June 9, 2013
“What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!”
~ Alfred Adler
November 18, 2013
Puts the whole thing in perspective really
June 3, 2013
As I have said many times – goats are great characters and usually up to mischief of one sort or another. Ours always seem to have a fascination with our car – last year’s kids seemed to spend all their time climbing about on the roof. This year they seem to have other ideas…………
Wispa the naughtiest goat in the world looking for somewhere comfy to lie down.
Marshmallow back seat driving.
Crunchie and Honey making sure no-one else can get in.
At times it feels as though we are in the monkey enclosure at Longleat Safari Park – I’m just glad they haven’t started pulling bits off the car yet!
June 2, 2013
Kashmir, Cadbury and Drifter chilling out
The weekend here has been gloriously sunny and the goats have been taking the chance to do a bit of sunbathing.
Wispa – just for once immobile !
Saturday was so hot that even Wispa (the cheekiest goat kid ever) had to lie down and sunbathe for a while.
Golden Guernsey baby Kashmir
And his twin brother Korma
And twins Korma and Kashmir hunted for shade and ended up retreating under the nearest gorse bush. but came out to play as the worst of the heat died away.
May 31, 2013
So, we have got ourselves a new camera to try to take some photos of all the goings on on the smallholding and update the blog.
We decided to test the camera with Blotchy’s latest litter of kittens. Blotchy the barn cat has now become Blotchy the house cat, as she disappeared during a cold snap while she was pregnant.
When she came back to the barn it became apparent that she was terrified of the baby goats, and I was worried that she would try to have her babies outside and lose them in the cold. So……..we decided to bring her home until she had had her kittens. That was about 2 months ago, and I don’t think she has even looked out of the window yet. She is completely contented at home and has produced a litter of 3 kittens.
Having the kittens at home has been a totally different experience to having them at the barn, and they have kept us endlessly entertained.
After an hour of chasing kittens left, right and centre, rescuing them from behind the furniture, disentangling ourselves from the octopus – like grip of tiny legs and claws and trying to persuade all three of them to sit in the same place at the same time WITHOUT fighting, all the while trying to coax the new camera to take photos when I asked it to, NOT three seconds later as it appeared to want to do. After an hour of sheer frustration, I handed the camera to the apprentice who produced three shots, apparently with ease! Admittedly she cheated and took individual shots, not the group shot that I was aspiring to but, as you can see, she made a pretty good go of it!
May 30, 2013
Well, this has been a longer break than anticipated but so much has been happening I just haven’t had the time to sit down and type. I am afraid there are no photos just yet as the camera is in hospital.
We ended up with 6 goat kids – 2 female and 4 male. We had some exciting times with kidding this year – they all kidded earlier than expected (must have done my maths wrong there). One of them had twins which we nearly lost to cold (some rapid work to warm them up and get them feeding) and another mum put her kid in a draught, he got chilled and, despite frantic efforts, we were too late to revive him.
The goats are all out on the summer grazing now and loving it. They are always so much calmer when they are out for the summer than when they are confined in the bad weather.
The hens and ducks are laying well and, now that so many people are selling eggs at the gate, I was struggling to sell all my eggs while they were still fresh. So, because I have lots of spare time on my hands (note the sarcasm here) I decided to get pro-active and visit the local market. There is someone else selling chicken eggs there so that wasn’t an option, but I can sell the duck eggs there and I have started a stall selling “value added” eggs. Cream meringues, lemon meringue pie, custard tarts, scotch eggs, lemon curd – anything that uses up the eggs. I have had a very good first few weeks and am now looking to expand my range and also find things that I will be able to make when the eggs dry up later in the year. Because it is a very small market, I don’t want to duplicate anything that other people are already doing so it might be a bit of a struggle to find other products to make.
The garden is completely on hold for this year other than a few bits and pieces. I have decided that, this year, I have so much work to do on fences etc that didn’t get finished last year that this year I must focus on this.
And of course – we had SNOW!!! The apprentice and I both love snow, and we had enough to get out and enjoy, without it going on forever and becoming a nuisance. The ponies and goats were all in through the bad weather so I was content that all the animals were OK so we were able to get out and make the most of it. Photos to follow in another post as there are millions 🙂
Both of the cats have had kittens (Blotchy has had 3 and Splat 4) who are now just at the delightful “just out of the nest and starting to explore” stage. I’m almost tempted to go and buy a new camera just so that I can post photos of them!
I think that’s most things covered – as soon as the camera comes back I will catch up with all the baby photos.
May 30, 2013
“A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs”
~ Robert Townsend
February 12, 2013
On Sunday Honey was a week old and, because the weather was reasonable, we took her out so that she could have a run around and her mum could have a bite of fresh grass. We have uploaded some videos to youtube of little Honey’s first foray into the big bad world. Click on the pictures to go to the videos.
February 11, 2013
We were surprised yesterday evening, when we went to feed the goats, by the sight of another new goat baby. We knew that mum (Coco) was close but I was predicting probably another week or so. That’s goats for you! Another girl, this one has been named Wispa.
The Island Smallholder 