h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've started playing Farmville 2 on Facebook. It's a great way of watching things happen on the screen and feeling a sense of achievement without actually having to exert yourself either mentally or physically; a good way of winding down after a busy year.

The purpose of Farmville is to build a farm, raise goats and other animals, and plant crops. There are a few oddities:

1. Whatever country the farm is located in, it is hot enough to grow tomatoes out of doors, but it started snowing yesterday. I believe the tomatoes continue to grow despite the snow.

2. It never rains at all. I have to water everything before it will grow, and water is a limited resource. Where I live, lack of water is never a problem - usually we have too much of it.

3. The little 3-d character that represents me in the game never walks - he only runs. It's great fun to water an entire field in a completely random order and watch him rushing backwards and forwards. When my friends Lanzababy, Rosie and Zube come to help me on the farm, they also rush around.

4. The goats produce milk and cheese. There's no work needed to make the cheese, it just pops out of the goats. And the fertiliser which the animals produce arrives neatly in bags.

I don't know how long I'll play this game but it is fun for the moment.

A word to the wise. Don't eat that cheese which pops out of the goats...

I don't eat it, I sell it.

This sounds like a fun game.

When I saw your headline, I thought you were doing it for real. Which reminded me of this journalist from St Louis, Missouri. He moved to Ireland in the 1970s, and bought a little piece of land, under a law that allowed foreigners to do this only if the land weren't arable.

So he decided to raise goats. And write a weekly column about it - a blog, if you will, but before the internet. We found it highly entertaining.

So I was imagining you chasing goats...glad to hear they're virtual. My sister's had them, and says they're a handful.

When I was a child, my best friend's father decided he didn't like the city and bought a small piece of land about 20 miles into the countryside. The whole family moved there. He continued to commute into the city for his office job, but in his spare time kept a cow, a sheep and some chickens. He only had about 10 acres. I often stayed on their "farm" during the summer. I've also stayed on farms that had pigs, dairy cows, and turkeys, so I'm familiar with a few different types of farm animal. I've never dealt with goats, though.

When I first saw the title of this thread, on my PS, I thought 'must be a 2legs journal'... then I realised I was 2legs, and it can't have been mine
I've milked goats before, on a smallholding a friend had when I was younger... They're weird critters... : It kept trying to drink its own milk out of the bucket as I was milking it mmmm goats cheese

My sister and her husband have a 'farm' like that. Live in the country, commute. It's a grand way to do it.

Big flat mushrooms. Pull out the stalks, put a dollop of goat's cheese in the hole and grill lightly.

(and wrap them in bacon first too... if you like that kind of thing.... mmmmmmmmm.....)

...garnish with a Mediterranean olive...

I drove through Kalamata a few years ago but didn't stop to buy any olives. It was at the end of a very long drive and we were exhausted.

There was a story about George Bush, the Younger, being led through an olive grove while visiting Greece. He supposedly plucked an olive and almost tried to eat it. The story is most likely apocryphal, but that's how I first learned olives are soaked in lye and pickled in brine before they're edible and pickled in brine.

Ah, Kalamata. The home of the world's best figs.

My sister breeds goats. Well, strictly her youngest son does the most of the work (daily milking, seasonal kidding etc).

he shows them at agricultural shows, and does pretty well at it - he's recognised as a goat expert, is starting to get asked to judge at shows etc.

I've asked my sister why they never got into selling goats milk, making cheese etc. She explained that the health and safety and food standards that would be required are quite onerous, and the capital outlay that would be required is substantial.

Can I adopt a goat, and call him derick?

Would you then be a goatee?