'The Right Stuff’

As a goat owner of 20 years, I was delighted to find that the fascinating woman who recently served me coffee in a busy Honesdale cafe was also a “goat person.” In the course of our conversation, she invited me to visit her farm near Beach Lake.

Since moving from Indiana four years ago, Diana Beisner and her husband have invested countless hours at their Lazy J farm in caring for longhorn cattle, horses and a herd of goats. The name, a traditional one for their acres, is also the name of a rural road that serves the property.

Entering the barnyard on a cold February afternoon, I was greeted by Rowdy Goat, a shaggy pygmy buck, who races from fence to fence before launching into mid-air.

In the warmer barn were Opal and Emily, Rowdy’s consorts, and at Emily’s side, her newborn doe, Annie, who, ten days after birthing, was already testing the genes that propel her father.

Billy Goat, who arrived at Lazy J with a companion horse, lay atop a hay rick in a fenced pasture where his large partners feed, preferring their fellowship to that of his kind. “He really believes he’s a horse,” was Diana’s comment.

As I’ve learned at home, through sharing the farm with Wimbles, Frisbee, and other companions, now deceased, and with the barn’s current residents, Basil and Cordelia, there’s never a dull moment with goats around.

Many, when happy, have a habit of jumping up sideways, which little Annie appeared to be emulating as she traipsed after Emily. The frolics at Diana’s place, or the spectacle, at home, of Basil ignoring a chicken perched on his back, while Cordelia butted several others, remain as staples among the simple but enduring gifts of rural farms.