Gave the Gift of Love and Laughter
By Dianna Troyer
The greatest gifts we receive can’t be wrapped of course. Relationships of unconditional love and laughter are the best obviously, and sometimes four-legged friends fill that niche.
For 14 years, my white LaMancha goat Jade gave my family the gift of her presence and humor and milk. After my aged horse Rudy passed, I was looking for a companion for my goat Angel. I called someone who provided goats for 4H kids and looked in her pen to pick a goat. It was as if Jade picked me. A yearling doe, she jumped up and down like a pogo stick and craned her head like a periscope above the other 20 goats. She ran back and forth, baaing, desperately making eye contact with me, as if saying, “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting.” She and Angel became inseparable.
Jade touched our community in many ways. For three years, she was the featured fund-raiser for our high school cross country team. Her milk was made into bars of artisan soap, one of the many gifts in welcome bags given to more than 300 athletes who come from throughout the nation and even Japan to run in the Scout Mountain Ultra, a series of ultra-races that my neighbors organize in the forest south of Pocatello, Idaho. Also, her milk never had that goaty after-taste and fed us and friends with cheese, yogurt, and berry smoothies.
My favorite and funniest photo I took of Jade was her sticking her tongue out. I could never have timed it. It happened spontaneously and still makes me smile. Among goat owners, the LaManchas with their distinctive tiny ear lobes are considered the class clowns of breeds. She made others smile, too, with her spontaneity and “why not” attitude—traits she reminds me to emulate.
Jade liked meeting people and volunteered to help our daughter’s cross-country team. Every fall, our local high school has an evening fund-raising festival of activities to benefit all the sports teams. The cross-country team always did “road apple bingo.” People placed bets on where a pony would plop her road apples on a bingo grid on the school’s front lawn. One year the coach was desperate because the pony couldn’t make it, so our daughter volunteered Jade.
With T-posts and four 16-foot-long cattle panels, we made a square. Inside, one-foot-square grids were drawn with white paint on the grass. People placed bets on the square Jade would drop her goat “raisins” on and whoever had the winning square won. She charmed people, and hundreds of dollars were raised that first year. She was so successful that she was invited back for several years until our daughter graduated. I’ve been told that “goat raisin bingo” with another goat has become a school tradition.
Jade’s most remarkable trait was feeding us every day for more than a decade, giving us milk without having to be rebred. Milking her was a privilege not a chore. With her prolific summer milk production, we made berry smoothies. In winter, when the fat content in her milk increased, we made cheese. I heated the milk to almost boiling, then added an acid and herbs. Our favorite flavors were lime juice with dill; lemon juice and Herbes de Provence; and apple cider vinegar with basil and oregano. When we went on vacation, our neighbors stepped up to the milk stanchion. They loved to make yogurt and soap that never dried out your skin.
When our daughter had braces, her orthodontist became frustrated at the slow pace her teeth were moving and finally asked, “Do you drink goat milk because your teeth are so firmly in place?”
We said cheers to that bone-boosting goat milk and how it fueled us. A glass of goat milk compared to a glass of cow milk contains 13% more calcium, 25% more vitamin B6, 47% more Vitamin A, 134% more potassium and three times more niacin, according to a study cited in “The Blue Zones, Lessons for Living Longer.” The study also suggested that goat milk can help prevent mineral loss in bones and iron deficiencies.
Inevitably, at age 15 Jade’s body wore out on May 16, 2023. I dug her grave to face east and planted flowers. Colorful lemon coreopsis, indigo larkspur, pink poppies, and burgundy and gold Gaillardia bloom, reminders of the beauty she brought to our and others’ lives. MSN