I’ve never really liked goats. Something about their smell, the dead eyes and annoying bleat. So growing up on a smallholding in Cornwall in the 1980s with a handful of the creatures was something of a trial: my mother named one Mischief – not without good reason. It seemed that no matter how hard you hammered the spike to tether them into the ground they would find a way to escape. And then they would head towards the garden, greenhouse or vegetable plot and begin to feed. However, unlike other animals that might eat a few plants and then proceed to curl up and siesta the goat will stroll around picking the growing tips of as many choice plants as it can find and ringing as many newly planted trees and shrubs. It is this almost hellish characteristic that I most disliked and which has led to them being nick-named ‘The Desert Makers’. My favourite saying in reference to goats as a species was ‘the best kind of goat is a curried one’. Continue reading →