3rd February - we must be nearly there - surely?!

It is the same every year.  We close at the end of October and it seems like we have all the time in the world to put in hand the maintenance jobs that aren't possible when the farm is open to the public.  November slips by, some progress is made and we all feel quietly confident that everything is possible.  Then December whizzes by- a blur of cooking, eating, shopping and entertaining. On to the New Year.
January arrives, slaps us round the face and demands to know how it is possible to finish all the jobs we have started before we open our doors mid February.
By early February and the birth of the first lamb, the full horror of the situation is all too apparent.  We have a week left and about 1000 hours of work to complete.  Yet again, we have taken on way too many jobs, assumed there would be no hitches and forgot to factor in that we are only a small team.
By the time we open, on the 11th February, some things will have to be sorted.  The lambing pens are ready and our first twins are happily leaping around the pen. There will be more.
The posts for the new pig pens are still in the disabled parking lot.  Yesterday's efforts to start driving them into the soil failed as the ground is now frozen rock solid.
As I write, the builders who have been changing the toilet arrangements in the shop (who promised me they would be finished by last Friday) are still very much here.  My efforts to clean and prepare the kitchen yesterday were thwarted by the fact that the plumber still hasn't finished the pipe work and therefore there is no water.
On the positive side, once we start lambing we have to check on the lambs round the clock. As I got up this morning to do the 3am check, I began thinking that it would be a good idea not to go back to bed, but to head to the shop and start painting. But the thought of my nice warm bed was too great.  I went back to bed and worried instead.  At this rate, this time next week, we won't even be going to bed.

The Year End

There is a strange disconnect between the world I see around me on the farm and the calendar.  Outside the grass is still growing, most of the trees still have all their leaves, there are raspberries on raspberry canes and roses around my window.  Yet, at the end of this week, the farm closes for winter.  November is only a few days away and yet I frequently see our volunteers out and about in short sleeved T-shirts.
Closing the farm to the public always creates a mixture of feelings: the end of another year; the beginning of the big tidy-up; a time to look at what we do and why/how we do it; time for a break.  Of course, the last of these really only applies to me - as the majority of my work revolves around the shop - serving, cooking and stocking up.  The rest of the farm, like all live stock farms, carries on as before  - the pigs still need feeding, Gigi and Grace (our pet goats) still need daily cuddles and at some stage presumably the weather will deteriorate and the animals will have to be moved under cover to avoid the worst of the winter.
But today - no need to think of the winter gloom.  The first visitors of the day are arriving. I better head to the shop and open up.

No angel

I am one of Gigi's greatest fans.  From the moment I saw her it was love at first sight.  Her mum, Geraldine, was my favourite animal on the farm and as she died giving birth to Gigi, I think I just transfered my affections.  There is something about Golden Guernsey goats that I don't get from other goats.  They are serene, gentle and very curious about humans.
However - Gigi was trying my patience yesterday.  She spent the day showing Grace - her half-sister - all the best places to nibble greenery.  I was too late to rescue my palm - it is now a stump.  All the sweet pea pods (that I had planned to pull off, dry and plant next year) have been eaten. And I seemed to spend the whole day carrying Gigi or Grace out of the shop.  In fact, even my extremely laid back cat was getting annoyed and could be seen batting Gigi whenever she came by.
So she was already not in my good books when I ducked into my flat to grab some paperwork only to discover she had relieved herself all over my leather sofa. YUK!
I suppose it serves me right - I shouldn't have left the front door open.  You would have thought I would be wise to the perils of an open-door policy on the farm, after the piglets came in and ate all the cat food.  But some people never learn!

Dear Old Mrs P

I woke this morning with a feeling of melancholy.  Looking out the window I could see a few early "autumn" leaves being buffeted about by the breeze and it brought home the realisation that summer is nearly at an end. All our "babies" are growing up and all except the baby goats have now been weaned.  The ducklings still do not have the right kind of feathers to make them waterproof - so they aren't on the river yet - but other than that the piglets, the lambs, the chicks now look like miniature adults rather than babies.

I was also still thinking about Mrs Pugwash - one of our old favourties.  Mrs P, as she quickly became known, was a Large Black pig and had been with us for nearly 14 years.  She had had many litters of her own  but in recent years, when it was no longer possible to breed from her, had taken on the role of a surrogate mum.  We were never sure if she actually fed the piglets that seemed to cling to her or if they suckled from her for comfort.  But she seemed to be happy to have them around and they would often have "sleep overs" in her ark. 

But over the last few months she had seemed unsettled and lost her appetite for normal food and often had to be coaxed to eat - she would finish her food provided she could see a treat such as fruit or cake to finish with. Finally even these treats couldn't tempt her and the vet  confirmed what we feared - that she had an inoperable tumor.  

We will all miss her - even those who feared her grumpy moods (she had been known to try to nip a couple of the people who worked here).

So perhaps I feel melancholy today as it feels like the end of an era, as much as the end of summer.

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!