Living with animals...

On Saturday it rained ALL day. We started off by working in the market garden, but were soaked through in minutes. So, we spent the day doing in-door animal things.
First we cleaned out the goat house. This involved scrapping and scrubbing the milking stand clean (I won't say till it shined, because that is never going to happen), and cleaning out all the straw, bags, and dirt. The goats were very curious as to what we were doing. A good morning's entertainment was had by all. The baby goats tried their hardest to eat anything the came into range (which included; our hair, jackets, straw, rope, broom handles, a tray full of food, plastic bags, and numerous other things they got their mouths on over the course of a few hours). Gust (mamma goat #2) was very curious as well, and spent most of the time with her head over the stall watching us. Cinnamon (goat mamma numero uno) wanted to know who gave us permission to do all this? Where were our papers? Why had we not shown her any documentation? She spent most of the time pushed up against her trough, where she could see both of us and protect her back at the same time...(she has since come around, having discovered that I give REALLY good scratches behind the horns).
For the afternoon we got to play with sheep sheadings. We took sheared fleeces and picked out the really good bits (after we had figured out which end was which, and believe me, it is not easy to determine). Then we took all the wool and put it into the bathtub. You wash it by filling the bathtub with warm water and then gently pressing down on the wool. We felt like cats kneading at a bathtub full of wet wool. Then you rinse with cold water, and rinse again. This process takes quite a long time, as water dose not really go through wool very well (hence the waterproffness of sheep). Your hands get very very soft however, due to all that lanolin. Then we take all the fleeces and hang them inside the poly-tunnel to dry. They are still there, not quite dry yet. I have pictures, it looks very funny.