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Waaaaaay back in May I ordered over £100 worth of beer making kit. This week I took delivery of most of the order. It's been a long struggle of unanswered letters and emails and phone calls and threats and excuses.- and in short, do not use www.easybrew.co.uk. If you're not convinced by me read this.
Anyway most of the order means I can get brewing again - and Ailsa helpfully made some notices to indicate that the beer needs to be left alone. She says the spelling mistake makes the sign more convincing. It's a Tom Caxton best bitter - the type me mate Mark used to brew for us at University. It's brewing in bedroom - the warmest room (in summer anyway). The Piccy also features 'Dry Dock at Pwllheli' by Lynne Roberts.
On the art theme, there are quite a lot of folk offended at the idea that the Duke of Sutherland should be asking for £100 million for a couple of Titians. I agree with the objections - quite apart from the history of the Sutherlands there's the small matter of the cost. I tend to think that when art gets over-priced it becomes worthless anyway - eh? £100 million could keep a lot of contemporary artists in Scotland making things far more relevant than Titian is today.
Sharp eyed viewers will also note "The People's Act of Love" James Meek. I'm fully engrossed, and trying not to think about castration too much.
Ailsa was away for a sleep over so Jussi and I had an evening in the pub. For some reason someone thought that having a karaoke machine on a Friday night would be a good idea - 'karaoke and disco'. But to an auld **** like me it was just a noise. Once again though, we were just getting into the swing of things when Jussi was called away because Ailsa had decided she wanted to go home. Pah!
I was given a lift home a bit later - by a very drunk 79 year old lady. I've never been so terrified at 2 miles per hour in my life.
Phew - she didn't eat for 4 days you know - it was pretty bad. Still she's her bright and breezy self again - and if it wasn't raining I'd get you the photographic proof. We still can't use her milk for a week or so. Cheese stocks are running down....
I can't claim it's interesting - but this is the sort of stuff Jussi used to do before she became a goat-keeper. Jussi is in the left hand top corner and is the other one speaking.
The vet has been yielding more antibiotics and generally ensuring he gets good returns from his share options with various pharmaceutical companies. Bonnie is minutely better - but still very ill.
... I have to collect my smalls from the common grazing myself. This is quite amusing but as you can see most of the washing is caught on the barbed wire fence - a recipe for holey undies.
Bonnie is not getting any better and the vet is coming out again today. I think this all might be an advert for organic farming myself. Meanwhile the stress of it all piles onto Jussi.
The great thing about goats is that you don't need to herd them. They want to follow you - so all you have to do is go and call them and they come running. So you pull them in with a song rather than push them along with a shout which is how you herd most animals.
This technique works every time - except when it doesn't - which is usually when you most want them to go somewhere.
I need to practice calling the goats in. I aspire to this: (thanks to Pedi).
Apparently Bonnie has a swollen brain (cerebro-cortical necrosis) caused by vitamin deficiency, caused by malfunctioning rumen caused by stress caused by her move to a new environment. The cure is jump as high as you can and grab the vets bill right at the top. In other words:
- Inject steroids (to un-swell the brain)
- Inject B vitamins (to correct the vitamin shortage)
- Inject antibiotics (to kill off the unbalanced rumen)
- Drench with probiotic rumen stimulator to get the rumen going again. (Drench means force feed with a giant syringe)
Vet also looked at the itchy goatling (called Gwennie) - and seems to think it's fine.
If enough people click through on this link they might send me a free organic bamboo T-shirt. Whether they do or not I 'like their style'. So go have a look.
As I've mentioned before - this animal husbandry mullarky is tough going. In just a little over 3 weeks we've had:
- Travel Tetany - Gwedolyn. Sub-cutaneous calcium and intramuscular broad spectrum anti-biotic
- Mastitis - Margo (pictured). Intra muscular antibiotic and injections up the udder.
- The runs - A goatling (they all look alike to me) - salt & sugar solution
- Itchy neck (the same goatling) - ointment - we started with calendula but Ti tree seems to be working better. Itchy neck might not sound much but she was scratching it to raw. We think it started with a horse fly bite - she's certainly afraid of flies. We don't think it was mites and as she's responding to ointment we're probably right.
- The runs - Falvia - Several attempts to rectify diet and salt/sugar but eventually cured with a few doses of stuff to boost the rumen.
- Lethargy and just plain unwell. Bonnie. We thought this was hypocalcaemia and did the subcutaneous calcium solution. As the only milker we take a lot of effort to see that she eats well but now she's not eating at all and looking very unhappy. The calcium solution hasn't worked and we are awaiting another visit from the vet soon.
Jussi is finding this aspect of keeping animals very difficult. And I think she's blaming herself and thinking she's doing something wrong. Obviously we are learning and there are things we could do better but I think Jussi is wrong to be so very hard on herself.
I think the goats are still settling in and getting used to new surroundings and diets. There are also psychological battles going on - Gwendolyn is fighting to keep her place as the matriarch but Margo is challenging her and Bonnie is still struggling to be in the group. Meanwhile Flavia will rarely venture far from Bonnie. All these battles take their toll.
My fear is that things haven't settled come winter. It will be a hard winter for them and they need to be tip top to get through it. I need them to be tip top for me to get through the winter too.....
There is good farmland around here if you look hard enough - and I went to visit one of the estate farms to the east to buy some oats on Thursday. It was a fantastic old place with regal buildings and walled gardens, not quite 'Das ist ein Schloss' (borrowing from Boris Johnson) but not far off.
Andrew showed me round the place, including a tour of the greenhouses with peach trees and ripening grape vines! He kept goats as a lad - they milk well for orphan lambs - and fondly remembers their antics climbing on to the roof of every building in sight.
On the way back I picked up a couple of hitch hikers - rare things these days unfortunately. They were from Alberta Canada and their take on climate change was that it was years since they'd experienced the minus 40C temperatures they used to get in winter 'unfortunately'. Even so - they didn't seem too convinced that climate change was happening.
They likened the Highland Clearances to the eviction of Canadian Indians to Reservations - which was an interesting take.
Talking of Boris Johnson - I thought he was wonderful at the Olympics closing ceremony - I especially enjoyed seeing him put his hands in his pockets and then suddenly correct himself. It was a shame he'd made so much effort to look statesmen-like - but I think the shambolic buffoon shone through well enough.
.... get in the way of a class story. Jenny tells me that the 87 year old ancestor who died in Glanford Brigg workhouse - wasn't an agricultural worker after all - he, Edward Anderton, was a ropemakers labourer.
Still, he might well have dreamt of his 12 acres anyway.
We very rarely eat out - it's a cost thing - but we are always glad to when visitors offer us a meal out in return for hospitality. Before we moved here we'd eaten at the Farr Bay Inn , and marvelled at the quality of their chips, and I remember returning to Dunbar and raving about them. But it could have been a flash in the pan, as it were, so the chance for lunch at the FBI was grasped with glee. We never cook chips - so it's always a bit special having them anyway. But the chips on Saturday surpassed wildest imaginings - - superb!
Chip lovers should note that the FBI is for sale. So if you want to experience this delight you'd better get up here quick - it's one of the owners who cooks, so once it's sold you've had it.
Gorgeous chips and gorgeous weather and a few pints sitting in the sun after a swim in the sea with excellent company and the kids off clambering somewhere - what more is there to life. I mean really?
You make your own walls - a maxim of mine. The only thing that stops you from doing something is you. Of course setting out to do something doesn't mean you'll succeed - but trying is a whole lot better than finding excuses not to try. This is something I need to keep remembering - there's a host of reasons why I'm not doing the things I could be doing - but they are walls of my own making.
We had a wall collapse in July and at the weekend Mike, who'd arrived with Sho and Kieron and Rachel from Edinburgh, was very keen to re-build it. He did this - almost single handedly. It's a fine effort and he taught me the basics of dry stane dyking in the process. Experts amongst you will spot the deficiencies of course - but as the first wall I've ever helped to build I'm pretty pleased. According to Mike the best way to test if a wall is sound is to walk along it. So here he is modestly proving the worth of his work.
It is a good job - and all we could achieve in the time - but it will only last so long. To do it properly would have meant dismantling a much larger section of the wall and when we looked at doing this we couldn't see where it would end - so we took the short term way out. I wonder if we'll regret this sooner than we think.
My consolation is the thing wasn't built properly in the first place - so if it does collapse earlier than we wish it probably was going to do so anyway. When we removed all the rubble we found the wall had been built directly onto the turf - no hint of a foundation trench at all.
But building this short snatch of wall doesn't half make you realise how skilled proper dykers are. I'll never walk past a dry stane dyke again without marvelling at the beauty of the straight lines.
What the hell are we doing?
I've worried about this on and off for many many months. And I've been worrying about Why we are doing it. And what the consequences will be.
I was brought up to be proud of the family's working class routes (in a class war context - a very British habit I think). Dad's mum was a war widow (her husband and all his brothers were killed in the North Atlantic convoys) and brought up her children by doing piece work clothes repairs for the Co-op. Dad was a self-improver and betime I came along he was a successful paint chemist and I think our working class credentials were looking pretty thin. I went to a middle class school and benefited from a university education (though I never really felt I fitted in in either).
My sister has been doing some genealogy and uncovered some of the real horrors of our working class roots - from census returns showing tens of people packed into small terraced houses in late 19th/ early 20th century Hull to aged agricultural workers being left to die in Lincolnshire workhouses in the mid 19th century.
What would that 87 year man, who'd spent his life toiling in the fields, make of me throwing in the absolute luxury of being a Chief Executive and attempt to live the life he must have sorely wished he could pull himself out of? Would he understand my complaints of 'stress' and having no time for my family, and of wanting to feel a connection with my food and my existence? Or would he scorn me as a soft, self-indulgent and irresponsible 'don't-know-you're-born'? An idiotic dreamer.
And what will Ailsa and her children make of the move? It is incredibly difficult to rise out of poverty and yet Jussi and I seem to be happily condemning ourselves to it. How disrespectful of the toils of my ancestors - how unforgivable to our successors?
On the other hand, perhaps that 87 year old man, who doubtless spent his life doffing his cap to the masters, would utterly understand. Imagine having 12 acres to call your own, with your own house and everything. What else could he have asked for?
As for my motives - they are true. It is all those things noted above and more. It is not about making a statement - though I hope to do so incidentally. And our successors will judge for themselves. Jussi and I think that, once again, having 12 acres and a house will be a sign of true wealth in time to come. And, we hope, the spiritual wealth that comes from connectedness with the land, and being a part of a small community will be equally valued.
Inspiration for this post: Twee middle class
What would my grandfather think? (and look at the preceding post for a great piccy of her grandfather)
Milking a single goat is hardly a two person job, never mind the three of us. Ailsa is all excited about the whole thing and leaps up at 6 and rushes out with mum to 'help with the feeding and the milking'.
Now that Bonnie has learnt to love her milking stand, Jussi copes with the milking admirably on her own (with Ailsa offering moral support). I stay in bed wishing I could get back to sleep. Eventually I get up feeling as though I haven't slept enough and feeling lazy to boot, and in the last couple of days this feeling has pretty much lingered all day.
Not good. Methinks I need to pull my finger out and start one of the many projects waiting for action. Mmmm - try telling me that.
We're having visitors at the weekend so today will be a cleaning day, tomorrow a shopping day. Two fine excuses for avoiding trying to do anything serious until next week after the visitors have left.
We're looking forward to the visitors......
Note the lack of final e or s.
So here it is after salting and getting a final drying. Big apologies for the piccy quality here - the automatic flash was bleaching everything out and the odd angle is me trying to avoid it.
Goats milk yorkshire pudding works a treat, and the goats milk white sauce used to bind the accompanying vegetables was groovy too.
Is a groovy sauce possible? I guess it must be - you can have a saucy groove afterall.
Unexpected
On her way back home Ailsa had spotted a clump of field mushrooms - so as soon as she reported this I asked her to take me to where she saw them. Just up the road from our house, on the verge, she proudly showed me the mashed remains of a good few fine looking mushrooms. Why is it that kids can't resist kicking mushrooms? Anyway - there was one good one left and we proudly brought it home - "that'll do for tea".
Bad (or just plain confusing)
Ragwort thou humble flower with tattered leaves
I love to see thee come & litter gold...
Thy waste of shining blossoms richly shields
The sun tanned sward in splendid hues that burn
So bright & glaring that the very light
Of the rich sunshine doth to paleness turn
& seems but very shadows in thy sight. John Clare, 1831
Now then, like many I suspect, I think of Ragwort as a poisonous plant that must be rooted out at all costs. Our 'lower field' has some ragwort growing and yesterday Ailsa and I went out and uprooted the ten or so plants we could find and sealed them into plastic bags and popped them in the bin. Good deed for the day.
Then this morning, I interneted to find the truth about what I should do with ragwort. (I often work like this - I'll do something and then check if I've done the right thing afterwards. A cleverer person (like Jussi) checks how to do something and then does it).
Well it seems all is not quite so clear cut. For a kick off there are lots of plants that look like ragwort - and therefore a bit of careful identification would have been in order. Secondly, up rooting is suggested by many as actually helping to spread the plant - although Defra does have it as a recommended control method if there's only a few plants.
Oh well. I did my best. Next summer I'll identify before acting and take more care over the uprooting part. Both Ailsa and I are fine this morning so I suspect the advice to wear layers of protective gear when handling them is a bit over stated.
Good
For me, pancakes should be light, and if you're lucky, crispy round the edges and served with nothing more than sugar and freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice in the rough proportion - how many oranges you have:how many lemons you have.
Jussi has an altogether different notion. She adds things to the pancakes as they are cooking - anything from potatoes to bacon and usually with lots of onions. Her pancakes tend to be darker, thicker and stodgier than mine and many a pancake day has been ruined by me coming home from work - all exhausted and stressed - and complaining about her pancakes.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jussi has been completely consumed by looking after our new goats and getting to grips with what to do with all that milk and cheese and I have been getting grumpy about doing all the cooking and cleaning. So last night Jussi offered to kill two birds with one stone and cook pancakes made from goats milk. My reservations about her pancake skills were totally subsumed by the luxury of having a day off from cooking. All I had to do was harvest the mushroom (see above) and pick some dill, parsley and chard for the fillings.
Cooking, and especially timing the cooking - allowing for two trips to the goats either side of eating - is difficult. Jussi, who is pretty tired anyway with the stresses of learning animal husbandry and the rest, found the cooking of the pancakes very stressful. They were plonked afront of us with the challenging words "Just try and be nice about them OK?"
Well.......they were fantastic. I don't know if it was the goats milk, the fresh garden ingredients or the computer game Jussi played each time she put a pancake in the pan, but they turned out a real treat. 
I think I'll try goats milk yorkshire pudding for a toad in the hole tonight.
Jussi's latest cheese offering, which will be ready later today is Coulommiere. That'll be a Scottish coulommiere like. Not the French one which takes much longer to make. I can't find a web reference for the Scottish one and Jussi wont tell me what it's going to be like. Not sure how it will go with toad in the hole.
Yesterday Ailsa was up at 6 to help feed the goats, back down the cottage for 7 to eat breakfast, back with the goats to help milking, back in the cottage by 8, in her school uniform and off to school at 8:30. What a hard working country lass she's being.
Only trouble is.........
At 9 we got a call from the school asking us what to do because, in fact, school doesn't open for another day. So the poor wee thing trudged home again.
Jussi and I felt guilty about this - but Ailsa was blaming herself because she had Monday 18th marked on her calendar as back to school day. Still we made a celebration of the extra days holiday and what a fine day it turned out to be.
The theory is that you plant nasturtiums by brassica and the cabbage white butterfly makes a bee line for the nasturtiums and you have happy cabbages.
Bollocks.
The practice is you plant nasturtiums by cabbages and said butterflies swarm to the cabbages. Those cabbages no where near the nasturtiums are fine.
The greatest success of the garden this year is chard. I'd never come across chard until I holidayed in Croatia a few years ago - but it's thriving here. Why don't Brits make more of this fantastic leaf (and stalk) vegetable? Maybe it's because chard is best served drowning, and I mean drowning in garlic.
Last night I made pasta with chard and tomato sauce, served, rather delectably, with dollops of goats milk crowdie. Tonight it will be chard and potato (and crowdie) moussaka. Well, when I say moussaka.....
One unexpected result that may be related to climate change is the re-emergence of the tiger in England. I refer to Hull City of course. And they beat Fulham yesterday.
Now I've never been a Tigers fan but it is great to see them in action in the Premiership. I am a rugby league fan - and watching Hull FC in the Challenge Cup final is something I'm definitely looking forward to.
C(ghghghg)-Uuuu-M-on you Ulllll(aaaaaaaaagh).
The wait for the Guardian was so long I just plain gave up. Clearly this opens up a whole new route to carbon salvation. Shops should have a compulsory four hour waiting time between ordering and receiving goods. I reckon this would be particularly useful in fast food shops and would go a good way towards carbon and waist reduction.
The carbon impact of not buying a multi-section newspaper would be quite difficult to calculate - and unfortunately it would need to be off-set by me 'watching' the Olympics instead. I say watching - I slept. But I did wake in time to see that 100 metres final.
For more practical ideas (and quite fun some of them) for individual carbon reduction take a look at http://www.carbonrally.com/ and thanks to lamarguerite for the lead.
Yeah! It's a Saturday - the sun is blazing, and it looks set for the day - and there's a light wind to keep the midges down.
I've decided to treat myself to a Saturday Guardian this morning. I mean morning in the loosest sense of the word, given that morning papers don't arrive here until about 12:30. (Sunday papers on the other hand, arrive by 10am). It's 10 am now, I've been up since six, and the wait had better be worth it!
This all reminds of a conversation Stoney has been having with our man on Raasay about the nearness of emergency services. I came across this map which shows travelling time to our nearest hospital - and we are only in 30-45 minutes zone, which aint bad, though frankly you'd struggle to make that time without driving like a loony - especially in Summer when there's camper vans trundling along around every corner. Even then, that hospital doesn't look too well set up to deal with anything serious. I'm not complaining, and it was something we considered (briefly) before we moved here. But it is an aspect of rural life that people sometimes overlook.
This morning Jussi said she was feeling all tense. I asked her if she was going camping. Oh how we laughed (well ok - not much actually).
After a pleasant morning the rain has now set in. It's the sort of rain that looks like it'll last a few days. Fortunately we got another trip to the beach in yesterday so the rain feels like a bit of a refreshment from the sun-bakedness we've had of late. I've got a bit of extra consultancy work to do and Jussi and Ailsa are planning a trip to Thurso for the weekly shop. I think Ailsa has big plans - she's been raiding her piggy bank again.
Floods in Edinburgh and Dunbar and Fife, mud baths in Aberdeenshire - but we continue to have a fine summer. We've had just enough rain to not worry about watering the veg patch and plenty of warmth to make swimming in the sea a pleasure (the water is cold - you can warm up by rolling in the sand).
Even the flowers are cheering.
Ailsa goes back to school next week.
I've finished the consultancy work I was doing and the goats, although not fully settled, are getting into a routine. So what am I going to do next? I wont bore you with a list of possibilities - but there are many things to be done and many things I could do. Oh the opportunity. Oh the joy and the freedom.
Jussi has made a crowdie. (I can't find a decent web link to Crowdie - but it's a traditional cheese - claimed to be introduced by the Vikings - Jussi makes it with whole goats milk, not skimmed cows milk as most web references suggest it should be).
I love the smell of goats breath in the morning. It's a smell beyond compare - all your worst school dinner cabbage nightmares come true.
Bonnie is not milking well. She doesn't like her milking stand for a start at it's my job, morning and evening, just before breakfast and just after tea, to sit at the cabbage end of her mollycuddling and feeding delicacies such as willow herb and sycamore branches to try and keep her occupied while Jussi does the milking. I fear for my fingers especially as my judgement is numbed by the clouds of digestive gasses I'm engulfed in.
As a smell, it's worse than the steaming reek of damp commuters on the 0738. As an experience it's far far better.
Still, to freshen up we all went swimming on Tuesday afternoon. It was fun playing in the surf but boy was it cold! This wasn't captured on film because Jussi wouldn't let me take the camera. Such a shy wee thing.
Just an exuse for a goat piccy really - but this area used to be thick with nettles.
The milking bench that Bonnie doesn't like. She kicked over her milk this morning so here it is after a washing down. Made from pallets by Jussi of course.
Tying up willow herb for drying. I mean it's a job to be done but especially on a day like today you can hardly call it work can you?
And once it's tied up it's hung to dry.
We had a very enjoyable weekend with Jenny here. In the main Jussi had things to do for the goats so Jen, Ailsa and I went off and explored lots of beaches and archaeology. I think Ailsa is getting the idea that archaeologists are strange people who look at piles of stones and speak gobbledegook - this is a contradiction to what I've taught her previously - which is that archaeologists spend their days sitting in pools of mud, in the pouring rain, singing Beatles songs (Balfarg 1985). But we did find a very nice homestead broch in the valley up behind Armadale House.
Of more interest to Ailsa was swimming in the sea - at every available opportunity. It was freezing - Jenny and I stayed wimpering in the sand dunes at the very thought.
It rained in Saturday so we went to Thurso to see Wall-E. A strange film - Jenny warmed to it's anti-consumerist message, I thought it tried too hard to be worthy and lost the fun it should have had, and Ailsa, in her 8 year old logic, thought it was just the saddest film she'd ever seen.
Piccies were on Jenny's camera and we didn't have a cable that fitted to download them - sorry.
And thanks for the meal on Sunday Jen.
Sorry this was eaten before piccies could be taken. But Jussi used the first lots of milk to make a curd cheese (like cream cheese only crumblier cos it's not had cream added, apparently). She made 6 flavours - garlic, garlic and herb, plain, black pepper, paprika and herb. And very fab they were too.
We had it for lunch yesterday, on sourdough, and tea, on baked potatoes. Tonight we'll probably be having it with corn on the cob, or with chard and pasta.
Yesterdays milk is currently becoming yoghurt. So I need to think of imaginative ways of eating lots of yoghurt. (Hanging up-side-down with feet tied to the rafters perhaps? Too kinky probably).
This morning Bonnie kicked over her milking bucket and all that beautiful milk was wasted. This put Jussi in a bad mood - but I'm quietly relieved cos it's one less goat milk product to worry about how to cook. But that's very bad of me.
Rosebay willow herb - aka fire weed. Goats love it and it's now in flower and we are collecting as much as we can. It's quite scary feeding it to goats, who want to rip it up by the roots - even when you're handing it to them. Currently we are using it to lure Bonnie on to the milking bench - a contraption she is taking rather a long time to get used to.
Surpluses are being hung from the rafters to dry - they'll make for a wee treat in the long winter months ahead. What I didn't realise is that humans can eat it too. I doubt Jussi would allow us to deprive the goats though.
So far we've harvested a couple of car loads. If the weather changes this week we might go down to the forestry between Altnaharra and Lairg and get us a van full. (The weather just now is very still - and even when bright and sunny as it is this morning the midges are in full party mode.)
"And I'd like a sack of alfalfa as well please"
"What sort of alfalfa?"
"What sort have you got?"
"Forage, cereal, nuts"
"Oh I'm not sure - not nuts though - forage I think"
"What's it for?"
"Goats"
"You'll want alfalfa then"
"Yeah that's what I asked for"
Ailsa is delighted by the state of the cabbage patch. Tickled with glee she comes out with all sorts of "Aw" "Cute" and "Cuddly" sort of noises. And I'm not allowed to pick all of them off....
Meanwhile my mum has sent me a collection of booklets on organic gardening. I read the one on slugs with great interest and discovered that slugs are useful and that there are carnivorous slugs that eat other slugs. The book is full of helpful hints about controlling slugs - but the message I took away is 'give up you'll never win'. Actually the coffee grinds seem to be doing the trick - I can't claim to be slug free, but I'm getting quite partial to the extra je ne sais quoi they add to lettuce salad.
We have a very rare species of bumble bee nesting in the garden.
The main cucumber plant now has three leaves - the biggest of which is almost as big as just a bit under half my thumb. But the dill isn't going to waste. A couple of nights ago I forgot to put a bag of frozen peas back in the freezer. So last night we had pea soup made with parsley and lots of dill from the garden. It was delish.
Jussi is away at the Black Isle show today. She had hoped to be there for a couple of days but Margo's mastitis put paid to that. I think she intends to spend buckets of money on things I'll turn my nose up at and say we don't need, and collect an Anglo Nubian milker and a kid. We about to drown in milk. And our diet will become goats cheese (omelette, pie, en croissant, con pan tomate, au naturelle, en croute, provencale, in vivo, you get the point). I might also attempt goats milk soap sometime down the line, but not for eating obviously.
I'm busy (well ok I'm not really - but I will be soon) tidying the house cos big sister Jen is coming to stay for a few days.....
Jussi came back to the cottage about 11:30 - demanding an early lunch. She was quickly distracted by emails - sending "We've got goats!" messages to random friends. By 12:30 I was getting hungry and as Jussi was engrossed in her laptop I decided to go up to the garden and pick us some fresh lettuce (I had plans for marmite, peanut butter and lettuce on sourdough - yum!).
I also checked the goats. And there was 'sickly' Gwendolyn standing looking bemused on the wrong side of a bedraggled electric fence.
So lunch was postponed while Gwendolyn was re-united with her pals and the electric fence repaired.
But how the hell did it happen? It took her less than an hour for to escape and we cant figure out how she did it. And unless we know what happened we can't take preventative measures.
Ailsa is on the case - she's taken her lunch and a couple of Asterix books up to the croft so she can sit and watch the goats. I've suggested that she needs to take up playing the flute - then she can spend all day serenading them. It would make for a quieter life for me anyway.
We have 4 goatlings - I can't name them yet, but the black ones are British Alpines and all have names derived from Gwendolyn, and the white - a Saanen - has a name derived from Margo (Ailsa insists on referring to Margo as Mango - after a Mii I created (on the Wii for those who don't know). One day I'll post a picture of Mango.
The vet looked at the off-colour Gwendolyn and confirmed travel tetany. He also noted Jussi's colour - very clearly a bit new and green and prescribed calcium and magnesium, vitamin and broad spectrum antibiotic. We await the bill. I strongly object to the routine use of antibiotics and might have questioned this had I been there (instead of blogging!).
However - here she is half an hour later already looking much better - and fit for some adventure.
Day one of the goats and Jussi and Ailsa were up and 6 to go off and make sure they'd settled in. Of course they hadn't. The old matriarch - Gwendolyn - was unhappy, not eating and distinctly unhappy looking. We think this is transit tetany, the cure of which involves a huge sub-cutaneous injection of calcium and magnesium (not the pure metals....). Jussi phoned the previous owner - the advice was a banana, bread and call the vet.
Jussi is delighted that Gwendolyn likes sour-dough bread. I think they'll get along just fine.
And then there's the vet - who I think I've just heard drive up - so I'll go see how that's going. And I'll remember the camera too. I think I'll then begin a new series of postings called "vet bills".
Up at 6, away by 7 for the long drive into darkest Aberdeenshire. When we arrived all I wanted was a cup of tea - but we had feeding troughs to dismantle, a van to load with feed and hay and feed bins and frightening-looking medical machinery. Then we had to empty a couple of goats of milk (also called milking I guess), tag the goatlings and and. Eventually I got a wee cuppa while the paperwork was sorted. Then the goats were loaded onto the trailer and home we not quite sped.
In all this excitement the camera stayed in the van (sorry!).
As a quick aside, I need to sing the praises of the van - it coped superbly with what was a heavy heavy load. ("La la la laaaah la la"). Good. Done that.
I'd been a bit nervous of towing - I've never done it before - but it was a doddle. The worst bit was having a police car behind us for about 10 miles. I wasn't sure if the speed limit far a van towing is 40 or 50 - so I stuck to 45 and they didn't bother us. The hardest part of the journey was was circumnavigating Elgin. The town signs proudly pronounces: "Elgin - making an impression". I'd like to suggest a change to that, it should be "Elgin - making you dizzy". Sooo many roundabouts. As I was a long van towing I decided the best way of negotiating roundabouts was to make full use of every available lane. I think somewhere inside of me there's a budding trucker.
I even managed to reverse a couple of times.
When we got back we had to transfer the goats from the trailer to the stables. This went virtually without incident - only two out of the six managed to escape.......
It's gala week so the pub was heavin'. We were just getting into the swing when we were called away due to a largely imaginary attack of illness on our daughter. Honestly!
Anyway -- Grrrr. There was no Friday night.
Today there has been more gala-ing - a grand procession of five floats lead by a troop of bagpipers and then all sorts of fun and games in the school field. Our friendly mohican was dressed as a nurse complete with fishnet stockings. It was fun and I was better at archery and haggis throwing than Jussi. There's much more tomorrow but unfortunately we'll miss it as tomorrow is truly G Day........And we think we're ready for 'em. It's sooo exciting!
All stops are out for getting ready for G day. The weather has come in but it's not too bad. We have a working electric fence and Jussi is making doors and bits and bobs like a mad doors and bits and bobs thingy. Meanwhile I've accepted some consultancy work - it's a lot to do in a short time scale, but money is money and at this stage in the business I have to take on anything that comes my way.
The really good news is that Ailsa has a sleep over tonight so there will be a Friday night in the pub. Looking forward to it. The campsite is looking full so there's a chance of some exotic specimens to offset the usual suspects.
Waaaaaay back in May I ordered over £100 worth of beer making kit. This week I took delivery of most of the order. It's been a long struggle of unanswered letters and emails and phone calls and threats and excuses.- and in short, do not use www.easybrew.co.uk. If you're not convinced by me read this.
