See these goats??? They are in JAIL! Last night around 7:00 they decided that they would do this to the fence...
They pushed it down and climbed right over. See, I believe they knew that Harold, John Wesley, Cody, and Jonas are all gone. They knew that it was just me, William, Lena, MaKenzie, Jared, and Matthew here at home and they knew it would be hard for me to be out with them when I needed to be inside watching the littles. But I couldn't just let them stay out roaming freely, so I put Matthew in his bed, and sat MaKenzie and Jared on the couch with a movie to watch and told Lena to come out and get me if there was ANY problem, and out I went to wrangle the goats with William.
Goats don't really do things in an orderly or organized way. They just kind of follow their noses to the nearest edible (or even INEDIBLE) item or plant. So they were going in 5 completely different directions and that wouldn't be a problem except that Mom & Dad have flowers and actually try to make their place pretty with plants and things. Things that goats like to eat. So, while William followed the goats around, making sure they didn't eat Grandma & Grandpa's plants and flowers, I tried to patch the fence.
We put the goats back in the fence, and within about 14 & a 1/2 seconds, they were back out. A fence fixer I evidently am not--now be truthful, does that surprise ANYONE???? So we called Harold and told him he had to come home. On the phone, he talked me through several options (that didn't involve him driving 6 hours and arriving back at AJ at 3:00 in the morning) and we finally lit on one that worked--or at least has worked so far. We decided we could use our extra gate to keep them locked in the shed until he got home and could come up with a better idea. --Like electric fencing, perhaps--set on the highest possible setting!?
Thankfully, Dad and our neighbor arrived home from church around 9:00 and helped us figure out the ratchet straps that William and I had managed to get in a bit of a twist. I had never needed to care about how ratchet straps worked before, but maybe I should learn. I never claimed to be a farm girl. A wanna-be is all I am.
In other homestead news, here's a cute picture of one of Anna's puppies. She's a good momma, stays with her pups nearly all the time and is generous with the kids (you know, the human ones), patiently letting them pet, poke & prod on her and the pups.
Harold will be home tonight. And I can go back to just being Mom, instead of Farm Manager and Fence Fixer, titles I'll gladly hand over. I like "Mom" just fine.
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