A Series Of Unfortunate Events: Winter Storm Edition

As I contemplate the coming snow storm that is breathing down Montana’s neck, threatening to dump yet another foot of snow on the ground and bring us sub zero temperatures for four days in a row, I am reminded of a series of events in 2010 that culminated with me falling asleep in front of the wood stove on Christmas Eve at 3:00 a.m. fully dressed in my Carhart bibs with four dogs curled around me and six baby goats in a cardboard box.

Perfecto, the goat buck escaped out of his pen and got in with the does, where he definitely should not have been, which caused

numerous goat does to get pregnant earlier than they should have. Time passed and they grew bigger and bigger….

Soon, it was 5 months later, Christmas Eve 2010. I was alone because

Mike changed his travel schedule and left town early to visit his parents for Christmas in Rapid City, because

there was a major winter storm coming that dumped a foot of snow on the ground and brought sub-zero temperatures with it, which caused

 three goat does went into labor, forcing me to hastily convert our tack room into a makeshift kidding barn that had no heat or light but it was better than nothing, and I had to

move three large, pregnant, recalcitrant does 200 yards up a hill from the red barn to the tack room in 1 foot of snow, in the dark, by myself, leading to

ten hours of kidding out does,

and bringing their kids inside to the wood stove periodically to keep them warm, which led to

me falling asleep in front of the wood stove with 4 dogs curled around me and 6 baby goats in a cardboard box next to the stove at 3:00 a.m., on Christmas Eve, in my Carhart bibs. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You are thinking, well Alexis, you could have avoided all of that by preventing Perfecto from getting out of his pen. That, my friend, is true. But, as you can probably imagine from reading Goat Pimp, a horny goat buck is difficult to control.

So here we are, the end of February, Perfecto bred the does when he should have, we are having kids when we planned to, and we are faced with another major winter storm leading us to convert the tack room into a kidding area.

But one thing is different this year.

Mike is home so if anything goes wrong, he’s the one that has to deal with it.