Another Kid...

I’ve heard people say that if you wait to have kids (you know until you are “ready” and financially secure) then you’ll never have them. Well as it turns out the same goes for goats.

  I was supposed to get goats 12 years ago. They were a birthday present from my husband. He was clearing land to build me a goat pen for them and everything, but I told him to stop. We were possibly moving and we weren’t ready for goats. Every year thereafter goats have been discussed and a couple of those years we have come realllly close to getting goats, but we always came to our senses. We kept waiting for the right time. This fall we started to talk serious goat talk again. We want some brush clearing yard helpers and mowers, and we are looking for raw milk. We finally made a practical use plan for having goats around. (Things to consider: breeds, sexes, milking, feeding, shelter, fencing, what to do with babies, how to breed them if we don't want a male around -renting a stud goat-, Etc.)

 Even so, goat shopping was not on the top of our priority list as the washing machine and refrigerator simultaneously broke, the holiday season is here, we have a 5 month old baby, and we are already taking on new expenses this month for heating and the growing food budget... now purchasing organic eggs at the grocery store AND buying feed for our chickens because it is cold and our hens are on winter break so they are not laying right now. We could come up with at least six more reasons why we shouldn’t get goats. I really started the whole thing up again when in October I told Ricky nostalgically that this year would be the perfect year for goats because next year Charlotte would be 18, and I promised her that we’d have goats someday. A promise I made to her when she was just a bright eyed kindergartner. He listened thoughtfully and started making goat shelter plans that same morning. In the meantime Craigslist hadn’t yielded anything promising in the way of actual goats. We had very specific requirements and not a lot of time to fool around at an animal auction. For one we wanted Nigerian Dwarf goats for milk flavor and a smaller size goat that fits well on our land and backyard with little human kids, but were also interested in the Saanen breed. We also didn’t want to pay a lot. Goats have really gone up in price since the last time we seriously looked. The goat talk quieted down...

 Since we were going to be further out in the country for two days over Thanksgiving I casually said we should look around for goats. The day after Thanksgiving Ricky looked online and sure enough we found a Dwarf Nigerian mama with a Dwarf Nigerian Saanen cross baby doe. The owners didn't want to see  the mama go but were selling her because she was very “docile” and the other goats were picking on her.  My grandma is a wheeler and a dealer so I asked her to call and negotiate a price for us. She’s hilarious and of course did call for us and got us $30 off their already reduced price (they claimed they had already gone down in price, and it was a good price). Grandma wasn’t pleased they wouldn’t budge more on price but we were happy enough. So we were on our way over hills and winding country roads to pick up new additions to our lives...

Charlotte, 17, and Dixie our very first baby goat. I promised Charlotte we would have goats when she was in pre school and kindergarten. Promise fullfilled!

I fell asleep on the long ride home and Charlotte took my picture. I also got peed on. It was a given though; someone was gonna get it.

We have no refrigerator (New one is on order) and technically a broken washing machine, but we have goats and we have each other. If we were to wait until everything was perfect would we EVER have gotten them??