The main project on the agenda at the moment is replacing the barn roof. We were putting fresh hay in the hay racks for the goats the other day when it was raining, and the rain was coming right through onto the goats! We looked at each other, dismayed…We had known that the roof was going to need doing at some point, but had planned for it next spring, when our piggybanks might have recovered a little from the outlay on the wedding and the honeymoon. Now it looks like we had better scrape our butter a little more thinly and get the roof done before the winter comes…

Rich jumped up on top of the stable divider (he’s very agile, for such a tall man!) and started pacing around like a tight rope walker, squinting knowledgeably at the beams and supports, pulling down cobwebs and poking at cords. “We need a big timber here, and then a framework of supports,” he told me, and I nodded as if I understood exactly what he meant. When he first talked to me like this I used to panic, thinking that I was supposed to contribute some meaningful bit to the baffling conversation. Now I understand that he’s just talking out loud, getting it clear in his head, and all I have to do is nod agreeably. If I wasn’t around, he’d probably talk to Mr. Incredible, the big Buff Orpington rooster, with equal effect…

Then Rich laughed. “Look at this!” he said. Over the goat stalls is the place where we store the hay, and in the hay bales were two whole nests of kittens, mewing faintly and warmly tucked into the straw, and an entire dozen chicken eggs. So that’s where she’s been laying! We had wondered - but it hardly seemed worth climbing into the rafters every time we wanted an omelette.

Really we need to re-locate the chickens before we do the roof. They’re free range, wander the grounds during the day and make themselves at home in the barn. They make a terrible mess, leaving chicken poo around everywhere, and they eat the cat food and terrorize the goat kids away from their food.

But they’re such brazen characters, and think they own everything - I can’t quite imagine where we would put them, or how we would make them stay there! There’s Mr. Incredible, (large, handsome and dumb), his rather bedraggled looking wife Monroe (she’s had too much love, and it’s made her feathers fall out…) and the game cockerel, who reminds me of an Italian-Guido type, shiny, showy and lethal…and the Black Rock chicken, who’s old as the hills, and seems to know every trick in the free range chicken book. If there’s a dust bath or an extra scoop of rolled bran going, she gets it.

The latest goat to stay in the kitchen is Toffee, the one-and-a-half week old daughter of Nessa. Toffee looks like a cross between a faun and a gazelle, with the softest brown fur, long gangly legs, grey blue eyes and a white swirl on her forehead. I love this stage with the goat kids, when they’re first being broken to the bottle, and need feeding four times a day. We keep them inside for a while, and I cuddle them shamelessly. Toffee has house trained herself, just as Eira did, and she comes into and curls contentedly up on the arm chair while I work. When she gets restless I take her out for a walk, and she dutifully does her business outside. Yesterday she came along while while we examined and laid plans for the barn, and she skipped and gamboled in the hair, bounding straight up in the air as if she was on springs…