There’s a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” where Bilbo tells the young hobbit Frodo, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
While stepping out your door on the Old Mission Peninsula is generally not a cause for great concern – unless you’re camping on the shoreline – Tim and I have a little version of that quote we like to say, because we never know what we’re going to find when we step out our door and take a ride around the OMP.
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It’s always eventful. Especially when you run a local newspaper where people near and far like to see what’s going on. Stories abound wherever you go on the OMP.
“What does this have to do with goats, Jane?” you might be asking. Well, we’ve driven by the outbuildings on Martha Jamieson’s farm for years – decades, even (my brothers have been farming it for her) – and not once have we ever seen any signs of life there. Well, unless you count this guy, which we most assuredly should. Until yesterday, that is.
As we tooled along the little two-track that connects my family’s farm – Johnson Farms – with Martha’s farm, I spotted something jumping around by those outbuildings. “Goats!” I said delightedly. “There are goats there!”
So we stopped and took a few photos, and they posed so politely for me on the steps of one of those old farm buildings. A few minutes later, we met the person who bought part of Martha’s farm – Sarah Bachert, who currently lives elsewhere on the OMP with her husband Bret.
They’re planning on building a house on their new farm, but in the meantime, these adorable goats get to live there right now. Sarah said their names are Ivy, Sue and Boots, because their one job is to eat the sumac and poison ivy on the farm – of which we know there is plenty, because we probably have some of the same root systems on our property a few miles away down Bluff Road.
I forgot to ask Sarah what their plans are for the farm, but it can only be good. I’m taking the goats as a good sign, and the fact that their one job is to eat all the sumac and poison ivy there. They’ll be busy for a long while.
Welcome to the neighborhood, Bacherts and goats! Tim and I were so lucky to be “swept off to” meet you and these goats yesterday.
A NOTE FROM JANE: I started Old Mission Gazette in 2015 because I felt a calling to provide the Old Mission Peninsula community with local news. After decades of writing for newspapers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and magazines like Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, I really just wanted to write about my own community where I grew up on a cherry farm and raised my own family. So of course, I started my own newspaper. Because the Gazette is mainly reader-supported, I hope you'll consider tossing a few bucks my way if I mention your event, your business, your organization or your news item, or if you simply love reading about what's happening on the Old Mission Peninsula. Check out the donation page here. Thank you so much for your support. -jb
