Aimee, All Alone (Top of the World, Ma!)

Day three of running the whole shebang by myself. I know that there are plenty of women who run larger operations than mine by themselves, day and day out, and who do it admirably. If any of those women are reading this blog, bully for you, babe, I salute you, but it's kicking my ass!

It's unfortunate that Homero's unscheduled vacation (he spontaneously decided to drive to Oaxaca) coincided with the beginning of milk-around-the-clock season. I am getting up a half hour early to milk and get everybody ready for school, and what with one thing and another, I pretty much don't sit down until bedtime.

Then I don't sit down, I fall down.

I never realized there was so much slack in my schedule before. I felt pretty busy a week ago, too, but it wasn't even in the same league. One thing's for sure - if I ever have to be a single mother (touch wood), I sure ain't milkin' no three dairy goats every damn day. Homero, if you ever entertained thoughts of leaving me, give it up! You ain't goin' nowhere!

This morning was particularly rough. When I went out the the barn to do chores, it was raining lightly. I realized I had left the brand new bags of chicken food and goat food out last night because I can't maneuver my way through the chained gate and operate the latch on the barn door while carrying a 50 pound feed sack and fending off four frantic goats without help. Well, I couldn't do that any better in the morning than I could at night, so I cast about for something to cover the bags with. I spied the 75-gallon rubbermaid water trough, which thankfully was empty. I lugged the tank over, then tried to pick up the sack of goat feed and put it on top of the sack of chicken feed. It seems, however, that the light rain had already weakened the paper and the sack split in the middle spilling all the grain on the ground. So, swearing, I ran around looking for a couple of five gallon buckets and some sort of scoop. At least the ground is dry and hard and so I didn't lose any grain to the mud.

Scooping up the last of the grain, I decided to sprinkle it over the hay in the new fence-line feeder that Homero built for me. The fence-line feeder is basically a big box into which you put a whole bale of hay on the OUTSIDE of the pasture. The goats can stick their heads into the box but they can't trample the hay. It was a massively heavy hinged wooden lid on top to protect the hay from rain. I lifted the lid and started to sprinkle grain. Then I noticed four eggs in the hay (the chickens can get in the feeder and love to lay in there). As I bent over to get the eggs, the lid fell on my head. I don't know why Homero made it so heavy, using both plywood AND

T1-11. He could have just used the siding.

Then I went in to milk. These days I carry two half-gallon glass jars to milk into - between the three does they both get full. While I was milking Flopsy, the last doe, into an almost-full half gallon jar, she kicked and made me spill it all over myself. "Oh you horrible goat!" I shouted. "I hate you!" And at that moment, I truly did. I hated the goat, my husband who left me here all alone, myself, and basically the whole world.