This had to be the busiest “Rendy Day 1” anyone has ever seen. Usually Thursday is pretty low-key with only a few trailers rolling in while many more show up on Day 2. This year it seems most folks made it in the first day, perhaps because I scheduled the classes for Friday instead of Saturday.

It’s always exciting when Dwite Sharp rolls in! He had 32 kids in his trailer and soon they were picketed out on the grass, waiting for their new owners to take them home after the Rendy.

We had a great campfire discussion that night about Bighorn Sheep issues. Maggie Highland flew in from Pullman, WA just for this talk, and she shared quite a lot of information on Bighorn Sheep disease research and theories.

Recently retired Lake City Forest Service/BLM officer, Edna Mason, also joined us for that discussion. She didn’t have a lot to say, but what she said was very interesting. Apparently Bighorns in the Lake City area have never experienced a die-off despite the fact that domestic sheep have been grazing in their territory every summer for the past 100+ years. She is frustrated with the Wild Sheep Foundation’s agenda to push domestic sheep out completely (even when there is no evidence of harm) instead of working with shepherds to find compromises. She believes the only reason Bighorns were recently collared and are being tracked in the Lake City area is so the Wild Sheep Foundation can prove territorial overlap with domestic grazing areas and use that evidence push domestic sheep out.

John Mionczynski also shared many of his experiences studying Bighorns over the years. He is convinced that low selenium is one of the key factors in Bighorn die-offs. John was very interested to know that Lake City’s herds have always been healthy. Edna was able to show John on a map where the local Bighorns live so he could collect plant and soil samples for testing.

I hope that as knowledge is shared, we will arrive at a healthy solution to helping Bighorn Sheep thrive while still allowing multiple land-use activities such as goat packing and domestic sheep grazing. After hearing from all these bright minds on the subject, I’m convinced that it does not have to be “either-or”.

First thing Wednesday morning, we packed up the goats and headed to the Rendy site at Snowden Meadow, some five miles south of Lake City up the Henson Creek road. Pike Snowden’s cabin looked a little lonely that morning with no campers on-site yet!

The road to Snowden Meadow leads through the old Ute-Ulay mine. At one point there was a sizable town perched on the edge of this narrow canyon, and there were two different attempts to dam Henson Creek. Both dams blew out shortly after being built and no one tried to tame the river again.

I had fun making these little Rendy packgoat signs!

That afternoon, Kate and I took a little trip to Lake San Cristobal–the lake from which “Lake City” derives its name. Believe it or not, this little pond is the second largest natural lake in all of Colorado! It’s also a fairly new lake, having been formed by a landslide some 700 years ago.

Many thanks to our friend Kate from Australia for letting me use her photos to make my posts. I slacked off and didn’t take one photo all week!

Phil and I picked Kate up at the airport in Colorado Springs the weekend before the Rendy and on Monday we loaded up and headed over to Lake City. We rented a small cabin and spent a couple of days enjoying the picturesque little town and visiting old friends that I grew up with there.

Our goats cut quite a shine in my hometown as we walked them through the park, drove them with their wagon down the streets, and chauffeured them to the market in the bed of our pickup.

Whose are these handsome faces in our rearview mirrors?

We originally planned to bring only Finn and Sputnik to the Rendy, but Tigerlily was still recovering from the trauma of losing her first kid and the mastitis that followed afterward. She needed to be milked 2-3 times a day and my milking help at home could only come in the morning, so we brought Tigerlily with us. I felt that the change of scenery would do her good, and it did. She also got quite a lot of sympathy from two sweet girls we met in the park.

The Hartman family has owned the San Juan Soda Company since I was a little girl. I grew up with the Hartman kids, and eventually they started having their own kids. Everyone chips in to help run the soda shop in the summer. It is the epitome of the “family business.”

The Hartmans have preserved the original old bar with its bar stools and they serve ice cream in what looks like a proper old-fashioned drug store.

I had a fun time holding three goats and an ice cream cone and trying not to lose all four of them.

The Hartmans generously offered our goats as many broken waffle cones as Phil and Kate could carry away. While this photo makes it look like Finn is the hog, it was actually Sputnik who ate inhaled most of them, beating back all competition and daring them to come any closer.

ALL the babies are old enough to go for walks with the big goats now! Altogether we’ve got sixteen wild and wooly goats charging around us like racehorses. That’s a lot of flapping ears!

Nubbin’s kids are starting to hold their own with their big, rowdy older cousins.

Nubbin’s crew had their first walk this past weekend.

I think they had fun. “Fly Tornado! Fly!”

It’s been over a week since Tigerlily lost her baby, but it seems like an eternity. The poor girl had a rough time with a retained placenta, lots of penicillin shots, and finally a bout with mastitis, but hopefully she’s now on the mend. Thinking back, I’m glad I had a little time to hold her baby. We dried him off and cleaned him up well and I was able to cuddle him for a while. He looked asleep. He was so pretty! A beautiful red bay with roan spots with a little white tip on his tail. And he had one wattle. Just one. It was adorable. Phil said he was too cute to be allowed, so God had to take him back. I said he’s going up to be with Cuzco, who is probably giving everyone in heaven a really hard time by now and needs something to distract him. Cuzco always hated baby goat season and timed his exit perfectly (so he thought). Apparently he’s not getting off so easy! Now the one-horned Wonder Goat has a little one-wattled sidekick to keep him occupied.

After Tigerlily lost her baby, Jim spent much of the next day with her. He petted her, talked to her, comforted her, offered her treats, and just generally kept her company. She appreciated it. It was a hard day for everyone.

In the sadness over losing a kid and the work of trying to nurse Tigerlily back to health I didn’t get around to posting our recent photos. It’s good to look back over the last couple of weeks and see how much happiness we are blessed with. There is truly a lot more joy than sorrow around here!

While Jim and Lois were in town we had a baby goat party on the couch and watched the movie, Artois the Goat.

Lois bonded with Sox on the “rox”.

There are plenty of babies to go around!

My parents visited while Jim and Lois were here and my dad got goated! “Get him, Tornado!”

My dad doesn’t hold baby goats, so I made sure he at least got a few kisses.

My mom was in love with little Coral and kept singing “White coral bells upon a slender stalk…”

Phil and Jim and I took turns holding two of Nubbin’s babies on the back porch that afternoon. Jim bonded with Tornado while Phil and I took turns holding Storm

Storm is the friendliest and most curious of all our kids this year.