I had a goat ………. I did………… I done

Goats are in the media. So I thought I would add my little bit.

I’ve owned goats, in fact more than one – I’ve had Baby, Emma. Billy and Butt-Head. You can learn a lot from goats, sometimes they are worse than kids, cats and dogs.

Emma was black and white – she was a good goat, the only problem was she was Houdini, The neighbours got sick of tethering her up again and she was also a very good actor, right to end, when she was too good for her own good, and the sickness she was hiding killed her.

Billy was a white goat, was a boy and well smelt a lot, but besides that was a good lawn mower and tree trimmer.

Baby – the name invokes tenderness and YES she was my favorite. Her only problem was attachment issues. Unless she could see/hear you – she would cry like a baby.

Butt-Head – was the worst of the lot and I suspect the name says it all. I am wondering if it is purely a boy thing – but Butt-Head (whose name USED to be Billy also) use to butt you ever 1 metre or so as you were taking him to the tether point and bringing him in. The only way to stop it was to hold him by the horn and man-handle him that way.

Goats are great animals and if it wasn't for the Houdini’s and Butt-Heads of this world I would get another.

As for the current events, the goat Billy saw that bucket of weeds as his Nirvana, nothing more, nothing less. Weeds and goats are like bees and honey. It is a symbiotic relationship!

The Ode to Lamb Chops and Joey

Lamb Chops and Joey – How can I explain this?

Alright – I won’t other than we ate them – Lamb Chops the 6month old and Joey the 12month old – both rested nicely in the freezer before being consumed

See we live on a farm – and we often eat the meat we grow. In fact we rarely not know the day the animals were born, they day of each monthly birthday and the day they met their maker.

Lamb Chops – by definition was obviously a lamb
Joey – A little harder to determine was a calf, well yearling in the meat market

There have been many others – but these two stick in my mind for some very interesting reasons.

Lamb Chops was introduced to my family after death, when everyone was sitting down at the table and my 5yo piped up and said “Lamb Chops is yummy” An adult at the table corrected the sentence “No, The lamb Chops are yummy” and the 5yo piped up again and said, “NO, Lamb Chops IS yummy” and then proceeded to inform the dinner guests of who lamb chops was.

Reminder to self, never allow a child to name your dinner whilst still on the hoof, it causes people confusion and also to be ill when they realize where the meat actually came from. For some reason the meat from supermarkets is different!

Joey…………. Well Joey was a darling little boy. (Well, little really isn’t true, all 250kg of him) He was dispatched of in the normal manner and put into the freezer.

Standing at the BBQ a couple of weeks later and guests ask us where the cow was. The 10yo then pipes up and advises said dinner guests that we will be eating Joey for dinner. One of the guests went vegetarian that night, and called us cruel.

I don’t understand, the meat from the supermarket is meat from cows/lambs that once stood in a paddock, ate lots of grass, looked cute and was born to feed them. Yet a cow raised on a friends farm and killed for the same reason, is considered cruel?

Everything in the supermarket has raw ingredients; those raw ingredients are grown on farms. Those raw ingredients are sometimes turned into what I consider inedible foodstuffs, that are prohibited in my house. My children have tasted ‘real’ milk from real cows. Many children have no idea where milk comes from. When asked they think it grows and comes from the supermarket.

Everything we eat comes from the land, not the supermarket. Teach your children this.