At that time it was a depression family with four children from six to sixteen years old on a farm in Southeast Idaho. The winters were so cold, often 50 below zero, that Dad had to build a fire under the engine of the Model T to warm it up enough to start. For years Mom had to melt snow for the chickens, pigs, and cows as well as the family during the winter. On this farm the family recently moved to, the folks put a water pipe to the house from the big windmill that watered the stock in the bleak lava rock and sagebrush landscape, greened only by the determined scratchings of homesteaders. On a hot July Sunday at the end of the depression, I was born at home, the fifth and last child, of second generation immigrant Mormon homesteaders.

While growing up I thought that all my folks ever raised were horses, cows, pigs, and chickens and that goats ate tin cans. Was I ever surprised to learn that not only did goats not eat cans, but the family actually had some before I was born! Our closest neighbors lived a half mile away. We were a 4-H family [to give us something to do, Mom said], and I started with my own calf when I was five about the time my brother won his trip to Chicago - the first of four of us to go. I had a variety of projects from cooking, sewing, and gardening to sheep, fat steers, dairy animals, and beef. As a teenager during the summer I rode my horse a mile up into the mountains every day to push our herd of registered Herefords from the water hole through the sagebrush to the grass higher up. Oh, yes, and I graduated as valedictorian of our consolidated high school.

I went to college at Idaho State and graduated, the only child to finish college, with a BA in English. I accepted a call from the LDS Church to go on a mission to Germany where I was for two years and which was the hardest calling I had ever been involved in until I became a mother! I came home, attended Brigham Young University, graduated with an MA in English, and began teaching English on the college level. I met my husband in New Mexico when I was teaching. I quit work in the real world to begin real work raising a family and moved with my Air Force husband to Okinawa. Klisse was born there with a dual citizenship, and she had to be naturalized so she could qualify for U.S. government jobs and scholarships.

About the time my husband retired from the Air Force, Klisse and Michael were old enough to NEED to be kept busy with positive activities. I had already started a schedule of them cleaning their own rooms and regularly assigned other rooms and doing the dishes [my house has never been so clean], but they needed something more. So I turned to what had been my childhood love: 4-H [to give them something to do]. I became a 4-H leader again, which I had been as a teenager. We had begun raising Flemish Giant rabbits, hoping to build up a successful business, so it was natural for the children to start with them. Because my husband and son were allergic to cow's milk, in 1981 we also got a goat, “Ma Goat,” an experimental 50% Saanen/50% Nubian cross. Our herd expanded quickly wherever we could pick up a promising doeling.

At that time, in the predominantly cow country of Idaho, “promising” meant “female,” “available for purchase,” and “give milk.” I didn't know much about goat conformation except straight legs, decent udder, and looked put together. Klisse quickly picked up on the points of doing well with her goat, and, after dabbling in cooking, cats, dogs, horses, sewing, and demonstrations, decided to go into animal husbandry when she attended college.

So good old mom took care of the few goats Klisse had acquired, and mom started on Milk Test at the insistence of daughter. About the time Klisse got her BS in Dairy Science, my marriage of 26 years could no longer be held together, nor should it have been, and I got my divorce the same year that Klisse had her first Linear Appraisal. Both were dismal. Her animals were mostly in the 70 and low 80 range.

We chose to live together for economy's sake and found that our relationship improved. I love the animals and found working with them to be therapy. But I could not/can not afford either the cost nor time involved in the actual care of goats. I helped Klisse whenever I could, but mostly I helped myself by being with the goats. In all of these years I've only had six or seven goats, never more than one at a time; even now I only have a token goat, Celly - daughter of one of Triumph's quintuplets that I helped deliver, and Klisse has her. Proud mom has watched daughter improve her herd to the standard it now enjoys.

 I joined ADGA in the mid eighties and took the name "Silver Sage" in memory of the land I grew up in.

 

Now I am working on promoting the Sable as a recognized ADGA breed. The temperament, color, and production of the Sable deserves to be recognized with a Herd Book of its own!

Although I work two part-time jobs often 50-60 hours a week being unable to find a full-time teaching job, I no longer have to build a fire under the engine of my car to start it. I no longer have to chop wood nor carry in buckets of coal in the coal scuttle. I no longer go to sleep in bedding so cold it feels damp, nor does it weigh as much as I do. I no longer live in desolate SE Idaho. I have running cold and hot water, an automatic washer and dryer, a refrigerator, and air conditioning plus the ultra modern TV, VCR, microwave, computer, printer, scanner, and digital camera. My neighbors here in Washington live only 100 feet away, but I still live in the country on 5A with sagebrush along the roadsides, and I still love animals.