A London couple try to make a go of raising goats on their back-to-the-land country homestead--excerpted from the book, "A Farm of Their Own"

by Graham Irwin

Excerpted from the book, "A Farm of Our Own: a spiritual journey running a smallholding"

'You don't suppose we spoil the animals, do you?' I called to Rosemarie as she worked in the garden. I was cutting off the remaining wasted autumn blackberries with the secateurs as an evening treat for the goats.

For some reason the question went unanswered. Oh well, I guess it was only a rhetorical question after all. It was pretty obvious. Why else would I be picking blackberries for the goats? But then our animals were not run-of-the-mill farm animals.

The goats were our first livestock. It had been our intention to obtain a few goats to produce enough milk for ourselves with some excess to sell. With this in mind, our first goat was hardly the ideal choice - a yearling, from whom we would have to wait at least a year before we got any milk! So keen were we to get a goat that this oversight seemed to escape us at the time.

Sophie was a white crossbred goat. Very pretty with long dangling ears and a tiny pink nose. But, as we were soon to find out, she was also very scatty and had a manic bleat which was more like a screech that would not have been out of place in a Hitchcock horror film. We got her home and into the stable we had prepared for her and Sophie seemed to be sulking. She wouldn't eat any of the goat mixture we offered her, or any greenery. And then she started running round in circles jumping up at each wall in turn and bleating dementedly. As newcomers to goat-keeping we were frantic with worry.

'What are we going to do?' cried Rosemarie. 'I can't stand all this noise for long.'

'She probably just needs time to settle down,' I suggested helpfully.

'We'll have to do something soon or we'll have the neighbours complaining.'

The farmer from whom we had brought Sophie, Mr Jones, suggested that, since goats were herd animals, she probably wanted company. No, it wasn't a ploy on his part to sell us another goat! At first he said he had no more to sell.

Meanwhile, we borrowed a goat from Maureen. Kiwi was a distinguished-looking, brown Anglo Nubian - the type with a Roman nose and long floppy ears. She was very calm and good natured, and she should have been a calming influence on Sophie. But not much.

Mr Jones eventually agreed to sell us Lin, a heavily in-kid British Alpine - an attractive breed with a black coat and white markings. We collected and brought her home just six days after Sophie, though it seemed much longer.

Lin was a goat of more mature years with an impassive nature, who seemed to take everything in her stride. It was with some difficulty that we got Lin into my rather inappropriate hatchback. On the way home the mirth of drivers behind as well as several passers-by made us realise poor old Lin's swollen private parts were clearly visible to all and sundry through the back window. Not that she seemed to care.

Getting Lin out of the car when we arrived home promised to be tricky. It had taken two men to lift her into the car, and there was only Rosemarie and me to get her out. However, when I put a bale of straw on the ground to lessen the height she just stepped implacably down onto the bale and then onto terra firma.

Lin kidded at Easter, much to my delight as I was at home to witness the first births on our little farm. Not, it has to be said, that I was of much help. All that blood and placenta! It was a lovely warm sunny day, which was ideal as they could all enjoy the outdoors air. I helped Rosemarie to dry off the kids - two males and a female - and we made sure they knew where to find their milk supply. Rosemarie impressed upon me several times the importance of the first suckle for newborns as the milk is mainly colostrum, which contains natural antibodies from the mother. Ideally they should have their first feed within a couple of hours of their birth.

A few hours after Lin had given birth we saw a couple of boys straining over the gate trying to catch a glimpse of our new arrivals. We proudly asked if they wanted to come in to see them.

'Oh, yes please,' they chorused eagerly. They were almost as excited as we were and wanted to know what breed they were, how long they'd been born, what other animals we had, and would it be all right to come back at the weekend to take some photographs for a school project? We answered all their questions easily and readily as though it were an everyday occurrence for us.

Now that Lin had kidded, we would have some milk. She was not a heavy milker, giving between four and six pints a day, but this was more than enough for ourselves, with some left over to sell. In order to get the milk we had to separate Lin from her kids, keeping them in a separate stable, and hand rearing Rosy and the 'Billy Boys' on dried milk.

We fed them from a wine bottle fitted with a lamb's teat. But they were very rough, frequently knocking the bottle from our hand and fighting over the bottle so we were never sure if they'd each had their fair share. After about six months the kids were so rough we just gave them their milk in a washing-up bowl and left them to it. I've never seen milk disappear so fast!

We planned to keep the female, whom we named Rosy. And we faced a stark choice with the Billy Boys. We were not in the business of keeping them just for pets, and indeed no-one seems to want male goats for pets anyway. So we had two options. We could kill them at birth, an option that took less than a moment to reject. The other option was to give them a few months of good life and have them for meat. Looking after these young creatures and then having them killed did not greatly appeal, but if we were going to eat meat at all it seemed better that we knew the animals had been looked after and had a good life and a quick and humane end. Even if we didn't eat meat there would still have been a difficult decision to be made as to what to do with any male offspring.

The goats spent the nights in the stable and went out into the paddock during the day, unless it was actually raining or frosty, or if there was snow on the ground. Even if it was dull and overcast they went out. Sophie, in particular, called - or rather, bawled - to be put out every morning. But they would soon call to go back inside if it started to rain. Their thin coats were not designed to withstand the rain or cold.

I bought a small field shelter for them for when it did rain, to save us the task of bringing them in every time. It is something I would have made myself in later years. At the first sign of rain we would see Lin sauntering over to the field shelter for its protection. The others would wait until they were more certain it was raining and would then make a mad gallop towards the shelter. But Lin was invariably the first there - and the last to leave it once the rain had stopped. The image of her black and white face peering out of the shelter is still quite vivid.

The stables were not ideal for the goats, but with some minor conversion they proved acceptable. The hay racks, bucket holders, and mangers, having been set at horse height, all needed lowering, of course. We kept three or four goats in one stable. When, a little while later, we had six or seven goats and had to split them between two stables, we found it was too much work. And three or four goats were sufficient for our needs anyway.

There was always a scrum at feeding time. They needed two mangers and two hay racks, as four goats had great difficulty in sharing just one. With the two mangers they seemed to spend much of their time running from one to the other, pushing each other out of the way. But if they wanted to spend their time this way, then that was up to them. It did mean, though, that the goats ate whatever they could, and that we were unable to vary the quantity of feed for an individual goat. But then we weren't that scientific in our feeding anyway. If we did need to give special rations to one of them, then we could feed her outside the stable.

And then with one hay rack they all fought for the hay and much of it fell to the ground from where it would not be picked up. Contrary to popular belief goats do not eat just anything. They will nibble at almost anything, but they are, in fact, very fussy eaters. And they wasted a lot of hay. Learning that all goat keepers had the same problem was not much of a consolation.

In order to milk them we took the milking goats out of the stable one at a time and fed them their ration of goat mix, whilst we pulled on the other end. Occasionally one of the non-milkers would get out, and we would then have an almighty scrum to catch it, put it back and get the right goat. Once they had finished their ration of feed they wouldn't allow us any more milk. Rosemarie was chief milker. It was a long time before I was anything like proficient at milking and I invariably ended up giving them twice the ration, and I still got only half the milk!

When we took the Billy Boys to the butcher we asked him to let us have the skins back as we intended to try our hand at curing them ourselves. The butchers were two brothers. A funny pair of old boys. They were very old-fashioned couple. Their buildings were very basic and would certainly not come up to modern hygiene standards. And contacting them was always difficult as they didn't even have a telephone. We were told we could contact them by phoning their neighbours two doors down, but we thought we'd be better off making our arrangements face to face.

When I opened up the sacks in which the skins were returned the first thing I saw was a pair of ears. I shut the sack up again quickly thinking the butcher had sent back the entire skins including the heads! It was an hour or so before I plucked up the courage to look again, and I was thankful to find the heads were not there. There was only part of the ear still attached to one of the skins.

The process of tanning involved stretching the skin, carefully removing any remaining particles of meat that might still be there, and then painting the skins with paraffin each day. At least, this was the easiest way for the amateur. There were more toxic chemicals for a more professional job. However, we found the meat had not been well butchered and there was an excessive amount of meat still attached to the skin, which made the job more difficult than it might otherwise have been. They were not good skins for our first attempt at tanning. In any case we didn't make a good job of it, and gave up. In retrospect what we should have used the skins for if we had been successful I don't know.

We learned a local health food shop was looking for a new supplier of goat's milk. When we approached them, they were delighted and said they couldn't get enough and they'd be able to sell all we could produce. We thought we'd hit the jackpot first time. This called for another goat!

And so we bought Brolly, a great hairy Toggenberg with a mottled light-brown coat and a rather domineering character. She used to tyrannise poor Sophie, Rosy and the Billy Boys, although she never got the upper hand over Lin, who was quite clearly 'senior goat'.

Brolly was quite a character. She used to go to bed on the rabbit hutch, happily chewing away at the felt roof. That is until the hutch fell apart under her weight, thankfully without George or Honey inside. One time when Rosemarie was taking Brolly to the billy goat, she was quite entranced by the Christmas lights as they drove through the local town. Rosemarie had a Citroën 2CV at the time, which, with the rear seats removed, made an excellent 'goatmobile'. It was especially useful as the goats could stand up in the car - in any of the other vehicles we used they had to spend the journey lying down. Brolly looked from side to side glancing at the colourful lights obviously quite enjoying herself.

The goats became quite used to their shelter in the paddock for when it rained. There was always some bitching, biffing and biting of bums when all they could do was stand in the shelter waiting for the rain to stop. On one occasion Brolly forced poor Sophie out of the shelter into the rain, and Sophie ended up catching a chill, for which we had to call out the vet. Not only was Brolly causing aggravation, but now she was costing us money as well.

Brolly was already in milk when we bought her, so we went back to the health food shop. Yes, they said, they'd have twenty pints a month. Twenty! That wasn't even a pint a day. What a let down! And what were we going to do with all that extra milk?

We decided breeding Angora goats for their fleeces was going to be the next up-and-coming business. But there was a slight problem there. We couldn't afford to buy a purebred Angora as the price was at a premium. A single goat could cost two or three thousand pounds. The alternative was to 'grade up'. If we were to cross a dairy goat with an Angora and put their offspring to an Angora, after five generations we would end up with a purebred. It would take several years, and we would need to have a female from each mating, but we decided to give it a go.

So when she next came into season I took Sophie to an Angora buck. Arranging a goat's love life was a new experience for me. I had to hold Sophie, on her lead, whilst the buck sniffed around her rear quarters and - er... - well, did what he was supposed to do.

The owner, Joan, whom we knew only slightly, laughed:

'I don't know what my mother would say if she could see me doing this with a strange man!'

As it was, her mother couldn't see us. In fact, even if she had, I doubt she would have realised what was going on as she suffered from dementia. Joan, poor lady, worked nights as an auxiliary in an old peoples' home, and looked after her mother and the animals during the day. If she wasn't mucking out goats, pigs or cattle, she was mucking out her mother or the members of the home.

To add to the comedy, Angora goats are comparatively small animals and Sophie was quite tall anyway. So we had to find somewhere where the buck was at a higher level than she was.

After the event, we went inside to see to the paperwork and have a cup of tea, and then we went outside again to repeat the performance - just to be sure!

Five months later Sophie produced three fine kids, a male, who we named Gozo, and two females, Polo and Noddy. They had the finest fleeces I have ever seen on a first cross Angora - but then I do admit to being just a little biassed.

Despite her faults, Brolly clearly had a strong maternal instinct. When Sophie was raising her three kids, they would often go to sleep by the hedge, and Sophie would wander off with the others. When the babies woke up wanting a feed, they'd cry out for their mum. We would see both Sophie and 'Auntie' Brolly running across the paddock towards the kids, returning their calls, with their udders flopping from side to side as they ran, and Sophie's ears flapping up and down. It was quite a sight.

We sold Brolly soon after that as we had no need for all the milk. We had by then put up a 'Goats Milk For Sale' sign in the front garden. That and word of mouth attracted one or two private customers for the milk, and we also sold some to a local farm shop. But it didn't amount to many pints a month, and we were not going to get rich at twenty-five pence a pint!

Sophie never really settled down.

'She's driving me to distraction,' complained Rosemarie. 'She's noisy and neurotic, and a disruptive influence on the others. There's nothing we can do with her. We've tried everything. If she's out she wants to go in, and if she's in she bawls to go out. It's not fair when I'm working. She'll have to go.'

I knew she was right, particularly that it was not on for her to have to put up with Sophie's complaining when she was trying to sleep during the day. But I was fond of Sophie in a funny sort of way - she seemed to be a bit of a lost soul.

'We can't sell her,' I said hopefully, realising it would be unfair, both on Sophie and any new keeper, to have passed on the problem to another goat keeper.

'No,' Rosemarie replied. 'The hunt can have her.'

Not that we supported hunting, but the local hunt kennels did offer a valuable service to livestock farmers by putting down and carting away for free any sheep or goats.

Sadly, then, and very reluctantly, that was Sophie's fate. At least her kids were weaned by then, and they didn't even notice their mum had disappeared.

On the whole, goats are quite intelligent creatures. Gemma, I guess, was the exception that proves the rule. She was a black and white Anglo Nubian. She had very unusual and pretty markings, but always seemed to be sixpence short of a shilling.

She was last at almost everything. The other goats would be well into their feed before Gemma realised it was feeding time. Out in the paddock we would often see her gazing vacantly into space, apparently contemplating the mysteries of the universe, oblivious of the fact that the rest of the herd had by then made their way to the other end of the field. When she realised they'd gone, she would gallop down the field in her rather ungainly fashion to catch up with them, calling out, 'Wait for me, wait for me.'

Despite her apparent retardation, though, she did seem to know what was expected of her when we took her to the billy. In fact, she didn't want to come home!

When Gemma kidded, Rosemarie had gone off to work, leaving me to be midwife. It was about ten o'clock at night when she started. Like a nervous father-to-be I kept going outside to the stable to see if there were any signs of the impending birth and returning indoors when there was not.

When the first kid started to arrive, I helped her by pulling it off. I then had to ensure its nostrils were clear of mucus so it could breathe, and sprayed its navel with iodine. It was her first kidding and she seemed a little bemused by it all, not knowing quite what to do. I left her licking off her first born and went inside for a while and rang Rosemarie at the hospital to report on progress.

When I went out again, there were signs of a second arrival. I helped with that birth too, and I tried to make sure that both the kids knew where to look for their milk, and then left her to it.

I checked them all again before going off to bed and everything seemed to be fine. Imagine my surprise, though, when I checked her the following morning to find there were now three kids. There seemed nothing further for a seasoned goat midwife to do apart from spraying its navel, so I went off to work leaving a note for Rosemarie for when she got in half-an-hour later.

Somewhere along the line - 31st May 1988 to be precise - we bought Kiwi, who we had previously borrowed from Maureen to baby-sit Sophie. Although she was a very quiet and peaceful goat, she was not without a trick or two up her sleeve, and she was already about six years old when we bought her. Rosemarie took her to the same stud goat as Gemma and she produced twins within a couple of weeks of Gemma kidding.

We sold Gemma's three kids and one of Kiwi's, keeping the other one, who we named Daisy May. We were lucky that year in that we didn't even have to advertise the kids for sale. They just disappeared. Someone seemed to know someone who wanted a goat. It wasn't always like that, however, and we were always concerned they should go to good homes. Goats, perhaps more than any other domestic animals, often seem to be bought for the 'wrong' reasons, kept in poor conditions, and end up having a miserable existence. And we didn't want ours ending up that way.

Since we didn't need all Kiwi's milk - not that she gave a lot anyway - we let her and Daisy May graze together during the day so Daisy could suckle. But we kept them apart at night so we could take some milk from Kiwi in the morning. It saved us having to bottle feed Daisy, which made life in that respect a lot easier. Anything that could save us having to bottle feed was definitely a 'good thing' as far as we were concerned. Once she was weaned, we were able to let Daisy share the stable with her mum. They were inseparable. Even when she was fully grown we used to find the two of them curled up together when we came down in the mornings.

When she was about eighteen months old, we put Polo to an Angora buck. It was Rosemarie's turn this time, and it turned out to be a rather uneventful occasion. Polo produced two kids - a male and a female. We kept the female, naming her Sophie after her granny, and sold the male together with his mum. It was difficult to part with Polo, but we knew we would not be able to keep all our first, second and subsequent Angora crosses when our aim was to breed a pure Angora.

So now we had our second cross Angora. Sophie was a funny little thing, very full of the joys of life. She was surprisingly gentle, taking her bottle without giving us the bruises or cut fingers we usually received when bottle feeding. And, of course, she had the most superb fleece. She was very playful and would run up and down on top of our wood pile in the Tringle as sure-footed as if she belonged there. Polo had been something of a tomboy when she was a kid and it looked as though Sophie II was going to take after her mum in this respect. Since we had sold her dam, we had to bottle-feed her and - of course - give her extra care and attention.

Sadly, we never actually managed to get an angora fleece for Rosemarie to spin and knit up. Although after a few years it occurred to us to let the goats stay out in the field day and night during the summer, they had to come in at night during the winter. This meant the fleeces became matted with hay seeds and straw from their stable. So ended our dream of making our fortune with Angora goats.

On one occasion a farm lorry deposited part of its load of Brussels sprouts on the verge opposite Dorothy's petrol pump. Once we heard the news we lost no time in going up the road and filling as many sacks as we could with sprouts for the goats. And then we took Lin for a walk up the road to collect up those we had missed.

Another year our friend John let us have the remains of his sprout field. It was usually Rosemarie's job to take the van and fill it with the spent sprout plants. When she arrived home it was mayhem. On hearing the van's return Lin and the others jumped up at the stable door and started calling for their special treat.

And the year after that Clive offered us his failed field of cabbages.

Such treats were much appreciated by the goats, but their stable was not a pleasant place to be near for the rest of the evening!

Dear old Lin would frequently return from the field in the evening with a distended stomach, a mild form of bloat. It happened so often we referred to her as 'bloaty goat'. It was never sufficiently bad to warrant calling out the vet, but we used to have to administer a 'first aid' treatment in the form of a spoonful of cooking oil, which had the effect of lubricating the stomach and allowing the gases to escape.

The poor old dear also suffered from a form of rheumatism. She coped with it for several years, but we eventually sought veterinary help. The vet gave us little encouragement, just putting the condition down to her age, and sadly, after a further period we had to have her put down.

Luckily Rosy inherited Lin's calm and friendly temperament. She loved being the centre of attention and would always come over for a stroke when we went out to the field. On one occasion when we had a visitor, we were walking across the field together and Rosy came up behind him and sidled up to him. For a moment he looked rather put out until he looked down to see it was Rosy looking up at him with an expression as if to say, 'Hello, I'm Rosy. Do you want to give me a stroke?' Silly? Well, maybe it was daft to imagine the animals had 'human' tendencies. But then again, perhaps not.

She also had a rather jealous streak, though. Whenever we made a fuss of one of the others, she would come over and interpose herself between us and the current object of our affection. At times she could be particularly spiteful. If she thought one of the others was getting too much of our attention, she would bite the other's ear.

Rosy had one bonus for us. Well, it could be something of a mixed blessing. She was a maiden milker, which meant she gave some milk without having had a kid, and she first came into milk when she was about nine months old. She only gave a pint or so a day, but it had its uses.

One day we sold Noddy to a girl who had looked after goats at school, so we were one goat 'down'. That evening we took Rosy for boarding with a billy a few miles away, as we had never been able to catch her in season - we had missed her the previous year and didn't want to be caught out again. Another one gone. The following day the girl, apparently pleased with Noddy, decided she'd like company for her and so we sold her Gemma too. The remaining goats seemed to be rather alarmed to see their numbers dwindling so rapidly and looked apprehensive whenever we went near them.

About two weeks later Rosy still hadn't returned and Kiwi had come into season. So Rosemarie took her to the same stud. When she got there Rosemarie was told our normally calm and placid Rosy had jumped out of every pen she had been put in. She had finally ended up in one with a pony, where she had been left. We could hardly believe it. Rosy had never jumped anything at home.

On her arrival Kiwi seemed pleased to see Rosy and we imagined their conversation.

'So this is where you are. We wondered where you had got to. Are Noddy and Gemma here too?'

'No, I've looked in all the pens. I don't know where they can have gone. I hope mum's here to take me home.'

Kiwi stayed overnight and Rosy stayed a further night, too, and Rosemarie went to fetch them home together the following morning. Rosy was not her usual friendly self for several months after she came home. She refused to talk to us. Before she went away she would always answer us with a little bleat whenever we called her name, but she was having none of that now. And she didn't seem to want us to make a fuss of her.

We had put three goats - Rosy, Kiwi and Polo - in kid that year. At least, we thought we had. After all the expense of boarding her and feeding her up, Rosy failed to deliver the goods! She had been given the choice of three willing and able billies, and the stud owners had even resorted to giving her hormone injections to encourage her to come into season - with our agreement, of course. But it was all to no avail. Kiwi, too, failed us. And, as a half-Angora, Polo was not a milker anyway.

This meant we would have no milk for a whole year and we'd have the additional expense of feeding them for no output. Luckily Rosy came to our rescue, coming into milk again without having had a kid. She still produced only about a pint a day, but it was sufficient for most of our needs. It meant we would have none to sell, and there'd be no excess with which to make yogurt. And it was going to be an expensive way of getting our milk!

The following year was worse still. After the expense of trying to get Rosy in kid the previous year we decided not to try again. We had sold Kiwi and had no luck getting Daisy May in kid. Rosy, bless her, gave us about half a pint every three days.

As luck would have it, we spotted an advert for goats for sale in the local paper. An elderly lady who clearly loved her goats was having to sell up due to her failing health. Mrs Dunhill was only able to get about with the help of two walking sticks, and it was clear she had been unable to tend her animals herself for some while. It seemed her husband had eventually had enough of doing so. She had sold two of her four goats, one of which had recently kidded and one that was due to kid that day. She didn't want to sell her favourite, which was the mother of one of those she had sold and the grandmother of the other. But she wanted to let her go to a good home on loan.

Without realising it we obviously passed the test as Mrs Dunhill asked if we would take Kady on loan. It was a great honour as she clearly adored Kady. She asked if we thought she was beautiful to which we dutifully replied in the affirmative, but in truth I found her looks quite ordinary and Rosemarie thought her ugly! She was rather nondescript in appearance, of crossbred ancestry, and with a long-haired coat, white and brown in colour.

As Kady was 'senior goat' at Mrs Dunhill's we wondered whether she or Rosy would win the position at our place.

There was quite a bit of argy bargy when we got Kady home. In the end Rosy won. Kady seemed too laid-back to care. So long as she got her food she wasn't too bothered about herd politics.

Kady was already milking, which, after all, is what we wanted her for. She had been milking for a year already so the following year we put her in kid again. But Kady was not at all keen on the process of giving birth to, nor of looking after, her babies. She didn't like them to suckle and barely took any notice of them. We had to make sure they got enough milk, especially as we wanted some of Kady's milk for ourselves. Eventually we thought it easier to rear them by bottle. Given our previous experiences of bottle feeding that was saying a lot! But that way we could be sure they were getting enough feed, and Kady was greatly pleased with the arrangement.

However, Kady was quite remarkable in one respect, which was that she continued in milk year after year without being put in kid. Anglo Nubian goats frequently manage to go for two years, but we had never heard of a goat of any breed that went on and on like Kady. Perhaps it was her dislike of kids. Every winter she would have a period of two or three weeks when she didn't want to eat much, whatever we might try to tempt her with. No doubt it was her body telling her to stop for a while. So we stopped milking her for that period - except to relieve the pressure on her udders - and she would soon return to her usual self.

Sadly, as well as inheriting Lin's calmness, poor old Rosy also acquired her arthritic condition. When she was still only six years old - younger than Kady - we had to have her put down, never understanding what the problem was. Although they had never got on, Kady seemed to miss Rosy. But only for a couple of days, after which she settled down quite happily to be a lone goat.

Rosy's failure to get in kid was a mystery to us, but it seems they can be prone to hormonal imbalances. One of Maureen's goats was a billy of unknown pedigree. What she wanted to keep a billy for we couldn't imagine. No beating about the bush, billy goats stink. They 'spray' themselves - with what I'll leave to your imagination. Apparently it is supposed to make them attractive to the females. But to the human the result is quite offensive! Anyway, we were surprised when Maureen announced one day that her billy was giving milk! It seems that such a condition is not as uncommon as we at first thought. And, if I believed in coincidences, I might have found a little uncanny the request in the following month's Goat Society newsletter by a vet at an agricultural college asking members to provide details of any milking male goats for a thesis he was writing.

Early one afternoon, quite early on in our goat keeping career, Rosemarie asked quite unexpectedly, 'Do you want to go up to bed, or shall we go and see Maureen's new kids?'

Such was my fascination with baby goats that without hesitation I replied, 'Ooh, lets go to Maureen's!'

Oh, well. As they say, it takes all sorts. Perhaps it's not just goats that have trouble with their hormones from time to time.

Graham Irwin is Publisher of CityScape Books, PO Box 16554, London SE1 5ZS UK, and author of A Farm of Their Own. Visit his website at https://www.compassion-in-business.co.uk