Reprieve, and roasting away.

Billy Boy is reprieved, this was decided after a mid morning family pow-wow. The goats need sorting out. We have eleven, including the littl'uns. This is too many. But if Billy Boy stays with the girls, then we shall be having more littl'uns by the end of the year. Two options for him: to get him his own pen built, or to slaughter him and put him in the freezer. We have dithered over what to do for several weeks, but had decided that the second option was the only one we could take. 

This saddened us, because he is a handsome goat, is not too bad with the weeing on himself, is good natured, and has grown up here so we know him. He fits in, as far as goats can fit in anywhere.

So it was 'do the deed day' this morning. Only we couldn't do it. There were too many reasons as to why he should stay, the most important one being that if we bought a male goat in from anywhere else, that he might not be such a nice goat as Billy Boy is. So, the pressure is on to build an outdoor enclosure for BB so he can be kept away from the girls. This should untaint the milk when we get round to milking the goats again, and help us to manage which of the girls has goatlings in the future. Meanwhile we castrated the two young male goatlings because they were already trying to mate with their mum and everyone else. It was either that, or slaughter them. But they have not had a life yet, so we could not do that either. So, those little males and Billy Boy are reprieved, with the little boys probably being slaughtered in October when they are nearly full grown, but not before.

And Yes! We are going to keep the goats, but reduce the numbers, probably down to three. The reason for keeping goats is to give us meat for the freezer. Lissie, and eventually Bonny, are going to provide sufficient milk for us, but it is possible that we shall look into selling the milk should the time come when we need financial input. We are both self employed now, and it could be that next year we shall need to look at several options for earning enough to pay the bills. It is lucky that we do have lots of options. It will be interesting to see which option works for us.

So today we have roasted. Temperatures now up around 20C, and looking to stay that way for a week or two. Time to get outside and get jobs done. The task today was to get the fencing wire put on some of the posts which have been recently put in by a local farmer. And I said to the small white cockerel as he passed on by to have a look at what we were doing, I said to him, "No raiding of the veg plot for you this year", this cockerel having been hatched a year ago, and who grew up fed almost entirely by raids on the veg plot. He is a fat boy. He would be. He ate a huge amount of tomatoes last year, and no matter what we did, he would always find a way into the veg plot. Not this year! This year we shall barricade the veg plot!

Re: Camera. I do now own a swanky camera but have problems with getting the right battery connecting lead. Not to worry. Should soon be sorted. Looking forward to then posting up some photos of what we have been up to since the beginning of the year.

Re: Piano accordion: it is in the post.

Re: my little bit of roasted skin. It is only pink, so I am not sunburnt.

Re: the little boy goatlings who have just been de-balled. They are not happy, but everyone else is. We think that the shenanigans that those two boys were getting up to was what was causing so many problems with the herd in general of late.

Re: the horning in the buttock. Lester suffered no bruising after Lissie made known to him her unhappiness about his late milking of her. I think this unreasonable of her because he was only half an hour late!

Re: smallholding life. Today was a good 'smallholding day'.

Hope your day went well as well.......

Vx