Michelle Fabio, an American expat living in Italy, reduces her stress with what she calls “goat zen in a pen,” spending time with Margherita, shown heer, and her other goats, Pasqualina and Carmelina.

“I never would have imagined how calming and reassuring just being in the presence of these goats can be,” she says on her blog Bleeding Espresso. “It’s hard to be worried or stressed about anything when these sweet faces are looking back at you.”

Fabio is in the midst of reading “Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese” by Brad Kessler, who recounts that goats have been the subjects of many legends and stories, always “helping humans or leading them to unexpected places.”

“If you follow living beings assiduously in the field, or through the lens of a microscope,” writes Kessler, “they lead you to an understanding of their lives, and all life. They usher you into a kind of Eden.”

Related Posts

1. “Goat Song”
2. Cheese Making: France, Part I
3. Making Goat Cheese
4. Human Training
5. Goat Butter

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