As I stood at the Butchers on Christmas Eve I overhead another customer telling him that they were staying at home over the holidays as they had animals and were supervising their neighbours animals. The butcher replied “….seems very fashionable this year for people to be staying at home and looking after other people’s animals.” It struck me right there that for the first time in my life I am following a fashion!
Our neighbours are off up north and we’re been entrusted with their precious livestock for a week.
Annie their goat is an orphan from the wild. She arrived on their land one day having wandered in from the bush. She seems now to be fully tame. She’s tethered in our top paddock and made herself right at home. She’s not quite the lawnmower we are used to but she is playing her part.
Most of the time she seems to be standing up on the trailer she came delivered on looking out for her playmate, Abbey the Dog. She’s no fool though as soon as the southerly blew in today she was taking shelter away from the wind and rain.
It was quite comical to watch her indignantly watching the wind whistle through.
Having a goat to stay is driving Fortnum crazy. He pines at the gate knowing that there is something on the other side. He and the goat spent quite a long time chasing each other in circles. He wasn’t keen on being chased but teased the goat mercilessly by lying just out of her reach. Mason has much more intellectual things to do than chase a goat.
Photographing a goat is marginally more difficult than capturing a basset as they move a lot quicker but I will at least get some practice in whilst she’s here to stay. We have of course had goats here at Domestic Executive HQ before.
Depending on her performance as a lawnmower we may get ourselves some goats to keep the top paddock in trim. The beauty of goats is that they will nibble away at new gorse growth and eat thistles which we seem able to grow in copious amounts.
So far Annie has been no trouble at all. I’m starting to think goats cheese already.
What a pretty little face the goat has. I used to help with the goats on a city farm but they were mostly the rather plain looking white ones. We got quite used to goats’ milk in our tea.