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<i>I'm sure that no one is surprised when I come out with the family story involving barn animals,** so here goes</i>.


My parents are both from Quincy. When they moved from the South End to a quarter acre genteel 1890s townhome in Hopkinton in 1977ish, they thought they were moving to a farm in the STICKS. They:

*Attempted to grow an organic vegetable garden in the back yard. Except there was not nearly enough sunlight for real gardening so nothing grew and all of the praying mantises flew away

*Raised chickens. They even had a rooster until our alcoholic next-door neighbor Dick Johnson threatened to come over and strangle it for waking him up. I believe what he said was <i>"If you don't kill that &*^^%&ing thing, I'll come over and do it myself!"</i>

*Made dandilion wine. They invited their Boston friends out for the uncorking and made them all sick

*Borrowed the next door neighbor's MEAN billy goat to 'mow the lawn'. We were out when our neighbor came by with the goat and staked it to a plot of grass near the front door. We came back to find:

a. That we couldn't get into the house because the Billy goat was blocking the door and wanted to kill us
b. A big steaming pile of goat poo pellets
c. Instead of mownig the lawn, he ripped the grass, roots and all, out of the dirt, leaving a big round bare patch where he had been for the last hour or so. It took about 6 months for it to grow back.

The moral of the story-- Sheep are really the way to go.
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**stop it with the dirty mind!