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 ..

Normal service will now be resumed ..

So .. have you missed me?  Missed who? ME!!!  Hasn't anyone noticed that it's been rather quiet on the blogging front? ...  Of course you have. 

Many apologies for the slight hiatus in service but I have been laid low by a rather nasty stomach bug.  Not completely sorted yet but a hundred times better than I have been.  Needless to say, it's been rather of a pain in the bottom (if you will forgive the expression) with trying to sort out extra people to cover all the work that Yours Truly usually does ..

But the rest of the Ellie's Dairy team has rallied round and everyone has been brilliant at doing all sorts of extra jobs at strange hours of the day and night.  Dairy Fairy Julie was busy bottling milk for orders at 7.30 one morning and Kelly (daughter of Jane the Cheese) sped up on her motorbike to lend a hand feeding babies when I had to retire to bed.  Joe (and girlfriend Rosie) spent a happy day at Wimbledon market and Milking Mel has been doing all sorts of extra shifts to keep the milking parlour going. 

So a big THANK YOU to everyone .. especially David who has had to put up with all these extra people doing things in his goatshed!!

So, here I am back again .. about a stone lighter but almost back to normal.

We're not sure but we think we may have finished the second round of kidding as nothing has appeared for a couple of weeks now, although there are a few suspiciously fat goaties still lying around.  All the babies are growing well and even the little tiny Wilma goat is up and about.

We think that she is still partly blind but this may be a temporary condition which will sort itself out in time.  But she is a chirpy little soul - very sweet.  She has been named Thumbelina.

It would seem that Daramac is responsible for most of these babies and it is very easy to spot the family resemblance.  All the kids have the 'slightly surprised' expression that Daramac wears most of the time and it does make me chuckle to see all these little goats of different colours with faces exactly like their dad.

Here's one little handsome chap..

And talking of handsome chaps .. With a couple of strategically planned 'comfort breaks' I drove up to Cambridge today to collect a new BT boy.  Strangely enough, it turns out that he is the brother of a male which has recently been bought by our friends in Dorset.

So here he is on a brief trot into the goat barn to meet his future girlfriends.  As you can see, there was rather a lot of interest in the new boy!

 

He is in temporary quarters in the hay barn with the babies at the moment while he has a few days to get settled.  Then it will be off to work for him! 

The beautiful September weather has seen the goaties outside for much of the time, especially when David opened up the other field for them again ..

And finally .. you will be pleased to know that all the girls have settled well into their new home in Herefordshire and are busy getting to know the 3 new boys who have been put in to keep them company.  Lucky goatlings!

Babies, babies and more babies!

Seems that rather a lot of our girls were very late in season this spring .. all that fluttering of eyelashes at the boys has resulted in an Indian Summer of kids .. 24 so far and still more to come I'm sure!

Two of Mary's goats set the ball rolling with Katya having a female and Kismet a male .. They were closely followed by Goblin who decided that she would have 3 little girls ..

Other new mums include Bassey:

 

 Blossom:

Astra:

 And our dear old Wilma goat:

Wilma had two little white girlies which David had to pull out backwards.  They have been a little bit poorly, especially the one at the front of this picture who has not been doing very well at all.  But a few nights in the caravan with goatie mum Debbie, lots of warm milk and attention from Wilma have made a huge improvement and she actually managed to stand up on her own today. 

Wilma is doing really well, if a little tired.  Of course, as a geriatric mother, she has all the privileges of age - lots of treats and many bananas!

And how about this little girlie?

 

Isn't she just beautiful?!  We haven't had one marked like this before .. she is going to be called Domino.

And in the midst of all this activity, we have got another racing pigeon to look after.  It landed on Saturday afternoon but we were not able to catch it for a couple of days.  It is looking a bit poorly at the moment and so I am having to feed it and look after it until it is picked up at the end of the week.  It belongs to a very nice chap in South Wales.

I'm back off to another night in the caravan outside the goat barn tonight .. very late in the year to be doing that!

I leave you with a little clip of what babies get up to while mums are busy eating their breakfast ..

Goaties on the move

Today was the day when 130 of our lovely goatlings and kids moved to their new home near Hereford.  It has been an exhausting couple of weeks getting them and their paperwork all ready to go.  All those feet to trim and blood tests to do.  Lots of checking and rechecking of paperwork and the final selection of who was going and who was staying ..

So, finally, whilst Anita and Mel did the milking this morning, David and I went and sorted everyone out ready for loading into a huge lorry that was due to turn up around 9.30am.

We penned goatlings and kids separately - here's all those stroppy teenage goatlings waiting to be loaded:

The lorry turned up dead on time and we loaded the goaties in groups of around 20 to each section of the lorry. 

The babies went in first, up on the top deck ..

It all went pretty smoothly and soon we were ready to go.  Anita and I had tears in our eyes as we waved the lorry off ... a very proud moment that we were sending our babies to start another herd but sadness that so many of our lovely girls were moving so far away.

After a quick wash and change, I jumped in my van and drove like the clappers to catch up with the lorry.  I finally made contact with him at Warwick Services where he had stopped for a break .. and then it was off along the M5 and through that beautiful rolling Herefordshire countryside towards the Welsh mountains.

The goaties' new dad, Andrew, was waiting to meet us and lead us up  to the farm.  The lane got narrower and narrower and the lorry only just made it through in places!

 

And finally we reached the farm.  Absolutely gorgeous!  Stunning views across the valley to Wales .. lucky goaties! 

Unloading was pretty quick as all the goaties ran down the ramps and into their new barn .. goatlings in one section and kids in another.

They all seemed to have travelled very well and were soon investigating their new houses and tucking into the lovely hay and straw that Andrew and his family had got ready for them.  But in true goatie fashion, the kids had managed to break their automatic water bowl within minutes of being there!  Welcome to goat keeping, Andrew and Diane!!!

So, I am spending tonight in the most gorgeous farmhouse B&B a few miles up the road.  I will go back and say goodbye to the goaties in the morning before I wend my weary way back to the south ..  Must say that I would much prefer to stay up here!  No traffic, no people and lots of mountains.  Idyllic!!

David will be busy while I am away .. especially as we now have another new arrival.  This little girlie arrived during morning milking yesterday ...

And with very proud mum Katya (one of the big Mary goats):

 

 

 More to come .. we just don't know when!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like father, like son ...

At this time of year, it always makes me chuckle to see the little stud boys strutting their stuff in front of the girls (usually their mums and aunties!).  Young Magnus is glued to his dad Daramac and is learning all those hideous male goat habits from him.  I haven't worked out yet if Daramac is a proud dad or just resents the competition!

I managed to snap this pic of Daramac and eldest son Magnus with one of his younger sons bringing up the rear.  Nice photo for the family album!

Meanwhile, back inside the goat shed and completely oblivious to all the macho posturing going on outside, Valerie was safely tucked up underneath the hay rack.

Yesterday was a long day for David as he was fighting through the undergrowth in a field which has been neglected for several years.  The farmer wants to bring it back into use and so David was sent out with the heavy flail mower to try and beat it all into submission so that the ploughs can go in next week.

It was a hugely overgrown field and David said that some of the plants were so high, they were above the tractor cab!  He took this pic out of the front window to give me some idea of what he was up against ... the red thing is the bonnet of the tractor (about 6 foot high!).

So, what to do with a weekend of no markets? Well, I was tempted to load everything into my van anyway and just drive around .. but then I had to get to grips with the VAT return, do a couple of deliveries and catch up with my email. 

Today, however, we gave ourselves a couple of hours off and went into Faversham to the Hop Festival.  Beer and curry ... an excellent combination!  And, of course, you have to get into the spirit of the day by wearing the traditional head gear ..

Even the dogs joined in the fun!

 

The best cheese in the world?

And so, you may remember that we were lucky enough to win a prestigious Gold Medal for our yummy Shaggy's Beard camembert at the International Cheese Awards that were held in Nantwich a few weeks ago ...  Well, yesterday, I received a box from the ICA which I opened immediately, thinking that it would be some of their nice labels for our prize-winning cheese.

Imagine my surprise when I found these inside the box:

 

Yes indeed, dear readers, The Delamere Dairy Trophy for Best Goats Cheese in Show.  Apologies, but I have to do that in big letters   BEST GOATS CHEESE IN SHOW!!!!!!  How utterly fab is that?!  When I checked the results sheet all those weeks ago, I never even glanced at the trophy results.

 

Our little dairy beat all those professional cheesemakers from all over the country (and beyond!) to get BEST GOATS CHEESE IN SHOW!!  Sorry to keep repeating myself ...

 

Whooping with joy, I immediately called David and Jane the Cheese and Julie our fab cheesemaker to give them all the good news.  They were all delighted, as you can imagine.  I ran into the goat shed and announced the news to the goatie girls and thanked them for all their lovely milk.  As you can see, they were overcome with excitement ..

 

 

Back to normality .. David was busy with hedgecutting when I called him with the BEST GOATS CHEESE IN SHOW news ... a short while later he phoned back to say that the tractor had broken down.  So I had to drive off to find him with a set of large jump leads ..  Fortunately for him, there was another tractor ploughing in the same field as so we used him to get going again ..

 

 

Young Epi is still a regular visitor to the 'naughty corner' in the milking parlour.  She has come to expect all kinds of treats when she arrives there .. she was very interested in the yummy cakes in David's Fortnum and Mason's cake box ..

 

 And, as the temperature dropped this week and the nights started to get darker, the boys decided that it was most definitely 'stinky beard' time of year.  And so those lovely big boys have started to display those very undesirable male goat characteristics ... They are starting to smell already and it's only been a few days!

Hugo was busy strutting his stuff for the ladies this evening during milking ..

And finally, the good news is that all those blood tests turned out fine and a big group of our youngsters are off to Herefordshire next week.  So much to organise before they go!

And did I mention that we won BEST GOATS CHEESE IN SHOW???  Shaggy would have been very proud ..

The endless task of harvest

It's pitch dark outside but I can still hear the combine harvesters running .. Everyone has had another frantic few days trying to get harvest done whilst the weather holds out.

Rained off for a few days, David has been busy carting straw bales again this week.  He managed to borrow a large trailer from another farmer so that he could move more bales in one load (22 instead of 16 on our trailer). 

However, when some b***ards decided to start setting fire to some of the bales still in the field one night, he decided that an even larger trailer was needed to get everything off the field as quickly as possible.  Another farmer very kindly lent us a HUGE trailer ... 36 bales ...

 

And so, to everyone who has been crawling along the A20 behind a red tractor with a very long trailer full of straw ... humble apologies :-)

You can just see the tiny dot of a tractor slightly to the left of centre in this picture.  Large field and around 500 bales to move.  Great sigh of relief when it was all finished tonight and all straw safely in barns.

Needless to say, goaties have been completely oblivious to all this frantic activity which has been taking place in order to provide them with food and bedding for the year ahead.

There was some anxiety though during morning milking when 3 sheep appeared in the goats' 'old' field.  They must have wandered through a weak part of the fence and were happily trotting along the hedge munching all sorts of yummy things.

 

They were spotted by Lulu and a couple of the others .. 

 

But no harm  done .. and they soon wandered back down the field and disappeared back through the hedge!

 

Wild Country Organics sent me home with a lovely bag of bits and pieces after Parson's Green market on Sunday.  Here's Wilma helping herself to a selection of yummy greens and carrots.

 

Incidentally, dear Wilma is expecting twins within the next few weeks!

You may remember that we had a few 'late' girls due to kid ... we had our scanning man in last week just to check a few of them over and we also have a couple more 'surprises' that we had not planned!  So, in a couple of weeks, I think we may get rather more kids than we expected.  But it's all good and it means that we will have more milkers still productive as we go into that 'winter dip'.

And finally .. what of Marmite cat?  Well, as I write to you this evening she is curled up on top of my printer .. very helpful!