Is It Just Vermont People?

We're off to look at another goat this weekend. But here's something interesting from today's Wall Street Journal ...

For every person paralyzed by fear or blissfully in denial, there was another leaping into action to preserve what amounted to the fruits of a lifetime of work.

Carolyn Sloane, a 43-year-old paralegal in Wallingford, Vt., officially marked the end of the bull market by investing in cows. Ms. Sloane has been playing the stock market since 1989, but the rattling of Wall Street, she said, gave her a "desire for hard assets." She recently sold all of her stocks and bailed out of mutual funds, and put part of the money in certificates of deposit. But she also wanted the kind of assets she could see in her own yard, so she bought three cows, two of which were delivered on Sunday.

"This is my commodity play," she told perplexed relatives.

Her plan is to breed the cows, black-and-white Belted Galloways.

"When they have offspring, that's your dividend."