A Squarefolk column
Dear Dolly
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Printed at the farm · Filed also with Ozarks Goat News
From a first-year barn off County Road 14
She lifted the latch and took the sage
Dolly — Our yearling Nigerian learned the gravity latch on the garden gate. Tuesday she walked the thyme down to nubs and took the sage to the ground. She left the comfrey standing. I planted the bed in April for the kitchen. Is sage poison now that a goat chewed it? Can I still put the leftover leaves in a tea? How do I keep her out without building a fort?
Sage is for sauce. It is not poison because a goat tasted it. Wash what she did not flatten and cook with it this week. Do not make a supper tea out of the comfrey she refused. Comfrey stays in the browse and the soil. Lemon balm and thyme may go in the Friday cup if you still have any.
Put the kitchen herbs back behind woven wire a goat cannot lip through, and retire that gravity latch on anything that matters. She lifted it because it asked only one motion of her. Two motions: a latch plus a snap she cannot work with her mouth. Hang the snap high and on the people side. Ocean is right about latches. The goat is keeping a calendar.
— Dolly, the Quonset desk
P.S. — Charlotte: Two snaps. I counted.
From the square off the Marshfield road
The mineral turned to brick
The open pan under the lean-to took last week’s rain and set up like mortar. The does walked past it for four days. I set out a cattle mineral block so they would have something. Two of them licked the corners and quit. We breed in October. The grass is short and brown on top. What should actually be in that feeder?
Dump the brick. Wet mineral is ballast. Scrape the pan and start over with loose goat mineral — not a cattle block, not a sheep mix, not white salt pretending to be the rest of the ration. A goat takes a quarter-ounce to a half-ounce a day if the mix is right. A block makes her work for salt and skip the copper and selenium she came for.
Cover the feeder. Mount it at chest height, dry, out of the manure path. If they still walk past it, move the feeder toward the water, not toward the hay. Check it once a week. If it clumps again, dump it again. Do not top off a crust. Breeding does not wait on a pan you forgot in the weather.
— Dolly, the Quonset desk
From the porch that faces the square
The pig found the kitchen door
Our pot-belly sow rooted a gap under the hog panel and showed up on the kitchen step this morning, breathing hard. The wallow we dug in June is a cracked plate. I filled it yesterday noon and by supper the water was warm enough to wash a skillet. Heat advisory today. She is not lame and she ate breakfast. Do I keep filling that hole, or move her in with the ducks until September remembers itself?
Pigs do not sweat. A wallow in full sun is a stewpot. Shade the hole first — a scrap of tin or a tarp on posts is enough — then fill it in the morning, not at noon. A kiddie pool works if you can keep her from tipping it and if the water stays out of the afternoon glare. Leave her with the ducks only if the duck pen can take a snout. It usually cannot.
Close the gap. Hog panel needs a board or wire skirt at the dirt, and a latch that does not hang at snout height. She opened the kitchen side because the kitchen side smelled like supper. If she is panting hard, will not rise, or goes off feed, that is the county vet, not this desk. The advisory runs until evening. Work her in the cool hours and leave the midday to the shade.
— Dolly, the Quonset desk