Silly Billes!

Tourist season’s over. Which means no cleaning toilets, no changing bedsheets and no kids! No kids also means lonely times for the 3 Silly Billies. Coz there isn’t anyone who’d come by to bring them for walks. Which explains why they always make a hell lot of noise each time any of us leave the house. During times like these, the only solution is to bring the goats away. The goats don’t actually belong to the farm. Unni rents them from a goat farm near Leknes. It’s mainly for the tourists and the kids during the tourist season. So now that the tourist season is over, the goats can go off to.

Saturday, Unni decides that it’s time for the goats to go off. After going to the local shop, we go home and get the goats ready for the road trip. Coz they’d probably pee and poop in the car, it was decided that they’d be traveling in big black garbage bags.

Then began the great goat adventure.

First thing was to line the car with garbage bags so that they don’t dirty the new car.

Then we had to figure a way to get the goats into the bags. Coz all 3 of them would come running to you when they see humans, we tied 2 of them to the fence first and dealt with the Silly Billy No. 3.

Coz he’s the smallest, it was pretty easy to get him into the bag. But being stuck in a bag, with only his head sticking out, I guess he must have gotten pretty stressed, so we brought in some animal feed to calm him down. Bad decision, coz he was soooo excited, he kept trying to run over to the feed and of course ended up tripping himself and falling over onto the ground.

Silly Billy.

Mitzy comes by to check out what all the commotion was about


So after getting him into the bag, we carried him over to the car and tied him to the back seat. He was the easiest. The rest we had a harder time, coz they were much bigger and fought back. But bring out the animal feed and everything works in your way… well, almost. After about an hour wrestling the 3 Silly Billies, we get all of them in the back of the car. The most difficult was Silly Billy No 1. Not just coz he’s the biggest, but coz he fought back a lot. He broke free of the bag, in the end we tied his legs together, which no doubt he broke free of soon after. After a lot of rope tying in the back, we got Silly Billy No 2 and 3 sitting in the corner with their heads in a bucket of feed and Silly Billy No 3 in another corner struggling to break free of his ropes.



The farm is located on the way to Leknes, about half hour drive away. After some turns, Silly Billy No 1 collapsed on the other 2 and coz he was tied up, he couldn’t get up and so let out a ‘blehhhhh’ and just lay there. With some help from me, he managed to stand up. Which was good, coz he was comfortable and kept quiet the rest of the way.


Aalan Gard is the goat farm located in ulu-ville. It has to be the ulu-est farm I’ve ever seen I tell you. You turn left from the main road, drive drive drive drive drive drive drive and drive and then you reach the farm. And it’s just the farm, a mountain behind it and nothing anywhere else for at least 2km.Knut comes out to meet us. We release the Silly Billies from the maze of ropes and he takes them into goat house. Of course I had to go take a peek.

that's Silly Billy No 1 dragged against his will into the goat house

The farm has 1 milking cow, 1 horse, a couple of sheep, a rabbit and about 120 goats, about 95 of them are milking goats. Like cows, they are milked twice a day. A process which takes about 1.5 hours. 18 goats can be lined up to be milked at once. Since they are much smaller, they only give about 1.5L of milk, which means up to 6 goats can be milked at one go and by the time the last milking machine is put on, the first one is probably ready to be taken out. Emily the Dutch working guest does the milking (she does the milking OK!) and tells me each time she has to wrestle with the baby goats which rush up to the milking goats to drink the milk. Then it’s a race to see who gets to the milking goat more quickly, coz she only gets 20s window to catch the baby goat before it drinks up all the milk from a goat.



that's where the goats line up in the stalls to be milked. the metal bowls is where the food is placed for them to have s quick meal while being milked

milk tank. much smaller one compared to the one that Unni has which can hold up to 1200L of milk

milk machines. Goats only have 2 teats unlike cows which have 4. Knut has 6 milking machines.

So while Unni and Knut were talking, I was going around taking pics of the goats. Bet ya didn’t know goats came in so many colours and sizes.






that's Silly Billy No 1 trying to challange another bigger goat in a game of head-butting

After, we head to the farm shop where Knut shows us where he makes the cheese. The budding entrepreneur even has a backyard where herbs and spices are grown and sold in the shop as well. So that’s how you become self-sustaining in ulu-ville.


We sat down for tea and a round of cheese-testing. Tea with a tinge of peppermint freshly harvested from the garden ok! And check out these cool goat napkins which came along with it!


that's the fresh peppermint leaves hanging in the middle


making brown cheese on the farm!


And then surprise surprise! Unni buys me a goat skin! Kinda like an end of work present. Apparently the goat is skinned on the farm and is sent away to be treated. It took a whole year before they got the skins back.


With so many animals, herb and spice gardens, a farm shop, it’s wayyyyyyyy cool to work on a farm like Knut’s. I was telling Bcc to secretly get me a job on the farm next year!

Oh by the way if you were wondering if i'd lose the 3 Silly Billies in the sea of Silly Billies...

WRONG!


ha, that's coz they kept following us around!