The first time we saw it, we thought he'd fallen. Barry, our white goat, was perched on top of Belle's back like a small, smug loaf of bread, eyes half-closed in the afternoon sun. Belle — our ginger Scottish Highland cow, all horns and shaggy red coat — was chewing her cud as if a goat on her spine were the most ordinary feature of a Tuesday. We stood at the fence with our coffee getting cold and waited for something to happen. Nothing happened. That was the day we understood that something had shifted in the pasture pecking order, and we had not been consulted.
Barry is small. Barry is loud. Barry has the kind of rectangular pupils that suggest he is doing math you cannot follow. He arrived on the farm with a normal goat job description — eat things, headbutt things, climb things — and for a while he stuck to the program. Then he discovered Belle, and Belle's back, and the specific way the sun warms a Highland cow's coat in late morning. Highland cattle have a double coat: a coarse outer layer and a soft woolly undercoat that holds heat through Michigan winters and, evidently, makes an excellent goat mattress. Barry did the cost-benefit analysis once. He has not gotten down since.
The day Barry decided he was the boss
We don't know exactly when the climbing started. One afternoon Belle was lying in the grass; the next, Barry was standing on her shoulder blades like a little white flag of conquest. He worked out the launch angle himself. He plants his front hooves on her ribs, hops his back end up, walks two careful steps toward the withers, and settles. If Belle stands, he rides her standing. If she walks, he rides her walking. We have watched him doze through an entire pasture relocation without opening his eyes.
The strangest part is Belle. She does not flinch. She does not shake him off. She turns her enormous horned head, looks at him the way a tired aunt looks at a toddler smearing jam on the couch, and then goes back to her grass. Highland cows have a reputation for being calm — gentle giants, the breed people always describe — and Belle is the proof. Whatever ancient cow logic she's running, it has concluded that the goat is not worth the energy. Possibly she likes him. We try not to project, but we have our suspicions.
Barry, for his part, is insufferable about it. He postures. He surveys the field from his hairy throne. When the other goats look up at him, he stares back like a small senator. The rest of our animals — the Black Dexter steers, the mini moos, the chickens, the four young peacocks doing whatever it is peacocks do — give him a wide berth, less out of fear than out of the universal instinct to avoid someone who has clearly peaked and won't shut up about it.
Why a goat on a cow is the truest picture of this farm
People sometimes ask what Wolf & Steer is, and the honest answer is: thirty triangular acres in Ithaca, Michigan, with a lot of opinions on it. We have the wolves — our two husky-mix siblings who give the brand half its name — patrolling the perimeter. We have the steers, who are the other half, sober and serious about their grass. And then we have Barry, who is neither wolf nor steer, who contributes nothing to the brand identity, and who has somehow become the face of it.
That photo of Barry sitting on Belle, white goat on red cow, both of them looking like they invented the arrangement, is the picture we keep coming back to. It's the whole place in one frame: a fluffy Highland cow doing her job, a goat doing whatever Barry does, and a small Michigan family farm mostly trying to keep up. We've turned it into mugs, posters, stickers, and shirts in our Barry series, because every time we look at it we laugh, and we figured we couldn't be the only ones.
We tell ourselves Barry will grow out of it. We say this every season. He hears us, we think, and then he climbs Belle again to prove a point. The truth is we'd miss it if he stopped. There is something quietly correcting about watching a 90-pound goat assume he runs a farm full of horned cattle and two large dogs, and being right, in his small white way. He does run it. Belle lets him. We just pay the feed bill.
Come spring, when the grass is high and the calves — Q-tip and Leo and the rest — are bouncing around like wind-up toys, you'll find Belle in her usual spot near the south fence, chewing slowly, eyes soft. And if you look closely, there will be a goat on her back. He will pretend not to see you. That's just how he is now. We've made our peace with it. So has Belle. So, eventually, will you.