Chad Gadya... An Only Kid Goat

At Passover time there's a lot of talk about goats. Those shepherds in the old days weren't just tending sheep, goats were a very common animal to own and they were used as sacrifices according to the Torah ( Old Testament).

 On the seder plate one of the symbolic foods is a shankbone (Z'roa), the only meat BTW on the seder plate. Today people tend to substitute a chicken neck/wing besides the traditional roasted lamb / goat Pesach sacrifice offered in the days of yore in the Temple in Jerusalem. It's a visual reminder and not eaten.

Since living in the End of the Rainbow Valley, this goat shankbone definitely has new meaning because those beautiful kids that were bred last spring tend to have a limited life span.  Last year there were 3 kids born, we lost one kid, Little Bit to natural causes. You may remember the story of me bottling feeding the tiny newborn only to lose her and her mother later on for overeating something that wasn't good for them. That was so sad. Anyhow, that leaves Mancha, a girl who was bred this December and Blanco, a male whose destiny is to  become hamburger, literally. 

It's time for a confession.  OK, it's difficult for this city girl to not become attached to this livestock that tend to be like pets with personalities.  Animals are here to serve a purpose on the homestead to either give milk/ breed/ be used for meat. It is with sadness I see that sacrificial bone sitting on the seder plate and know that when I return from visiting my folks in May for Mother's Day, Blanco won't be with her Mom Jacqueline and Mancha out in the pasture grazing... He will be in our freezer. Some days I don't feel very cut out to be a country girl...

Blanco's on the far right.

It's certainly a time I feel like becoming a vegetarian...

Here's the Passover song, dedicated to the goat in the English. At least it was the cat that ate the goat...
Chad Gadya, an only kid

* a day after this published Mancha miscarried... Sadly, there will be no new 'kids' this year.