Secrets from Chuckling Goat

by Shann Nix Jones

  14 February 2011

  A day of firsts. The first snowdrop, white and fragile against the soaked brown bracken. And our first goat kid – Valentine – born silvery grey and white, perfectly patterned, with Nancy Sinatra-style white boots and elegant stripes down each side of her head. The first goat kid born into the Hoffnant herd. Her mother, Marmite, looked ridiculously pleased and licked her all over. We hung over the stable door, marvelling and admiring. What a clever girl Marmite is.

  My friend Sue phoned me in great excitement today. ‘Turn on the Food Show, on BBC Radio 4!’ she cried. ‘There’s a doctor on there talking about raw milk, like your goat’s milk!’ I flipped on the radio straight away. The doctor being interviewed was Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride, a noted neurologist and one of the world’s leading experts in treating children and adults with learning disabilities and mental, digestive and immune disorders. I was so interested in what she was saying that I wrote it down:

  ‘Milk as it leaves the animal is alive, because it is, in effect, the white blood of the animal with red blood cells removed. It contains active, alive lymphocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, antibodies, and other immune cells which kill infection, and protect us from infection. It has active, alive enzymes and vitamins, in the best biochemical shape and form for the human body to assimilate.

  ‘Raw milk is a probiotic food, with lactobacilli, bifidobacteria and other probiotic bacteria. All these substances are there for a purpose – to protect the milk from contamination and infection – so raw, alive milk, as it leaves the animal, is protected from infection.

  ‘All that protection is conferred to the person, when they drink it in that shape and form. When we pasteurize milk, we kill it. The immune cells are killed; the enzymes are destroyed; the probiotic bacteria are killed. This becomes a dead, processed product, coming into your digestive system. It’s very hard work for your digestive system and body to handle. Alive, raw milk is equipped with all the factors for us to digest lactose in the best possible way, so it does our digestive tract only good.

  ‘When we pasteurize milk, we destroy all those factors. So lactose becomes hard to digest, and people become lactose intolerant. They develop bloating, diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, and other unpleasant symptoms. I find that many lactose intolerant patients, when they start drinking raw milk, can tolerate it perfectly well.’

  Wow! We knew that the raw goat’s milk was good stuff, and we knew that it’d cured Benji’s bronchial infections, but until now, we didn’t know exactly what we had, or why it was working – or that it’s so important the milk is raw.

  I sat down and ordered a copy of Dr Campbell-McBride’s book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, ADHD/ADD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Depression, and Schizophrenia. My journalist’s ‘news nose’ told me that there was something here worth following up.

  27 February 2011

  Sing a song of small things… It occurs to me suddenly that the problem is not the galaxy out there, it’s the galaxy in here.

  I’m carrying Dr Campbell-McBride’s book everywhere with me, reading it word for word, turning the pages in fascination, despite the fact that I don’t have a scientific bone in my body. She’s so clear about what’s going on inside the body. I’ve never read such a simple, easy explanation of physical science. I was particularly struck by the following passage:

  ‘A human body is like a planet inhabited by huge numbers of various micro-creatures. The diversity and richness of this life on every one of us is probably as amazing as the life on Earth itself. Our digestive system, skin, eyes, respiratory and excretory organs are happily co-existing with trillions of invisible lodgers, making one ecosystem of macro- and micro-life, living together in harmony. It’s a symbiotic relationship, where neither party can live without the other.

  ‘Let me repeat this: we humans cannot live without these tiny microorganisms, which we carry on and in our bodies everywhere. The largest colonies of microbes live in our digestive system. A healthy adult on average carries 1.5–2 kg (3–4lb) of bacteria in the gut. All these bacteria are not just a chaotic microbial mass, but a highly organized micro-world with certain species predominating and controlling others. The number of functions they fulfil in our bodies are so vital to us, that if our gut got sterilized, we would probably not survive.’

  So, we are a planet, hosting innumerable life forms. Our ancestors co-existed happily with tiny, invisible microorganisms. They made use of them to create food, in the form of sourdough starter, yeast and cheese culture.

  Cheese is made with rennet, which is the lining of a calf’s stomach. You take the rennet and put it into milk, to start the curds forming. The reason this works is that the microorganisms from the calf’s gut help it digest its mother’s milk. You take those bugs and put them in the milk; you are essentially borrowing the calf’s ability to digest the milk. The calf is extending its protection to you.

  In the past, humans lived happily with the world of microorganisms. Then we got smart enough to see these bugs in a microscope, and we were horrified. We called them germs, and set out to kill as many as possible. We tried to sanitize everything – surfaces, food products, soil, milk, the lot. Blast the bugs and the weeds with pesticides, and then put chemicals back in to make the plants grow. Processed food loses its taste, flavour and colour, so chemical additives are added to compensate.

  We know now what the result of that has been. Sanitize a child’s environment too energetically, and you’ll create allergies. Feed generations of children processed food and you have an epidemic of autism, ADHD, eczema and asthma.

  The next step for human beings, I think, is this one – learn to understand the world of microorganisms, and co-exist with it.

  Dr Campbell-McBride went on to crystallize her findings into something called the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), which has helped hundreds of thousands of people all over the world suffering from autism, dyspraxia, ADD, dyslexia, ADHD, schizophrenia and depression.

  Turns out that all these patients have something in common: they struggle with digestive problems – abnormal flora in the gut. This creates ‘leaky’ gut walls that don’t process food properly. So the patients are not only suffering from malnutrition, but food molecules that aren’t converted properly escape into the blood system, where they affect the brain, causing abnormal behaviour.

  The GAPS diet basically works on a two-part principle: first heal the lining of the gut, then repopulate it with good flora. You heal the gut by eating homemade meat stocks (boiling meat bones in water releases cartilaginous material that helps the healing process). You then repopulate the good flora with homemade yogurt and kefir.

  Here’s an extraordinary thing. Rich suffers from ulcerative colitis, and we’d just got to the point where we went to see a specialist in London. He told us that there was no more help for it; Rich would have to have a colostomy. We were horrified.

  But when we returned home, Rich went into spontaneous – and complete – remission. He’s been entirely symptom free ever since. We were so relieved by the timely miracle that we didn’t think that much about it. It was simply, grace.

  But now I realize that the GAPS diet is exactly what I’ve been feeding Rich for the last three years. We butcher our own meat and put it in the freezer. To cook it, I hoist it into a pan of water and cook it all day on the Alpha, because it’s too big to thaw in the microwave. So he’s been getting a lot of homemade meat stocks.

  And, as we had so much goat’s milk, I started making yogurt and goat’s milk kefir, just as a way to use up the excess milk. So he was getting the good flora, as well.

  We’d accidentally stumbled on the diet designed to help him – just from eating the way that people always have, on the farm! These are the ways that people used to eat, when tiny microorganisms were a part of everyday life. I’ve a jar of sourdough starter in the fridge. The living organism in it will make my bread rise. I’ve a container of goat’s milk kefir fermenting on the table.
The life in it will repopulate our guts with good flora, and keep us healthy.

  Like learning to co-exist with the world outside, we have to learn to co-exist with the world inside – all the trillions of tiny living cells living on us and in us without which we could not exist. We are the planet. Literally.

  Fired by this discovery, Rich and I began to seriously discuss the possibility of trying to start our own business. Maybe there was a market for the goat’s milk goodies that have been so healing for our own family. If raw goat’s milk is such a powerful health product, perhaps we could become licensed to sell it?

  If goat’s milk kefir is so helpful to children with autism, maybe there are parents out there who’d like to buy it – to have it made for them, rather than having to make it themselves?

  Maybe we could make it here on the farm, for other families, the way we’ve been making it for our own family?

  16 March 2011

  Okay. We’re going to try it. We’re probably crazy. In fact, we’re definitely crazy! But we’re going to give it a go. Since we have the goats and love them and milk them anyway – as a very expensive hobby – it makes a certain kind of nutty sense that if we push it a little further, it might actually give us something back. It might, in fact, earn us a living. A brave and dangerous thought, in a time when farming seems doomed to fail, and everyone accepts that smallholdings don’t make money.

  But we’ve decided to try.

  So now we’re struggling to get a new barn built and a brand-new, start-from-scratch dairy up and running. I signed up for a free ‘start-your-own-business’ class, where I spent three days trying to wrap my mind around the complexities of tax exemptions, business costings and marketing plans. We’ve registered with Farming Connect, who are going to provide us with some discounted training and a ‘Whole Farm’ mentor.

  Rich has been working every hour in the day, trying to expand the barn and create a milking parlour that will keep the hygiene inspector happy. And my cousin Ron has flown over from Texas to help with the backbreaking work of barn-building. He’s lovely – it feels like he’s always been with us.

  22 March 2011

  Everything is a disaster at the moment! The first ewe has had lambs, but she doesn’t seem interested in feeding them. So we’ve got two baby lambs in the kitchen that need feeding four times a day.

  Marmite, who’s the only goat milking at the moment (16 goats and only one in milk – some dairy!) has developed mastitis, and has an oozing sore on her udder. Rich wheeled her off to the vets in the trailer as soon as he came home, and the vet says she’ll have to be pumped full of all kinds of antibiotics, which means we can’t use her milk – which leaves us without milk of any kind. So I’ll have to buy it from the shop – which I hate doing!

  I have to travel to Denmark tomorrow for four days – I don’t want to go, but we desperately need the cash infusion to pay for the renovation of the barn and to set up the dairy. I’ve made lists and more lists of things for everyone to do in my absence – but Rich is looking boot-faced, and with all the animals poorly and needing feeding, it’s going to be a nightmare for him.

  Yesterday Rich and I were in the kitchen until 11 p.m., and looked at each other in despair – is it always going to be this hard?

  ‘We knew this was going to be the difficult bit,’ I reminded him. ‘The overlap – where we’re working to get the dairy going, while still doing our other jobs. It won’t always be this bad.’

  ‘If it’s always this bad,’ he replied grimly, ‘we’re not going to keep doing it.’

  26 March 2011

  I went to Denmark: training executives to do public speaking in a majestic country mansion decorated with glistening chandeliers and grey velvet furnishings. Came home to find that Joli had made a delicious rabbit pie and homemade biscuits, cleaned the kitchen, swept the porch and put a jug of wild daffodils on the kitchen table. And she’s only 12 years old! It’s heaven to be home.

  The barn is looking gorgeous; white-washed walls for the pens, light and airy, windows to let in the sun, neat milking benches, a milking parlour, a dairy to process the fresh milk. Unbelievable that Rich has managed to put all this together on a shoestring, with no deep pockets, no investors, nothing but his own skill and hard work.

  He’s done all the designing, digging, plumbing, electrics, building, roofing, automatic watering systems. I marvel at him, all over again. He has the brain of a skilled engineer and the hands of a master craftsman. We could never have afforded to hire someone to create the barn and the milking system for us. His abilities have made it possible for us to try to launch this business.

  30 March 2011

  All hell has broken loose in the barn – the goats are kidding right, left and centre. Teasel had triplets – black ones with white noses and long snowstorm ears. They’re tiny and skinny, with long spidery legs. Joli loves them, since Teasel is her goat. We’d just decided that Conkers wasn’t pregnant after all, when she popped out a single kid with gorgeous colouring – fawn brown with dark eel stripes. It’s strong and stocky and lovely, and undoubtedly the most beautiful kid yet.

  Rich constructed a wooden kid pen up at the top of the hay barn, where the kids are warm and cosy, protected from the weather and far enough away from their anxious mothers that they can’t hear each other bleat. They have to be separated from their moms, so that we can milk the mothers, and the bond between them is broken. When they stop calling for each other, the kids can all go into one pen together inside the barn.

  Another aspect of the whole business that seems heartless – but it’s a reality of dairy farming life. You have to produce a baby animal to get the milk to flow – but the baby can’t be allowed to drink all the milk if you want to have any to sell. Luckily, if the babies are taken away from the mothers, the mothers produce much more milk than if they were left on, so there’s enough to feed the kids and us, too. And, hopefully, some members of the paying public… if our little infant business is ever going to get off the ground.

  2 April 2011

  More bad news – it feels like we’re swimming the English Channel, and just getting smacked in the face with wave after wave of salt water. Rich’s Land Rover has packed in, and he thinks it’s completely dead. We need it to tow the goat trailer, pull out stuck tractors and all sorts of other tasks. Can’t manage without it. Can’t afford to replace it. Don’t know what we’re going to do – we’ve had two cars die in the time we’ve been trying to launch this new business – and the money to replace this one will suck up every pound that we’ve saved to outfit the new dairy! Argh!

  My dad has been an angel and come to the rescue. He’s giving me my birthday gift early, to bail us out with the car. And, he says, he’s throwing in extra to act as start-up for the business. A life raft in the middle of the bitter water! And Rich’s dad says that he’ll help us out, as well. Feeling so grateful for a loving family… immediate crisis weathered. But frightening long-term implications – we’re on such a shoestring, trying to fund this business out of our very shallow pockets, that any little setback can completely derail us.

  On the upside, we went into Cardigan today to speak with our business advisor. I’ve been working like a demon on a business plan and grant application, and he says it looks good, and that he sees no reason why we shouldn’t get the EU grant that we’ve applied for. It’s not a lot of money – and we have to put in 60 per cent to their 40 per cent – but it’d be so reassuring to think that the government believes our business idea is viable enough to invest in. Fingers crossed. He’s sent off our application, and we should hear one way or another before too long.

  5 April 2011

  Went into the barn today to try to milk Seren again. She kidded five days ago – twins, a beautiful black nanny with white speckled ears and silver splotches on her body, and a male with the same colouring. He got put down. But Seren, normally so affectionate and even-tempered, isn’t taking very well to being milked. She kicks over the bucket, refuses to eat
the food in front of her, and generally drives everyone crazy. So I’ve been ending up covered with milk, shouting, sweating and swearing, just trying to get some milk out so that she won’t go rock-hard and get mastitis. It’s a mess.

  I thought that I’d go out at the half-point in the day, and try to get a little more out of her. Otherwise, by night-time her udder will be tight as a drum with milk, and painful, which won’t make the whole process any easier.

  I also had to feed the kids. We’ve got some who get fed five times a day, some who get fed four times a day, and others still who get fed three times a day, so I’m out there a lot. Anyhow, I went out, casually looking to the right and left of the whitewashed stalls as I walked by, automatically checking on all the goats. And when I got to Buddug’s stall I did a double take – she had two kids in with her! She’s not due for another week, so she hasn’t even moved into the ‘keeping an eye on her’ phase. I went in closer for a look, heart pounding excitedly.

  Buddug is the only goat whose billy we’d consider keeping – she’s from a different line than everyone else, so he’d be unrelated to the rest of the flock, and thus good breeding material. Plus, our friend Aeron, who shows prize-winning goats and likes black goats especially, had put in a word that he might be interested in a male from her.

  Both of Buddug’s kids had black bodies with silver splotches, and white speckled ears, in what looked to be the characteristic Hoffnant pattern this season. But my stomach sank as I looked closer at one of them. Something was wrong with his face – terribly wrong. His nose was deformed, more like a trunk. And his tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth. Otherwise, he was big, healthy, beautifully marked, sturdy.