The couple has fallen in love with goats, an affection Jerry cultivated in his youth when he had one as a pet. This year, especially, their vitality has been a source of both delight and restoration to him. A handsome, rugged man, Jerry has suffered from two strokes in the last six months, the most recent causing a seizure and slight language aphasia. His recovery, which is nearly complete, was expected to be gradual and lengthy. Both Jerry and Leslie credit the goats with his accelerated return to health.
The first kid of the season was born on the day Jerry returned from the hospital. Over the next months, he was surrounded by a daily burst of new life. Though he couldn't do much in the way of farm chores, neither could he stay inside. Every day brought him into the pasture to attend a birth, or to bottle feed a kid with milk from one of four dairy goats they raise to provide supplemental milk for the kids and fluid milk and cheese for the house. Sometimes he was simply there to watch a kid find its hooves and begin a wobbly prance.
After the anxiety of the strokes, the continuous presence and needs of the animals have been therapeutic, both for Jerry and Leslie. Over an amazing dinner they'd prepared of curried cauliflower and slow-roasted goat, Leslie explained to us that since they began raising them, the care of the goats has kept her grounded: "In this world where I feel so insecure, where you never know what's going to happen next, I love the fact that I can go out in the morning and they're always there, ready to eat. It doesn't matter what else is happening in the world, they need to eat. They want to eat, and I want to feed them." —MMH
