Thunderstorms and a sleepless night

Thursday, continued.

Thunderstorms moved through last night. Carrie and I were up eating dinner in the barn when it started to rain. You could hear the sheets of water hitting the metal roof and pouring into the earth all around us. It was dumping. The wind was also making a lot of noise as it blew against the high peaks of the barn. The baby goats were snug and dry under their heat lamps in the kid pens. The rain didn't faze them at all. Lucky kids.

I couldn't sleep. Even though I had a very early start and worked hard all day, I could not drop off. Carrie and I stayed up late chatting, and I guess I got too engaged and couldn't shut off my brain. Fortunately, I got to sleep in until 6:15 today!

Carrie, my roommate, is a young woman from Greensboro. She graduated from Pomona College in southern California last May. She spent time with her archaeology professor looking at Chumash Indian petroglyphs and rock carvings around Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz Island. Having a fondness for wild California and Santa Cruz Island, we had lots to talk about. She returned to Greensboro around December. She's now trying to figure out her next move and thought a stint and Goat Lady Dairy would be a great place to learn more about sustainable living. Her interests are wide and include sustainable agriculture, archaeology, and organized labor. She speaks fluent Spanish. She loves the goats and really wants to spend as much time with them as she can. We get along pretty well, and she is very polite and respectful. It doesn't seem like that long ago when I was fresh out of college and wondering the same things she's wondering. The only difference is that I've had four or five careers since then. She kinda makes me feel young and old at the same time.

So little Carrie is my roommate, and big Carrie is the other cheesemaker around here. When you have more than one person with the same name, Southerners like to clarify things with a good descriptive adjective added to the name. The other Sarah on the farm is an old yellow retriever. So there is Sarah the dog and me. But I digress…Big Carrie has been around for a couple of years, I think. She's married to Bobby, and they have a couple of girls. Each has a child from a previous marriage. They must marry young around here because Carrie and Bobby look like they're in their late 20s. Carrie used to work in "the mill" before she joined Goat Lady Dairy. Bobby's family had a farm, and he is very handy around GLD, doing lots of handyman jobs. Not quite sure how Big Carrie started at Goat Lady Dairy, but I'm sure I'll find out soon.

Ginnie explained to me that up until the 90s, it was common for the locals to say that they work "at the mill." There are a lot of old, decaying textile mills around here, and no one bothers to say WHICH mill they work at, they just work at "the mill." Also, women often say that they have "public work," a.k.a. they work away from the home. The mills have closed for the most part (textiles are now made in Asia & elsewhere) so the small towns are struggling to keep an identity.