A Thanksgiving Goat Wedding Nov 27, 2007

In case you haven't been around goats lately, it's breeding season.

What this means is that if you have LADY dairy goats (aka does), and if you want them to produce milk next year, you need to get them bred. And in case you didn't remember anything from Sex Ed, or are under 10, you need to have a MAN goat to breed your LADY goats to.

The tricky thing about bucks (man goats) is that they generally live on someone else's farm. Dairy bucks are pretty stinky, and they do things to themselves to make them even more odoriferous and thus more attractive to the ladies-- from 50 yards away. So you can see why most goat folks don't keep one around. I suppose it helps keep those pesky neighbors, friends and relatives away, if you're reclusive, but we're not. We like our friends. (Ok, we like our neighbors and relatives, too, it just sounded better being short and saying "friends".)

BUT.... the tricky thing about NOT having a buck is that a doe is only ready to conceive for one day, maybe only 12 hours, once every three weeks. Or so. So when your 16yo daughter tells you, on your way out the door to church for the morning, "Oh, Mom, I think Fuchsia is in heat," you pretty much drop what you are doing and race her over to the breeder's, or miss the Golden Window of Opportunity for another several weeks. Which we did, upon racing her to the breeder's AFTER church.

So you can imagine what lit the fire under my, uh, bathrobe Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving, when K came in from milking and said, "Fuchsia's in heat!" I downed my coffee and dressed, leaving Grandma to fend for herself with the little girls. The boys were all gone with Grandpa and Dad to an air museum for the day, and we had "Gone With the Wind" and tea parties all lined up. Oh well, nothing like a goat wedding (it's a very short ceremony) to add to the activities of the day. K went outside to get the goat, but came back in very quickly.

"Mom? The van's gone."

OH YEAH.... with all the menfolk. To the air museum. All day. No telling when they would get back. I saw the Golden Window of Opportunity swinging shut. Hmm.....

"Do you think Grandpa would mind us hauling a goat in his 57 Chevy?" I wondered aloud.

"YES HE WOULD," said Grandma.

Nix that idea.

(Have I mentioned yet that we still don't have a trailer, and have to haul the goats in the back of the van?)

"Dad's car!" In the excitement, I'd forgotten about dh's car. We've only had it a year. And a half, I think. It was his mom's, it's a Lincoln. An Old Lady car. But with a leather interior. Nice and clean, too.

"Well," I said, "We have no choice. We'll have to take the Lincoln. K, get a tarp. A clean one." (whoever heard of a clean tarp on a farm?)

So K lined the back seat with a tarp, got Miss Fuchsia on a lead, and climbed into the car. Fuchsia seemed to like the Lincoln, even better than the van, and hopped right in. K got her in a headlock and I jumped in and started the engine. "She won't sit down! You'll have to swerve!" I heard from the back seat. I backed out of the driveway and slammed on the brakes. "OW! Ok, she sat down!"

Fuchsia, however, didn't WANT to sit down. She wanted to see where we were going. "Mom! Swerve!" So I swerved. All the way into SmallTownsVille and right past the police station.

"Oh, my! What if we get pulled over?" I said. K hollered back through the goat, "I'm not even wearing my seatbelt!" All I could imagine was, "I'm sorry, officer, no, I'm not drunk. We're just trying to take our goat to the breeder's and she's only in heat for one day, and my dh has the van... no, she's not, she can't get the seatbelt on through the tarp.." all while 120 lb Fushia thrashes all over my dh's nice clean leather interior trying to get out because we were not swerving. I wonder if he's a country policeman, or if he comes in from the city 20 miles away?

"Mom, it'd be funny in five years!" said K.

"Nope, it's funny NOW!" I said. We both cracked up and swerved some more.

A few more miles of swerving, braking and accelerating, we got to the goat breeder's house. She laughed at the sight of us pulling up in the Lincoln. "I've only ever seen a goat hauled in a Lincoln ONCE before, and the owner made me promise that I'd never tell anybody." She took Fushia's lead rope and walked her over to the buck's pen. "It's ok," she said to the goat, " you're such a sweet little princess you *deserve* to ride in a Lincoln!"

We left Fushia there with her new beau, they were getting on quite well, and came home. We had our tea party with Grandma, the little girls got all dressed up with Great-Grandma's old nighties and jewelry and hats. We finished watching "Gone With The Wind". Dh called later and asked how it was going.

"Fine," I said. "Fushia's over at the breeder's."

"Oh," he replied. "You'll have to wait until we get home to go get her, I guess, since we have the van."

"Oh, no we won't. We'll go get her the same way we took her over there... in your car."

He just doesn't understand. Fushia IS a princess!