Cuddling goats

Gigi continues to be clingy, huggy (and with a taste for nibbling hair).  As I walked around the farm yesterday, I can't tell you how many times I saw her sitting on someone's lap or trying to get in a push chair.  A couple of times she ended up in the shop and had to be carried out.  But she is so gorgeous, I noticed that there was no shortage of people who were prepared to carry her out (and have a bit of a cuddle on the way!)
However, this morning her aunt, Ginger, gave birth to a beautiful little kid (a nanny).  They are both in a pen in the tunnel at the moment.  But once we have made sure they are both eating well and healthy, they will return to their paddock. Gigi will then have a friend and maybe, just maybe she will stop following people around the farm and start kidding around with her own.

Please may I park my goat here?

                                                                              Photo Karen Steel

Gigi seems to be going through a clingy stage.  Orphaned at birth, we have got through the first few weeks when we just had to hope she would take to the bottle, where we worried that the long birthing process (that proved too much for her twin and her mother) would have left her with insurmountable health problems.  Now it is clear she is a healthy, happy goat.  But she is a bit clingy.  Three times yesterday I had to physically separate her from different groups of visitors as, having latched on to them, she had followed them around the whole farm and finally ended up in the shop. And then, just as I was heading up the stairs in the house I heard her bleating behind me.  Shops and houses are no place for a goat - even one that walks to heel better than our dog, so I carried her out and tried to shut the back door.  But no sooner had I started to close it, than her little nose poked around the door edge. I tried carrying her further afield but she ran back to the house more quickly than I could.  It was becoming a very tiring game!
In the end, the only solution seemed to be to find someone who could take over as mum/entertainer.  And so it was that I found myself in the orchard asking a very nice lady, seated on a bench, if I could park my goat next to her.  She readily agreed and the deal was done.  She stroked and petted Gigi and I legged it back to the house, closed the door and was upstairs before Gigi realised what had happened.  In fact, all of us were delighted by the transaction - Gigi had an attentive audience and "Grandma" landed  the prize that her grandchild so desperately wanted to find.  "She is going to be so jealous" the lady said "She left me on the bench while she went to look for Gigi and yet I am the one that has ended up with her sitting on my lap!"

A lesson learnt

It was good to see Neil had learnt from experience..... Last week he decided to rearrange his bees.  As usual, he wore bee-proof clothing on the top half of his body but only his normal work trousers on his legs.  Unfortunately his work trousers keep getting caught on the fencing and end up with holes in various (and often quite revealing) places.  But the pair he wore for this bee work just had one hole, the size of a golf ball, at the back of the knee.
The work he needed to do involved dismantling part of the hive and taking out and checking each of the frames.  So within 5 minutes he was surrounded by frames and bees.  It didn't take long for one of the homeless creatures to find the hole in his trousers.  It took even less time for him to call his mates.  So within a few seconds Neil had a rather large number of bees exploring every nook and cranny in his trousers and boxer shorts.  And, of course, as soon as one of them stings, it releases a pheromone that brings even more bees and even more stings!
Realising what was happening, but with the safety of his bee colony at stake, he couldn't just run, shedding his clothes as he went.  He had to put the frames back, one by one - whilst pulling handfuls of bees from his pants!
As he flew through the bedroom door, pulling off the remainder of his clothes he shouted "Check me- are there any bees left?"  I looked around - about 8 bee-stings but only one bee (that quickly found the window and left).
So this week, guess who's wearing nice new, hole-less trousers to do his bee work!