Homestead Mistake #217
Mistakes were made. Many, many naive mistakes.
For starters, metal sheds don't make very good shelters for goats. Who knew? Especially not when you have a brutally mean monarch like Mother Superior.
Guys.
She literally used Lupé as a battering ram to knock an escape hatch through the side of the shed!
With their newfound freedom, the herd decided the woods and grasses on our 13 acres are inferior and opted for the more attractive grass at the very edge of the other side of the road.
As you may well know, it's considered rude to allow one's livestock to meander into the road and obstruct traffic, even in the rural countryside. Not to mention there exist rock quarries and chicken houses up the road which employ large, industrial trucks, evidently outfitted with governors mandating minimum speeds greatly exceeding the posted legal limit.
After a brief management meeting with my children, we decided that locking Mother Superior and Lupé up in the kennel we'd used to house them when they first arrived here was ideal. After all, both are over due to wean their kids anyway, and the kids won't stray far enough away from their mothers to find themselves in the road.
Still, we really couldn't leave the kids out at night. There are predators that would be delighted to indulge in a modicum of tender, young goat flesh. So I tried stomping the sheet metal into place the best I could. Sadly, without some carpentry that I didn't have time to perform, there really wasn't much hope that the kids wouldn't escape through it again. So I thought maybe if I could straighten out the door and pull it closed, that might do the trick.
A cacophony of loud banging on the sheet metal reverberated through the woods for several minutes but I managed to get the door closed. A few apple wedges persuaded the doelings to follow us away from their mothers and back to their enclosure. Jack needed a little more convincing. They seemed secure, albeit fiercely upset and cussing at the top of their lungs, so off we went to Wednesday night service.
Two hours later I returned home to find all three kids standing outside the kennel and all five goats intently focused on me, calling me some very unbiblical names. It was almost dark and I was out of ideas. So I crammed the kids into the 10'x10' kennel along with their mothers for the night.
Today is a new day. I shall brave the high humidity and do my level best to reinforce the tin can to the best of my ability and try again. And also formulate plans for a more suitable fortress. Maybe take a page from the third little pig.
