I was a senior in High School when my parents bought the small farm they’d always wanted. 60 acres in the rolling hills of Piedmont NC. Previously it had been a dairy farm. All the cows were gone, the milking machinery removed, the fences sagging, the pastures overgrown; it was beautiful. And it was just in time because the following month we won a horse as a door prize. My sister, B, convinced my dad that I wanted to go to the Central Piedmont Arabian Horse Association show for my birthday. For the first, and only time, my father bought us all tickets and took us to the horse show. The tickets gave us all a chance to win a door prize, a five year old Arabian gelding named Nabor’s Gem. We only stayed at the show for an hour or two so we missed the drawing when my father’s name was pulled out of the pool of tickets. It was after dinner that our dad got a call from a man who worked at the Post Office. An Arabian enthusiast with a small, family-run horse farm, the man took the deer prize home and put him in his barn and called us. I’ll relate the whole story in a future post. It took a little while to get the fences back into shape and to fix up a stall for Gem. Horses are herd animals and are not happy by themselves. I think it was B who had read that a goat can be good company for a horse.
The farm wasn’t yet fixed up enough for Gem, but my dad brought home a little brown goat that we kept in the backyard. My mom named her Nanotchka, although sometimes we called her Nan or even Lizzy. My dad always called her just plain Nanny.. She was a plain little brown goat, slim and deer-like with large drooping ears. Each day after work my dad would sit out in the backyard with the goat, read the paper and snack on peanuts before dinner talking to her - mostly trying to keep her out of the peanuts or stop her from nibbling on the newspaper. Goats don’t eat everything; but they do like to taste everything, just in case. Like horses, goats are herd animals and don’t like being alone. She bonded to my dad. She loved him and followed him every moment she could. Even years later when we had more goats to keep her company, she still followed my dad around. She gambled behind him as he walked the fences, galloped behind the tractor - it is a miracle she didn’t get run over because he drove the tractor just like he drove cars. She came along with us on expeditions to the bottom pastures to cut the Christmas tree. She’d get into his vegetable garden and even come into the house whenever she got the opportunity.
All goats are full of vim and vigor. She would leap up on top of the cab of my father’s draftsman’s truck - much to his dismay. She would leap over the wall dividing her stall from Gem. Poor Gem. He’d grown up on a big horse farm and lived in a stall surrounded by other horses. He’d never seen a goat before. Nan would leap over the barrier and help herself to his dinner while he cowered in a corner. She wasn’t the best company for him. We got a few more goats to keep her company and she moved out to the new goat pasture when we got a company horse for Gem. She was the queen of the goats, but still loved hanging out with her human family. She enjoyed rides in the wheelbarrow. She would lean forward into the wind as my sisters and I pushed her around the barnyard. If you slowed down the pace to catch your breath, she’d paw with a foreleg to remind you to pick it up.She loved to play king of the hill - and would happily press her head against yours and even rear back on her hind legs to deliver a big bang (if you’d let her). One day, riding bareback in the pasture, I fell off one of the horses. My dog Button rushed to make sure I was OK. Nanotcha ran over too - doing that crazy, sideway-sproinging gambol that happy goats do. Not to see if I was OK; but to use me as a fun springboard for a particularly daring and twisting bit of goat-dance. I’m sure she had a ska soundtrack running in her head all the time. You could see it in her golden eyes, super bouncy-trouncy fun time with a dash of gleeful chaos.
In this painting I wanted to capture Nan’s independent and amusing character through intense colors and simple shapes. Goats have such an odd geometry. Very slim legs and neck with a solid body; blocky heads with their golden eyes with their uncanny slot shaped pupils, then comically long floppy ears and best of all their rapidly flicking little tails that express so many emotions.
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