David Friedli

By the Dashboard Lights

April 10, 2008

Kill the Fatted Goat

The extent of my barbeque and grilling techniques may be put to the test in the near future.

It is time to kill the fatted goat.

The mythical goat has been living back yard of the big white house on North Third Street since 2001.

It arrived the day my oldest daughter declared she would be joining the local chapter of the Future Farmers of America.

Being city dwellers, the goat is symbolic of our family’s lack of agricultural opportunities.

Supervised agricultural experiences were unsuccessful.

Vegetable and herb gardens died without producing a harvest.

Daughter One found a niche in FFA and wound up with a ticket to the National Convention.

Second Daughter also joined the fraternity of the blue jacket and came home with stories from standing in land-judging trenches, milk barns and cattle yards.

She memorized recitations of her duties as a Chapter officer and filled logbooks with meticulous records of her own attempts of making things grow.

Her horticultural experience didn’t go much better than her sister’s.

A strawberry patch exhibited failure to thrive syndrome.

The goat lived on inside its pasture: a 7200 square-foot patch of wannabe bluegrass inside a chainlink fence shared with the family dog.

Not unlike Melville’s whale or the albatross in the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”, the FFA goat seemed to remind us of our cultivating misfortunes.

But woe be to the goat now.

Last week, Corey became the second daughter of the father with no agricultural experience to punch a ticket to the National FFA Convention by becoming a State Champion.

As a member of the Lyons-Decatur Northeast FFA Farm and Ranch Management team and the top individual in the event, she’ll make the trip to Indianapolis, IN next fall.

How she did it, I still don’t know. It isn’t genetic.

It doesn’t come from the environment. Corey’s ranch is a standard city property lot covered with concrete instead of crops. In spite of that, she learned something about management.

I think it is mostly about hard work and perseverance.

And the goat’s usefulness seems to have come to an end.

So fire up the grill and throw a party. Goat is on the menu.