Goat Whispering In Vermont

I got together in Vermont over the weekend with Iris, Magnolia, Georgia, Coco and Zena. No, they're not old girlfriends from college: They're goats I befriended while writing Hay Fever, which centered on Consider Bardwell Farm, my friend and co-author Angela Miller's goat-cheese farm in West Pawlet.

There were several reasons I signed on to write the book, besides the urgency of needing an advance. Having an excuse to spend time in Vermont was a big part of it, and as soon as we arrived this weekend I took off for the woods, or rather the fields behind the farm. It seems unlikely that nature would bow to something as arbitrary as state borders, but the landscape changes the instant you enter Vermont, the Empire State's unemphatic hills and valleys giving way to the Green Mountain State's carved valleys and close-in peaks, on this afternoon still glowing with fall foliage.

Another reason I was eager to team up with Angela, a New York literary agent, was to learn what inscrutable forces would propel someone to rush up to Vermont Thursday afternoons, after spending the week in the city meeting with authors and editors, and then wake up at 5 Friday morning and for the rest of the weekend to milk goats and lift bales of hay. I'm still in the dark about that one.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Wall Street Journal.