Beech trimmings

 

One of my near neighbours had their beech hedge cut back earlier this week. I fed the goats on the trimmings for two days.

Growing kids

 

One of the goat kids has taken a shine to one of the water troughs!

Using up eggs - French fried toast

 

Our egg mountain continues so in an attempt to use up some of them, we made French fried toast. This is very simple to make - slice of bread soaked in beaten egg and then fried. The ketchup was homemade as well.

Children and goats don't mix well!

 

I was asked recently by the Whinnies Wanderers, a toddler group based at the Whinnies Community Garden in Sunniside, to bring along one of our goats to their gathering on Thursday last week. I took Nettle and we settled down in the corner of the garden. Shortly afterwards I realised that the choice of a fully grown goat was not so good. Though some children were happy to stand next to Nettle and pet her, many of them kept their distance. It was hardly surprising looking back on it. Nettle is twice the height of some of the children! Next time I will take goat babies rather than goat adults.

Goat feed windfall

 

A strong wind recently stripped lots of apples from local apple trees. This windfall bounty consisted of small fruit that had a few weeks to go before it would otherwise be ready for picking. The goats loved them.

And then there were 2

 

Penny was proudly lying down this morning with a baby next to her when I arrived this morning to feed the goats. She was chewing the cud but got up to have her feed. I assumed she was just having one kid. Though I was very happy she had had a baby, there was a hint of disappointment. The baby was a billy.

But when I came back at lunchtime, another baby had been born and it was a girl. Penny is our best milker and I was wanting her to produce a nanny to add to the milking herd. So well done Penny, great result!

Lemon marmalade

 

We don't grow lemons - hardly a suitable crop for the weather in North East England - but we do use lemon waste to make marmalade. The peel is used to make marmalade. Nothing wasted.