Helping Hands

Our goat kidding season will begin in less than three weeks! Although we will be warming, however temporarily, into the 40's this week, it's likely to still be around freezing when the babies arrive. Once the newborn kids have been dried off and received some warm colostrum, they will be comfortable. However, with goat birthing there will be quite a bit of watching and waiting on my part. I eschew gloves most days because I'm in a hurry, but after a few hours near freezing my hands start to get cold.

We are very fortunate to have help from a dear friend this year, mostly since she is interested in learning goat husbandry, but also because we have our hands full with a 5 month old human baby. I want her hands to be warm, despite being covered in baby goat goo, so I dug out my grandmother's knitting needles and patterns. I'm a self-taught knitting novice, but I figured as long as they were for goaty chores who cares if they are a little irregular. I found a "hunting mitts" pattern from a Mary Maxim publication printed within a sixty cent booklet of other gifts and novelties in Canada (there's no pub date, but I'm thinking '50s based on the pictures). I made up the mitten flap stitches to mimic the pair I use. This is my inheritance. It's a great resource for those do-it-yourself folks who may be disinclined to by a pair of polyester mittens from Wal-Mart. It took most of my free time away from this past weekend. Once they were finished, I showed my husband with pride. He commented on how much they must be worth, given the time I had spent on them. My rebuttal as usual, "when you're unemployed, your time's not worth much more than you make of it." I'm happy with them and I hope she is too.