We’re in full flood with feeding baby lambs - and it’s keeping us pretty busy!

Sadly, Rich’s pet sheep Pet died. She was very old, and he was worried about her this time around. She gave birth to a scrawny little lamb, and just didn’t have the strength to go on. It’s not the same, going down to the sheep shed, without Pet poking her head through the bars and demanding her special treat. Rich was very quiet for a few days…

But life on the farm goes on. Pet left a lamb we’ve named Rosie, who seems to be a fighter, so we’re feeding Rosie along with another lamb named Pickles, and of course there’s Joli’s special lamb, Mansel…Mansel is feisty and full of beans, gaining weight well. Joli is monitoring her milk amounts carefully, and had a nightmare the other night that Mansel got a pot belly! Welcome to the world of motherhood, I told her…

Mansel gets turned out now into the sheep field with the other sheep during the day, although she still sleeps inside under the heat light at night. Joli watches her anxiously, and reports that after a few days of bleating and hanging around by the gate, Mansel has made a lamb friend and seems to be fitting in nicely. 

Joli feeding Mansel

I’ve been bottle feeding the little kid goat, Lola, to get her calmed down and ready for milking when it’s her turn. So four times a day, Joli and I mix up milk, put measured amounts into four disinfected bottles, and troop out to the goat shed to feed lambs and goats.

Just when I thought I was finished feeding babies...

But Joli’s gone to spend the night with a friend, so I’ve been doing the feeding all alone! 

Last night Rich came out and split the feedings with me, but this morning I was completely on my own. I fed the three lambs, came back in, got a fresh bottle for Lola, plus the disinfected bowl that we milk into. Fed Lola, gave all the goats fresh feed, hay, straw and water. Then it was time to milk Buddug…

My latest challenge - goat milking!

Buddug has a lovely temperament, patient and gentle, but goat milking is an art that I haven’t quite mastered yet. Rich (who does the night milking) can do it in about ten minutes. But it takes me ages - you can’t pull on the teat, as you do with a cow. (Not, of course, that I know how to milk a cow!) But you have to pinch the teat between your thumb and forefinger, and then gently press the milk out with a flute-fingering motion - very tricky. 

The other day I had managed to wrestle a pint out of Buddug, after much foot stomping (hers and mine…) and set the milk down to put Buddug back in her stall. When I turned around, the $%^$$& cat was happily settled down, drinking my lovely fresh milk! 

“Mummy, you’re saying bad words again,” Benjamin told me solemnly. He was right…

So the cats got the milk that day, and I’ve developed a new system - the milk goes under a clean bucket while I finish the chores!

The milk is lovely - rich and sweet and not at all goat-ey. Benjamin loves it and asks for it, even over the dreaded juice that he adores. His eczema is clearing up, and his tummy seems to be in brilliant working order - so the milk is doing its job. 

There’s something wonderful about having our own farm milk…even if it’s a little hard to come by!

Our first pint of farm milk!

Geese and daffodils in the mist...

It was supposed to be sunny today! 

I’m just back from a business trip to Paris, and all set to do a load of outdoor projects. We’ve got the trampoline to set up, and the swing set, and the picnic table. Joli had her friend Emily come over to play, and we had big plans for a barbecue with chickens and our own home-made sausages, sizzling on the fire pit. I was going to make barbecue sauce and everything. I could practically smell it…

But instead, after a initial tantalizing blast of sun and blue sky, the mist rose from the sea, white and thick, blanketing everything with a haze of damp cold. 

Rich had borrowed a grass harrow from his friend Andrew to try to comb out the dead grass from last year’s disastrous not-harvested fields. He drove an hour on the tractor over to fetch the harrow, and an hour back. He persevered then through the mist, dragging mound after mound of dead golden grass out of the field, until it was time to come inside and watch the Wales v. Ireland rugby game.

But I was more easily discouraged from my plans to dig the grass out of the garden where I want to plant my wildflower seed, and retreated indoors to drink tea and catch up on the diaries…

Before I came in, I went to visit the goats. They’ve settled down a great deal, and now consent to eat ivy ( a great goat treat, apparently!) from our hands. But with stroppy Nessa starting at every sound, and shielding the twins from any human who comes near, it’s hard to see how we’re going to tame Lola. 

I’ve now hatched a plan to put Lola in a little pen with Joli’s baby lamb Mansel. Then the two can keep each other company, and hopefully Lola will see Mansel taking milk from a bottle and become convinced. I read in a goat-keeping book that bottle feeding a kid is the best way to tame them and ensure that you can milk and handle them when the time comes.

Mansel, aged 1 week

So far, I haven’t even been able to tempt Lola out of the stall away from her mother. But I was able to take a stool into the stall and sit in without Nessa trying to hurtle over the wall, which was some progress! The three even ate ivy out of my hand. I took in my book, and sat quietly reading for a while. Each of the twins came up and sniffed me, apparently convinced that I’m not too dangerous. But Nessa is still not convinced…

The chickens, Mr. Incredible and Monroe, are getting big and developing very grown-up looking pin feathers on their wings.

grown-up feathers coming in!

Mansel is getting big, too. She has long legs, like a gazelle, and leaps around rather than walks. Joli is turning her out into the field with the other sheep during the day, and sneaking her into the house (when Rich isn’t around to order her out again.) But at night she sleeps in her little pen under a heat lamp. 

Elly and her boyfriend, James, are at the farm today, eating chocolate biscuits and trying to keep out of the mist. James is a talented young musician who plays guitar in a band called Attack Pattern. He’s also one half of a house electro DJ duo called Vanguard, which will be performing in Narberth Queen’s Hall on Mar. 28…More info at www.myspace.com/levanguardfunk.

James' house electro DJ duo, Vanguard

And in the meantime, we wait for the mist to lift…

Today Rich went back to work, and I was on the farm by myself. Taid was nearby in his little house, of course, but I would be child-free. I planned out the whole day in my mind - I would clean the house, muck out the front porch (which after the busy weekend of lambing and collecting goats was knee-deep in mud and dust) mop the kitchen floor and generally have a quiet orgy of house cleaning. 

That was until Benjamin said “Mummy, my tummy hurts. Can I stay home with you today instead of going to Jess’ house?”

Jess is our brilliant child minder - a lovely lady, mum and dance teacher who lives four minutes from us. She teaches at Benjamin’s nursery school - or meithrin, as they call it here in Wales. On most mornings, Rich gets Beni up and dressed and drops him at Jess’, and Jess takes him to school, along with her beautiful little blond daughter, Katie. (Katie is Benjamin’s girl friend, as he tells us with great pride. She’s four.)

Anyway, it’s a lovely arrangement, which means that I can leave the house at seven with Joli, and get her to the bus by 7.45. It’s all a rather a lean, mean, well-oiled commuting machine with us in the mornings… 

Truth be told, I had my doubts about whether or not Benji’s tummy really hurt. I thought that the added lures of baby chicks, baby lambs and the new goats might just have had something to do with him wanting to stay home. But I’m leaving town on Wesnesday, for three days of work in Paris, and the working-mummy guilt of knowing that I was going away impelled me to agree. 

So I pulled over, we called Jess, and our plans were set…

I love being home alone with Benjamin. He’s such a friendly, cuddly, chubby little man. He loves nothing more than trotting around in his wellies, doing “jobs” and helping out around the place. 

Benjamin at home in his wellies

I warned him that we would be doing loads of house keeping, and he agreed. 

We cleaned out the chicks, and Benji minded them for me while I gave them fresh paper, water and chick crumbs. He’s named one of them Mr. Incredible, and the other one is called Monroe, because it’s just the color of Marilyn Monroe’s hair.

Mr. Incredible and Monroe

Then it was time to go outside and check on the goats. We had quickly cleaned out another stall and filled it with fresh straw for stroppy Nessa and her two twins, Dexter and Lola. But they were all wild as deer, panicking and rolling their eyes when we so much as came close to them. 

There was obviously a lot of taming to do before we could even think of weaning the twins and milking Nessa - and even more work to do on Lola as she grows up, so that we can milk her when it’s time!

I decided that I would start by just going to sit quietly in their stall with them, without trying to touch them, so that they could get use to people being nearby.

But when I let myself into the stall, Nessa abruptly jumped out of it, clearing a stable wall as high as my shoulder!

Nessa and the twins

She clattered into the milking pen and stood looking at me. I looked back at her, then around at Benji, who was standing frozen in the doorway behind me. I was trying to work out how to explain to him which door to close so that the goat wouldn’t bold out of the stable altogether, knocking him down on the way, when thankfully Taid came around the corner just at the right moment.

He was able to swing another door into her path, keeping her from escaping, while I worked my way around and shooed her back into her stable. Phew!

Then Taid told me that he thought there was a dead baby lamb up in the sheep shed. Horrified, I rushed up and found the one he was talking about. It was the twin of a little lamb we had named Mint Sauce (to keep us from getting attached - it was a male -) that Joli had been feeding, along with her own lamb Mansel.

Joli with Mansel and Mint Sauce

The lamb was collapsed onto its side, breathing heavily and twitching. 

I rushed it back into the house, wrapped in towels and laid in in front of the radiator, made up some lamb milk and tried to get it to drink. I settled in in my lap, put the teat in its mouth and massaged its throat, trying to get it  to swallow. 

It seemed to rally for a few minutes, and opened its eyes, and even seemed to be drinking. But then it stiffened, and shuddered, and lay still, and I knew that it had died in my lap…

I ran upstairs, stripped off all my lamb-smelling clothes, and stood in the shower under the hot water, crying and shaking. I had buried animals before, but nothing had ever died as I held it, while I was trying to save it. I could still feel the weight of it in my arms…

It’s twin, Mint Sauce, died the next day. They had some kind of infection, Rich thought. He was reassuring and kept telling me that it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could have done. “Sheep are good at dying. Sometimes we lose them for no obvious reason at all.”

But this time, it happened on my watch, when I had been left in charge, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I had known more, I might have been able to save it….