I have been in situations on the farm where all I could do was shake my head like Charlie Brown and say, "Good grief." I say this quite a lot while watching goat antics or people antics.

The other day we were putting the does in with the different bucks and in pens side by side was Strong Man and Nico. Each had their own does, but the competition between the two bucks in their separate pens was unbelievable. They both had to go and stare hard at what does each had, as if counting heads to make sure they had the same amount.

When the first doe came in heat in Nico’s pen, Nico never noticed. Nico was busy standing up in the corner of the pen staring hard at Strong Man’s girls, while Strong Man was busy staring hard at Nico. Nico’s doe had to go hunt him down. He was so shocked to realize that this doe in heat was his, that he immediately turned towards Strong Man and challenged him, telling him to get back.

This started Strong Man to bugling back at Nico. They were now in a shouting match, with Nico every now and then turning to throw raspberries at the doe and dance around her, telling Strong Man, "Hey, look what I got!"

Incensed, Strong Man started hollering louder, Nico started hollering back, and they both took off running up and down the fence, screaming at each other, leaving the doe in heat standing back at the corner in complete surprise that she was left alone. Good grief.

Or, how about that one winter when I thought heavy fleeced lined jogging pants was the way to go to stay warm. That day, in my warm fleeced lined jogging pants, I marched out into the shivery cold winter air to go through the fields checking goats. As I got to a gate to go into the next field, a bunch of baby goats came charging up to me to say, "Howdy!"

They started jumping all over me, digging with their front feet on my pants to get a better purchase to make another leap. With my hands on the gate to keep it closed, the babies basically pants me. Those elastic waist band pants dropped faster then the temperature on a cold winter night. Good grief.

Fortunately, I was wearing a long coat that kept me with some dignity as people drove by in front of our farm. But, they probably wondered why I was running around in a miniskirt doing farm chores.

Just the other day Lee and I decided to run to town to do some grocery shopping. We stopped down at the road at our paper tube to get the paper. We noticed that our neighbor’s paper had fallen out of his tube, so Lee opened the car door, while sitting in the seat, to pick the paper up, closed the door, and shoved the paper back through the open car window, into it’s tube. At the last second, Lee realized that there was a huge wasp nest inside our neighbor’s paper tube, probably why the carrier had thrown the paper on the ground.

Lee definitely had stirred that nest up and in a hurry, fiddling with all the buttons and what not’s these cars with electric windows have any more, instead of rolling our windows up to protect us from the angry wasps, Lee accidentally just locked the doors. Boy, did we feel safe. Good grief.

Then, the next week, Anna the Angora, in another field, came in heat. Strong Man was busy eating grain with his girls, but Nico had noticed Anna earlier out in the field and he was standing waiting at the gate. Now Anna is a wildish goat, hard to catch, but she happened to be in a friendlier frame of mind. I still had to somehow get her through two gates and not let Nico escape out into the main herd that I didn’t want bred at the moment.

How to catch Anna, drag/lead her through two gates and not lose control of the gates, goats, Anna, and Nico was going to be a real trick. I marched up to the gate Anna was standing closest to that opened into a feed type aisle way, and in a commanding voice, I said, "Anna! Come here." And opened the gate.

She obediently did as I asked, and walked in and started wandering around in the aisle way as I latched back the gate. Nico was standing at the other gate, quietly studying the situation over, not saying a word.

I went over to his gate, opened it, and said in a commanding voice again, "Nico, stay!" And, then I turned to Anna, who was wandering around trying to get Strong Man’s attention up in the other field. "Anna! Come here!"

She immediately turned and came to me. I opened the gate wider, "Go on, Anna, go in." She marched in as if she had been voiced trained all her life and Nico obediently stood back while Anna marched in and I shut the gate.

No doubt about it, this was a jaw dropper. Everything worked so well. If it wasn’t for the fact that Anna was in heat, looking for a buck, and very open to ideas; and, Nico was use to an electric fence in front of the gates and not about to charge any gate, you would have thought I had all my goats very well trained.

So, why am I complaining. Well, good grief. Here I put on a good show like that and there was not one soul around to watch and admire my "training" abilities! Good grief.