Yesterday was like a vacation day with no new goat babies born. I just did the normal chores, baked a cake, made a nice Sunday dinner, etc.
The day before, we had two new sets of twins born before six p.m. I did all the tasks listed in my last blog entry for each baby and cleaned out the pens, placing clean, dry bedding before sighing a sigh of relief. It was pitch black outside and I was looking forward to a hot bath to ease my aches and pains and wash off some of the farm.
I left the maternity barn to go to my UTV when I heard the unmistakable cry of a baby goat. I listened again. Yes. It seemed to be coming from up on top of the hill somewhere, but I couldn't see a thing and didn't have a flashlight handy. It had been raining on and off all day and cloud cover obscured the moonlight.
I drove to the garage and struggled in the dark to get some gas, in case I needed to do a lot of driving to find the baby. I went up to the house and got a flashlight and my husband (who also had a flashlight.) We drove to the top of the hill and walked through the brambles and trees, looking for the baby.
My husband located a doe with two kids behind the fence. I could not locate him. He struggled to carry the kids, get over the fence and walk them down to the barn with mama goat following. He slipped in the mud, but got down to the maternity barn where I met him.
We got them in and dry. The third set of twins in one day. Did the whole new baby routine, and hobbled back up to the house.
I'd done two loads of wash that day in-between goats. Our thirty-plus year-old dryer decided to give up the ghost. So, there was the problem of lots of damp clothes sitting in the washer and dryer. Before I could take the long awaited bath, I hung clothing on a rack in the basement and on hangers around the room.
On Sunday morning, my husband was really in pain from the slip on the hill. He needed a low impact job, so took the still damp clothes to the nearest laundromat, armed with quarters and the Sunday paper.
I did the animal chores. Later, he called Sears to arrange for a repair person to come out and fix the dryer. The phone came to me to discuss the day and time.
"We will send someone out on Thursday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The repair man will call to make sure you're home. If you don't answer the phone, he'll assume you aren't home."
"Wait a minute! I'm a farmer and am in and out all day. But I'll be here, just give me a definite time, and I'll make sure I'm at the house at that time. Cell phones don't work down below. It's a wireless dead zone."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. ... That's the way we do it."
"Let me speak with a supervisor."
CLICK. (He hung up on me.)
Could this have been my "no good very bad day" of the month?
3 comments:
Arghhhh. I hope the cake was good!
The dark trek through the mud must have felt like a surreal scene in nightmare. Hope the dryer gets fixed pronto.
Hate repair people. They think they can demand your entire day for an hour of their time!
My husband went to Sears Repair in person on Tuesday. It seems that the person we spoke to on the phone erased all record of our call after I asked to speak to a supervisor!
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