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….

We decided, goodness knows why, that we wanted some goats.

Actually, we’d been talking about it for a long time. Rich had goats before, and loved them. But he was concerned about what a tie they were – they need to be milked twice a day, and it’s difficult to get people to fill in for you if you need to go away. Milking a goat is a tricky business, and people who have goats of their own need to stay home and look after them.

So we’ve discussed it, off and on, without ever making any decisions.

Then something tipped us over the edge – I think it was when we took Benji to the chest clinic, to talk about managing his bronchitis. He has eczema and border-line asthma, and gets deep, wracking coughs that turn into secondary chest infections – far too many infections for such a sturdy little boy.

Goats milk apparently provides a virtual cure for eczema and asthma – Rich says that when he and his girls were drinking goats milk every day, none of them had any eczema. Nowadays, on cow’s milk, they all do. As do I. And Joli.

So we’ve got a household of people with eczema, a load of empty stalls in the barn, and 25 acres of green fields. It was time to get a goat.

I fancied a Golden Guernsey. I had seen them on a trip to Folly Farm, and was enchanted by them – they’re a gorgeous caramel color, delicate as deer, with fragile faces and shaggy coats.

Rich kept Saanen goats before, which are apparently so “milky” that you can even milk the males!

We got online and looked at a picture of the Saanen. I was unimpressed.

“They’re ugly,” I objected.

“They’re practical,” Rich pointed out, in our eternal chorus of aesthetic v. real world.

We looked at Anglo Nubians, which he had also kept. I liked them better, with their long floppy ears, but one website promised Anglo Nubian kids for £150 apiece! And that seemed like too much.

As we did more and more research, it seemed harder and harder to actually find a goat that was for sale. All my online searches drew a blank, and I was forced to resort to emailing goat societies, all of whom were very nice and promised to get back to me if they heard of any goats for sale, but none of whom had any at the moment.

It was very frustrating.

Then, after we took Benji to the doctor, we decided on a whim to take a drive, and see if the man who had sold Rich his goats the last time, was still there.

We drove over the green, sunlit hills, and turned down a lane that Rich thought – but wasn’t quite sure – was the right one. He chewed his lip and made guesses as to where we were going, and we ended up at a charming little house down tucked into a valley, studded with snow drops and early daffodils.

The lady at the door pointed us to her husband, who came up in overalls. He was, indeed, the same man who had sold Rich goats before, and he actually had some with which he was willing to part!

We went to look at the goats in a sunny stone barn, and I immediately fell in love with Lola, a little coal-black Anglo Nubian-ish kid, only one month old, all long legs with one ear that pointed out sideways.

I instantly fell in love with Lola...

I would have to bottle feed her, the farmer warned. But I thought that sounded like fun, and decided it would be a good way to get her tamed and easy to handle.

Since it would be ages until Lola was ready to produce milk, we also looked at Buddug (pronounced BITH-ig) a large, placid, matronly goat who had a handsome year-old billy goat son.

Buddug was dramatically splashed with black and white, like a backwards Dalmatian, and had a lovely temperament.

We decided to buy them both – the elderly nanny and the little kid – and settled with the man that we would come back for them in a few days, once we had gotten their stalls ready.

We drove back to the farm in high spirits, a little shaken by what we had done, but still game…

Buddug, the calm and gentle old nanny goat

Back at the farm, we cleaned out one of the old stalls, power-washed and disinfected it. Rich scrubbed down the milking bench, a concrete affair just the right height for the goat to stand on for milking.

The next day, we drove back in a state of excitement to pick up the goats. We had a nearly full contingent of kids with us – Benji, of course, and Joli and Elly came along to meet the new additions.

But once we got there, the farmer had come up with a problem. Lola had been nursing her mother for a month, and was likely to be difficult to wean onto the bottle. Rich agreed, it would be a problem. Once goats or lambs get used to the teat, it’s tough to get them to switch over.

Rich looked at me. I looked back at him imploringly. I had lost my heart to Lola, and love just isn’t logical…

We worked out that to buy Lola, we would have to buy Lola’s mother, as well, to feed her – a wild-eyed brown goat with horns, who we called Nessa, after the stroppy character from Gavin and Stacy.

And if we bought Nessa, we would also have to take Lola’s little twin brother (who we named Dexter) because he was too young to be left behind…

So Rich, sighing deeply, loaded four goats into the trailer instead of the expected two.

Instant herd!

Stroppy Nessa and the twins, Lola and Dexter

I picked up Lola, Rich picked up Dexter and the unlucky farmer dragged Nessa, kicking and bucking all the way, up the drive to the trailer. We loaded them in without too much complaint.

Then the farmer went into a different shed to get Buddug. She came out calmly, along with her handsome, glossy son, a billy of about a year old. Even I could see that it was impossible for us to take him - male animals, as Rich often says, aren’t much use on the farm, and we already had one billy too many, thanks to me.

But we were all nearly in tears by the time that Buddug was loaded into the trailer, bleating piteously as she was separated from her son, and he was standing there looking after her as the door was shut, crying back and looking bewildered…