On Mother's Day, Artemesia finally got the message --- she needs to fill her own belly first. Okay, so she didn't entirely toe the line immediately. But she started nibbling a bit of the cream of her pasture, was willing to eat out in the world while I sat nearby with her kids, and even grazed for up to half an hour in the forest when I shut the kids in the coop to keep them out of both of our hair.

I'm ashamed to say that this last scenario is my favorite --- kids are cute, but I vastly prefer the serenity of enjoying the outdoors with a gentle adult goat. Artemesia, on the other hand, prefers option two --- she's only fully content when her kids are accessible to her eagle eye.

To please the crowd, I usually take momma and babies out to nibble on oats at the bloom stage for their morning/noon repast. These are the cover crops I planted into close-cut lawn last fall, and the patch did an amazing job of feeding goats all winter in the sunnier parts of the yard (while pretty much doing nothing in the shadier parts of the yard). The goats kept the grains nibbled low enough that they survived the winter in a vegetative state, and the plants are now pushing up blooms...which apparently are the tastiest thing since dried sweet corn.

Artemesia browses through the patch at head height, eating nothing but the top six inches of growth. Once she's done, I'll see if more tasty flowers pop up. If not, I'll sprinkle soybean seeds into the standing grain then have Mark whack the latter down to ground level. Come fall, I'll definitely plant this area in oats once again. The amount of enjoyment and forage value we've gotten out of $5 of cover-crop seeds is truly astounding.