Goat screams
So, the good news is
that I realized on weaning
day two that one of our goat pastures had chicken wire around the base
that could keep Punkin in. Once our buckling was able to nose his
mother through the fence, he calmed down quite a bit. He still wouldn't
take a bottle or drink out of a pan, but I'm putting him in with
Artemesia some nights after his sister gets locked in the kennel so his
gut doesn't have to completely change over from milk to grass cold
turkey. I figure within two or three weeks, he'll be thoroughly and
safely weaned.
The bad news? Between
Punkin calling "Mama!" and Artemesia hollering "My baby!" relentlessly
on day one, our mile-distant neighbor became convinced Mark was guilty
of spousal abuse. The neighbor in question came over on his
four-wheeler with a pistol at his hip the next day to check on
us...which was actually pretty sweet, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, I
wasn't able to run over to check on the visitor the way I usually do
because I was knee deep in the bee hives, so I left the guys talking
for about ten minutes before showing up. I hope our neighbor believed that
no one was being murdered over here and we simply have a couple of
unruly goats...but I guess we'll see if Mark's been kicked out of the
good-old-boy network or not.
(Yes, this is the
equivalent of calling the cops when you live in the country.)
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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