Not On The List……
Why is it we go into a shop for one thing and come out with 10? Don’t deny it, we all do it at some time. If you go in hungry, that’s when the toilet rolls you went in for become chocolate digestives, snow balls, crisps and so the list goes on; if you come out with what you went in for it’s a plus. This happens to me most weeks as I go to buy a “treat” for our guests arriving in our cottages and no it’s not loo roll, although I do put that in the cottages, if you’d like to know what the “treat” is, visit our reviews – Ruby Farmhouse Holiday Cottages page or come and stay in one of our cottages to find out!
Anyway I digress, fact is by the time I’ve finished I will have doubled the cost of my proposed shop. Much like I did yesterday, only I wanted sheep and not loo roll. Correction: I don’t want sheep, I need sheep. Anyone who has horses will know they are the worse grazers you can possibly have so I need sheep in order to manage our land better (for the horses’ benefit of course). My earliest memories of sheep, are my being called up to the field, fairy liquid in hand during lambing because I had the smallest hands in the family, well you would at 10 wouldn’t you? My memories don’t stop there, there’s the dipping, the feet clipping, the sheering, the only fun part was rounding the sheep up, done on horseback, hence my love of horses and why I now need sheep! So there I am at our next door but one neighbours smallholding choosing sheep, and seeing as I’ve always “wanted” a goat, (note not “needed”) and being in the right place at the right time what’s a girl to do? Well choose a goat of course, whereupon doubling the cost of my proposed shop. (my husband hasn’t asked how much, probably scared of the answer) Very good value shop I thought, but that’s neither here nor there, the fact is, if and when they produce offspring we get to have meat that tastes of something meat like on our table, we know where it’s come from and it will have been spoilt rotten while with us. Our land will have benefitted too, along with the guests young kids now having some more animals to see while they are here.
Now onto names, the sheep we think, will be called Mint and Rosemary for obvious reasons. The goat? Well we’re still not decided hence todays blog! So far we have from family and friends; Gertrude, every single name to do with Harry Potter courtesy of our daughter, Vindaloo, Passanda and Ogg. I should explain, goat makes very good curry, takes 2 days to make a good one but well worth it, so that’s where Vindaloo and Passanda come in, although rest assured this goat will not be curried (hear that husband dear) As for Ogg, this is after Nanny Ogg in Terry Pratchett’s books, a favourite of my husbands and seeing as I went out for 2 sheep and came back with an unplanned for goat maybe I should let him have his choice? I would still like to hear your ideas though before a final decision is made, so feel free to send us some more names.
Our new family members will arrive next week whereupon it will be my job to teach Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley (our gun dogs) that they are not toys to be chased round the field and wrestled to the ground. As Miranda’s Mum would say “Such Fun!”