Cows, bees, and the rest of the yard
A goat paper that only writes goats in a week like this is a goat paper that has forgotten who shares the water.
Cows. They are the headline the cattle pages already wrote and the reason Joplin’s pair market sat down. Southern springs thinning. Early hay. A raffle cow waiting in Dixon September 18–20 if you prefer your bovine news with a parade and a funnel cake. Forty years of Cow Days is a long time to keep a joke and a livestock prize in the same downtown. The cows under the rest of the Ozarks are not a joke. They are why a goat editor still prints the big-water sermon.
Sheep. The Shannon County grazing school is still on the wall for September 28–30. That is the same week as the Howell County court date, which this paper will not braid into a feature. Sheep do the quiet work goats get photographed for. In this wind they need the same two tubs. If you took sheep off the mid-Missouri list last week, they are still deciding whether you are weather.
Pigs. The Expo put hogs at the front of a morning because a hog is honest about labor. Wild hogs are a different office. The partnership that has been pulling them out of watersheds for years is still working. A domestic pig wants a wet wallow. A feral hog wants your acorns, your fence, and a chapter in someone else’s drought story. Do not confuse the two at the gate.
Dogs. Livestock guardian dogs had their classroom in Marshfield. A good LGD is not a festival extra and is not invited to Perryville. Keep the working head unscribbled. Keep the pet dog off the municipal goat park in October. These are two sentences. They are both true.
Cats. The record remains silent, which is how barn cats prefer the news. They will be in the rafters above whatever talk you thought you finished at the Expo. If you see one, you did not. That is still the arrangement.
Ducks and chickens. Yardbird Pluckers did the honest work in public if you bought that seat. The rest of the flocks are home now, negotiating dust baths in dirt that sounds like paper. Two turkeys off the Boone County list are owed one more sentence: a bird who survives a quiet barn and then finds a kitchen yard has earned the right to be loud about grapes.
Bees. Natural beekeeping had a tent. Honey bees will take the credit at the market table. Native bees will keep doing the work that never gets a wristband. In a flash drought the flowers clock out early. If you planted a strip and called it pollinator habitat, water it as if it were a kid on a bottle. The Beekeepers Association of the Ozarks has been saying the unfashionable part for years: the honeybee is not the only vote.
Butterflies and the smaller winged parliament. They do not issue burn bans and they cannot file a protest when a brush pile becomes a policy mistake. Leave the late goldenrod if you can. Leave the match in the drawer. A hillside that goes up in September does not send the monarchs a memo.
Deer, turkey, coyote, bear. Filed at more length in Inkhorn’s woods piece. Short version: the cameras already know they are here. Archery week will make the knowledge official. Shut the gate when you come back from the ridge.
Armadillos. Filed by Button. Short version: the hole is not always the dog.
Goats, because this is still that paper. Whiskey Throttle is still milking and still soaping the square. Treasured Acres is still raising Mayhem and Midway. DeLapp is still the Colorado sentence that decided to stay. The Robertsons are still running sheep and goats across rock that does not forgive a sloppy truck path. AppleJo in Eldon posted a retirement plan; this paper records the post and does not invent a parade. Eldon is not required to give us a quote. A barn that chooses a smaller herd is still a barn.
Arkatype Farms remains a goat operation with opinions about everyone else. The opinions this week are not complicated. Fill the tubs. Share the shade. Leave the matches. Let the working dogs work. Let the bees finish what the Expo only started. October will bring sequins. Wednesday is for the ordinary animals who keep the hills from going quiet.