You can't recycle wasted time. - unknown

What a day! No shortage of action here on Baker Rd.

I started the "work"portion of the day getting the Kia ready for posting on Craig's List. The outside is washed and the interior vacuumed. All the nooks and crannies have been emptied of ear buds, pens, paper clips, spare change, and all the other odd things that fill up a car over eight years of ownership.

I was putting things away from that project when Pam yelled, "Stella has slime!"
One of the signs of impending birth in goats is a thick slime coming out momma's rear end and Pam was right. Yikes! I'm relatively new at this but I've never seen so much. So I put Stella into the smaller room in the barn that we use as a birthing suite and kept an eye on her.

Within ten minutes she was in labor, and it was labor indeed. Because it was her first kidding? I don't know but she pushed so hard it was impossible not to feel sorry for her. After about 30 minutes I saw exactly what I wanted to see: two little hooves.

Goats are supposed to be born front feet first and come out like a diver entering the water with hands over his head. More difficult pushing but eventually we saw the head. Once that biggest part was clear the rest of French Toast ("Frenchie") came out very quickly. We were very pleasantly surprised to see what I think is called a dappled doeling.
The other side has even more mixed color but at this point my efforts were about getting her cleaned up and keeping track of Stella to see if she was going to give birth to a second.
She didn't but she did do a great job of taking care of Frenchie. Momma goats should lick their newborns all over as part of the bonding dynamic, something not all first-timers will do. Two hours later Frenchie was at Stella's udder and everything looks just as it should. The first 24 hours can be critical but we have no reason to expect trouble.

Once things were calmed down in the barn (the rest of the goats could sense something was going on and got VERY noisy and nosey) I went to work on Sally.

Before going to Brazil I got 90% of the install done on the new universal carburetor. Today I got a new manual choke installed, put in a bracket that allows me to use my stock air cleaner, and installed a new gas cap to replace the old one that had a clogged vent. That last part sounds like it should be really simple but it was NOT. The gas cap is attached to a cable that is attached to the fill tube with very small bolts that are all but inaccessible. That's a task that on any other car would not take over an hour. Thank you, Ford.

After everything was bolted, connected, and hooked up I turned the key.
SHE RUNS!!
And much better than she did with the old carb. Smoother, drops down to idle when I take my foot off the pedal, and this new manual choke operates a lot smoother that the old one.
I'm happy.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll take Sally for an official test drive. I didn't want to push my luck today.

I had just come in from that when Pam yelled, "The goats are out!"
Blakeley and Eclair had somehow escaped from the weaning pen. The good news: They're so tame that getting them by the collar and leading them back up where they belong was easy enough. Bottle babies, both.
It's hard to prevent another breakout when I don't know for sure how they escaped this time. I *think* they got under the fence where there was about a 3" gap. I think they pushed against that and created just enough room to get out. So I spent the next hour-plus attaching more fencing to bridge that gap.

By the time that was done it was time to give Eclair his bottle and feed the others. And then a shower. We hit 83 today and I got pretty sweaty several times.

In retrospect? A very good day. Stella gave birth a day before her due date but we were her to watch and do the post-birth procedures (drying, cutting umbilical cord, iodine dip...)
We got a healthy and beautiful doeling.
Sally runs and runs well!
I *think* I closed the escape route.
Tomorrow's Sunday.