“Okay,” I began.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. Don’t get too close to me. Don’t do anything weird. Don’t wear those orange gloves. Don’t move too fast. Don’t move too slow. Don’t do the chores out of order. Don’t separate me from the herd. Don’t squirt the water too hard. Don’t let her in the barn first. Don’t let her out of the barn first. Don’t let her have that corner; it’s mine. Don’t wear your hoodie over your head. Don’t bring a friend with you. Don’t try to catch me or halter me or vet me or shear me. I will chew and graze. I will turn grass and hay into downy warmth. I might eat out of your hand. But only if I’m in the mood. Once in a while I might smell your hand and say ‘hi.’”
“Right,” Greg agreed. “That pretty much captured it. Now, you know, I think our guanacos that were born here are a little more relational than that.”
“Well, since that time, we’ve created more relationships with them,” I said. “But that was back when we had nothing.”
Greg smiled. “I mean, I remember the first summer wearing shorts into the barn, and they’d never seen my ‘old man white legs’ before and they freaked out because I didn’t have pants on,” he laughed.
“Yeah, that was hard,” I said. “I guess my idea was that I wanted something that would love me and be more handleable and more relatable. And that’s why I went to go find goats.”
“I think that was a good decision,” Greg added.
It all started at the Black Sheep Gathering Fiber Festival in 2019. There was a Pygora Breeders Association dinner that I decided to attend. I wanted to see if Pygoras were easier to raise than guanacos. There, I got to talk to many goat owners, including Lisa Roskopf from Hawks Mountain Ranch. She’s recognized as a stellar breeder of Pygoras, and she was a compassionate listener of my guanaco woes. After the meeting, she pulled me aside and quietly told me that she might have a pair of kids for me. She’d taken in my sob story about wanting animals that I could handle and who would love me, and she thought that I could make a good mama for two bottle babies she had been holding back because she loved them so much. I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep that night.
Greg remembered the day I went to get them.
“You took dog crates and put them in the back of the Subaru Forester SUV to load the goats into the dog crates and bring them home.”
“They were so small.” I recalled. “They were still babies and they fit in one large dog crate in the back of the Subaru. I remember driving all the way up with them and then waiting in the ferry line and opening the hatch to see how they were doing, and the other people in the line in the cars were like, “Oh my gosh! Look at your goats in there.” It was very sweet.”
Now, you might be wondering a bit about how Pygoras fit into our luxury fiber farm.
It’s true, there is a bit more to the whole idea than getting animals who would love us. See, from the guanacos, we already had very rare and fine fiber. It’s warm and exquisite. But, because the guanaco fiber is so short, it isn’t that easy, or even that desirable to make yarn from all by itself. It makes better yarn if you blend it with something. And when you blend fine fiber, you better keep the theme going by using more fine fiber. Otherwise, you kind of erase the whole intention. So that’s where Pygora goats came in.
To explain their breed and fiber more, I met up with Ainsely Henry, who is only 18, but is the force behind Peaceful Oak Haven Farm, where they raise prize-winning Pygoras and Shetland sheep. We met at a local farm event.
“Pygoras were first bred as a cross between an Angora goat and a Pygmy goat,” Ainsely said, going into detail. “So, they’re basically a blend of the names. They were first bred by Katherine Jorgensen in Oregon, in 1980. And then as the breed progressed, the Pygora Breeders Association was established in 1987 and hasn’t stopped growing since then.”
“Why the cross?” I asked.
“So, Katherine Jorgensen wanted colored mohair,” Ainsely said. “So she combined the white angoras with the pygmies because she was a pygmy goat judge at the time. So she wanted some of those colors with the Angora fiber.”
“Okay then,” I continued growing more interested. “How did their three different types of fleece come to be?”
“That’s a really unique thing,” Ainsely said excitedly. “Basically mohair and cashmere combined, because angoras only produced mohair, and cashmere. It can be produced by any kind of goat breed. So pygmies produce cashmere, but in very small amounts. So when Katherine Jorgensen crossed them, she got kind of a mohair type of a fleece; a mixture and kind of a cashmere type fleece, which is the Type C. So we have A, B, and C: A for angora, C for cashmere, and then kind of blend for B.”
“And do you have a preference?” I asked.
“Umm…,” Ainsely thought. “Personally, I like Type A’s because I just love the luster and the ringlets are amazing. But type C’s are always really cool to see. Because they’re so soft like cashmere and so fluffy. They’re kind of cute.”
“Yeah, the luster is what impresses me most about type A, but also I have a B, and the luster is just beautiful too,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s the really unique thing about Pygoras, is that there’s so much variation that you can have a luster, to matte, crimp, to curl. Like there’s just all different types of variation and things that you can get,” Ainsely explained.
“So what about this personality thing?” I asked about her animals. “Are they your babies? Do they just love you? Do you love them? What? Tell me about that?”
“Yes, I do call them my little babies because they’re so loving,” Ainsely gushed. “And I think they kind of combined the best parts of an angora and a pygmy. Because Angoras can be a little bit calmer. And pygmies can be a little bit wild and hectic. So when you combine them, they’re kind of not super wild. But there they still pack a ton of personality in their little bodies. So they can be jumping, running, and playing. And definitely when they’re kids, they love to jump and play with you. And I like to play hide and seek with my little baby kids. But they keep that personality, even as they get older, which I think is the unique thing that they never kind of lose that spark.”
Now, if you have any more doubts about the personalities or cuteness of Pygoras, I would like to end those doubts right here and now. I want you to meet Bellamy. She’s Ainsely’s little white doe with lots to say. Bellamy spoke out during my entire time with her and Ainsely at the farm event.
“I think that her vocalness kind of comes from being a triplet,” Ainsely explained while holding Bellamy at the festival. “I think when they’re triplets they kind of communicative, and it was one of her first shows. So she was definitely excited, but confused about where she was. So she was just trying to talk to her other goat mates. And as for her in the show-ring and her fleece, I’ve always loved her. She’s like my little princess because she has that way she carries about herself. Like a judge said to me once Bellamy kind of shows herself. So she likes to strut around and show-off, and her fleece definitely shows itself too.”
“I nicknamed Bellamy “the Diva” because of her vocalizations” I told Ainsely. “I mean, like you would walk into the barn I have and it’s this huge, huge building. And all you hear is this one goat.”
“Yeah, she’s so tiny, yet so vocal,” Ainsely agreed.
Bellamy was darling to meet. I wanted to take her home.
She seemed to be just like my Daisy and Milo; truly goats whose heart doors are wide open.
These goats don’t care if you just yelled at the AT&T representative. They don’t care if you haven’t showered in 3 days. They don’t care if you feel like there’s a heavy cloud over your head and you can barely pick up the corners of your mouth. They won’t hold it against you if you forgot the treats, they will just let you know and wait until you come back with them. You can go see them any time of day or night and they will welcome you. You can just sit there and stare off into space. They will stare with you. You can run and play and jump and they will follow you and run sideways and jump and be goofy right there next to you. You can tell them the worst things you can imagine and they will listen. You can tell them the best thing you can imagine and they will listen. They will always be happy to see you and they will always let you know that in their own ‘goaty’ way.
“I love being greeted by them whenever I’m out there in their barn,” I told Greg. “I mean, I just love the fact that they have to come look at what I’m doing. Run over to me, if there’s any chance that I’m bringing something for them to eat. Milo’s got to do his amazing ‘jumping around happy dance’ because he might get something to eat. And in the morning, there’s just such a routine with them because I clean their house in the morning. So I walk in, and they’re waiting for me at the gate at the same place every morning. They’re waiting at the gate, and I open the gate, and Milo walks over to me and puts his head near my leg for me to scratch his nose, and the side of his face and talk to him. And Daisy comes over and interrupts and shoves him out of the way so I will scratch her back. And then I open the door for them. And unless it’s like a hurricane, they go outside. And they know that I need to be inside to do my cleaning. And that’s our routine in the morning. The thing I was thinking about them, and it’s like, for me, the thing is that they’re always full of unconditional love.
You walk over there to the pen, you walk inside the pen, there’s no doubt in their mind that they’re happy to see you. You don’t have to do anything but show up.”
“And when they come right over to you, they act like ‘Where have you been?’” Greg chuckled.
“Happy to see you? My gosh,” I said. “And I think, for me, there are times I love that bench that we put in their pasture. Because there are times when I really need that. Rough days when I need to be greeted with so much enthusiasm and love that, you know, I get the feeling that the world could be a terrible place, and they would still love me.”
“Well, it could be, and it is sometimes a terrible place. And they still love you,” Greg agreed.
“They still love me,” I went on. “And I think that there is also that fear response, a sort of a wariness to strangers. But not like the fear response that the guanacos have; even the ones that we have close relationships with, that fear is not there at all. And so you reach down and there the goats are. They come toward you instead of move away, you know?”
“They do and and they always think that you’re bringing something good for them, even if it’s just scratching,” Greg said. “You’re bringing something good that they want and need. And yeah, as opposed to the guanacos, where it’s kind of like there’s a distance. You can get so close to them. But if you close that distance, they are going to move away. And the distance is only a foot or so.”
The experience between encounters with a guanaco, who assumes the need for protection, and a goat who assumes goodness, feels viscerally different. From a guanaco, you get wariness, suspicion, armoring up. From a goat you get direct-eye contact, a running towards you greeting, a relaxed and wagging tail. The goats put me at ease when they make physical contact with me. I love to lean on them and touch them and give them pleasure through scratching. With the guanacos, I’m always slightly on guard. They are not open-hearted in my presence. And I have to use my ‘Spidey Senses’ to figure out when they might turn on me.
So what exactly is open-heartedness?
To be open-hearted means you don’t close your heart off to another in anticipation or reaction of what they might say or do.
That you are giving them the benefit of the doubt. That your own fears or need for protection are down, because you don’t know yet if you need protection. Your heart door is open because you don’t assume a need for protection. Instead you assume love and kindness, and that treats are coming… (if you’re a goat). This doesn’t mean that you can’t run away or even kick if you need to. It means you begin with an open heart. Which also means it’s more likely that you will invite the other to respond with an open heart because they won’t feel the need to run away or kick when your approach is so kind.
“Do you want to hear what I wrote about goats?” I asked Greg, providing an alternative version to what I wrote about guanacos.
“Oh, yes!” Greg said eagerly.
I started, “Don’t leave me alone. Don’t stop scratching my neck. Did you hear me? No, don’t leave me alone. No, don’t stop scratching my back. I want to get on you. I want to be near you. I want to eat out of your hand. I want to follow you everywhere you go. I want to come in your house. I want to come into your bed. I want to eat your clothes. I want to nibble your hair. I can’t get enough of you. Love me, pet me, feed me treats. Did you hear me? Love me, pet me, feed me treats. I will cry when you leave. I said I can’t help myself. I will cry when you leave. I will always run to greet you, even if you are just taking out the trash.”
“It’s very cute,” Greg responded. “And not only do they run to greet you, but they’ll do their happy dance all along. They’ll wag their heads and jump all around.”
“They’re always just so excited to see you,” I added. “So what are some other instances that you can think of where having goats sort of lifts you up or makes you feel better?”
“Well,” Greg thought. “I think it’s funny when they do things like escape for a little while. Because they really want to be out. But they don’t. They don’t want to be away from people. And they’re really curious and cute. And you can’t grab them and catch them. They run away. But if you walk back to their little house, and act like you’re going to feed them treats, they come storming back in, because they just can’t be away from treats that long.”
“And how does that lift you up?” I asked.
“It just makes me feel like a home is where the goats are,” Greg said.
“They want to be our home just as much as we want them to,” I said.
“I mean, I like being down in the bottom paddocks that they have access to now, and have them come running up to me. Not as fast as they come running up to you,” Greg said. “But they do come running and wanting to be near me, and wanting to see if I’ve got anything for them to eat. Wanting to be scratched. It’s just that they’re lovely to have as an animal. That’s a farm animal that greets you with such enthusiasm.”
So, I want to tell you about Bebo. She is a very difficult female guanaco. She does not have an open heart. She’s territorial, irrational, unpredictable, and as Greg puts it, “safety wired in the pissed-off position.” It can be upsetting to navigate her during feeding time. I don’t like to have to watch my back every time I go through her gate. One day, after she was particularly aggressive, I was upset and angry and frustrated. So, I went and sat with my goat babies. They didn’t react to my emotional load, or sense that something was wrong and try to make me feel better. They were just their goat selves, bringing me open-heartedness. Being accepting, loving, friendly. Milo looked up at me with such innocence and curiosity. Like his heart was a magnet trying to find the point where I would finally be pulled in and my heart would open to his. Daisy leaned on me. They nuzzled me and each other. It happens each time I go see the goats. I can’t help but smile because it feels so good. They balance it all out–one side of the farm heavy with Bebo and her nastiness. The other side with goats who say, “Be here with me because that’s all we want in the whole wide world. We want your heart. We welcome your heart.”
And now for the song I promised you. My dear mother, who is also an extraordinarily open-hearted person, loves Milo and Daisy. When she visits the farm she tends to spend a lot of time visiting with the goats–you know–one open heart door to another.
“I’m not doing the podcast,” My mother began. “I’m doing this out of real love. Okay?”
“Oh, yes!” I laughed.
“I’m so happy to see you,” my mom said, greeting Milo. “Oh, sweet baby. You want to eat our recording equipment? Okay. Oh, Milo. Yes, yes, yes. Hello Oh, hello. Yeah, so nice to see you. Yep. Yep. Okay!” she laughed as she was overwhelmed with attention. “You want me to sing to you guys? Okay. Good morning to you. Good morning to you. We’re all in our place.”
“What do you love about the goats?” I asked my mom as she sang.
“What I love about the goats is that they are friendly and interested and responsive and they eat the recording equipment you use,” she said. “And I don’t know. They seem… they seem like dogs to me. Like, their tails wag! Whoever heard of a goat with a wagging tail?! Wagging? Oh boy. So the other thing I love… I love the feel of them. They are so soft. They are very soft. And they let me pet them and seem to even like it. You know? They like pets and scratches; scratches on the head and on the on the jaw line.”
“You are a handsome boy. Mr. Milo,” my mom continued as she pet the little goats. “Oh my goodness! With that dark, dark part on your face. And that little beard. Well, you are one cute guy. And Daisy! You’re like a diva, right? Oh my goodness. Yeah.”
“I like to sing my morning song because that’s what they expect from me,” my mom explained. “Good morning to you. Good morning to you. We’re all in our places with bright shiny faces. This is the way to start a new day.”
“Okay, guys,” I interrupted. “We have to say goodbye.”
“Okay, I’m gonna say goodbye in goat,” my mom said.
Soon she started with her best goat vocal impression. You can’t tell the difference between a goat and my mother.
“I speak a lot of languages. Thank you,” she said.
Back with Greg, I asked, “So if you’re thinking about the metaphor, like ‘everybody needs a goat in their lives, or two,’ like, what does that mean to you?”
“What it means to me is that everybody needs to get a little unexpected love from an unexpected place every once in a while,” Greg said.
“Yeah, I think that’s very, very true,” I said.
“You know, you don’t think of goats as these animals that are going to be so attached to you, that would live with you in the house. They’d eat all kinds of stuff in the house, but they’d be happy for the company in the house with you. And you don’t think of that, and it’s unexpected love. I think it’s a good thing,” Greg said.
“I also think it’s a great thing,” I added. “It pretty much makes my day every day.”
Each day, when we interact with our animals, we get reminded about the choices we make in how we approach others.
We get to notice what it feels like to interact with guanacos, who are fearful, suspicious, and just plain wild. We get to feel unexpected love, and practice opening the door of our hearts with the goats who embody that way of being without even trying. And in the end, I think we’re better for it. It helps us remain connected to the animals, and to each other, and to ourselves. We get to practice acceptance, instead of judgment. Connection, rather than rejection. And we get to live in a place we love to call home–together.
So, think about it: is the door to your heart open, or closed?
Do you know a goat or a grandma who can help you practice open-heartedness? If not, I hope you can go find a goat to enrich your life. If you already have a goat in your life, then celebrate it, and spread the love. Or go be a goat for someone else.
Thanks for listening. If you’d like to hear more stories about our farm life and what we learn when we live close to nature and use our hands to make things from what we raise, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast listening app–or, if you want to be notified every time we post a new episode, you can sign up for those notifications here on our website, afiberlife.com.
