​The iconic song “Country Roads” by John Denver has a special meaning to both of us. This is due to the song intersecting both of our lives multiple times spanning a time period of over thirty years. Dating back to before we ever met.

For me the date was June 1984, I was living in New Jersey. I get a copy of a photographic magazine. Inside I find an article about cave photography. Intrigued, I reread the article several times. I kept thinking about the article and I sent a letter requesting more information. A few weeks later I get a standard information packet from the national cave organization. It was nice but it did not give me any local contacts.  Fast forward a year to 1985, I get a letter from a local cave club in New Jersey.  I called them and started going with them to explore some wild caves. All this time they talked in glowing term of the BIG CAVES in West Virginia. Finally,  they formed a trip to Lewisburg WV.  On the 8 hour trip down they played Country Roads over and over. When our vehicle crossed the state line, I started to understand. The more time I spent in WV the harder it was to leave. My heart was so sad when I crossed the line to head back to New Jersey.   I never forgot my time in West Virginia, I went on several more trips there. Each time I fell more deeply in love with that special place.

That same year Michelle was in basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey and took a field trip to Fort Monmouth, which was only 4 miles from my house. That was her first time that far away from her WV home she loved. It was her first time in NJ, but not her last....

In 1998, I went on a Christian Dating site, a few days later Michelle wrote me. We talked and I found out she lived in Lewisburg, WV. I told her I was there in 1985 caving, she was not impressed. We talked, fell in love and I drove down to meet her face to face. We got married later that year, and she moved to New Jersey, we lived there for 8 years. But her heart was in a place south of New Jersey, in those sweet mountains of West Virginia. For me the tug to move to WV kept getting stronger. We played "County Roads" to death on our CD player as we both dreamed of some day returning to WV.  When we were doing the final part of the remodeling in the condo before the big move we made a CD of WV songs.  Different versions of "Country Roads" was on it.  That CD is what kept us going when we just wanted to give up.

In 2006 we moved to Kingwood, WV and never looked back. We live on a farm high in the mountains. Life is hard here, but we love it. This is where those country roads took us home. To the place our heart will always belong......

Sometimes I wonder, about the lengths we go to, for the health and welfare of our goats.   Living in the mountains our challenge has always been to guide the water that flows after a rainstorm away from the entrance to the does barn.  View the following Sway to discover our solution to the problem.

First, I will start this post by saying that I am not blaming her new owners for what happend.  I am using her death as a public service announcement in hopes that this does not happen to another family.

I called this post, "My Name Was Ginger" because she passed away on May 4, 2018.  Ginger was a great doe and I really cared for her.  She was the first animal born on my farm to officially carry the Sliceofalmostheaven herdname.  My plans were to keep her here until her natural death, many years from now.  But she proved to aggressive once she became herd queen to be in a larger herd.  So she was sold.  Thankfully, I have a daughter that is the spitting image and personality of her mother, minus the aggressiveness.

She passed away because of an occurrence that I have heard far too often.  She was tied out in a field to graze unsupervised.  I do not know all of the details, but I'm sure she either got entangled and hung herself or fell somehow and hung herself.  No matter how it happened the results were the same, a dead goat.

I impolor anyone who has goats, PLEASE do not tie out your goat.  You might get lucky and not have anything happen the first time, but goats are good at getting into trouble.  Also, a stray dog (coyote) could come around while you are away and kill the goat.  Being tied up they cannot get away. 

I always think of my goats as 3yr old children, and treat them as such when it comes to their safety.  We have GFCI plugs in the barn so the goats do not fry themselves or burn down the barn.  We use safety heat lamps with redundant connections so the kids do not burn the milkbarn down.  You get the idea.

The final thing I will say on this topic is for anyone wanting to tie out a goat (or any other livestock) plan on supervising the animal, better yet buy temporary fencing.  Don't suffer the heartbreak of a dead animal.       

​The short video is of our little goat Flash. His birth was uneventful but the days afterward were anything less than extraordinary. You see we keep our newborns inside for a day or two to make sure all is well. Flash and his sister were doing well and went outside to the barn to be with the others in the kid barn. Within 15 minutes of putting him out there, the once full of boundless energy kid is laying on his side crying in pain. We whisked him back into the house to try to figure what was wrong with him. After hours to checking every book we had and consulting other goat owners online, we concluded he had a blockage internally and could not "go".

So what do you do with a goat that can't go? We spent the next several hours rubbing him all over to stimulate his little body. After about and hour and half, the blockage pushed out and the flood gates opened. 24 hours later, Flash went from standing around like a statue to the bubbly goat in the video. So he now plays catch me if you can!

PS. As an extra bonus, Henry the cat photo bombed the video.  Make sure you watch out for him.