Three weeks after a rendezvous with Boulevardier—an icy-blue-eyed cream buck from down the road—I am hopeful that Rosemary and Hilda have settled. Welcome to another chapter in the quiet, complicit art of raising dairy goats. Last spring shifts came to the herd that no one agreed to or would have approved if allowed a vote. Clara, Julian, and Oakley had raised their kids to the nine-week mark (my hard stop) and had gone to new homes. Definitely not the preference for either

Late last year I began taking a daily walk through what we still call the Young Forest (planted with ten-inch pencil-thin seedlings 20 years old, now reaching toward the sky at 70 plus feet). It takes less than five minutes to walk unless I linger, which I sometimes do. I slip out of my garden shoes and make my way barefoot. Silly, I suppose, this hankering to connect to God and pray in this way. But it feels like an invitation into something unexpected--both uncomfortable a

In early September Mark and our three daughters drove to the Oregon coast to spread the ashes of their Grandpa. We shared memories and...