A slide into decadence

Is this the slippery slope into decadence?  Sitting in bed with my laptop and mobile broadband dongle, sipping Sal's delicious homemade kirsch?  I will spare you the selfie of me in my jim-jams with Marmite Cat ..  Think yourselves lucky!

So, I am enjoying my extra hour of GMT and thought I would make the most of the extra time by writing you a little blog.

Today was a lovely dry and sunny market day.  Whilst I was at Notting Hill, young Joe went off to Twickenham for the second time.  And very good it was too!  The meat sold out very quickly (note to self .. take more meat to Twickers) and the cheese, milk and soap were also very popular.  Joe was pleased to see many customers coming back to make repeat purchases and so we are hoping that this new market will be worth while.

Meanwhile, at Notting Hill, Jamie's flowers were still in full bloom:

And it was great to see Omer from the Hackney Deli/Bow Belly who had all kinds of deliciousness on his stall including sage, goats' cheese and squash muffin.  This is made using a mixture of two of our cheeses and it is truly an awesome muffin ..

And Epi continues to be a naughty goat at milking time but now lets herself in to the Naughty Corner.

Here she is trying to help David figure out how to use his new phone!

 

 

Just when you thought it was all over ...

So.. there was Kidding Phase 1 in the spring.  Then a few weeks ago we had Kidding Phase 2 - a much shorter version of Phase 1.  And today, dear Perdi goat decided that we should have Kidding Phase 3.

Hearing something squeaking this afternoon, David went to check out the babies but could see nothing wrong.  The squeaking continued and he finally tracked down the source:

Yes indeed - two bouncing baby boys!  In mid-October!  How ridiculous is that?! 

So, just when we thought kidding was well and truly over, it looks like we may be starting again!

There's always one ...

Those of you familiar with our little goatie family may remember that we start all our kids off on bottles of milk and then gradually move them over to feed on milk powder from an automatic machine. 

As we have only a few kids at the moment, it is not worth connecting and running the big machine and so we connect their teats up to buckets instead.  Just like this ..

It all works very well and most babies soon get the hang of feeding themselves ..

But every year, there are always one or two kids who just can't get the hang of it and we have to continue to feed them with bottles instead.

So, here is the latest refusnik ..

Danny Boy.  A beautiful big British Alpine baby - son of our lovely Dani goat.

It took him a while to get the hang of bottle feeding, but once he figured it out, he was well away.  But, I have tried and tried to get him to feed off the teats and he will not have any of it.  Absolutely refuses.  Won't do it.  And, he will not drink milk replacer either.  Has to have proper milk from a bottle.  Nothing else will do.  Little monkey.

And what a change in the weather this week.  Suddenly chilly in the mornings.  It was only 1 degree when I drove up to the farm earlier this week.  Time for fleeces, woolly hats and the head torch!  Always nice to bring a bit of glamour to the goat shed ...

Goaties at rest

How about these for some stressed-out, hard-working goatie girls:

Astra

 



Pandora and Sibyl

All lying down outside after milking - waiting for the barn doors to open up again so they can run inside and settle back down on their nice comfy straw mattresses.  It's a hard life!

The boys are in full gobbling mode now as those lovely girls start to strut their stuff.  As I think I may have mentioned in the past - male goats have some rather disgusting habits during the mating season .. As a result, Daramac is going a lovely shade of yellow, rather than the magnificent white beastie that he was earlier in the year.

And how quickly those babies are growing ..

But, as usual, everything is just too much for some tiny people .. Cicely's little girlie went fast asleep after her bottle of milk this morning ..