Rich had a day off today, and we sat at the breakfast table, eyeing the spitting sky and trying to decide what to do. There are a lot of things on the list – we need to sort out the old chicken run, so that the chickens can be shifted there when we start re-doing the barn next week. Taid had the idea that we could catch and wing clip our free range bandits, and stick them all in the chicken run, so that the newly re-roofed barn would be blissfully free of random chicken poo – but first the chicken run needs its fence fixing, and a new roof on the chicken house.

And we need to muck out the stall where Dexter died.

But the first priority seemed to be the laburnum trees that we suspect of poisoning Dexter. We have never had a problem before – but with our luck, as Rich pointed out, another goat would eat one next week, and we would remember the time that we sat inside, thinking about getting rid of the tree but putting it off one day too many…

So we spent the morning in the pouring rain, hacking up and getting rid of the laburnum. At times it rained so hard that we couldn’t see, so we would retreat into the top shed, hair plastered to head, (well, mine, anyway! sorry, Rich…) mopping our foreheads and staring out the open door at the sheets of water.During the breaks in the storm Rich chain-sawed up the trunks and big branches, while I took the loppers to the smaller ones. Afterwards I swept up the leftover leaves and seedpods as carefully as shards of glass, getting down on my knees to get rid of each scrap of green…

Glenda the good (our Saanen star milk goat) is still on milk withdrawal from the penicillin she had for the abscess on her udder. The abscess has cleared up brilliantly, but we’re still waiting to get our milk back. In the meantime, we’ve been milking Nessa, Toffee’s mother. (Toffee was born July 1.)

And I have to say, although I adore goats in general, Nessa is one that tests the boundaries of my affection. She is – not to put too fine a point on it – ugly, mean, nasty-tempered, horned like a devil and gammy-legged as an old sailor, with teats that stick out sideways. She kicks when you try to milk her, jumps fences when you put her out, and just generally behaves like a walking, bleating blister.

Yesterday I went out to do the morning barn chores with fear in my heart. I past the empty, ominous, yet-to-be-mucked out stall where Dexter died. I checked carefully that everyone was still alive – although we think it was the laburnum, it’s hard to tell – he might have had something infectious! But everyone seemed happy and hungry, leaning eagerly over the stall doors for the odd scratch behind the ear. Lola always stands up on her hind legs and leans her brisket on the door, like some dance hall floozy waiting for a whiskey at the bar…

I’ve put a radio in the barn, because I seem to spend so much time in there that I thought I might as well have some music. So I turned on the radio, collected all the food bowls from the various stalls – we have 11 goats now, in four different pens, and each pen gets its own ratio of food bowls, proper amounts of stock mix, wet or dry beet shreds, etc…very complicated. I dished out the food, gave the bowls to the right inhabitants, put Glenda’s bowl on the milking stand and let her out. She went straight up on the stand, jumped up and started eating quietly, bless her – she’s never kicked or budged in her life, even when we were milking her with a horrible great abscess in her udder. You’ve never seen such a placid animal. I used to think Saanens were boring…but I’ve changed my tune now! Rich tried to tell me about Saanens from the first, of course…he nearly always is right, it’s very annoying.

I tipped Glenda’s milk into the two bottles we use to feed Eira, let Glenda out in the field, and put Nessa’s food bowl on the stand with a sinking heart. She came out, kicking and butting, tried to escape into the field, didn’t want to get on the stand, resisted when I heaved her up, and immediately had a gigantic poo everywhere.

I started to milk her and she kicked.

I milked with the other hand and she kicked.

I tried again and she put her foot right in the bucket, complete with clod of poo.

I gave up on the jug, held her leg with one hand and started trying to milk with the other, just to make her more comfortable. (Why I bothered, I don’t know!) Her wonky sideways teat was spraying my legs with milk on every other squirt – sometimes soaking me, sometimes the floor, sometimes the wall. Then I decided to try the jug again, grabbed it, and sloshed the remaining milk in it all over my shirt.

I gave up and came inside the house, covered with milk and pieces of hay. I figured that I had about two hours before I would actually start to curdle.

I called my friend Lynn – the one I call “the goat whisperer.”

“Lynn,” I whimpered. “Help me.”

Lynn showed up about forty-five minutes later with her clean clothes in a bag, asked for a pitcher of warm water and a rag, and headed out for the barn. She came in smiling about twenty minutes later with a liter and a half of milk in the jug.

“How did you do it?” I asked her, awed.

“She needs hobbling,” Lynn said. “Just tie a scarf around her back legs in a figure-8.”

Hobbling. Sure. I knew that…..