A Squarefolk column
Dear Dolly
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Printed at the farm · Filed also with Ozarks Goat News
Answers from the walnut desk in the Quonset hut, Arkatype Farms, Arktopia County.
From Lila Voss, a square off the Marshfield road
The Acorns Made a Floor
Dear Dolly — The two white oaks at the west fence dropped last week. The paddock looks paved. The three Nigerian does and the wether have been crunching since Tuesday. They still come to hay. I planted a late row of dill and thyme inside the garden wire. Do I rake every nut, or can goats live on a mast year?
Rake. A goat will nibble an acorn and keep her manners. A floor of green ones is a different meal. They tolerate more tannin than a cow does. That is not the same as a ration. Hay first. Browse they are supposed to have. Acorns as a carpet is neither.
Keep the pile out of the loafing shed. Do not store the sweepings where a bored yearling can reopen the case. If a doe goes off feed, scours, or stops looking interested in the bucket, that is the county vet. I will not sort kidneys from a letter.
Dill and thyme stay inside the garden wire. They are for the Friday pot, not for the west fence. Walk that fence when the next wind comes. Oaks drop on their own calendar.
— Dolly, the Quonset desk
From the Food Closet crowd, after the Friday truck
The Bin Had a Door of Its Own
Dear Dolly — We put Saturday’s leftover scratch and a torn bag of layer pellets in the blue plastic tote by the coop. Monday the lid had a chewed corner and the tote was lighter. I saw two rats at dusk. The hens still lay. We planted basil for the rescued-food supper and left the tote where Arthur set it down.
Plastic is a suggestion. A rat reads it as a door that has not been invented yet. Move the feed into metal with a lid that latches. Not a snap a child can bump. Dump what is left of that torn bag. Do not mix Friday scratch back into a week-old tote and call it a plan.
Lift the feeder at night if you can. Sweep the spill. Poison has no business near a hen, a goat, or a barn cat. Traps and a closed bin do the ordinary work. The hens laying is not a report card on the rats.
Basil belongs with the cooking herbs, inside wire, not next to a tote that already lost an argument. Friday food feeds the table first. The coop gets measured feed, not the truck’s remainder.
— Dolly, the Quonset desk
P.S. — Charlotte: I would have posted at the tote and made the second shift sit somewhere else.
From Ned and Cora Pell, first-year barn east of the square
He Walked the Fence Like a Calendar
Dear Dolly — Our yearling buck started pacing the four-foot woven wire on Sunday. He hooked a horn in the stay and leaned until the staple walked. The two milkers are on the other side. Monday’s milk tasted like the shed. We planted rosemary against that same fence because the catalog said it was tough. How tall does a fence have to be in September?
Taller than his plan. Four foot holds a polite doe. A buck in shortening days is not polite. Five foot, tight corners, a hot wire at the top if he still tries the lean. Put the latch on the people side and give it two motions. He will invent the first one.
Milk picks up buck if he lives in the same air as the udder. Separate sheds. Separate hands if you have been scratching his neck and then the milking stand. Wash. The taste is a neighbor problem, not a curse. If the bag is hot, hard, or the milk looks wrong, stop writing me and call the vet.
Rosemary is a kitchen herb. Tough is not goat-proof. Move it inside the garden fence with the rest of the supper plants. He is keeping a calendar. So should the staple gun.
— Dolly, the Quonset desk