second to last week

Last Tuesday I was hoping to get some sleep in between my checks and it did not happen: i was up until 6 am, helping for a complicated delivery that ended up with 1 kid alive and 1 dead. Nothing could be done, it came out the wrong way, with the head and butt wanting to come out at the same time…not possible. The mom is getting better and we took her away from her kiddo; she looks sad. I gave a lot of tea (uterine tea) the day after the birth to help her pass the afterbirth and it helps most of the time.  Passing the afterbirth usually happens within few hours after birth , but sometimes it takes longer. Just need to keep an eye on the goat because she can die from it.

I was on chores duty on Thursday and i really enjoyed my day. I like to take care of the goats and give them their medicine, teas and special remedies. I also gave a couple shots of selenium (needs to be done after each birth) and it is fairly easy to do, under the skin. Derek is doing the real work with giving shots (Vitamin A, E, D and C) with big serynges, I do only little ones. I am a light weight and could never be a real nurse: don’t like blood and cuts and things like that. I guess i am doing okay for being around lots of blood and delivering babies!  I had a couple challenges that day. The first challenge was to catch two goats (Flower and Patti) in order to give them some milk maid powder to help them produce more milk: they do not like to be caught, are pretty quick, and do a great job at staying away form people. They made me run all over the place and it was more frustating than funny; Derek had to come and help me and i guess he had a good laugh watching me struggle with the goats for a while! The second challenge was Sandy, a sick goat with staph infection: her skin is getting better with hair growing back but her udder and teats are still miserable (hard and lumpy) and the poor thing is probably in so much pain; milking her twice a day is not an easy thing. Tonight she was literaly trying to climb the fence, kicking her back legs and it was very difficult to milk her. I hope her infection is not that contagious because I am literaly leaning on her hard to try to keep her still and some of my skin is definitely touching her infected area… Now i understand that she must be in so much pain…i mean if you could feel her udder and teats, she gotta be in a lot of pain. I wish we could be doing something….or at least not milk her but it is not possible. Poor thing!

My days with the goats are (mostly) good, but some days are more challenging than others. I wish i would always stay calm, like Ed, but i am not perfect and i get frustrated and angry (like trying to catch the goats or try to keep Sandy still). It is probably because i have expectations (that everything should go a certain way) and sometimes things don’t go as planned and i get frustrated…i am aware of it and trying to work on it. Life with no expectations should always be a happy one!

I do catch myself talking a lot to the goats, or the sheep, and also to myself…isn’t it a sign that i am going crazy? Now, i don’t have a full conversation with myself, i just speak aloud, kind of like to keep me company when i am alone or with the animals. Hope you will still like me when i go crazy. Wait a minute, I am already crazy, Derek says so all the time! I am getting better during the night shift and I am not as scared as at the beginning. I don’t know why i don’t like to be in total darkness. I always try to shut my mind off so I don’t spook myself with little noises I hear…or so I don’t freak out when Hunter or Brewster jump in front of me out of nowhere (i always see these 2 cats in the night; keep me company). Anyway, there have cougars around here, and a couple years ago, few goats went missing because of them so i know they are around here. They captured two of them on the farm. I saw the picture and I don’t want this big cat jumping in front of me at 2 am…It is a very impressive animal and try hard to not think about it during my night rounds….

I’ve been eating so much cheese lately! I have cheese with almost everything: the best is a baked potato loaded with chevre…yummy! We haven’t gone back to help with the cheese making yet but we’ve done our share of eating and tasting it. We just tried a new cheese called “Oval peak” (a local peak), a round goat cheese with a crust like brie but the inside is kind of creamy and hard at the same time…so good. Reminded me of cheeses i had back home. For the yogurt, i like to pour it on my oatmeal with some honey…the best breakfast ever. Derek makes a mean oatmeal with raisins, coconut flakes and almonds; I think i will keep this man a bit longer : )

We are short one person since today and we are leaving next weekend. So far they have only one other person coming sometime next week so they are going to be busy. I guess once we are done with birthing (5 mothers left), it is going to be less work as we won’t have to do the night checks and we won’t have to feed babies every four hour. It was set since the begining that we wpuld leave on that date so no big surprise. Ed has offered to stay if we wanted to, or go to Spokane for a while and then come back if we change our minds. I guess the doors will alawys be open here for us so it is a nice offer. I think Ed and Vicky want to retire and are looking for someone to take over the dairy…they think Derek and I would be great for that so the offer is on the table. There is definitely something about Twisp and things have been happening lately that makes me think that the town is sending us messages so we stick around here.  We both like it here a lot and if we thought we could make it happen financialy we would probably not hesitate about staying here. It has everything we are looking for (beauty, nature, good community, etc) but only 1000 people. Last night, Ed invited us to a dinner with his church and we met wonderful, nice people. A lot of the people we met are from here or were also attracted to the area years ago. Well, we don’t have to make a decision before we leave; we can always go as planned and come back here if we want to; I like it like that. It is funny how life works sometimes: i’ve never heard of Twisp before and it is one of the most amazing place i’ve visited. I was not expecting anything like that. And I also like that there is not fast food joints, no franchises, etc.