Clifford, the goat
Clifford, a usually shy goat, pinned Jennifer Hambly up against a wall in the barn.
Her heart raced.
“What am I going to do? I’m all by myself,” she thought.
Finally, another goat pushed Clifford out of the way, and she escaped.
The next day, Clifford did it again. And again, the next day.
She researched ideas on how to get him to stop. There were videos of men just flipping a goat over to show it who’s boss.
That was not going to work for Hambly, who is four-11 and weighs less than 100 lbs. The goat weighed 180 lbs and was almost as tall as her.
Finally, she found a woman who used a spray bottle and sprayed her goat in the face with water.
The next day, Hambly gave it a try.
“He totally respected me after that.”
Now she keeps the spray bottle on the gate, and he has stopped being aggressive.
“As a woman you start to think outside the box and look at things differently.”
Hambly runs Cherrywood Farm in central P.E.I. Her husband, Nathan Hambly, works in Alberta and she is alone most of the time, but her three German shepherds the size of miniature horses make her feel safe.
Needing a change
After graduating from Holland College in 2007 with a Diploma in Business Administration, Hambly and her husband moved to Fort MacMurray, Alta to make money. She loved her job, but there was something missing.
She started having panic attacks and was diagnosed with anxiety. The simplest tasks became overwhelming.
She knew she needed a change. She needed to get back to nature.
Her grandfather, John MacKinnon, had a hobby farm in Milton. He had a horse, cows, pigs, chickens, peacocks and a garden. The farm provided most of the food for his family.
“My childhood was calling me back to my roots,” she said.
In 2012, Hambly and her husband bought a farm on P.E.I. Four years later, Hambly moved in.
Soon she was raising goats, heritage chickens, ducks and rabbits.
Farm girl
Her days are busy with barn work, feeding the animals and cleaning their stalls twice a day – no matter the weather. And she has a small garden to tend in the summer.
She doesn’t get a day off. There have been summers she hasn’t gone to the beach. But she loves it.
“Especially now with COVID, it’s nice to know that if anything ever happened, I know how to hatch my own eggs and raise the chickens for meat. I know how to garden. I know how to make bread. I know how to milk a goat and make cheese and yogurt.”
But there are challenges. The tractor has broken down. The animals have been sick. Sometimes she’s just not strong enough to do the physical labour like hauling feed. She must come up with innovative ideas like hauling feed on a sled.
“As a woman, you need to work smarter, not harder.”
Even though it can be hard, Jennifer would do it all over again, she said.
“It’s the best therapy I could ever have.”
And she is glad when her husband is home from Alberta and can help, she said.
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