Weather: The thermometer says 67 degrees, but it feels colder than that - cloud and sun alternating, with a chilly breeze.

Tasks for the day: bury the dead lamb, go to the farm shop for more goat food, make lemon curd

Rosie, the lamb who had wet mouth and bloat, died shortly after we got her back from the vet. I felt really sad about this one - we had nursed her and fed her for so long, and she was the daughter of Pet, Rich’s pet sheep who died giving birth to her. I was really hoping to have Pet’s daughter to grow up and take her place…

But, not meant to be. She was always a little sickly and scrawny, and Joli had nursed her along. I suppose in the natural scheme of things, she would have died right away. Poor thing.

Another fatality - one of my two Buff Orpington chicks. Mr. Mean, its nasty brother, pecked its nose and eye, which swelled shut. And then it just seemed to give up the will to live, even though I couldn’t see anything wrong with it aside from the eye, which I thought would heal. 

Mr. Mean carries on, however, feisty and noisy and stroppy as you like. Since he’s on his own, we’ve been taking him into the house to hang out with him, and he’s funny - he’ll attack your finger if he sees it! Rich said he had read that the way to cure them of that was to put your fingers down, as if they were another chick, and kick back. So Mr. Mean had a little training session…

Mr. Mean gets in the ring with his opponent...

On Saturday we all pitched in to muck out the lambing shed, where the ewes had been kept in to lamb. All the muck then goes into the muck spreader, and then it will get spread onto the fields, to grow the grass for next years lambs. A tidy little ecosystem…

Everyone helps, even Benjamin, age 3

And then we went inside for a play. ..

George tosses Benji

George, 19  just recently went to the SkillAuto competition in Bridgewater to compete against eight other aspiring ace mechanics. He came out first, with a 98%! He was in the newspaper and everything. He won the possibility of a job with Audi/BMW in Cardiff, and a multi-meter, that tests electrical circuits. Now he goes on to the next leg of the competition.

He also is now a fully qualified mechanic, and we were so proud of him that we all went out for supper! Since there are eight of us, we very rarely go out to eat…a treat that we reserve when one of the kids do something fantastic. Da iawn, George!

Just got interrupted by all the goats bleating outside - there are spatters of rain and they’re complaining.

The goats, complaining...

The goats don’t have waterproof coats like the sheep, so they hate to stand out in the rain. It makes it dicey to let them out, because it rains every ten minutes here. If we shut them in all the time the milk yield goes down…but if they come out, we can’t leave the house because it might rain while we’re gone! 

Rich is going to build them a little shed outside, so they can go in and shelter when they choose. But until it’s finished, I’m jumping up every few minutes to check that it’s not really raining…

Today you can see the sea from the kitchen window...

Farm weather today: Sunny with a cold breeze, 61 degrees.

Tasks for the day: We were supposed to take the car to Cardigan today to repair a tire, but it’s Barley Saturday, when they race stallions down the main street! So, Cardigan is to be avoided at all costs unless you’re keen to get run over, by people and horses both…

We were then going to spend the day pottering around doing jobs - I need Rich to build me a table on which I can feed the doves (out of cat reach) and a way to keep the chick-shed (where the two bigger Buff Orpington chicks are housed) closed from the inside, when I’m in with them.

Mr. Incredible and Monroe are getting huge!

But then Joli came in from feeding the lambs to announce that Rosie, the smallest and sickliest of the lambs that she’s bottle feeding, was bloated. Rich went out to look and came in carrying Rosie, looking grim. He thinks she has bloat and wet-mouth, something mysterious and horrible that happens to sheep, apparently…It would be heart-breaking if Rosie died now, so close to weaning. Joli has been so faithful and tender in her feeding of the lambs.

Joli and her lambs

He and Joli went rushing off the the vet, so that’s a hole put in our day!

In the meantime, I have to sort out something to do with all these lemons:I went a bit mad at the farmers’ market yesterday - they looked so beautiful, forty of them for five pounds! So I paid the man and hauled them home, and now have to sort out something to do with them. I’m thinking lemon curd…so, have to haul out the farm wives’ cook book and find a good recipe. 

Another problem to be solved today is the problem of Mr. Mean, the latest hatch of Buff Orpington chicks. (Two chicks out of ten eggs, how pathetic is that!) Here’s Mr. Mean, and don’t be fooled by appearances:

Mr. Mean

He’s the toughest, nastiest thing going! Only days out of his shell, and he’s pecked his sister chick so badly that she has a bloody nose and a swollen-shut eye. If you put your hand in, he’ll run at it and peck it! Never seen anything so small and fluffy with such a mean streak. 

So, I’ve got to separate the two chicks - which seems ridiculous, since there’s only two of them to start with. And since they’re separated, they’re cheeping madly, which is driving everyone crazy. So, have to solve that problem as well…

And then, there’s the question of what to do with all this milk!

Too much milk!

The goats are producing about eight pints of milk a day - that’s a gallon! And even though there are eight of us in the house, we don’t drink that much. The lambs are having some at the moment, but they’ll be weaned soon. 

George asked us if there was any cow’s milk left in the house, and Rich told him that there hadn’t been cow’s milk for weeks. George laughed and said that he’s been drinking it all the while without knowing, and thought it was delicious! So, that bridge has been crossed…

We’ve been online this morning and ordered a cheese making kit - apparently it takes a gallon of milk to make a pound of cheese, so that will absorb some of the surplus - if I make cheese every day! But can we eat a pound of goat’s cheese every day? We’ll see…

I saw George’s mum, Lynn, in town yesterday and asked her to come over with her cheese making equipment and show me how - she says you can do all kinds of fancy things, put in chopped apricots or berries, roll it in cracked black pepper, etc. I can’t wait for our cheese-making afternoon! She’s lovely, George’s mum…

In the meantime, I guess we need to put a sign up on the road for farm eggs and goat’s milk (we can’t sell it for human consumption, as we’re not licensed, but we can sell it for people to give to their lambs and puppies) and see if we can shift some of the extra! 

Not the land of milk and honey, but definitely the land of milk and eggs…

View from the kitchen window, Fri April 24

Weather today - mild and slightly misty, 64 degrees. 

Tasks for the day - Town day today! Farmer’s market for a net of carrots, buy a new milking bucket for Rich (the last one I bought was too big) a new milking strainer, mixed corn feed for our new arrivals, the doves!

Our new arrivals, the doves...

My helper for the day - Benjamin, who only attends his new school four mornings a week, and stays home on Fridays.

Benji helps with the haying

Day before yesterday, we desperately needed some straw for bedding all our new goats, and Rich didn’t want to buy a big bale until we have mucked out the lambing shed, so that we could get to the small baler, so that we could re-bale the big bale straw into small bales, which would be easier to handle…

It’s always like this on the farm, before you do one task, you have to do another, and another, and before you know it, the whole week is gone! 

Anyway, in this case, we worked it out. Rich had gone out to run a brilliant machine that he borrowed from his friend Andrew, through the fields, to dig out all the old dead grass. We’re still dealing with the legacy of last year’s horrendous summer - the fields were too wet to mow and bale, so all the dead grass is still there, choking out the new growth. 

Rich dug out the dead grass, leaving it in rows. We all went out to rake it up and put it into the little trailer. I rode the quad bike forward one pile at a time, and Rich pitched-forked it into the trailer, and Benji sat on it to squash it down - not many motions older, I reckon, than the one of pitching hay with a pitchfork. Your genetic muscles just remember how…

And at the end of the process, we pitched it up into the little loft over the goat shed, and had loads of nice dry bedding for them! So, problem solved for the moment…

Speaking of goats, we had Lola de-horned on Wednesday, and a more horrific, medieval thing I hope never to see. I thought that we would just drop her off at the vet’s and come back to pick up our neatly de-horned goat kid. 

To my alarm, as we walked in, Angus the vet told us to put her down on the table, and it became obvious that we were going to be present for the operation. Angus is a down-to-earth, ruddy practical guy wearing a ripped jumper and sagging jeans. He handed Rich a gas-and-air mask which he put over Lola’s muzzle, which was fine until the tube fell out onto the floor! We stuffed the tube back in again and prayed that it wasn’t a bad sign of things to come…

Angus injected Lola just beside each horn, left the room again and came back with a length of serrated wire, with which he proceeded to saw off the now sleepy Lola’s horns, right there and then! Lola moaned and objected in her sleep, and the sawing sound seemed incredibly loud. I was holding Lola tight, along with an assistant, and couldn’t do anything but just close my eyes…

Rich was crouching down on the floor heating up something with a butane torch, and when the sawing and bleeding was done, he handed it to Angus - a white-hot metal tool. Angus put it down on the horn buds and the smell of burning bone filled the room.

When it was all over, we gathered up our kid, who was looking around a bit bewildered, and the assistant asked if we wanted to keep the horn. For some reason, I said yes, and brought it back with me…perhaps I’ll have it set in a necklace, like a lion’s tooth. 

Lola is absolutely fine - seemed improved by the operation, if anything! She was skipping around and even head-butting the other goats later that day, much to our astonishment. I think Rich and I felt more wobbly than she did…

Lola, newly de-horned...