The story you are about to hear is real.
Only the names have been changed to protect the innocents.  

 

Ever have one of those days that just doesn’t seem to flow right?

That just starts out rough and never improves?

We’ve just had two of them in a row.  I’m hoping they are over now and that Karma can move on and take her chaotic brat with her.  It went as follows…

 

We woke up on a normal morning, a little early and ready to get into the day.  We had just come from a day of errands before and were ready to get started in a few projects and some business and client work inside.

Well, all is well until Jessy comes in and tells me she thinks Buttercup is sick.  She has a messy bottom.  Hmmm.   That’s weird.  I get my shoes on to go and take a look at her.  I am met in the screenporch by Maggie who is in a panic… the sheep are out in the back pasture!  Agh!  Okay… I go to help her out but then I notice that Daisy and Buttercup are bawling at me… from the garden.  Which is forbooten to all creatures since they discovered baby cabbages growing there.  (don’t ask… but I did manage to save most of them) (the cabbages….)  Concerned, I rush over to get them out and what to my dismay…. I see all the meat chickens walking around in the garden… loose.  I cross paths with Maggie as I am shooing the goat babies out of the garden and ask about the nuggets…  she says the bottom of their garden coop rotted out!!!

Okay, now, realize… only about 5 minutes have elapsed and all hell has broken loose on our little farm.

Maggie grabs the feed bucket and we are off to get the bad sheep back into the correct pasture.  Goaties are following.  I do realize that Buttercup has a messy bottom.  But she seems fine and is all excited that we’re running with a feed bucket and nearly trips me by crossing in front of me sixteen times.  In flip flops.  (I was only expecting to check a goat butt…  not a farm roundup…)

Our little runaway ovines are well trained and a shake of the feed bucket and they come running.  And of course, push right back through the little spot that they pushed out of, a wee bit before.  And let me tell you, it’s about the size of a cereal box.  A SMALL cereal box.  I am most impressed to see blimpy Bridget squeeze in…  she’s due within the next week or so to have LAMBS!

We decide to put them in the front salad bar pasture while we figure out how to wire up the hole.  Sounds easy enough.  Sure enough, they will follow the feed bucket holder to the other side of the county and back.  Maggie locks them up.  She will go to the fence and fix it and I grab Buttercup to check her out.

Well, it’s kind of hard to tell if she is really sick or if she got into some nasty poopy mud.  There is a big pig wallow next to the pump that Ebony made, so I wonder since it’s not definitive that it was HER poopy mess.  I check Daisy out and she has a big smear on her side of this offending stuff.

If you’re wondering… one worries when a hoofie gets a messy backside… it could mean the animal is scouring, which could be very dangerous.  Basically, their delicate system is messed up.  Ruminants are prone to illness from food changes or from eating something bad…  I start to worry about it, but decide that first off, they both need a quick bath so I can watch and assess if it is really from them in the first place!  We’re right by the pump and the water trough, so I pick up Buttercup and the scrub brush and give her a dunk.

Silly me.  I thought that would be easy.  But I learned that goats HATE water just about as much as cats do and a little 20 pound goat thrashing about with sharp little hooves can be a real difficult thing. You can just insert a funny picture in your mind of me and Buttercup as we enjoyed that bath.  Of course, Daisy took one look at me trying to drown her friend and ran bawling for Maggie.

I get Buttercup cleaned off.  I set her down in the warm sunshine and she promptly gives me a stink eye glare and rushes off to get into the courtyard.  I look for Daisy and find her following Maggie who is dashing over to me in a panic… the sheep are out of the front pasture!!!  AGh!

We manage to get them BACK in the pasture… it was only three of them…  Iris, Fergus and Bridget.  But then we find Buttercup and Daisy in the courtyard, where they don’t belong, eating all the leaves off one of my beloved baby lilac bushes!!!!  We get the little rascals and Maggie holds Buttercup while I dunk Daisy and scrub the nasty icchor off her cute little coat admist bawling.

Honestly, you would have thought I was tearing an infant child in half.  Jessy comes from the house thinking we have totally gone nuts…  only to find a soaking wet mom and baby goat.  Of course, at this point, Buttercup starts pooping away and it’s fine.  Normal goat poop.  The little worts had just gotten filthy in some crazy goat way.  Still…

So I have the girls put the goaties in the dog yard.  It’s the only pasture that they can’t seem to get out of.  Daisy can walk through a 4 inch square of field fence.  Its quite amazing.  4 inches wide.  a whole goat.  We have to rescue my garden from the chicken nuggets, all 19 of which are now walking about and considering how to jump up on a straw bale.  Maggie and I herd the little dumbies out into the middle yard…  all fumbling and awkward like nerdly teenagers.  Meat chickens are just not the sharpest tacks in the chicken world, let me tell you.  I have to shoo away one of the roosters who seems to think that all these big girls need some rooster loving…  of course, they all just stand around, perplexed by the rooster dance of love.  We make a quick decision that we will pop the nuggets into the angora goat stall, and the angora goats will bunk with the sheep for the night.  They don’t mind.  Well, the sheep do, but the goats are pretty cool about it.

We try to catch them but it’s nye impossible.  So we decide they are fine for a few more hours and we will catch them as they start to nod off in the evening.  The sheep are in the middle pasture and content to lay around and chew their cud.  Maggie says she is going to mow the front yard since it’s almost to hay height from the rain.

I hardly get into the screen porch when I hear the poor mower sounding like it’s on it’s last leg.  I go out there to see what the heck is up and Maggie is trying this and that.  Nothing.  It’s running, but it sounds like one of those jungle PT boats after a major skirmish in the jungles of Vietnam.  Well, sorta.   It’s misfiring and sputtering.  I ask if it’s out of gas and Maggie just glares at me in a way that only a teenager can after bathing goats, chasing chickens and sheep and now doing small engine diagnosis.  Of course, it’s not.  She had checked.  I kind of forget that my girls are getting pretty darn smart.  Well….  I suggest it’s either the spark plug or the carburetor.  Jr. had said that it really needed a new spark plug, so I say, let’s go up to town and get one at the hardware store.  And maybe an icee from the Circle K mart.  Sounds like a plan.  Bribing teenagers is the only way you can sleep at night with both eyes closed some times…  We grab Jessy and head to town.

Only to find that we’re 5 minutes too late because everything in rural America closes at like 4:30 or sooner.  Well, the icee is pretty good and we get home pretty quick.

We wait a few hours and manage to get the meat chickens into the stall and everyone into the paddock for the night, all critters accounted for.  The goat babies are both pooping perfect little goat pellets and the pig is settled in and we hit the sack.

Thing is…. our farm chaos was not yet over, our bill was not paid and we still had some time on our clock…  Wake up, start to do chores and next thing I hear is Maggie screaming at sheep in the courtyard.  Hmm….  Jessy and I spring from our desks and out into the yard.  Apparently, she had mended the little breach in that pasture and put them out to watch them.  And they promptly pushed under another section and were out by the road.  Thinking quick, she grabbed a bucket and threw some rocks in it and opened up the courtyard fence to get them in there, at least.  But once they got in the courtyard, a forbidden place for all hoof creatures…. they totally ignored her and began to eat my plants and flowers like starving inmates from some concentration camp.  Maggie was terrified they would eat all my pretties and was trying desperately to shoo them away from this bush or that plant.  We managed to get them out pretty quick…  it was hot and naughty sheep hate to be pushed around and made to run.

Maggie is totally upset and angry, and we call an emergency farm meeting.  It’s clear that we need to secure ONE of the external pastures to lock up the critters.  Each one has a problem.  The weed patch is no good because all the lambs and the little goats have figured out how to push through the pallet fence in a few spots and get into the garden.  The salad bar up front is no good at the moment because there is a stretch of it that is so rusted out that if a butterfly lands on it, it breaks, say nothing of a big fat sheep that thinks the grass is greener on the other side.  And the back pasture has some mysterious hole that we can’t seem to find.  (We had fixed the small gap the day before…)

We decide that we will fix the back pasture as it has the best grazing, the biggest area and the goats can’t escape.  Good.  Jessy will be the warden, she’s most excellent at that.  Good.  Maggie gets the feed bucket with a wee bit of sweet feed and we go into action.  We put everyone out there, figuring they will eat first and then escape after.  Which is their normal MO.   Jessy was still in the mud room rounding up her supplies.  I go in to hang with the little goats and watch everyone while Maggie goes to add water to the trough out there.

I turn my back for 10 seconds and Fergus, Iris and Bridget are OUT OF THE PASTURE and they have a brown lamb with them as well!  Gosh darn it…  I go running back to the corner that they are near and mind you, they are just eating grass on the other side and not in any danger save me conking them on the head at this point.  I am of course, wearing flip flops.  Stupid I know.  Immediately I see the problem, they had pushed through an area where two fence pieces met and was not wired tight enough.  AGH!!!   I call to Maggie because now, the REST of the herd has followed me to the corner and is standing there baaaing because they too, now know the secret of the naughty threesome….  Maggie comes, climbs the fence and manages to get caught on the fence and rip her pants.  We take two pallets that were laying in the grass after our pallet fence dismantle a few months past, and we manage to rig up a blockade to keep everyone in for a few minutes.  We’re shouting for Jessy to hurry up with the big guns…. baling wire and cutters.

We get back to the middle and we take the bucket and put rocks in it to go and get those loose behind the weed pasture, back into the weed pasture and then hopefully back into the middle yard.  Jessy has the back pasture under control.   Well, the came into the pasture, with the bucket trick and undoing part of that fence.  But then they refused to leave the weed patch.  So I’m coming over to just shoo them out with sticks and arm waving when I walk by the barn and hear a terriable chicken racket…  gosh darn it… the pig has BROKEN into the goat stall (chain link panels, mind you) and is rooting about the stall looking for chicken scratch and the poor dumb nuggets are freaking out, since I’m pretty sure they’ve never see a hog before.  Of course, Daisy and Buttercup managed to get out of the back pasture when I was leaving in haste and I didn’t think much of it, since they do follow pretty well, but now they are in the goat… er… chicken stall, in the way as I try and herd the squeeling, angry pig out of the barn.

I will admit.  I was loosing my cool.  Maggie’s yelling for me to come help, because she thinks I’m slacking and doesn’t know about the pig yet.  I get Ebony and the goats out, slam the door shut, and then the pig runs over to the lil coop and pushes her way under that fence to start checking that yard out for left overs!!!  AGH!!!!  With great shouting and dodging and much stupid herding on our part, we get the sheep out of the weed patch and it locked down.  We try to get them into the back pasture, but that is impossible because now those in there are trying to get out and join the rebels.  Maggie is freaking out about the pig in the lil coop yard and I have managed to bang my forehead hard on a piece of cattle panel that we had cut and was pokey…  The sheep are upset, and not following any direction at this point and I am beginning to question our whole existence at this point….

Sencing that we were about to implode… the sheep decide it would be nice to go into the paddock and rest a while.  Great.  We lock half of the herd in and Jessy has the rest in the back and has claimed the two goatie girls.  I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack and my head is bleeding and I have stubbed my toe badly.  Maggie has gotten the pig out of the coop and into her stall.  She is laying on the hammock like a dead person and is not speaking to us at this point.

There is a weird calm that finally comes over you after you make up your mind that you could not give a rat’s ah… behind what happens next.  You just give up.  Iris and Ivy are bawling like babies because their precious little lambs are in the back pasture.  I just let them out of the paddock, and then let the babies back into the middle with their moms and left Cody and the goats in the back.  They never escape.  Well, Daisy does… but not usually in the back.  We used smaller grid fence back there for the most part.

I tell the girls, lets go to town and get an icee.  (I need to make ammends with them.)  And a spark plug.  Oh yah, and dog food, we ran out.  Without a word they nod and slug back to the house, still fuming…  I get in the house, assess my head wound and decide it’s not life threatening.  I’m still in sandles and a crappy pair of shorts (because I was not expecting to do anything but sit at my desk all day and work!)  but I ask if the girls don’t mind doing the shopping if I drive so I can just stay in the car.  After all, we’re just going to the dollar store a few miles down the road.

Which gets us to the picture at the top of this lengthy story of chaos.  We’re about a half mile from the dang store and I hear this thuck thuck thuck sound and I just want to weep right there….  Blue has thrown a shoe.  She has a flat tire.  I limp her to the side of the road and just sit there in silence as my dear daughters try and determine if I will be upset or start to cry or what…  Maggie breaks the void and says, well, at least it’s not raining.  Which of course, it thunders off in the distance on cue….  haha….

We get that tire changed in a fast 27 minutes.  Pit crew material, we are not.  But we are not fading flowers either.  We manage.  Maggie is the lift man, and Jessy is the lug nut guy.  I stand back and take pictures.

Someone has to document things you know.

 

 

After all, I would have missed this awesome shot of my daughters working together to get Blue back on the road.

We got to the hardware store with 7 minutes to spare.  Got the spark plug.  Headed to the Circle K for icees.  Check.  Stopped at the dollar store for dog food and mysteriously so, a package of Oreos.  And cheese slices.  When you send young ladies in to shop, you never really know for sure what might happen.  It’s all good.  It was definitely an Oreo sort of day.  Or two.

In true Chekal girl style, we were laughing and chatting about the craziness on the way home.  We were thankful that it had blown out today instead of this weekend as we have two big social events in town and it would have been a BIG drag to have to change it in our finery.  It was the last of 4 crappy tires we had bought at Walmart a few years ago.  At least the $35 junk yard tires were holding out…  and I’ll be going there in the morning to get the last one replaced.

Yeah, life on the farm is kinda laid back, ain’t nothing that a country girl, she can’t hack.

I sure hope that tomorrow will be a little calmer.  I’m considering getting harnesses and leashes for all the sheep and hooking them to big concrete blocks in the middle of the pasture out back.  Each with it’s own circle so they can’t tangle up.  Haha…  naw, I’m sure they will be fine now.  Seems that every few months they have to show us all the weak spots in our fences.  And that they really just stick around because they like the sweet feed.

And laughing at us behind their backs as we chase them around in flip flops and ripped pants.

I’m telling ya, small time farming is not for the faint of heart.  There are days…..    shesh….

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