Many Hands

After breakfast and before letting the goats out of the barn, Deb and Craig were pressed into service.  It isn't that I couldn't have done the work by myself, but their willing hands and generous hearts made an hours-long job zip by (and it was a subtle ploy of mine to enjoy their company a little longer).  Goats are inveterate "rubbers," leaning almost perpendicular as they rub along a wall, any wall or fence available.  Over time, the girls had thinned out the outer barn panels to the point the nails no longer held and one panel was peeling back; not good with winter approaching.  Craig nailed a "band-aid" board over the seam, which the girls will appreciate when the cold winds blow.  Any work with the little tractor in the pen has to be done without goats in attendance.  Like teenagers with new learner's permits, they insist on driving, pushing each other off the seat, or chewing on tires or wires and, in general, making terrible nuisances of themselves.  With the girls still confined and complaining loudly and bitterly, we hooked trailer to tractor and went down to do some clean up.  Louie the Pig's old house had nearly disintegrated since his demise.  Generations of goat kids jumping off the roof tends to do that.  Craig dismantled what was left and we loaded the pieces, and then he drove around while Deb and I picked up a trailer load of branches and sticks spread throughout the pen from when Tree Guy worked on that oak.  The burn pile replenished, I had to get to the milking and the Kids had their own plans for the day.  Before leaving, they covered the stacked wood with a tarp for me, and took some loose firewood for the camping trips they have planned.  Sitting in the milking room next to Cindy as Deb and Craig drove down the drive, our mutual cries of, "Love you!," echoed in the air and in my heart.

It was a good day.