No kidding:

Diversifying into goats on a King Country sheep and beef farm has ended up involving the whole family, as Melenie Parkes finds in the latest episode of Country Calendar.

Raising goats has become a family affair for a farm in the King Country.

It’s a family affair on a dairy goat operation in the King Country. When Pam and John Easton discussed ways they could secure the farm’s future for their family, the surprising answer was goats.

The Eastons wanted to diversify the farm to create a legacy for their daughters, Jo and Catherine.

Jo Alcock says it was her brother-in-law’s idea to add these increasingly popular animals to the sheep and beef the family already farm. She says the family chose goats as they were, “a bit different”.

“Everyone thought it looked alright and we could still carry on running the sheep and beef and we all sort of worked in with each other.”

Alcock takes care of the goats while husband Carl tends to the cattle and sheep. The couple’s children also pitch in to help out with the other four-legged kids.

Along with Alcock, Catherine helps manage the business and husband Josh contributes his technical knowledge about the dairy industry. Mum Pam takes care of the male breeding goats and dad John manages the dairy grazers.

Milk from the goats is used to make infant formula. Alcock says she thinks goat milk has grown in popularity because of the fact that, “there’s probably more kids out there that can’t handle the lactose”.

Alcock, who worked as a police officer for seven years, says that, “Animals are a lot easier to work with,” than people. However, her herd can still be a handful at times.

With 604 goats to milk twice a day, it can sometimes be like working in a daycare centre.

“It’s like having a three year old after a birthday party on that sugar high and sometimes they’ll come in like, ‘What can I destroy?’ ”

And just like children, these kids can be fussy eaters too.

“People have a perception that goats will eat anything and they won’t.

“They will pick and choose what they want to eat and when they want to eat it,” she says. “That’s the way it goes for any animal – two-legged or four-legged.”

very long, happy relationship with a hot young guy.”

Williams says that while her character left a huge cultural legacy, much of her work with Fosse was uncredited.

“Gwen was asked to choreograph a few times and she said, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to do that. I can teach it, I can dance it, but I don’t want to choreograph it’.

“When my mother was growing up, all a woman could do was be a mother or a teacher, so who knows how much of Gwen’s saying that was the limitations of the time.

“I think what we hoped to show was where she was instrumental, where (Bob) couldn’t have done things without (her), which wasn’t necessarily true for his whole career.”

Williams says she thinks of Verdon as someone who tried to do her best at all times.

“This is a period piece about the values, the morals and the choices reflective of the time, about how they saw the world, all framed by the politics and gender dynamics of the world.

“The more I talk to people, the more I hear, ‘She was the most wonderful person that ever lived, so magnanimous, so generous’ and she was a good, true person, with flaws which will be explored. I think of Bob and Gwen as yin and yang. She’s the light, he’s the dark.”

She says Verdon was an unparalleled dancer and her career was all the more remarkable because her legs were put in braces after she developed rickets, a skeletal disorder caused by a vitamin and mineral deficiency, leading to weak bones and stunted growth.

Verdon’s mother, a former vaudeville dancer and teacher, put her three-year-old daughter – cruelly nicknamed Gimpy by other kids because of her deformed legs – into dance classes. Later she had ballet training and by six she was dancing on stage. But she shocked her parents at the age of 17, eloping to marry a tabloid reporter, divorcing him five years later after giving birth to a son. She also had a daughter, Nicole, by Fosse. She then got a job with Broadway and Hollywood choreographer Jack Cole, had small roles and also taught stars such as Jane Russell, Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe to dance.

But in 1953, a stand-out supporting performance in Cole Porter’s musical Can-Can thrilled the audience and critics, launching her to stardom.

“She was an unparalleled dancer,” says Williams, 38. “You can see that when you find these clips on YouTube and it blows your mind.

“You can only look at her even when she’s not the lead, the star of something. They had to put her in a corner because you couldn’t but be pulled towards her.”

Oddly, it’s unlikely Williams will see FosseVerdon on TV or much else on the small screen for that matter.

“I don’t know how people find the time to watch TV,” she says. “By the time I get home, I just look at a book and fall asleep. If I’m not working or parenting (she has a daughter with actor Heath Ledger), I’m sleeping.”

Does she have a television at home? “I think there’s one in a corner somewhere.”

“They stayed connected because as a dancer you need a choreographer, like a jockey needs a horse.”

– Michelle Williams