Upon going out in the late morning to feed Bucky and Peaches, our South African Boer (pronounced ‘boar’) goats, I found Peaches already into labor with her first baby kid about to enter the world. I had been using a baby monitor borrowed from John & Lynn Angus to keep track of her progress. But after so many false starts, I had started getting desensitized. Hopefully I will have learned my lesson. Of course, the night before I decided to turn the monitor off, and forgot to turn it back on the next morning to listen. So when I arrived to feed them, I was totally caught off guard. Instant panic mode!!! The first kid’s head was already protruding. I had no idea how long she had been in labor.

Danika had organized a wonderful ‘birthing kit’ down at the barn. Our plans (they always are ideal on paper) were to catch her in early labor, go through the procedures once again, glove up, sanitize us and the birthing area, then joyfully await the delivery of whatever God would give us through the small frame of a little female goat named Peaches.

That was on paper. Life should be so simple. In reality, when panic mode set in, all those other plans went out the barn door. I got on my cell phone to call Danika ..... “I’m sorry, you are not authorized to use the Cricket phone system. If you’d like to use the Cricket phone system, contact your sales representative to activate the service.” You know why I know that statement so well? I heard it about 50 times trying to call out. I have Sprint ... for now. A cell phone that sends you to a worthless tower when you REALLY need to call out is no better than a rock in the driveway. One time, I actually did get through very briefly, but not enough to even say a word. Danika called me back. By then my hands were swimming in afterbirth while helping the first kid, whom Luc and Kate named “Oreo” (once you see the kids you’ll understand). I opened the phone, set it on speaker, then flung it out of the war zone but close enough to hear and, hopefully, return the conversation.

“Honey,” I heard the sweet voice of my wife coming from the grass, “Is Peaches having her babies?” “Yes!!, I yelled, both hands pretty tied up at the moment.” ‘Honey, can you hear me?” I realized she wasn’t hearing me. Had someone walked by, it probably would have looked humorous to see me on my knees in the goat pen in the middle of delivery with my head turned toward a patch of grass and hearing me yell at the grass as loud as I could, “YES!!, YES!!! YES!!”. She never heard, but we must have connected on a deeper level because she knew.

Oreo was born classic in perfect position. A strong white blaze face, he came out head first with both his front feet bracketing his chin. God was kind to me. With Marble, our second born (we had twins!), the Lord saw to it in His indeterminable kindness, to give me more of a learning curve with the delivery. Marble came out 20 minutes later head first, but with only one foot by his chin; the other leg was tucked back by his stomach. “I could sure use that book about now,’ I thought to myself. I would have called our neighbors, Charles & Betty Turner. They once had goats and had helped with deliveries. They would know what to do. But as close as they were, they might have been 1000 miles away ... or at least as far away as that dumb Cricket phone tower. No, I was alone ... just me and God, a female goat screaming in pain. a baby goat half way out whose eyes I could see and whose mouth I could watch as he seemed to be attempting to breath. Should I break the sack? Can I reach in and find that other foot? After several unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the lost foot, I decided to break the sack, let the kid start breathing, and PRAY (which was part of my morning conversation when not talking to the grass), and hope the baby came out before his lungs were incapacitated by the birth canal of the mom. I opened the sack with my fingers and little Marble started to breath. As Peaches pushed I pulled. After a few frightening attempts, baby goat number two came out. I, being the creative person that I am, was calling them Number 1 and Number 2. ( I think it’s the open wild space of the farm that sets my creative juices so free to just instantly come up with such names.)

Within an hour both were standing on wobbly feet, albeit for not long. I watched them fall over like the Leaning Tower of Pisa that just kept falling. I watched all four feet run in opposite directions allowing the babies to do their own version of a Spread Eagle. I watched front legs go out as if the babies were kneeling to pray. And back legs go out as if about to poop. It truly was a joy to behold. By this time, after making sure Peaches was only throughly exhausted and not in any kind of long-lasting pain, I cleaned up enough to grab my camera (which I’d taken back to the house). About 50 snap shots later, the camera aside and the newborns towel dried and wobbling around Momma, I turned my attention to Peaches. It took awhile to get her up; she needed help. (Had I been her I probably would have been saying as I lay there all sprawled out and in pain, “Just shoot me and put me out of my misery. Just shoot me!” But Peaches is braver than me. Once she was able, with a little help, she got up, got a huge drink of water, and found her way to the feed I had finally put in their buckets.

Pictures sent out that early evening to Danika and the kids are where the other ... far less creative ... names came from. The kids saw Number 1 and immediately said, ‘Oreo!’ Then they saw Number 2 and said, ‘Marble!”

And so it came to be that on the 14th of April in the middle of one of those odd temperature dropping days, God saw fit to send these two cute little cuddly goats into our lives. (At least one female would have been nice; hard to grow a heard with a bunch of bucks, but God is infinitely wise so we will defer to His selection and enjoy the gifts He has brought us).

We hope you will enjoy seeing these photos and have a sense of what it took to get them. If you are in the mind, come by and hold one of these little critters before they get too big (and they’re growing fast). Of course, you are always welcome.