City Girl Survives Farm Weekend

My friend Alicia brought her two girls, ages 3 1/2 and 18 months, down to stay with us this weekend to have the whole "farm" experience. She was a trooper about the chicken poop on the back porch (I still don't understand the evening appeal for all 16 chickens convalescing there), her 18 month old eating a goat berry, and even the Bad Rooster attacking the girls. Did I ever mention that he does that? Yea, he's getting eaten. Soon. Her first impression of the goats left something to be desired Saturday morning, as it had rained all night before and the goat pen was a soggy mess. Then she got to see me feed them, never a pretty sight. Goats go feral when grain is involved. Then the unfortunate goat berry incident ensued, and pretty soon she was like, "Ok, I'm done with the goats and ready to go back inside." I could hardly blame her.

We gathered eggs after that, though, and she did seem to enjoy that. Hence the ridiculously adorable picture of her holding an egg. Yes, I know, I know: look at those dimples. *sigh* And her girls inherited them too. Sometimes life just ain't fair.

That evening after we put all the kids down, though, she followed me and Dustin out to do chores. This picture she took of me headed out to feed the masses (baby bottle included, of course) kills me. You can see how glamorous farm life is.













We sequestered Harmony and her babies in a stall so they could eat their larger portion of grain undisturbed, locked Tierra in the stanchion, and put down my new mega-sized pan of grain for the rest of the goats to fight over outside. I'm tired of distributing 11 dishes of grain and they're slowly but surely learning to eat together or go hungry. When I get the buck pen finished it will only be the three boys fighting over a dish and a few does over another, which should even things up a little more. Anyway, I digress.
As soon as I got Tierra up in the stand Alicia says, "OH! Can I milk her?!" How refreshing. I've made 2 other people do it who happened to be present at milking time, because I think if you're going to visit a goat farm you should at least be able to say you milked a goat. A squirt or two is all I ask, and they are always glad they did it afterwards. At least I assume they are.... ;) Alicia figured it out pretty quickly and thought it was rather cool how she could feel the milk escaping back up into the udder if she didn't squeeze the escape route off tight enough with her thumb and first finger. Here's a picture of her finally getting a stream of milk out, all over the stanchion, of course.After that the real fun began. I discovered something fun the other night. I had gone out to the goat barn to feed and milk the goats, but while there it started raining a deluge, so I decided to kick back and play with the babies for a while until the rain let up. As soon as I sat down I had 5 little goats all up in my business. On my head, my shoulders, my lap, fighting over who got to be king of my right thigh. Oh my! They especially liked it when I crossed my outstretched legs because then it made for more precarious footing. So, I found an old bath mat for Alicia to sit on and plopped her in one of the stalls with all 5 babies. Within seconds she was veritably boiling with baby goats, much to her delight. Each one has quite their own personality when it comes to mauling humans: Poe goes for the highest point, generally one's head; Mumble grudgingly has to do whatever Poe does so he generally follows, but makes it clear he's not nearly as excited about humans as his sister; Gypsy goes straight for something to nibble on, an ear or a collar sufficing nicely; Tiny prances up and down and up and down any body part available, never really with any agenda in mind; and Sable... well, Sable is a draper. She drapes herself over a nice warm fleshy part and expects to be coddled like a cat. She also likes to be picked up and goes totally limp and cuddly on you.

Think I'm exaggerating?

Sable settled in for a good cuddle:Gypsy giving Alicia's sweater the taste-testing of a lifetime:Tiny tap dancing the length of Alicia's thighs:And as for Mumble and Poe, I think this video expresses what they do much better than anything I can type. Not to mention it has the added benefit of capturing a charming story about Louie's attempt to ingest my "do." (Ok, so I just watched it again and I'm going to go ahead and admit something: I snort. I had no idea, but apparently I do.)