Well, this has been a longer break than anticipated but so much has been happening I just haven’t had the time to sit down and type. I am afraid there are no photos just yet as the camera is in hospital.
We ended up with 6 goat kids – 2 female and 4 male. We had some exciting times with kidding this year – they all kidded earlier than expected (must have done my maths wrong there). One of them had twins which we nearly lost to cold (some rapid work to warm them up and get them feeding) and another mum put her kid in a draught, he got chilled and, despite frantic efforts, we were too late to revive him.
The goats are all out on the summer grazing now and loving it. They are always so much calmer when they are out for the summer than when they are confined in the bad weather.
The hens and ducks are laying well and, now that so many people are selling eggs at the gate, I was struggling to sell all my eggs while they were still fresh. So, because I have lots of spare time on my hands (note the sarcasm here) I decided to get pro-active and visit the local market. There is someone else selling chicken eggs there so that wasn’t an option, but I can sell the duck eggs there and I have started a stall selling “value added” eggs. Cream meringues, lemon meringue pie, custard tarts, scotch eggs, lemon curd – anything that uses up the eggs. I have had a very good first few weeks and am now looking to expand my range and also find things that I will be able to make when the eggs dry up later in the year. Because it is a very small market, I don’t want to duplicate anything that other people are already doing so it might be a bit of a struggle to find other products to make.
The garden is completely on hold for this year other than a few bits and pieces. I have decided that, this year, I have so much work to do on fences etc that didn’t get finished last year that this year I must focus on this.
And of course – we had SNOW!!! The apprentice and I both love snow, and we had enough to get out and enjoy, without it going on forever and becoming a nuisance. The ponies and goats were all in through the bad weather so I was content that all the animals were OK so we were able to get out and make the most of it. Photos to follow in another post as there are millions 🙂
Both of the cats have had kittens (Blotchy has had 3 and Splat 4) who are now just at the delightful “just out of the nest and starting to explore” stage. I’m almost tempted to go and buy a new camera just so that I can post photos of them!
I think that’s most things covered – as soon as the camera comes back I will catch up with all the baby photos.