Just Kidding!

To start the morning off, the polls are closed, and the results are in!!! So, next week I will be starting.........

(drum roll please)

A day in my life via photos only!
(unofficial title...)

Yay, I'm very excited about this series. It will be a good challenge for me and I'm planning on using it to further my skills. ;)

In other news, spring is in the air over at our house! We have had 5 baby goats in the past 4 or so days. May I introduce you to.....

Benedict! 

Juliet and mother

Nessa (the mom) and baby Martin (twin to Benedict ;) with Grace being her adorable self!

And Abby with Benedict. :) 

I don't have a picture of the brand-newest set of twins born this morning, but they were a boy and a girl. The little boy was dead when we found them. :( So Anna's thinking of naming the girl Eponine, seeing as she's "on her own". :\  We still have 3 or 4 does who are due to kid very soon, so we're looking forward to all the furry little dears. :) So, I want to hear---what's new with you all? I'm hoping your Valentine's Days went very nicely and you had enough chocolate to get through it. ;) Leave a comment and let us know!

♫Here's a story, of a goat named Daisy...♪ ;)

It all started on the 13th of April when our matriarch of the goat heard, Daisy, had these two cuties:

Meet Harriet, everyone!

and here's me holding newborn Emma! :D

Then, the last Saturday, Daisy's daughter, Dove, had her first kid, a skinny little boy:

Anna named this chap Flynn. :)

And two days later, when going out to feed the goats, Dove's sister, Lizzie, (and my only goat) had given birth to her first kid ever, a beautiful little girl! I was really excited that it was a girl, and that her coloring and markings were so much different than all the other kids'!

Lizzie is a much better mama than I thought she'd be

After much consideration (and 3 whole days) I decided to dub her Nessa!

Suffice it to say, we now have our hands full with a goat herd of 9, including our soon-to-be 3 goats to milk twice a day! :D  It was actually pretty cool, because every time one of our goats has kidded, they've done it early in the morning, so we don't get to watch. But Dove started kidding when Anna was feeding them, so we were able to hurry out there and witness the miracle of a new birth!! :)

(By the way, all these pictures were taken on Daniel's phone, so pardon the low quality)

I'm glad I finally am able to get some pictures up here, despite my camera-less state. :)

I hope this was an enjoyable post, and I'm off to NC! 

Little Flynn enjoying a nap. :)

Goateo and Crueliet- an operatic farm-drama. :P

These are the Villains in this Drama:

Meet Daisy....


(Notice the dastardly-looking lack of ears? :P LaManchas are all so....sly looking as adults. :P

Next is Chocolate Chip (So glad we didn't name him Mr. Darcy- the vagabond!)


And the innocent [ ;) ] Miss Elizabeth Bennet (Lizzie)



It all began on a warm, beautiful, ideal early-May day in our corner of Virginia...

We spent the morning working in the garden planting more flowers for cutting. Then we got in the car, went to choir, and, in the odd hour between choir and Matthew's baseball game, we decided to go strawberry picking.



Buy two baskets, get the third free.
We finished picking 15 baskets in about 40 minutes. :)

Then off to the ball-game, and home to make dinner.

*Cue dramatic music*

♫"Woe are we- we gurgle our throats
Over our evil, dastardly goats...."♫

Um. Never mind the singing part. Skip ahead.

As we drove up the drive a astonishing and angering sight met our eyes. Every swinging one of those blasted goats were out and gallivanting around the garden. Ahem.

There was a chase through my newly planted flower bed as Leah rode Chip...

A dash through the peas after Daisy...(yes, I fit through the trellis without ruining any peas myself. :P)

And finally we caught them. Oh the fiendish animals!
♫"If I ate meat like a Blackamoor, We'd have a barbeque, But since I don't, I'll sigh some more Until those goats are through!"♫

Ahem. Proceed.

The worst of it was not over. Those measly, pitiful, awful animals chomped down on our baby blackberry bushes and nibbled our eight prized, adored baby blueberry bushes to nubbins. And they were even getting berries!



Oh the Horror! :[

Mama and I were quite put out, and the girls scurried to capture the goats, tie them up so they couldn't repeat the offense, and creep around till our wrathful state subsided a little. *Sigh*
So that's the little drama of the day. We are hoping that the blueberry bushes will miraculously grow back, and that we won't have to construct a veritable Guantanamo Bay to keep them inside and away from our garden. Because right now...it's pretty much Stalag 13 :P


But on the bright side...
*thinking hard*.....

Um.....

Hold on a second.....

Ah!

On the bright side, it gave me....something to blog about? :P -Rachel