Artemesia keeps going into heat when Monte's mom is out of town. This time, I called at the first sign of yelling. "There's only a little bit of clear mucous, no flagging yet," I said.

"I'm going out of town first thing tomorrow morning," Monte's mom replied.

"Today it is, then."

Luckily, by the time we got to the location of our picnic lunch, Artemesia was starting to flag. And when we brought her to Monte, she was definitely in standing heat. It took him a few tries, though, to get in position when her tail was up and out of the way. But we're hopeful Artie now has another set of buns in the oven.

Not that we can do anything about it, but we're hoping for two boys this time around. Artie has such prime genetics that it would feel wasteful to eat girl kids, so boys would take that difficult decision out of our hands. Either way, you should mark your calendars for April 10 for the first round of cute goat pics!

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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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