Achievement

The weather hasn't been terribly inspiring, although why I think that winter equates to crisp, frosty mornings having lived all of my life in the mild south-east I'll never know. Anyway, I decided to move the poultry runs around a bit to save my lawn. [Grass-and-buttercups I mean, it doesn't qualify as lawn.]

So, I put the mallard calls in the broody coop and moved them and the whites up next to the large hen enclosure:

And then the bunnies could go in the duck run:

Serious grazing to be done

I then moved the chicks plus the extension run up near the house behind the hedge:

which means I can't use that pathway but it's better than ruining the half decent patch of grass (bunny excavations aside) behind the apple trees. I am now left with the cleared border where the ducks were:

Hmm. I will probably mulch it and cover it with black plastic to protect it from the weather and encourage some worms. I want to divide up my lupins and plant out a few of my hollyhocks; if I can do the whole thing with my own propagated plants I shall be extremely pleased.

So, I am now left with a garden which can be left alone for the rest of the winter so it doesn't get churned up. Well that was the plan, except the bunnies escaped from their run (ducks are less inquisitive about a loose section of chicken wire but the rabbits soon found it) so Amber, Rose and I were sliding around the garden trying to catch the frolicking Willow and Scarlet as they galloped joyfully through the mud.

That would have been ok except about 20 minutes later I heard the chicks squawk and flap in alarm and I realised one of nextdoor's pigs was strolling across my borders, soon joined by his wife. Getting them back to where they belong didn't help the state of the lawn, it must be said....

I have finished the mitts I started in the Debbie Bliss alpaca silk aran that I had used for my raven hat:

They aren't meant to match!

I have found some wool stuffing (to use instead of polyester) on the Jamieson and Smith website which also has lovely yarns in muted colours so I might get some to make some socks with. I found a really simple sock pattern on a blog I really enjoy - Slow Living Essentials so I'd like to knit some as the children never have any socks, and not just because the dog hides them under the bed.

So what with that and sorting out some marital debt problems, I feel as if I have had a good productive day. However I think I have a cold coming and feel rather tired as the children seem to become highly co-operative after 9 pm and start inviting each other to read books together/play cards/chat - behaviour which is starkly absent at a more helpful time.

Hooray! It's the weekend! :-)

Happier Day

It was rather sad letting the hens out this morning, but I had no time to dwell as we had to hot foot it over to my parents to leave the girls there, while Tris and I went to the dentist. It was fine though (apart from the bill - is there anything more depressing to spend money on?) and on the way home we popped in to a new farm shop and I treated Tristan to a celebratory, sugar-free, tooth-friendly homemade sausage roll. We saw some cute piggies, although T hid his food as he 'didn't want them to smell their relations'...

When we arrived back, mother very kindly cooked us lunch while we all had a haircut; Tracey discovered my fringe under about 3 inches of wispy ends so that was a result.

We took the scenic route to Middle Farm, partly as it was the road through Glynde that made me fall in love with Sussex, and partly because I wanted to find the wind turbine that has just been built on the Downs, rather controversially. It's not difficult to miss:

It is absolutely immense. Personally I am so blown away (ha!) by the construction of it I can't help being awed by its presence, but then it's not in my backyard....

It is really difficult to get any sense of scale, but I nearly fell over backwards trying to take the photo. The children were fascinated. Well, the girls were, T spent his time looking at all the ladybirds that seemed to regard it as a beacon, presumably as the metal had been warmed by the sun.

We made our way to Middle Farm, and purchased a new Maud. We put her in the broody coop to settle in.

The chicks were quite interested:

...which is just as well as they are now coop-mates.

And here is a picture of the ducks in their bath:

Talking of baths, Rosie made bath bombes at Brownies which meant she couldn't wait to get in the tub, so I didn't want to get in the way of that, as it's quite a rare occurrence.

We want to have a go at making some of them for Christmas presents.

Smallholders show

Another lovely day. I baked cinnamon buns for breakfast and we got ready to go to Ardingly. I was feeling a bit intrepid as I went years ago but have not been for some time, and a lot of these things can end up appealing more to the hoi polloi (aka chavs) and I was a bit worried that it would be rather a poor relation of the SOES. The older two were being teeneager-ish and didn't want to come as of course there was Glee and Hollyoaks omnibus on T4 so fine, 2 less mouths to feed!

Anyway I was not disappointed :-) the Smallholders Show is much smaller than the South of England, and more manageable really, with lots of farm animals, poultry, and rabbits and guineas.  Poor Charles who has been desperately trying to dissuade me from buying a duckling was getting rather worried but I had purposely left the crate out of the boot of the car so I couldn't buy anything. There were really good bookshops and one place selling HomeFarmer mag back copies at £1 each - bargain.

Rose with some sheep

A veritable duckling-fest

I was in heaven

We enjoyed frozen yogurt in cones and then after a long discussion, we went back to the animal pens...poor Charles....

Meet John and Jean!!

They are 12 week old grey call ducks - how absolutely wonderfully adorable are they?? Of course, the duck people had boxes to put them in so they are now home in the run I finished earlier this morning so as to have as a spare one should anything need isolating. Hmm, oh well, anything ill will have to come indoors. John and Jean were my paternal grandparents and in the tradition of naming my poultry after my grannies and grandpas these two have got the last two names available! They are just lovely and very small and calm. They've got a seed tray to bathe in but I do have a tin bath I nicked borrowed off Laura, so how sweet will that look. I am a very happy bunny :-)

Misplaced camera

No pictures from me today as the girls borrowed my camera to do Morgana Show movies and we have yet to locate it again, which is a shame as I took a picture of my raspberries (all 8 of them) - my first harvest of soft fruit! The strawberry is plumping up nicely too; no doubt the chickens are waiting until it is at peak ripeness before hopping over the fence and treading on it.

Anyway I now have the ingredients to make soap, thanks to Nicky, but I need a thermometer and some distilled water so it will have to wait til I can make it although it does give me a few days to finish drying the rose petals that I'd like to put in the soap.

I was out by the car this afternoon looking for the dog's lead when a large white van stopped in the road. My heart sank as I presumed the driver was going to put my appalling lack of observation/sense of direction to the test and ask me where a particular house was but no! phew! he pointed down the road and said "Is that your pig?" so I said no, but I knew where it lived. So, being the neighbourly soul that I am, I grabbed a feed bucket and half a dozen apples out of the fruit bowl and yelled for the children to come and help me retrieve nextdoor's pig who lives in the field diagonally opposite. The pig was almost down to the bridlepath by the time we caught up with him but some judicious apple-throwing tempted him back up the road towards his pen and with some encouragement, more apple and an impromptu pig board we got him back to the field. I never thought my agricultural training would come in so handy :-)

This isn't him but he's similar

South of England Show

Well, I have not been to the South of England Agricultural Show for some time and the forecast wasn't great but we were looking forward to it all the same. T was sleeping over at his friend Joel's house, so we only needed to provide lunch for the girls - in other words, enough for small family rather than an army.

We arrived at the showground in good time and headed for the tea section for the first round of refuelling:

Then it was off to see some animals :-)

We stopped off at the Hound Show first where, as part of the judging, the hounds were released - presumably to show off their movement and ability to chase biscuits and sniff things they shouldn't.

Organised chaos in the Hound Showing Ring

We then headed over to the cattle show rings, which were conveniently close to another tea tent. There were some beautiful Charolais and Sussex cattle:

Sussex Cows being judged

Championship Charolais beef cattle

We also went past the pigs:

More organised chaos

It was starting to try to rain so we headed for the Fur and Feathers tent to get some 'ahhhh how sweeeet!!!' out of our system as my companions had thus far not joined me in thinking the cows were adorable for some reason.

Amber with prize-winning Brahma

I was not allowed to take these home

We stopped for a spot of lunch on wet seats and then started to make our way back to the Red Entrance which seemed to be diagonally opposite where we were. But no matter - Amber got to milk a real lifesize plastic cow called Buttercup:

Quite the milkmaid

And Rosie got to stroke a pig:

So I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

I'm going to try making some rose petal jelly as my roses are so gorgeous it seems such a waste to throw them into the wormery, even though I am having as many as I can in vases.  Well, I say vases; random vessels and beer bottles with pretty labels but it still seems a waste. I have only made jelly once before and it was like trying to get a knife through a trampoline - I think I had over-estimated the time it took to reach setting point. Watch this space...