no idea!!! What we did find in among the onions were plenty of other little creatures.
The bees and butterflies danced lightly from onion head to onion head. Landing so softly and briefly it was like watching a dainty dance.
Also flitting among the onions were dozens of Sunbirds. The striking green and blue flashes alerted us to the little Malachite Sunbird males feasting. I noticed a couple of the female Malachite Sunbird but she was so shy that I could barely focus my camera and she was gone again.
Without these remarkable little pollinators the onions would not be so fruitful. It is very special watching them all. Surprisingly the scent of the onions is not overpowering as one would imagine. The honey these hard little bees will produce promises to be unique.
As for my beloved rebels. They of course got more than a piece of FarmerBuckaroo's mind. He read them the riot act despite their innocent gazes and gentle grunts of indignation. "If I catch you outside of our borders again, I will use those onions to stuff a couple roast goat shanks! I don't care how delicious your milk is in my coffee!!"
