introducing Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats

 

Without doubt my best discovery of the year…

I’ve always loved these wonderful creatures – spirited, characterful, resilient, affectionate – and make a beeline for the goat enclosure at those petting farms where you can feed the animals through a fence.

Buttercups is a different matter entirely. Set in beautiful Kent countryside, it’s a refuge for neglected or cruelly treated goats, or goats with nowhere else to go. There’s a lovely calm atmosphere of recovery, kindness and safety. You can walk among them in their pasture, have a chat with them, feed them cream crackers and carrots from paper bags…

 

 

or admire them from a distance if you’re too small or a bit nervous…

 

 

then have a word or two with the friendly volunteers, and eat the most delicious homemade cakes.

We knew we wanted to become a guardian to a goat, but who to chose?
Would it be Vern, perfection in goat form?

 

 

Or enormous Stanley perhaps (main picture above), king of the herd, with his sensational tufty trousers, mastermind of naughty plans with his sidekick Alfie?
Here they are, clearly whispering…

 

 

So many to choose from!

 

 

And then we saw Lucky,

 

 

just licking the air, anticipating a snack of dried pasta.

 

 

He’s had a tough life (you can read about it here). No tail, a bit of a bald patch.

If only all of life’s decisions were so easy, or so happy-making!