The Lord works in mysterious ways. His timing can’t be beat. When I was home alone — the kids in California and Jeff also out of town — Piper went into labor. She is the goat who we never saw go into heat. We felt she must be pregnant but we had no idea when she would give birth.

At the evening milking and feeding on Tuesday, I noticed her udder was full. Also, she wasn’t interested in food. A few hours later, when I was locking up the ducks for the night, I found Piper all alone in the barn, backed into a corner, arching her back and looking uncomfortable.

Pipe was doing just what Buttercup did last week, whose labor produced a (stillborn) kid. I recognized Piper in labor because we had been through it before. God had prepared me, I now recognize.

I was nervous about being alone with a birthing kid, yes, but I leaned hard on the Lord. I knew that Piper was a strong goat and should birth easily. I hoped anyway.

I put Piper in the birthing stall with a bed of straw, plenty of alfalfa for munching, and water. I got a lawn chair, my camera, my phone (to call Jeff), a water bottle, and towels, and camped out. The contractions came sporadically, and she labored standing up for the most part. She moaned just softly and was not nearly as vocal as Buttercup had been.

Then she laid down and kept falling asleep. I would see contractions maybe every 10 minutes. It seemed like she was progressing, but it also seemed like it was going to be a long time.

I went to bed and left her sleeping. It was about 11:30 pm. I woke up at 4:30 am, very confused. I couldn’t remember why I was supposed to get up. God reminded me. I got out of bed so fast and went to the barn in my pjs and a sweatshirt…

…to find Piper standing and screaming her head off and two newborn kids on the ground, under the warm heating lamp. One (who I later found out to be a male) was trying to stand up. The other (a female) was probably just barely out of the womb; she wasn’t trying to do anything. I figured I’d help her, as Piper was not interested in her kids yet and the little boy seemed to be doing just fine on his own. Piper was still screaming for her herd or from the drama.

I rubbed the little doeling and wiped some goop from her face so she could breathe freely, and I nudged her to stand. She started working on it. Too cute! The little buckling was up and on his feet by now, though unsteady. I brought Piper to the babies; she didn’t want anything to do with them. I tried putting them to nurse. She brushed them away and moved away every time.

I had no choice; I chained Piper up. I put the hobble on her. I showed the babies where to nurse and they grabbed on. As soon as they did, Piper’s maternal instinct kicked it. I could feel it. She turned her head to them and started licking the buckling. I unchained and unhobbled Piper. When she finished getting to know and cleaning up the buckling, she got to know her daughter. The kids nursed off and on, and she kept licking and loving them. So miraculous!

When I thought things were going well and sat back, I noticed two things. First, the kids were shivering. They were still quite wet and goopy. I dried them more and put towels over them off and on. Our barn is quite breezy. Piper kept licking and cleaning them.

Second, the straw underneath where the buckling was standing was bright red. He was bleeding! His cord was going drip-drip-drip. I applied pressure and it wouldn’t stop.

I came inside to look up on the internet what to do. Suggestions were to tie it off with dental floss. I got some floss, but before I went back, I tweeted @Nika7k for advice. She knows goats. She eased my mind by and confirmed the steps I should take.

Back at the barn, I tied off his umbilical cord. The bleeding slowed, but still the cord dripped for an hour before the blood dried up.

Both kids were pretty wobbly on their feet for the rest of the day, and I felt the buckling took a downturn. He was not as energetic or active as his sister, even though he started the day with more strength than she. I am guessing that he lost enough blood  to zap his strength. They slept alot yesterday.

When Jeff got home yesterday evening, we took stock together. Just like a kid (human), Jeff couldn’t wait to get home to see them. Our visit to the barn left us feeling that they were doing well. Piper is a great mom. They nurse often and well, as far as I can tell.

And the twins love each other!

Now, today, the twins are just over a day old. The buckling has so much more strength today — I am glad! The little doeling is just the cutest thing ever. I can tell she’s mischievous. Stubborn, too; she does not want any help nursing and finding the nipple. And, she’s friendly. She follows me and wants to leave the birthing stall when I do. She calls for me when I leave.

The buckling has had the stickiest first poops. It was like hard candy stuck all over him. I had to bathe him this morning to unclog that mess. All better now.

My kids will be home tomorrow to find these cute gifts from God waiting for them! Even though they’re not here, my girls have already blogged about this event with the pictures I emailed them: Haniya’s post and Naomi’s post.

I am alternately baffled, overwhelmed and thrilled by the events of the past day. I think I know some of what God wanted to teach me: to trust in His design. His creations  birth and raise their young successfully because He made them to do it. I know I helped Piper’s birth, but I think can’t help thinking that it all would have been fine if I hadn’t been there, too.

I feel privileged to have witness a miracle of birth on our own little farm. God is good and His works are beautiful.

I’m sharing this post in “Simple Lives Thursday,” a blog carnival which I co-host at GNOWFGLINS. “Consume less, produce more.”

Pegs (first shown) has doubled her milk supply since we put up the hay rack. It could also be that she’s weaning her daughter, Piper. In any case, it is amazing to finally have a goat giving good yields. She is more full each morning!

We figured we needed a hay rack, because otherwise the goats would eat their (expensive) alfalfa hay in a big bin in the center of the barn. Most of it would end up on the floor.

After Jeff thought awhile, he decided to part ways from the plans and do it his own way.

We had cattle panels along one wall of the barn anyway – the wall doesn’t go all the way to the ground yet. We ran out of time to build up the floor of the barn this season, so the cattle panels block the hole. We also would hook the goats up to this “wall” for their feeding stations.

Jeff put up another row of cattle panels and t-posts just inside the current wall of panels. A fence within a fence. He put plywood leaning from the bottom of the inner fence to the top of the outer fence. And we put the hay between the plywood and the inner fence. The goats reach through the cattle panel holes to get the hay. They can’t waste so much of it because the hay pretty much stays put.

Now we hook the goats up to the inner fence – just for their supplemental grain feeding, not when they’re eating free choice hay.

Hallelujah!

The goats and the cow are getting closer to each other now. The goats still don’t prefer Trouble (the cow) to be around, especially when he wants to play. No playing for them!

Today is a beautiful day. The temperature is mild; It is not pouring down rain as it has been for a week. A joyful, peaceful sight.

On Saturday, we were home just puttering around. Except Jeff wasn’t home. He had to go to work. His new job is offering quite a workload and he’s sure been putting in the hours.

On Sunday, we drove up to visit friends. We had been borrowing their fork lift attachment to set rocks in our retaining walls and it was time to give them up. They sure were handy! We packed lunch and ate it with our friends. We stayed a few hours and then headed home. Here’s a picture from a couple weeks back on a section of the wall that Jeff was building.

Yesterday (Monday) Jeff was off because of Labor Day and we made it a work day. The weather here this August has been so changeable. We’ve had a few rainstorms already. I can’t begin to describe what a mess rain makes given our current living situation. First, the goats are all over the place, even on our porch, which is their resting place of choice. Second, we are surrounded by an uncultivated pad of red clay. 1 + 2 = our house is like an island in the middle of a dirt sea. And it becomes a sea of mud when the rain comes.

I was just so happy to begin to winter-ready our place. Who knows when the rains really will come to stay and even though our improvements aren’t done, we had to begin this process. Jeff put up a temporary fence of cattle panels all around the house, to keep the goats and their poop off the porch/sidewalks/doors, etc. The kids and I cleaned up the shed and baled up all the cardboard we’ve been saving for lasagna gardening. We found evidence of mice in the shed — nests and even a scurrying body along the back of a shelf. Note to self: set out a trap in there today. Then we cleaned off the front and back porches, sweeping and decluttering, and the sidewalks too. I also washed all the doors and the entryways. Oh, that feels so good. So good. So good.

The messes have really been getting to me. And with the dirt and the goats and having to use the front door (we usually use the back, but it was blocked off because of the goats), I have been fit to be tied with the mountains of dirt coming in. It felt like we lived in a barn. Not that a barn is bad; I love barns! I just didn’t want it in the house or have to walk through it when going out.

As an example, the treadmill came last week. The goats were all over the delivery truck and cardboard! Cute as they are and much as we love them, this can’t happen when it’s raining, at least not so close to the house! The technician who set up the treadmill said he had lots of projects going on at his house, too, but we had him beat with the goats. He’d not run into that before!

Today, I want to say is a big THANK YOU! to everyone in my family. To Jeff, for encouraging and organizing our winter-readying day, and for putting up that fence. I know it feels like a prison, but the alternative is a prison of poop and mud. And thank you to the children for working hard all day yesterday, cheerfully. You’re all treasures! Now let’s keep it clean, people!

Goats on Rocks

This weekend, Jeff has been out placing rocks, building one wall. He won’t let me take a picture of his progress yet. He’s a perfectionist and isn’t satisfied yet. This job is difficult, placing them. He’s borrowed a friend’s fork lift, which helps, but we won’t be able to use that much longer. The backhoe is helpful but would be more helpful if it had a thumb on it. So this is slow going. I love the look of what he’s done already.

The kids’ days are full of shepherding our flock around and taking care of the neighbors’ place while she’s out of town. They get to play with her dogs and bring them over here, which Naomi especially loves. She’s longing for a dog or two (all in good time).

We haven’t done any milking of the mama goats, and we won’t for awhile. A couple of them are experiencing an outbreak of viral abcesses, so we shouldn’t drink their milk. The reading we’ve done has said to boost their immune systems, so we’ve been feeding them garlic. I mix it up with rolled oats and coat it with molasses and I add goldenseal to the mix. They’re having it daily and enjoying it more than I thought they would. The garlic taste is strong!

Now if only the goats would head out to pasture on their own! They are going farther and farther themselves, but I am amazed how often they’re around the house. Aren’t they hungry? The food is all gone around here and must be sought farther out.

The peacocks haven’t been here since Sunday. Have they moved on? We’re seeing some incredible bucks, though. One in particular has quite a rack.

My camera is old and doesn’t zoom far, so I had to crop these pictures and sharpen them in GIMP, which is why they’re so grainy.

Mikah and I have been miserable with seasonal allergies. Mikah was wheezing yesterday because his airway is inflamed and he’s coughing and coughing. I’m doing better because I decided to use antihistamines, which I haven’t done for years. The first few days, those made me sick the other way (dizzy and feeling medicated) but I think I’ve balanced out. It was a hard choice to make, but the kind of seasonal allergies I have are debilitating, like I’m just plain allergic to living. I’ve tried nettle tea, which helps some, I take  local raw honey daily, and now I’m drinking Kombucha. Jeff is praying for us to find a food cure for these allergies. I hope his prayer is answered. Mikah is only drinking nettle tea and using a homeopathic treatment, both of which help some. He’s a trooper.

Today is our errand day. We have no piano lessons as the teacher is out of town. So we’ll pick up our eggs from the egg lady, go to the library, pick up our Azure order from friends and go to a couple other places, hopefully thrift stores, before heading home.

Jeff started out Saturday morning with the weed wacker, to trim our walking trails. He ran out of gas right by the pump-house and stopped in there to check on it. Found a leak! (Which he repaired on Sunday.) Since we are planning on updating our water system imminently anyway, he began work on that project. On the tractor, he began leveling out on the side of the shop (formerly known as the pole barn) because we will be putting a new pressure tank and water storage tank there. He had just begun when I took the picture and is much farther along now.

Anytime Jeff moves dirt, the kids move in. Here they are fighting amiably for the title of King of the Castle. By the end of the weekend, there were many more dirt piles and broken pieces of shale which the kids turned into gorgeously landscaped estates (they each had a hill-top to design).

The peacocks have moved in. We’ve seen them every day, multiple times a day. One day, the kids saw the male and the hen mating. The male displayed his plumage on Saturday morning and we were all roaming around, within feet of him. He is pretty beat up, though. There’s a county park with peacocks nearby and the peacocks there are much more beautiful.

See how close they are to Mikah? Mikah, Jeff’s helper on the water project, decided to get to know his tool box again and organize it. His tools were spread out in his room, in the kitchen, in the shop, in Jeff’s toolbox. So Mikah got them all together and got his own toolbox back in order.

These are madrone stumps we (I say we, but it was really Jeff and a friend) took out last fall from between the shop and the house. The goats love to climb on it. I have yet to see one of them on the tippy top. But I think it will happen. This is what the goats were doing when the peacock was displaying near Mikah.

Then the peacock made his signature call, which sounds disturbingly like a child’s cry for help, and the goats, lickety-split, got down off the madrone stumps and came to see what the fuss was all about.

Then they all wandered around together, pecking and nibbling. The goats’ preference is still to hang around the house, although they are not scared anymore. They’re getting stubborn in their familiarity, in fact. Now they don’t follow us everywhere we go, because they know their own minds. However, the kids have been “shepherding” them to various places of our property to eat down the weeds and get variety. Fiddlesticks, the three-legged matriarch, gets tired though, and calls them all back to the barn, whether or not we approve. This is such an adventure for us and we wouldn’t trade it for the world!

The first day the goats were scared and wouldn’t venture off into the tall grass much. In fact, they still don’t do that. But they don’t seem scared anymore. When the kids walk the trail on our property, that gives the goats courage enough to follow and begin to eat down the weeds. We wish they would do more of that eating! For the most part, they are hanging around here at the house — on the pad, in the driveway, in the shelter, and in the adjacent grasses (but not venturing too deep).

Napping/resting on the pad in front of the house…

Jeff never did build a shelter. Instead we sectioned off one part of the garage, which is really a barn. Only we haven’t ever called it the barn because we have a pole barn, too. Now though, this garage may become the real barn and we’ll call the pole barn the shop. Anyway, that garage/barn is a big dirt-floor building with three bays. We gave the goats one section, separated from the others by cattle panels. Those panels are so handy!

The shelter is really working out. The first night, the goats didn’t recognize it for what it was. They were trying to sleep up here on the pad by the house, but every little sound distracted them and we believe they were scared. So Jeff and I got our shoes on after 10 pm and walked them down to their section of the barn (I’m calling it barn now) and slid a cattle panel across the opening so they would stay. Otherwise, they would have followed us out. They laid down and went right to sleep and were sleeping when Jeff went to open up the barn at 5 am the next morning.

Getting in and out of the driveway is too funny. The goats want to go everywhere with us and they are usually waiting at the gate for our return. This morning, when Jeff and I went for our walk, little Annie followed us in the rain to the gate, where we went out, and then she trailed us along the fence, calling to us as we walked the 500 feet of our road that parallels the front fence. She’s the one who was bottle fed by the neighbor because her momma wouldn’t nurse her, and is more attached to trusted people than the others goats are. It is hard to walk away from her, she’s such a sweetie.

Little Annie…

All of these issues are bringing home the fact that we really need to get cracking on separating the “goat” areas from the “people” areas. To be honest, we thought the goats would roam more but they spend most of their time in the people areas. That is, when they’re not following one of us around somewhere else.

Following Jeff…

… and still following Jeff!

So, very soon, we would like to complete the fencing up the driveway and around the buildings, to keep the “people” places separate. Not that we don’t love the goats! Just that it would be better for everyone — us, friends, delivery people — not to have the extra difficulty of trying to get by very friendly goats when coming, going or staying.

I know I’ve been talking about our goat preparations for some time, but to be honest, all my energy (indeed, all OUR energy) has gone toward getting the fencing done. We haven’t settled what we are going to feed, whether we are going to vaccinate, or whether we are going to de-worm at all or choose an herbal wormer instead of a chemical one. I believe we will not be vaccinating. We aren’t fans of that for people, so why animals? The worming, though… I guess I need to research more. I have been reading at Fias Co Farm, where Molly, the farmer, runs a healthy farm using a holistic approach and does her own vetting. It is very interesting! She sells an herbal de-wormer that sounds wonderful.

Then there’s the milking issue. We’re swamped and haven’t gotten to that. Thank you to those who suggested a milking stand. We will have to do something like that. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in making suggestions to help us out!