LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY & A CHANGE OF PACE!

It has been a busy few days... the 'Bloke' is leaving to spend a week in Sydney, all the goat feeders needed to be filled, big bales of hay put out.  There was a time when I did these jobs on my own ...but the tractor broke & was replaced with a BobCat.  The 'tucker trolley' aka Feed Cart was designed to be little old lady friendly ...it has a battery start but the battery went flat yonks ago & this little old lady can't work the pull start on the motor.  I must confess - pull start motors & I do not get along ...that's OK ...push lawn mowers & chain saws also have pull start motors so that lets me 'off' mowing & cutting wood.

When I began my magnificent affair with Angora goats & mohair, I started with 2 little goats so I could have some mohair for hand spinning... then I got serious & bought a buck.  Then I bought more goats, sent does out for 'service' & quickly outgrew the land area I was running them on.  It doesn't take too many years to fill a 5 acre plot with goats... so we moved.

The move was huge, an 8 hour drive from all that was familiar, from where I had spent 50 plus years of my life, from my family, my sons, my home!  The move was a culture shock also - town & surrounding area has a population of around 110 people.  Town consists of a handful of houses, a Hotel, a Club, a Produce Store, a Motor Repair Shop, Post Office & a Cafe.  A little school & 2 churches with a monthly service.  Oh, and the big Grain Silo on the now defunct rail line at the edge of town.

The farm was huge ... November 15th 2002 we took possession of 8072 acres and about 1500 Merino sheep.  We moved the goats ..all 100 of them & two alpacas in 4 loads, filling up a little stock crate & towing trailers in trips that took over 10 hours, arriving at the farm in the dark of night.  We chose to do it this way and didn't have any deaths from the move.

Then it was time to do more fencing, buy in hay, buy more goats, put the bucks in, build the goat shed and become a serious goat breeder.  The shed was finished just days before kidding commenced. That first year I kidded 110 does in my new 'big' shed.  The electricity wasn't connected, all the work & dramas that happened in the dark of night was done by torchlight.

Three weeks before the goats were due to start kidding that first year, I had a fall and broke my wrist.  Home alone, the Bloke was in Sydney, I phoned the Hotel & the publican's son came to the rescue, drove me to the hospital, 45 minutes away.  They could only provide the Xray, so we had another hour and a half to the nearest 'proper' hospital where I was admitted & plastered.  The lady who ran the Hotel aka 'Pub' picked me up from hospital the next day.  My son made a mad dash from Sydney & arrived just on dark to look after his silly old mother & her goats.

My friend MamaSheri in Texas, wrote just the other day how things happen in life that change our attitude without us really being aware of the changes.  It made me think of my journey out here 'in the middle of nowhere'. 

When I was running a small number of goats on that 5 acre farm, the goats all had names, I spent a fortune on Vet bills & feed bills, fussed over every kid that hit the ground.  What we really had was a little paddock, with little yards, little sheds & everything was done the hard way.  We'd travel 3 hours each way to buy loads of bagged feed especially formulated for Angora goats.  We would feed that out into little tubs, mobbed by goats.  We used little bales of hay, carted them around in a wheel barrow at feeding time.  Shearing was a nightmare ...I did manage to engage a professional shearer but without a proper shearing shed ..it was chaos.  Drenching without a holding yard or race was crazy.  Kidding was hard work, although there were not a lot of kids ...mothers & kids had to be locked up every night to keep them safe from the resident foxes.  Foxes that I could not shoot or bait because our semi-rural patch of paradise was on the edge of surburbia.

So what's changed?  Well ...isolation has meant I've had to become more self reliant, the shops, Doctor & Vet aren't just 5 minutes down the road any more.  Going shopping is a major event, takes so long to get there that there is no time to waste 'window shopping'.  I miss my family, my friends & chatting with people I know, people who know me & understand my passions.  I've become somewhat reclusive... my goats & my mohair fill my days! 

My goats ...yeah, there are attitude changes there, too.  There are a few 'specials' that have names, some of those will get buried when they die.  The nameless ones go to 'Boot Hill'.  And, Life & Death ...well, there's a major shift!  Once I would do what ever I thought it took to save every goat, even when in my heart I knew the battle was lost before it began.  Don't mean that to sound like I don't care - it's now I know when it's time to let go.  My goats have taught me that! 

We had 8 years of drought to contend with followed by two very wet years ...that was a big learning curve, I got to learn a lot about what can kill a goat when you aren't really trying!  There were a few post mortems to sort out some of the dramas as well as some intensive testing done.  I'm sure there's still a few curves we haven't encountered, yet ...just hope they stay away.

So, now I have lots of goats & do things differently.  We no longer buy special mixes ...the goats get fed grain (that we grow on farm) in a Feeder that we fill with the Tucker Trolley, the hay bales are deposited in the paddocks with the Bobcat, we have a shearing shed & proper yards to work the stock in.  The goat shed is big enough to house 500 goats (very handy when they are off shears).  Kidding is much less labour intensive, although most of the goats do make it into the shed at kidding.  They go in one end, spend a few days in the pens & go out the other end.  While the kids are really small, the kids & doe mob goes back into the shed at night, then it's off down the paddock with the Maremma dogs.  No running around catching individual kids to pen up with their mum at the end of the day.  I have an old kettle full of stones that makes a great rattle... if the goats won't go into the shed when I use the rattle I get the Kelpie dog to push them in.  Job done in 3 minutes!  And I never wanted to work the goats with a dog ..that's been a major attitude shift!

 

This is the glorious goat shed. It's 18 meters wide x 24 meters long (approx. 60 x 80 ft).  The 27 pens take up 1/6 th of the shed, there is a partitioned off section of the same size next to pens.  The front & back sections are full width of the shed, with a big sliding door at each.  At the side of the shed is the entry door & a store/feed room, plus a "sick bay' & the hot box with heat lamp.

 

The pens were done with metal star posts, corrugated iron along the back walls & mesh dividers.  They were a temporary fix ...10 years later they are still in situ.  The mesh isn't the smartest idea, kids can get through it, nasty old mother goats will take a dislike to the kid next door & chew an ear.  Should the lovelies get too hostile, I wire a piece of plywood onto the mesh divider ..kinda like outta sight, outta mind ..that usually settles things down.

 

 

And this is my Kelpie boy Benny 'The Wonder Dog'

 

I tried to upload the Tucker Trolley but it was taking forever & it is now after 3 in the morning.  I also wanted to put in some shearing pictures ...ah, well ...that will be something for another day.

 

I'm looking forward to my little break of 'home alone' time ..just need to remember to keep the mobile phone charged & take it with me when I wander out the door...I have a habit of doing myself injury when left alone!  Well, it's now 4 a.m. ...I'm calling it a night!

Cheers from 'the middle of nowhere'