How many times have you stepped out of the house, all dressed up in your going to town
clothes, and you hear a holler out at the goat barn that just doesn’t sound right? So, do
you calmly go back into the house, carefully take off your fancy going to town duds
(clean jeans, shirt, and tennis shoes), fold them neatly away, put on your barn clothes,
and then go to the goat barn to check it out?
No way!! You know these goats just look for holes to stick their heads in and get caught.
You charge out there in clean tennis shoes, clean clothes, leaping over puddles, plowing
through goat berries and mud, careening around the corner of the barn to find a goat with
her head caught in the gate. And, it’s in a place where you swore no goat would ever get
her head caught in the gate and the resident bully doe is standing there using her as a
butting bag.
You chase the bully doe off and stand there and study the situation. Somehow this doe
has shaped her neck into a pretzel to weave in and out of the gate where it should have
been impossible for her to stick her head. You really want to keep your good clothes
clean, so you think of a technical thing that might get her head out of the gate without
getting you dirty. You rattle the gate. This is with the hope it will scare her into figuring
out for herself how to get out of a situation she got herself into. No such luck.
With a sigh, you lean your good clothes into the goat’s side to brace her, grab her
shoulders against your good clean shirt, and start weaving her head out of the gate. And,
do you get any thanks for this? Noooooo. She just hollers and whoops like you were the
one who put her there and with a flip of her tail trots off when she is free, never once
looking back with gratitude.
You dust yourself off the best you can, wipe off your tennis shoes, and head for town.
You still look good, but there is a certain aroma to your person now. An "Evening Out At
The Barn" type of perfume is now floating about you.
I can’t count the number of times where I have an appointment in town, maybe doing
something as simple as dropping something off at an office and it never fails, things go
wrong on the farm right before I am suppose to leave. I find myself impossibly late to get
there on time and in desperation, leap into the truck and head to town. I still have my
barn clothes on, barn boots, and barn coat. When I rush in the office, thinking they would
be so grateful that I made it on time, I find that they expect me to wait a while. I offer to
leave the materials with the secretary or clerk or whoever and they refuse to take
responsibility of it and accept it and invite me to sit down.
All right. They asked for it. The barn outfit might not be as dirty this time but the barn
aroma is still there. I try to sit as close to the person who would not accept whatever it
was I had to drop off as possible. No sense wiping out the innocent people forced to wait
also.
Eventually the heat in these offices gets to the barn clothes. A heady odor starts wafting
throughout the waiting room. I usually lean a little closer this time to the office person and
ask if I may leave the before mentioned information with her. She usually readily accepts.
One evening Lee and I decided to trim the older buck’s feet. I had my new barn coat on.
I was so proud of it. The older buck wasn’t exactly happy to get his feet trimmed and a
wrestling match ensued, but we finally got the job done. By that time my coat smelled as
rank as the buck.
The next day I had to run to town and stop at an office to ask some questions. Naturally,
things went wrong, I was late, once again it was the dive into the truck and the charge to
town. But, this time I had a dandy new barn coat.
As I went into the office and got in line, I could feel the warmth of the office doing it’s
magic. A heady buck aroma was coming from my coat. When I approached the desk, I
noticed that the women working there leaned away from me at precisely the same
distance I leaned towards them. We had a type of swaying dance going on. Plus, them
controlling the grimaces on their faces as my heady buck perfume floated strongly
towards them in great billowing waves. It was an oddly comical dance, me leaning in, and
them leaning away. Looking good in a new barn coat just didn’t cut it.
I’ve been thinking about this new Aromatherapy. This is where smells leave you with
peace of mind or whatever mind you want to have. There’s little capped bottles of all
sorts of smells, I mean aromas. Do you think they have farm smells?
The sharp rank odor of a buck sure would wake someone up and make them take notice.
The particular thing they would want to notice is the nearest exit away from that smell, I
mean aroma. Now, if you could bottle that, you could wake up someone who was in a
coma. Or put a drop or two behind your ears to make certain people stay away. Well,
make that all people stay away.
The smell of milk replacer on your barn jeans is a good one. Sit in a warm house a
moment and the aroma of spilt milk replacer on your jeans reminds you of the cute little
bottle babies you just fed. Of course, the other smears on your jeans can also remind you
of the rear ends of a couple of kids who had too much milk replacer.
The smell of freshly baled hay in your hay barn would be another good essence for the
Aromatherapy treatment. Nothing smells better then new hay in a barn. I’d like to keep a
bottle of that aroma around to toss on me when I have to run to town in my barn clothes.
A family came out to see the goats the other day and their little girl was dressed fit to kill.
Cutest little girl you ever saw, all frills and bows and pink socks, the works. She was
almost hysterical walking through the field.
"Watch out! Watch out! There’s more goat poop!" she hollered, dancing tippy toe trying
to miss all the goat berries.
She was in obvious distress and the parents didn’t know what to say to her. I leaned over
and said, "Honey, it’s all right to step on goat poo. That’s allowed. Just don’t step in dog
poo." The parents totally agreed with that.
So we all now happily walked through the field of goat berries, petted goats getting nice
goaty smells on us, and the buck pens near by added their usual aroma to the situation. I
knew that when this nice family all piled into the car and went to Wendy’s for lunch, that
they would surely look like a million, but definitely smell like a buck to all who came in
contact with them. Or, a least smell like a nice goaty farm. Now, that’s Aromatherapy.
THE END
