The work crew showed up this week to start digging the new well for our fancy-pants geothermal heating system. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled at the idea of not having to spend another winter hauling in enough firewood to heat a small village. But my lawn, folks. MY LAWN.
It was beautiful. It was lush. It was the result of years of careful neglect, the kind of natural beauty that only comes when you let the grass grow wild, mow it semi-regularly, and raise broiler chickens on it. And now? Now it looks like a herd of caffeinated hogs held a motocross tournament.
Seriously, if you dropped someone in my yard right now, blindfolded, they’d swear we were digging for Civil War artifacts. Or hiding a body. Or both.
My grandson, in his innocent voice—you know the one: soft, sweet, and usually followed by a comment that’ll make you reevaluate your parenting skills—looked out the window and said, “Gram, how long did it take you to grow the grass that nice?”
I just stared at him. “Longer than your last three Call of Duty marathons, your summer vacation, and that awkward family reunion where Aunt Linda wouldn't stop talking about her bunions.” That grass was a masterpiece. It had texture. It had soul. And now it’s just battlefield debris.
But you know what? If it means I don’t have to get up at 5 a.m. to thaw my eyelashes and split wood like a pioneer woman possessed, then so be it. Let the dirt fly. Geothermal is the future. And if I have to reseed the entire yard while muttering like an over-caffeinated groundskeeper, then that’s just part of the price of progress.
Now, of course, no construction project on this farm would be complete without the OGOC (Official Goat Oversight Committee.)
The moment the truck pulled up, the goats swarmed like a group of nosy neighbors who heard a rumor about free food and outrageous gossip. Heads high, ears twitching, and tails wagging with anticipation, they lined up to supervise like they were union foremen with performance quotas to meet.
If you’ve never been stared down by a team of goats while someone’s operating heavy machinery, let me tell you, it’s unsettling. There’s something about that wide-eyed, sideways glance they give you that says, “You didn’t measure that trench properly, Steve. And we both know it.”
One particularly bossy doe, Alice, took up a post next to the trench like she was waiting to give a TED Talk on soil composition. Another made a grab for the neon survey flag like it was a salad bar special. Twice. I caught a third attempting to climb onto the drilling rig, presumably to check the hydraulic fluid or give the operator a critique on his digging technique.
At one point, however, the work crew threatened to mutiny if I didn’t get the goats behind the fence. Apparently, it’s difficult to operate heavy machinery with a goat licking the control panel, another chewing on your tool belt, and a third trying to scale your leg like you’re a human jungle gym. One of the guys said it felt like working in a petting zoo run by anarchists. I told him, “Welcome to the farm. Now duck—she’s about to sneeze hay in your face.”
So we compromised. I bribed the herd with a bucket of grain and herded them into a pen, where they immediately began plotting their escape like it was the final act of The Great Escape: Ruminant Edition. They bleated their displeasure loud enough to make the drilling rig backfire.
But the hole got drilled, the piping is in, and someday soon that warm, toasty heat will be flowing into the house without me having to split another log or sweep up a metric ton of bark chips.
And as for my poor, mangled lawn? It’ll come back. Eventually. Hopefully. If not, I’ll turn it into a goat yoga studio and call it landscaping with purpose.
So if you’re ever feeling too confident about your home improvement project, just invite a few goats to supervise. They’ll humble you real quick, destroy your sense of order, and by the end, you’ll be grateful if all they ate were your blueprints.
1 comment:
I bet they wished they could have all that grass that was being torn up. :)
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