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Let me begin this "joys of farming" piece by saying I am most certainly not a farmer. I'm a city girl, raised in one of the most industrial towns in England, before moving to the decided urbanity of Seattle. My husband Loren and I moved to Puget Island to what was originally15 acres in 2006 with the idea of growing some vegetables, maybe raising a pig, having a chicken or two. That was my idea, anyway; Loren apparently had bigger plans that involved a tractor. Now we have what would be called a smallholding back home; a small farm with a little bit of everything from meat animals to the vegetable garden.

It's been over a year and a half since we moved to Wahkiakum county and in that time I've seen and done things that I never thought I would be doing. I can usually gauge how out of character something I've done is by my mother's reaction during our weekly phone calls: "You milked a goat? You did?" or "You put your hand where?!"

In doing all these new things I have learned many important lessons, the first being that farming is essentially a lot of poo, muck and bodily fluids and that you just need to get used to the fact that any nice clothing you own will be destroyed when faced with the mud of a garden that's been flooded since November. I've found that if a cow wants to go somewhere you don't want it to go, it will go there anyway and you will not be able to stop it. I also now know that a goose nip does in fact bruise, that being shocked by an electric fence hurts very much and to keep my mouth well closed when dealing with any kind of nasty liquids.

The most important lesson I've learned though is that, no matter how prepared you think you are for something, you're never prepared enough.

This was beautifully illustrated in the past week or so when we had been expecting one of our goats and the last of our pregnant ewes to give birth. We checked constantly, to the point where they were getting tired of us turning up to inspect their business ends. We were ready, we told ourselves. I was at work when I got the email to get home as soon as I could as Vera the goat was in labor. However, when Loren went back outside he found the baby had already been born without our help and was spotlessly clean in a pile of straw in the corner, underneath a confused but proud chicken. The chicken, clearly under the impression that this was the biggest, hairiest egg of her egg-laying career, was understandably protective. Between Vera and the chicken, Little Arlo made his way effortlessly into the world with no human supervision at all. We were ready for them, they just didn't need us.

Blanche the sheep was another story.  It was during one of the hailstorms this weekend that she decided to drop her lamb. Running through a muddy field in a hailstorm in rubber boots chasing a sheep with a lamb poking out of her is a lot harder than it looks. When we caught her, it turns out the lamb was stuck. In one of Loren's farming books I had been reading that morning is a lovely illustration of a sheep reclining, relaxed and peaceful with a lamb delicately making its way into the world. The lamb is, according to the book, supposed to be in a "diving" position, with both front legs in front of it. When Loren inspected our lamb though, it was halfway through a front crawl, with one leg stuck behind its head. "I'm going to have to push it back in!" he shouted over the howling wind. "Then I will hold her head and not look," I yelled back. There was a lot of eye rolling on the sheep's behalf, and grunting on Loren's before an almighty squelching noise heralded the arrival of the biggest lamb I have ever seen. Her head was easily the size of a softball and frankly made us wince.

Both mothers and babies are doing very well. Shawna the lamb weighed in at an eyewatering 13 lbs.  Luckily for us, we were as ready as we were ever going to be because until it actually happens, you can never be ready enough.

I've added "standing in a field watching my husband pull a sheep out of another sheep" to my list of things I never thought I would do. I'll be telling my mum about it when I call her on Sunday to see just how that one rates.