Secrets from Chuckling Goat

by Shann Nix Jones

  I’ve started bringing in lemongrass essential oil, from the soap making, and dabbing it on pieces of kitchen roll and leaving it around the room. It makes a heavenly scent. The nurses love it, and use every excuse to come into this room and take a deep breath – it does lift the spirit.

  Suddenly, Rich opened his eyes and said, ‘I forgot to get rid of the lambs.’ Two of them had died, along with one of the sheep. We’d called the knacker man to take away the sheep.

  ‘Why didn’t you just have him take the lambs as well?’ I asked.

  ‘I was going to do it myself, but I just forgot,’ he replied.

  ‘And they’ve been sitting there ever since?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  A wave of rage swept through me. Stupid, stupid, stupid and careless. How ridiculous, not to just have them all taken away at once. And now I was going to have to deal with it. Not on day one of the death, either, but nearly a week later, when the corpses would have turned into the stuff of nightmares. It was too much. Just too much.

  ‘Just take them and drop them into the pit,’ Rich said. I stared back at him.

  ‘I’m not going to do that,’ I said. ‘I’m just not.’ I imagined getting the corpses into the wheelbarrow, fighting to get it down the long, slippery, muddy hill, manoeuvring the lid off the tank pit with a shovel, dropping the bodies in. No – too much. ‘I’ll call the knacker man,’ I said.

  ‘Get Rhys to do it.’ Rich suggested. Rhys – Rich’s brother – has offered to help, and means it.

  ‘I’m not asking Rhys to do that.’

  ‘Then I’ll phone him and ask him myself.’

  ‘I don’t think you should.’ It’s too much to ask. Rhys is endlessly kind and helpful but he’s not a farmer, hardened to these things in the way Rich is. He’s a gardener, and a physics professor. He would most likely be as horrified by the task as I was.

  ‘I will sort it,’ I tell him firmly, and I will. Somehow. Because I have to. It has to be done, and there’s no-one else to do it. We change the subject. I want to scream at him, but I can’t, of course. He can’t help having forgotten, and it’s too late to fix it.

  But later, sitting in the car waiting to summon my energy for the long drive home, I grip the edge of the steering wheel and weep. Not for Rich, but because I’m furious at him. How dare he put me in this situation? It’s just the one thing too much.

  I got home and put off dealing with the dead lambs – I was too tired, and surely I didn’t need to do it after a long stint at the hospital? I dreamed about those damn lambs all night, and got up dreading it. I’d milk first, I decided, and then go and look – see how big they were, and how horrible, and whether or not I could manage to get them down into the disposal pit.

  11 April 2012

  Joli had a lie-in this morning. I’d allowed her to stay up late last night, as a special treat – she’d been working like a grown woman and it seemed unfair to make her go to bed early, like a child. Luckily for me, she’s on spring break at the moment. We’d sat up together and watched multiple episodes of Friends, from the much-loved DVD set I’d given her for Christmas.

  But by 10 a.m. I found myself getting increasingly annoyed as the time passed, and she didn’t appear. Finally she showed up, and I told her brusquely that she needed to be up by 9 a.m. in future. She nodded apologetically and set off on her round of chores.

  The lambs sat uncomfortably at the edge of my consciousness all the while I was finishing the milking, and when I couldn’t find anything else to do, I sighed and headed up towards the top barn.

  I met Joli coming down. ‘I’ve sorted the lambs,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  I goggled at her. ‘What do you mean, you’ve sorted them?’

  ‘I dragged them out and put them where the knacker man can reach them.’

  ‘You did?’ I couldn’t seem to make my brain work.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, looking at me strangely.

  ‘Was it – was it horrible?’ I asked.

  ‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘Only they were stiff. I don’t mind dead things – it’s just the stiffness that freaks me out.’

  ‘Would you like… would you like me to book you a facial?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, please!’ she said happily, and linked her arm in mine as we walked inside. I picked up the phone and booked her a facial straight away. My girl.

  12 April 2012

  Rich is coming home today! I feel excited and strangely shocked, and a little afraid. How will we cope? Might something happen to him medically that I won’t know how to deal with? It’s been difficult but strangely peaceful, this little time when my only duties have been to milk in the morning and then make the long trek to the hospital.

  But now I imagine the immediate future coming towards me like a huge wall of water – Rich home, impatient and in pain; the business starting up again; people knocking on the door, wanting things, wanting to buy milk; Benji at home, and both kids needing to be taken to school.

  It’s been a hard-won island of quiet, this period while Rich has been in hospital. I schemed and organized and called in all my favours, wearing out the goodwill of our friends and neighbours.

  But now it’s about to end. And what then? Who’ll help me when Rich is home on the couch needing tending, the two big girls are both back at university and Joli is busy with homework? How will I manage it all?

  13 April 2012

  Rich has been home for one full day and so far, it’s not too difficult to manage. The toilet isn’t working, though – another problem – and normally Rich handles all the plumbing. I suggested calling a plumber, which he wouldn’t hear of. But how do we solve it, if he’s not strong enough to do it himself, and won’t let me call someone else to fix it? This, too, is out of my range.

  The evening milking needs to start at 5:30 p.m. If it doesn’t, we end up not eating supper until 9 p.m, too late for Benji and too late for me, these days. Yesterday, we defrosted some pea soup that I’d cooked and frozen in the weeks before Rich went into hospital. But since Elly, Ceris and George were all going to be home, bringing our tally around the dinner table up to eight, I could see that it wasn’t going to be enough food, even with the loaf of bread I had in the oven.

  I needed to go to the store to get more ham to put in the soup, more sour cream to add to a new batch of soup, but I was out of cash to hand to one of the girls, so they couldn’t go for me. If I went to the store myself, the milking wouldn’t start until 6:30 p.m. and dinner would be unspeakably late.

  Joli was in the nearby town of Carmarthen – I’d sent her to go have fun with her friends, after she’d done all the morning chores for me. I was so exhausted that I fell back into bed and slept straight through until 2 p.m. I was shivery and shaky and dreaded falling ill – I mustn’t, at this point; I can’t.

  Luckily I slept off the ill feeling and got up with enough energy to make a batch of soap. I can feel the tide of the re-opening business headed towards us on Monday (today is Friday), with very little soap in stock.

  But the immediate problem – more groceries, to feed more people. I stomped out the door in a rage and got into the girls’ new (used) little blue car. (I’d loaned mine to Elly, so that she could go pick up Joli in Carmarthen.)

  I stormed up the driveway and had a shock when I tried to set the handbrake for the steep hill start at the top of the drive, and nothing happened. I just slid merrily backwards – the handbrake had no effect at all. By the time I managed to rev the engine enough to get it going against gravity, I was halfway back down the drive. I eventually managed to do the shopping – thankfully the shop is only two minutes away – and came back with the fresh supplies.

  I reported that the car wasn’t roadworthy and that it would have to be fixed before it was driven again; Ceris had been planning to drive it to work the next day. Luckily her boyfriend George came in at that very moment (he’s a mechanic) and I asked him if he would get the parts and fix it before he leaves on his year-long trip to
Australia.

  Ceris is being very stoical about him going, at least on the outside, but it must be tearing her up on the inside. They’re both so young, it’s hard to imagine that their relationship will survive an entire year apart. But then again, so far they’ve surprised me at every turn! They got together at age 17, and have been as monogamous as swans ever since. George lives in the farmhouse with us – he and Ceris have a large room at the back of the house – and he’s completely a member of the family.

  Such a lovely young man. What we’ll do without him, I cannot imagine. He drives Joli to the school bus every morning at 7.45 a.m. – another chore that’ll fall back on my shoulders after he goes.

  George said that he’d fix the car but that it would take him a week to get the parts and do the repairs. Ceris will have to use my car until that time. I have to go and pick up the lambs from Debbie, who’s been feeding them while Rich was in hospital. But I suppose I can use Rich’s Land Rover for that, since he’s not using it. How complicated does life really need to be?

  15 April 2012

  I cried a lot on Friday. I cried when we found out that the toilet was really broken. I cried again when it turned out that it wasn’t just broken but the cistern was cracked, and it needed to be replaced. I cried again when it looked like the freezer had packed in, and all of our buckets of frozen milk were slowly thawing.

  It felt like the universe had turned upside down, and was dumping itself on my head….

  Luckily all of it resolved, with some help from a wonderful family. Perthyn to the rescue! Rhys went out the very next morning, bought a new toilet for us, and spent the whole of the early afternoon installing it. I moved a bunch of frozen milk into the freezer that I thought was broken, and brought the temperature back down. So even if it’s broken, it’s maintaining – for the moment. A bit like me…

  16 April 2012

  Well, it’s 11 days post-op and Rich is well on the mend, thank goodness. He was better all round yesterday – feeling better, mood seemed better, more energy. He’s lost a lot of weight and looks a bit gaunt, but his colour is improving. Not that horrible grey-green colour that he used to turn.

  I’m struggling to know what to feed him now. I want to give him food that’ll support his recovery, but the things that I think of as ‘healthy’ don’t seem to be on the menu – he’s not supposed to have oatmeal, whole grains, brown bread, oranges or fruit with skin.

  I usually buy a book and research when I find myself in this situation, but this one seems harder to crack – plus I don’t usually cook lunch. We have tea and toast in the morning before milking, then come in for a big egg and bacon protein breakfast around 11 a.m. We have a snack around 3 or 4 p.m. and then I put a big farm supper on the table around 8 p.m.

  So I’m not accustomed to having to serve up lunch, and I think Rich is feeling a bit neglected during the day – I’m spinning so fast, trying to keep the whole farm running, that I don’t have time to sit with him, the way I did in the hospital.

  Business starts again today – here we go!

  19 April 2012

  Tuesday night was a real low point. I’d hit the ground running at 6 a.m., and run all day until past 10 at night. I was desperately looking forward to sitting down on the couch to watch half an hour of TV, but I couldn’t even do that, because I had to go out to the barn to feed the goat kids before I went to sleep. I stomped out, fed them, stomped back in. My recreation time was gone, and I knew that I’d have to drop straight into bed if I wanted any chance of making it through the next day.

  Rich was in the kitchen, trying to get the lid onto the leftovers box, and it wouldn’t go.

  I went over to him. ‘Here, let me.’

  But I couldn’t do it either, and as I struggled, the fragile edge of my control suddenly turned sideways and disappeared.

  ‘Close, you f^&*^&!’ I screamed, beating the box with my fist. I burst into tears.

  Rich took it away from me, put it in the fridge and came back to hold me while I sobbed uncontrollably. He led me up to bed while I cried some more, and then we went to sleep.

  But oddly, in the morning, I felt better. Or maybe not oddly – isn’t that what they always say? Things will look better in the morning? For no better reason than that you’re rested, I guess.

  But it suddenly occurred to me that this really isn’t so hard. I mean, for goodness sake, all I’m doing is putting milk into bottles. The goats are doing the really amazing part – producing this healing stuff out of grass. All I have to do is get it out of them and into bottles, and put labels on. Some of the milk I put goat’s milk kefir grains in, let it sit and strain it out. Hardly rocket science. I can do this. I know I can. It’s just not that hard.

  And with that knowledge, I went out in a good mood. I drew a funny picture for Joli, and made her a cup of tea that I left on the table. And when she came out, she was in a good mood too. It changed everything, for both of us.

  24 April 2012

  I was on an odd high for a couple of days after that last realization. I actually started to love getting up early, getting out into the barn, doing all the milking. We had the loveliest day on the weekend – bright sun – and I went out into the swing-set yard with the goat kids. I sat on the grass, and they crowded around me, piling into my lap and standing still to be stroked.

  I hadn’t really cuddled them since before they went to the Grants to be fostered, and I was surprised by the intensity of their determination to be petted. It was blissful, being surrounded by baby animals and soaking up the sun.

  Joli and I made batches of the new Break-Out Magic Cleanser, which has thyme and tea tree essential oils in it. The facial clay gives it a gorgeous pale green colour, like new leaves. For some reason the powerful essential oil combination makes it set very quickly, so we struggled to get it out of the pan and into the moulds in time. But the resulting facial bars smell delicious, and work a treat… Joli swears by them, and her teenage skin is looking lovely!

  All was satisfying and contented in the kitchen as I stirred the soap and Joli packed and wrapped the cut bars. The radio was on, we chatted as our hands were busy, and the sharp scents of thyme and tea tree floated on the air.

  On the Sunday, we bottled kefir, as we’d had a big order come in. We stood around the table. I filtered the kefir; Joli poured, and Rich labelled the bottles. I love looking at the ranks of small white bottles when we’re finished, all neatly capped and standing like little soldiers. I never thought I’d enjoy ‘manufacturing’ things so much.

  But it’s fantastic, to make something that didn’t exist before, out of things from your own patch of land. Even better if people want these things, and are willing to buy them. And if you can make a living from it – well, that’s as good as it gets.

  We’ll have to see about the making-a-living part. Rich is out of work at the moment, after his operation, and has been denied any disability benefits. My father gave us a hugely generous sum of money as an early birthday present, and we’ve been trickling along on that. But soon enough that tide will diminish, and we’ll scrape the rocky bottom again. Will our little bottles be enough to keep us afloat?

  On Sunday night, I was milking when Joli came flying into the barn. I knew by the look on her face that something was terribly wrong, and my heart seized in my chest.

  ‘Taid’s fallen,’ she said. I left the goat on the milking stand and ran after her as quickly as I could in my wellies.

  Taid, my 76-year-old, pipe-smoking, fiercely independent father-in-law emerges every morning around 11 a.m., with hat and scarf wrapped rather dashingly round his throat to drive up to Aberaeron to pick up a prescription, or go up to the supermarket for a newspaper and tobacco for his beloved pipe. (A diagnosis of emphysema has not dimmed this love – he still smokes away, and we’ve reluctantly agreed that, at his age, he has a right to do as he pleases.)

  He still takes care of his chickens – moved, at my insistence, away from the steep, muddy and slippery hill wher
e I feared he’d fall and break a hip – into a more contained chicken house where they don’t have to be let out and shut in every night, and can be fed only every three days.

  I don’t check on him as a matter of course – he’s proud and doesn’t like it. He comes out when he wants to: for a visit or a cup of coffee, or just to see what’s happening on the farm. He eats a hot meal with us in the evening, and then retreats back into his tobacco-smoky den, to read and watch TV.

  He’s had a difficult time lately – on top of the two big heart attacks and two major strokes that he survived before I came to live at the farm. He’s recently had prostate surgery, a bronchial infection that nearly landed him back in hospital, and a mini stroke that left him wandering, blindly, into our kitchen, having temporarily lost the ability to see.

  He recovered from all of these episodes, and seemed as strong as ever. But now as I raced into the house, I ran the possibilities through my mind, and none of them was good. The reality was worse than I’d feared. He lay on the floor, face down, half twisted to the side. I ran over to him and dropped to my knees. Rich was on the phone, trying to get through to the ambulance service. I looked at Taid’s twisted form – his breathing was harsh, laboured, wrong. Had he broken anything when he fell? I didn’t want to move him, just in case. But it seemed horrible to leave him as he was.

  I couldn’t think of anything to do for him. So I started to pray – it was all I had. I prayed for peace for all of us, and strength. I prayed for healing, and for the pain to depart, and for a vast river of golden light to come down and enfold Taid, carrying away all his hurts and troubles. He liked that – he seemed calmer.