Canada Day weekend!

It's been a busy weekend.  I can't believe I survived it!

First of all Stockings was 5 days overdue. Of course. Why can't these goats kid on their due date.  The problem was that we were bringing Tomas to the airport in Halifax so he could go home. 

The lady I had to milk had never seen a goat born or delivered or anything. So I gave her a head's up on what to expect.  Denise was a good sport about it and had my cell number on her cell speed dial. 

I was still at work when I got the call.  J. and Tomas had stumbled upon Stockings and her newborn doeling, but since she was supposed to have twins, they thought that the long thing hanging on her behind was a dead kid.  Dave wasn't at home at the time.  He was gone to drop off the dogs at my mom's.  So I called him in a panic to high tail it home! He was closer than I was. 

To make a long story short.  That wasn't a dead kid stuck. It was just the afterbirth.  But the problem was that by this time we needed to leave and we still only had one kid and Stockings wouldn't let the doeling suckle.  Not a great scenario.  So I got on the horn and called our pastor. He's got goats and used to work on a dairy farm. So not much fizzes him.  He said he'd come and check on her. I also called our other goats friends and they would come and check on her also and try to get her to nurse.

In the mean time I called Denise and told her what was going on and that we had to leave. I was not happy leaving.  I wanted to stay home, but Dave insisted that I go with them.  

So between the three of them they got the doeling to nurse and the second one was never born.  I don't know if the vet made a mistake in the ultrasound (I hoping for this one), or she aborted it awhile ago, (which is very unlikely) or it's still in her (Gosh! I hope not!) but she's not showing signs of infection. I honestly didn't think that she had twins in her in the first place since she was so small.

So Denise kept calling me all evening to keep me informed and up to date on everything. She did a great job. She even asked me if she should go check on her around midnight.  I told her to go to bed!   

So guess what we called the doeling.....

Please meet Denise!

So we slept overnight in Halifax because Tomas' flight was at 5am.  He had to be there 2 hours ahead of time so that meant we had to get up at 2am.  I never sleep well in hotels so I got a total of an hour's sleep that night before I had to get up.  We left Tomas and headed home at around 4am.  It's a 3 hour drive home. We took turns driving or else we'd fall asleep. Plus Dave cannot drive for long periods now with his arm/shoulder the way it is.  We stopped in to see his dad and do a bit a grocery shopping so we got home at 9am.  We were zonked!!  We were supposed to go camping for the first time that night at a friend's campsite.  We did go, but we needed to nap first. We only got there around 6pm. 

Ya think he's zonked!???

A little while ago we bought a cute second hand camper.  So this was our trial run.  We even brought the dogs with us.  But we had to go home and milk the goat still. So that was a small pain in the butt. But all in all it turned out pretty good and we will be camping again.  Our friend said that we could camp there for July. But we didn't want to overstay our welcome, so we brought it home. We'll go again another weekend.

The Mansion on wheels.

J. enjoying early morning fishing from their verandah.

These people's camp is bigger than most people's houses. It's beautiful.  I didn't want to post photos to respect their privacy so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Simonne sunbathing on the lakeside and Emilie trying to find something to eat as usual.

So we came home on Monday all tired and dirty, but we had fun.  It was a wonderful family weekend, the first of many more to come now that I'm done with the farmer's market.  

One bad thing when I got home was that I checked on my spinach and it had already bolted.  I never got a chance to enjoy it!  The carrots didn't even germinate. I'm so not impressed!

Have a Blessed Evening

Lisa