March 2007
Spring is here, veg, eggs, chickens, foxes, and flapjacks for poorly pigs!I guess the biggest news of all for our friends and visitors this month was the fixing of our track! As the weather settled, we had some planings from local roadworks delivered, along with a compacting roller, and Dougal, Jason and Wills set about being "men at work" and have done a marvellous job... come and see for yourself!
Spring has arrived and if we were in any doubt about that we only need to look at the pile of eggs in our incubators, the pots of vegetable seeds in our conservatory, greenhouse and coldframe (we're planning an abundant harvest!) and the way the animals are all moulting like crazy. We missed spring last year. If you remember, the weather stayed pretty cold and rather wet right up until the end of May when we jumped straight into hot and dry. Spring is beautiful and it brings for me a feeling that everything will be OK... I love it!
One day, Mark was taking pigs and a steer to the abattoir. Taking rather longer than usual, I got a bit concerned and was met in the house by an SOS phone call, that the Shogun was beltching out thick black smoke and making a racket. Our friend and expert in all things vehicular, Keith Simpkins, came to the rescue. The turbo had gone (sounded hugely expensive), so he lent us his Shogun to get the animals the rest of the way and towed our car back to his garage... where he fixed it with a second hand part. I have to say though, it's funny how often we seem to be getting sorted financially then we have an unexpected bill like this. Sometimes feels like two steps forward and two back!
On the animal front it's been a bit of a tough month... the fox took some of our farmyard chickens one morning, in spite of Brandy's best efforts... the youngest little pigs took to not doing very well and lost their energy one morning. We're currently giving them extra milk which is making a difference. We mix the milk with their barley and it smells like flapjacks! YUMMY... who wouldn't get better!!!
And finally, did you know that if you fill one of those big coffeee jars with £2 coins you'll have £400... what a great way of saving! I'm now collecting the coins from our markets and hope to save enough towards one of our big summer contractor bills... or perhaps... well... who knows!
Wishing you well :-)