COME ALONG AND Meet Shann
Shann is appearing at the Alternative Event at St James's on March 2nd Find out more here: www.alternatives.org.uk
Issue 3 of chuckling goat magazine is here...
This issue is all about the lessons that shann has learnt on the farm and from nature. read on >>>
Shann - owner & Goat Guru
Hi - I'm Dakota, one of the goatlings who was born last spring. They call us the hooligans, because we young goats like to make trouble!
Dakota
Things have been pretty busy here all right - we’ve been joined by our first Chuckling Goat family farm - Alcwyn Davies and his family just down the road have brought in 60 new milkers from Holland to help our goats produce more milk. Haven’t met the new goats yet - hope they’re nice and not too hoity toity, coming from abroad! This month’s issue is all about things that our person Shann learned from the farm, and from us. She’s got a lot to learn from us yet! But read on to see a few of the lessons that she’s picked up so far...
Fe a
tu
red
in
YO
U
Ma
ga
zin
e
I’m taking over today because after the recent article in YOU MAGAZINE, both the humans AND the older milkers are all running around like crazy, trying to deal with all the new orders that have come in!
READ THE FULL
ARTICLE HERE
Dakota, upper barn, goatling pen #2 Featured in MAIL ON SUNDAY - YOU MAGAZINE How does a Pulitzer-nominated US broadcaster end up farming goats in Wales? Read the full article... http://bit.ly/chucklinggoat2
farm twitter.com/Chu cklingGoat facebook.com /ChucklingGoa
shop t
uk.pinterest.com/ChucklingGoat1/
Marmite was one of the first of our Chuckling Goats. She had little teeny teats – absolute hell to learn to milk! I remember crying every night from sheer frustration, trying to get the milk into the bucket before she kicked it over. She was bossy, stroppy and aggressive. She had a terrible sweet tooth, and would knock you over, trying to get to the sugar beet shreds. And once her daughter Valentine was born, it was even worse! Together the two of them became the Toggie Mafia – bossing around the other, more mildmannered white Saanen goats, and keeping them away from the hay. I finally got fed up. “Rich,” I said, “We’re going to have to get rid of these Toggies. They’re driving me nuts! And they’re bullying the other goats.” But Rich always had a sneaking fondness for Marmite – and he didn’t want to get rid of her. I’ve learned over time that Rich, annoyingly is nearly always right. It’s a ‘Welsh farm magic’ thing – he just knows these things, from deep in his Welsh traditions. So for his sake, I looked a little closer.
Like the white Saanen goats we keep, Toggenburgs hail from Switzerland. But the Saanens are camouflaged for the valleys full of snow – they’re pure white. Saanens are known for being placid, and they’re lazy – they’d be happy to just stay in the valley all day, eating the grass. But here’s the thing about goats – they’re not grass grazers by nature. They’re browsers. For full health, they need to ramble the hillsides, and nibble herbs and bushes. Grass alone is not enough for them. When I thought harder, I realized that Toggenburgs are camouflaged for the higher Alps – the places where traces of snow drift over grey rocks. See their markings? Imagine them up in the high Alps? Then I realized – the famous sweet tooth of Toggenburgs has a function, far beyond just making them greedy for sugar beet – it enables them to search out the sweetest herbs, that grow in the highest reaches. And Toggenburgs are bossy and stroppy because that quality enables them to drive the entire herd up the mountain, to the best grazing.
med The Toggenburg, nickna lk goat, Togg, is a breed of mi n in named after the regio breed Switzerland where the burg originated, the Toggen valley in the Canton of ed the St. Gallen. It is consider oldest registered breed.
Marmite - chief toggie
Without the Toggies, the whole herd would just stay in the valley – and the milk would suffer. Sure, they’re aggressive and bossy. But they drive the herd to better grazing. The presence of Toggies in my herd, improved the wellbeing of the entire herd. Once I could see how their attributes benefitted the group – I understood how they functioned as a part of the whole. It was easier for me to tolerate the behavior that I had been rejecting before.
Now when I look at my human team of workers at Chuckling Goat, I look at them differently – with the addition of this piece of information that I learned from the goats. If someone is drawing your attention – what attributes are asking to be noticed, and suited to a purpose? And could their presence be for a purpose - to drive the whole herd to better grazing? Who are the Toggies in your life, or your organization?
Shann Nix Jones, Owner and Goat Guru at Chuckling Goat
1. Don't compete - cooperate. Butterflies are cooperative creatures – not competitive ones. You never hear the phrase “butterfly-eat-butterfly.” Who wants to be the last butterfly in the jungle? Not me! Unlike the aggressive dinosaurs – butterflies don’t kill each other. And look what happened to the dinosaurs! But the butterflies are still with us,
Tending our goats on our Welsh farm by the sea made me part of a larger ecosystem. And watching the butterflies on Chuckling Goat Farm taught me things that I could never have learned in the city.
going from strength to strength.
2. Cross-pollinate.
at guru Shann - owner & go Chuckling Goat
More flowers, more pollen…more butterflies…means more flowers, more pollen! Butterflies operate on a pollen econ omy. The more there is, the better everyone does. Cross-pollinating means that there are more flowers, so everyone does better. In today’s economy, there are loads of little butterfly companies – light weight, colourful companies, often run by mums out of their own homes, designed arou nd their families. In this era of the Internet, man y of the old, cold, dull, grey, huge publishing houses and record companies have fallen over and died of their own weight. These days, everyone is publishing their own book s, videos and online magazines. Like pollinating a field of flowers, the Internet has spawned a myriad of points of colou rful creat ivity – it’s a butterfly world out there! Soci al media is the perfect tool for cross -poll inatio n! Dinosaurs hate it, because they can’t control it – but butterfly businesse s adore it.
Shann will be appearing at the Alternative Event at St James’s on March 2nd at 7pm Find out more here: www.alternatives.org.uk/Site/Default.aspx
3. The happy factor. Feel with your feelers – and if you’re not happy, fly! Butterflies eat nectar – not vinegar. They only land on flowers that smell nice, and eat the nectar that tastes right. If it’s not right, they simply fly somewhere else. As a business mum, I now use this principle to choose our suppliers. I first formulated this principle when we were trying to lease a till for our first shop.We originally connected with a man who was horrible, grumpy and bullying. Although we felt unhappy dealing with him, we persisted because we thought it was “business-like” to ignore our personal feelings about him. He ended up providing us an illegible map for a till that we couldn’t read – and then tried to charge us, even though we told him we didn’t want to use his product! My team at the time was all women – and I told them, “You are now officially empowered to stop using a contractor the minute he makes you feel the slightest bit unhappy, uneasy or bullied.” We only work these days with suppliers who make us HAPPY. If we’re not happy – we fly on!
CG Oil is a proprietary blend of essential oils, safe to use on skin, that has been lab-tested and found active against MRSA, E coli, salmonella and campylobacter. Customer Question from Lynn... Which of your products gives my daughter – who’s going in for a kidney operation - the best chance of getting out of hospital bug-free? I think the CG oil would be good as a pre-op wash and then to use afterwards in the wound area. Regards, Lynn
Active against MRSA, E coli, salmonella and campylobacter LAB TESTED
Hi Lynn... You’re right, the CG Oil will be good for your daughter’s hospital stay. Put 10 drops of the oil in a small spray bottle with distilled water. Shake and spray - this spray can be sprayed over hard fittings, body, skin, anywhere that you think needs a clean. I would have her soak in a tub with 10 drops of the oil in before she goes into hospital, and make sure that you use sterile surgically infused medical honey dressing on any wound sites after you get her home. (brand name Activon, you can order them online.) This can be used in conjunction with antibiotic cream - the medical honey actually prevents the bacteria from becoming resistant. Great stuff. Ahead of hospital journey I would suggest that your daughter do a course of the kefir, to get her immune systems in as good a shape as possible. Probiotic tablets generally only contain one or two strains of probiotic, and those strains are dormant, dehydrated and on their way to death - which is why their power decreases over the time of their shelf life. Kefir by comparison is live, with 47 different strains of beneficial yeasts and bacteria all thriving in their own environment. You would have to take a huge handful of pills every single day to get the equivalent probiotic power to one 180 ml cup of kefir.
The Science Behind the Magic: Why does it work? One of the problems with MRSA is that it colonizes all over your skin, replacing the trillions of good bacteria on your skin with copies of itself. This is why it’s so difficult to get rid of the MRSA – it continues to re-infect from all over the body. This is also why a full-immersion bath is important, as well as a concentrated soak on the wound area itself. We also recommend that you dress the wound itself with a sterile surgical dressing of medical honey. MCS Laboratories has lab-tested CG Oil to kill MRSA at a dilution of .05%, with a kill time of one minute.
Any antibiotics that your daughter is given in hospital will knock her microbiome back, so would suggest that she also do another 21-day recovery course of kefir after you return home. Regards, Shann
ORDER CG OIL
Caution: CG Oil in its neat form is very strong. Do not use undiluted. Pregnant women should take particular care when handling the oil.
ts ckl ing pe #c hu k Fa ceb oo Have you got a chuckling pet that rules the roost? We want to see your pics posted on facebook use #chucklingpets
Secrets from Chiuckling Goat is now available to order The book has reached a best seller position on Amazon and is available in both print and for kindle and other e-readers.
UK Sellers
twitter.com/ChucklingGoat facebook.com/ChucklingGoat
uk.pinterest.com/ChucklingGoat1/