As I’ve said for years, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into two groups, and those who don’t.

In the Christian version of separating the people into flocks, sheep will reap the rewards of a life of servitude. Sheep go to church, pay their taxes, and watch television without questioning the messages of God or culture. Goats pay little attention to God or others. They’re independent, intellectually curious beasts. The bible throws in several disparaging comments about goats and their habits.

Needless to say, I prefer goats.

Here in the real world, goats are mischievous, curious, sociable, playful creatures. They welcome any opportunity to escape their pen, just to exhibit their intellect. They pull down anything we try to put out of their reach, and pull up what we try to pin down. As nearly as we can determine, ours like to play with the dogs and take evening walks down to the river.

Ellie (aka L.E., aka Long-Eared Cutie Pie) surveys her domain from atop her perch while Lillian searches for food

Most of all, though, goats like to eat. Just as they try to dismember anything their hooves can reach, so too do they take a nibble of anything within range of their mouths. Shoestrings, shirttails, and buttons are fair game, along with rope and shadecloth. Among the results of edible food are two we particularly appreciate: goat milk and goat shit. The former is high-fat food, the latter is high-quality compost for the gardens.

Autumn typically is rain-free here. This year, we’ll take advantage of the dry weather to harvest abundant poop from the goat pen and apply it directly to the then-recently harvested potato patch. Potatoes are heavy feeders, so the patch could use the nutrients. By the time we plant next spring, the compost will be working its magic. Nonetheless, we won’t plant potatoes there, though we haven’t decided which nitrogen-fixing plant to work into the rotation.

The other product from our goats is even more immediately rewarding, which better matches the American notion of instant gratification. We drink the milk raw (i.e., unpasteurized) and make a wide variety of cheeses. Goat milk is homogenized, so the cream does not float to the top. We have a cream separator with which to separate the cream, thus producing skim milk and the basis for butter and ice cream. We haven’t yet used this device because we’ve been using any excess milk to make cheese. So far, we’ve made chevre, Romano, mozzarella, Colby, cheddar, Monterey Jack, and Parmesan.

Our single adult, milk-producing goat generates three to four quarts daily. We typically consume between two and three of those quarts when we’re all here on the property. I’m here for about three weeks while my partners travel, so I’m making hard cheeses. Between stints typing this essay, I am making my third and fourth two-pound wheels of cheddar this week while watering the potato patch.

Making cheese is so easy, even I can do it. Ingredients include milk, culture (we use cultured buttermilk or yogurt, the latter of which can be made from milk), a coagulant (we use commercially available rennet, but citrus juice, vinegar, or extracts from local plants will work), and sometimes a little salt. The only necessary technologies are a cheese press and the ability to raise the temperature of milk to 120 F. We use a relatively inexpensive press, but you can make your own with little effort (although controlling the pressure is challenging in the absence of a specialty press).

As I make the cheese, I’m taking occasional quick trips to check the water and the animals. Each time I go outside the house, the goats sing to me. The etymological root of the English word “tragedy” is the Greek word “tragōidía,” which means goat song. So every time the goats cry to me as I pass them by, I say the same thing: “I know, I know. It’s a tragedy.”

They don’t understand my humor. But the ducks laugh every time.

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This post is permalinked at Energy Bulletin. There, as in the comments here, a reader takes issue with my interpretation of the Christian bible. Interestingly, I received an unsolicited message from a biblical scholar who agrees with my interpretation. Not that we should take that conclusion on authority, even if we’re discussing the ultimate authority-based document.

One of the three goats we’re tending had triplets last night. This morning, Ruby and the as-yet-unnamed kids are doing well. Our infrastructure has passed another test. More importantly, we were witness to the miracle of life. And not just once, but three times.

That’s right, I used the word. And you know I don’t believe in miracles.

Click here for video

Next day update: We’re awash in baby goats. Cocoa had triplets this morning, adding two girls and a boy to yesterday’s two girls and boy. This short clip shows the babies immediately after they hit the ground, and this one shows them feeding less than an hour after birth.

Awash in baby goats. Awash in miracles. Life is good.

On the other hand, I keep getting asked to come up with politically viable solutions to both predicaments. Some people think such an activity is worthwhile, and I’ll give it a shot with this post.

With respect to energy decline, totalitarian socialism worked for Cuba. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba experienced 90% decline in crude oil supply essentially overnight. The Cubans muddled through, shoulders to the wheel, with no measurable loss of human life. Even today, two decades later, their standard of living exceeds ours for every measure that counts (and no, GDP doesn’t count). With respect to emissions that drive climate change, the Cuban model is far superior to the leading economies in the industrialized world. If there is a viable political model to deal with both sides of the fossil-fuel coin, it’s found in Cuba and perhaps other countries characterized by totalitarian socialism.

Here in the United States of Advertising, in sharp contrast to the Cuban model, a 0.5% decline in world oil supply nearly brought the military-industrial complex to its knees. Thanks to heavy doses of Keynesian-style bailouts to corporations, the republic was saved, but it still teeters on the brink. It looks like the federal government will continue to function for a few more years, even with a 3% annual decline in world crude oil supply (cf. Cuba, with its 90% decline). And, lest you think the system isn’t working, think again. The system is working exactly as it was designed to work: capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. If it’s not working for you, it’s only because you’re not financially wealthy enough to matter.

I seriously doubt we can switch to totalitarian socialism in time to save lives in this country. We’re already too deep into fascism to switch horses. At this point, the sheeple probably would go along, but the corporations would not. Ours is a command economy, and the commands come from the corporations: If they tell legislators to vote for an initial $700 billion bailout package, you can bet how it will turn out: “in no time the taxpayers ended up with more than eighteen times that, $12.8 trillion in loans, spending, and guarantees.”

For those who do not believe we’ve yet reached the point of fascism in the U.S., consider these tidbits:

JP Morgan has taken over the U.S. food-stamp program, and has created jobs along the way. The jobs are in their call center in India.

The federal government has assumed a controlling interest in GMAC, after buying the nation’s largest car company.

The Federal Reserve is seriously considering the purchase of more (toxic) assets from Fannie and Freddie.

Your favorite Treasury Secretary told AIG to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis. Meanwhile, he repeated the administration’s commitment to economic growth at all costs, including runaway climate change: “There is no greater priority for this administration than getting Americans back to work.”

It’s a quick trip to jail for blowing the whistle on the criminals at UBS, which happens to throw big money in the direction of Obama.

The list goes on. These are merely the most recent examples of an essentially endless list.

Will fascism work? Only for the fascists, I’m afraid. After all, you cannot even land a job in the OBusha administration unless you’re willing to kill the right people. Hopefully, this system will work only for a very short time. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario by which it lasts as long as the Cuban solution.

Further evidence the American economic system is working as planned is found in projections for this year. If you think 2009 was punishingly bad for the American middle class, think again: economic black swans will be the least of our problems, according to a dozen mainstream economists. For starters, social security goes bankrupt this year, with no politically viable solution except printing money (the one-size-fits-all plan for the current administration). Meanwhile, bonuses are up — way up — on Wall Street. And although the last decade was characterized by a decline in stock markets and a net loss of jobs, the next 10 years has us headed straight for the post-industrial Stone Age. This likely will bring back to a decent sense of community, which marked Stone-Age cultures for the first couple million years of the human experience.

The U.S. economy is still shedding jobs, after setting records for the percentage of Americans out of work for an extended period (and, no, those jobs aren’t coming back). A few criminals continue to profit from the ongoing economic implosion, and the harbinger of hope appears to be among the scoundrels. No wonder his administration changes the rules every time they think nobody’s watching.

Meanwhile, a steady rise in the price of oil, hence gas, threatens to further strangle out-of-breath consumers. And speaking of gas, the public and their politicians seem completely disinterested in the huge methane flux coming from beneath Arctic seas, even though: (1) ongoing global warming threatens to thaw Siberia’s subsea permafrost, (2) the amount of carbon trapped in shelf permafrost is in the range of 1,600 billion tonnes – roughly twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere now, and (3) the release of this once-captive carbon would have catastrophic effect on our climate and life on Earth.

Not to worry. It’s merely life on Earth. It’s not as if the release of methane poses a threat to the vaunted industrial economy of the United States, or causes something as dire as childhood goat trauma.

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This entry is permalinked at Island Breath.