it's all fun and goats until...

Some of you know that J and I are goat-sitting at a farm about 20 miles outside of Ithaca for two weeks. When I tell people who don't know, the conversation usually goes like this:

Me: "J and I are goat-sitting at a farm about 20 miles outside of Ithaca for two weeks."
Other person: "GOAT-SITTING?"
Me: "Yes. Meat goats. 25 of them. Plus four chickens and a chocolate lab."
Other person: "MEAT GOATS!? TWENTY-FIVE OF THEM?!?!"
Me: "Yes. They're almost all pregnant, too."
Other person: "THEY'RE ALL PREGNANT?!???!"
Me: "Yes. Their owners are going to Hawaii."
Other person: "HAWAII?!?!!?!?!????"

... and so on. Truthfully, though, I never really thought this was THAT crazy of an idea. It made sense, right? I've liked goats for years, learned a bit about them and read a bunch of books, been curious to see if I really wanted this lifestyle someday. The farmer who owns the goats has a very practical attitude toward them and he's always seemed very confident that J and I, despite our city-slicker (suburb-slicker?) pasts and total lack of experience, would be fine. He answered a ton of our dumb questions and left us a lot of emergency contact information that he assured us we'd never need. This would be the perfect way to try out this lifestyle.

And the first five days were fine. The chores are pretty time-consuming but we were definitely getting into a rhythm; there were a few lifestyle changes but nothing we couldn't handle. I didn't love it exactly, maybe didn't embrace it quite the way I thought I might, but we were doing A-OK.

All that changed last night, when I got to the barn late -- around 5:30, when it's already getting a little too dark for comfort -- and looked down the stairs (the goats are on the bottom floor of the barn, which is half-open to pasture in the back) and saw a white blob. Moving white blob. Moving white blob that was a goat, which was out, in the part of the barn where it most emphatically did not belong. I went down the stairs and my stomach dropped into my toes: The goats were out, almost all of them. The door to the doelings' pen was wide open, but I had no idea how the rest of the goats had gotten out of the main pen, where only about six were left.

The story of getting them back in, in a nutshell, involves them walking sort of on their own volition into the doelings' pen and me closing and latching the door to keep them there; very calmly getting back in the car and driving back to the house to get my cell phone; calling the neighbor (who does the noon chores while we're at work and is the one who probably left the doelings' latch open); the neighbor coming over quickly; us devising a sort of chute to lead them from the doelings' pen to the main pen; bribing them with grain to walk through; doing the rest of the chores as normal. The whole event took probably 45 minutes.

Everyone seems OK. You have to check below their tails to see if any of them miscarried in a few days, but even if they had, there's nothing we can do about it. The resident goat guru says it's unlikely, though, because they weren't traumatized and got out "on a lark," as she said on the phone last night, laughing, "troublemakers!" This morning, as J and I tried to throw the straw under the manger to the back of the barn so it would be harder for them to jump over, we discovered that they can actually squeeze through the bottom of the main gate to the pen if it isn't closed very very tightly. Three more goats escaped, but again, we got them back without much incident and we at least solved the mystery.

Now, there is a "snowicane" predicted. I have no idea if the weather people are overreacting just to give journalists an excuse to make up stupid new words for their headlines, but whatever it is, there is likely to be some snow and some wind. The power at the house goes out easily. The water comes from a well, operated by an electric pump. If there is no water and no heat, we will have to melt snow for goats, chickens, dog and humans on a wood stove in the basement. If we can't get the car out of the driveway because there's a foot of snow, we will have to carry the water to the barn.

I am panicking. I actually am really not OK, even though I should be -- as J. reminds me, we are not going to die because of a snowstorm. We might not love the contingency plans, but they're there. We have lots of emergency contacts and people who will help us; we have neighbors relatively close to us; no one wants to see us fail at this; this story is most likely (but only that; not definitely) not going to end with us killing any of the animals in our care. But I can't stop thinking about what happens if this, if that, if the other thing, if all of it at the same time plus a foot of snow and heavy winds and no car and no power and no water and no heat. I feel profoundly, unproductively, furious at the universe that it's barely snowed all winter here and we have to get a potentially massive storm during the two weeks we're doing this. I've been on edge since the first time I heard about the weather on Monday and on the verge of tears since I saw the real forecast last night.

Deep down, I was pretty sure I did want a lifestyle like this, although maybe with 3 or 4 goats instead of 25. I knew people romanticized it and that it isn't at all romantic, and I even liked that about it -- I still like that about it. The dirt and the heavy lifting and the strict schedule... none of that is really the problem, although it doesn't give me the sort of intangible sense of accomplishment or steadiness that I thought it would. I was looking forward to this chance.

I know that a huge measure of this anxiety is coming because they are not OUR animals. It would be infinitely worse if something happened to animals that we were caring for rather than ones we owned; the responsibility is just completely different. I know I wouldn't be worrying about the dog this much if she were my dog, and that goes 25 times more for the goats and chickens. But there is a new voice now that says, you are not cut out for this. This is too much responsibility and you are not this responsible. You aren't good at this. You aren't cut out for it. You're just another romanticizer.

I have no end to this, but we've taken a bunch of pictures and I promise there will be a "woo, look at all the goats" post sometime soon. After the goddamn "snowicane," though. Keep us in your thoughts if you do that sort of thing, OK?