Update on the previous ‘plan’…

I had planned on ‘not writing’ while we were looking at a DIY project on the farm which I knew would be physically demanding, and involve me hanging around a lot waiting for deliveries and things, and I was pleasantly surprised that I still had some breakthroughs relating to the fiction projects and engaged in a damn good clear out of the file systems. The end was in sight on the DIY, and the male goats moved into their new home, and I was ready to get to the desk – and then the goats failed one out of three annual blood tests that  I commit to with them.

It is fair to say I was gobsmacked and put on my arse in disbelief. I thought it was a laboratory mistake. As far as I knew all the goats were from herds who annually tested. Long and short of that is they only tested for one of the three diseases and I hadn’t picked that up from the paperwork or in the hassle of COVID Lockdowns etc etc . None of them committed a crime, and I did my best to buy from people who I felt knew what they were doing, but I did not know that in the twenty years since I last kept goats that the British Goat Society and the Goat Veterinary Society had totally concentrated on only the one disease. Neither did I appreciate that Goat Keepers often only have those two organisations as their guides and not wider farming experience – to show goats at BGS shows you only need a CAE certificate, not including a Johnes or CLA’. Ironically I can still show my goats! Yet, CLA is the only zoonotic disease of the three. 

The advice of the vets was ‘cull and don’t restock’ or operate a clean herd and a dirty herd but as 5/6 of my adult goats were positive and 14 were not tested due to being too young I couldn’t see how I could separate them and we certainly weren’t going to cull them. I informed the breeders and received the embarrassed and bemused comments when they realised what the implications were for them and their goats – some were able to find the money to test theirs, some of theirs and some chose ‘not to know’ one was outraged at me and another decided it wasn’t them – none of them provided any evidence of whole herd CLA testing over any years or Johnes testing. They will carry on being complacent or delusional and will test a few or not – I will never know where this came from – and it may have had more than one source – but the effect is they will carry on and my goats and I will stay here – a closed and self-contained herd but we won’t sell breeding goats or be mixing with other goats. If I had wanted to go back into meat sales I would have bought sheep. Dairy goats are not ‘beefy’ and require housing and year-round feeding and they get all the problems of both dairy cows and sheep. 

So it has been absolutely shit few weeks and I have found myself reaching for colouring books, or embroidery or sketching with heavy rock in the headphones. Audible books or reading as I have tried to regain some semblance of control over raging anxiety and inability to sleep – Mum’s dementia is also getting worse and that is a constant worry – together the two things have annihilated me. 

Some years ago, when I started these blogs. I talked about my sheep and the ponies and the dogs and the farm and it is always difficult when things die – no one reads these posts – but I am conscious they might. With the goats, perhaps more than the original four-leggeds, I used FB – I had joined in goat-related groups and allowed ‘friending’ to my profile and I had set up a Bridevale Goats page at some point. I had quickly found out how abrasive and unpleasant some goat- keepers were on these sites and had a few track me through Messenger until I blocked them but suddenly I realised my whole world outside on the farm was visible to people who didn’t have the whit not to make some stupid comment – and something I very much enjoyed doing – photographing this place, and it’s inhabitants, was compromised. I tried the security tweaks but these goat folk were everywhere in my Contacts and so to give myself some peace of mind from them, their activity and opinions, I deactivated my FB profile and closed down my writing page and the goat one. They are not totally deleted but they will be ‘off air’ for the foreseeable future. I will miss the non goat related groups I do enjoy being part of, and the news things I follow, real friends and family update and being able to use Messenger – but it is worth it to know these people have to get at me/to me in other ways – where I can see them coming. If non of them ever contact me again it won’t be too soon. 

The Goat Project seemed an innocuous little project that would draw together the farm and the writing with non-fiction, the Blogs and some light-hearted fun giving us some cheery animals about the place and me the chance to muck about with the dairy stuff. There is no chance that I will ever want to write about my goat keeping experiences in non-fiction though I expect that when I recover my sang froid, enough to get back to the fiction projects, that some will undoubtedly seep into them – and by then I might see the funny side of Fifty Shades of Goat Keeping or It Shouldn’t Happen to a Goat-Keeper or even Prime Suspect.

But, as it is now, I am not seeing the funny side of this – there are empty pens, in other yards, and other people are crying because I tested something they did not test for – and not all can keep their goats as ‘pets’…I also know that in still other yards there are goats who are neither ‘pets’ nor regularly tested free of this virus and who will still be sold, as breeding goats and ‘pet companions’, to unsuspecting and ignorant buyers. At another time in my life, I might not walk away from that fight but as it is now, though it makes me feel sick, it’s not a fight I wish to take on.

So me seeing the ‘funny side’ is a way off.

All that leaves me, and our goats, in much the same place as we were – and as Rufus is my ‘only pony’ now, and one I do not ride anymore—as I can’t leave my Mum on her own these days, I suspect I will add the goaty adventures to this section of this web site especially while I try to find my way to escape in to writing my own fiction again…

LOL I have renewed the Hosting for three sites – but for the life of me, I can’t think why 🙂 Except, I suppose, it might give the illusion I am still a Writer. I will always be a Writer but whether I will ever make a living from it is in doubt. I am battered, right now, more than the average cod in the average seafront cafe.