February 2008

One of my new year's resolutions usually includes something about taking better care of myself... well this year was no exception... but January went by without me really noticing, so here I am at the beginning of February embarking on a personalised eating plan designed to give me more energy and have me be more healthy. 2 weeks in and I noticed a dramatic difference... no more headaches, awake when I wake up rather than being drowsy, not falling asleep in front of the TV in the evenings. If you want to check your profile out I used www.metabolictypingonline.com.

This month has been marked by lots of BIG wind... big enough to blow over the frame of the new chicken house, and bend my gazebo at a couple of farmer's markets :-( No one's died, but it is a bit of a pain trying to nail everything down when you're working outside, and our house is a relative new build, done on the cheap so it's a bit like living in a caravan when the weather is throwing itself around at night.

Having said all that, spring is beginning to tickle the farm. Goat willow is budding in the hedges and we have some vegetable seeds sprouting on our windowsill in the conservatory.

We are having a bit of trouble on the farm with chickens keeling over for no apparent reason and a group of piglets not doing too well in the barn. Our homoeopathic vet thinks the barn is sick so we are looking at ways to increase ventilation in there as well as giving the inhabitants some homoeopathic remedy to help them along. Of course, the fox is hoovering up any chickens that stray too far from the safety of the barn and there are either a lot of them, or there's one very big fat fox roaming about the place, 'cos we've got significantly less chickens than at the end of last year :-(

8 new piglets arrived from our friend Dave. These are funny looking things... they have sticky up ears and are very shy. As you know, Prudence breeds our pigs for us, but her boar had a sleepy summer lounging around in the sunshine so there have been no piglets for a while and that doesn't bode well for sausage production. Dave has a smallholding in Grittleton and rears all his pigs outside. They have slightly less plush surroundings than at Prudence's pad, but they are all happy and his boar didn't take a long summer break!

Talking of pigs, we've been asked to do a hog roast at a friend's wedding, so Lorraine and Dougal went to see a man about a machine. It all looks very manageable and we're going to give it a go. Takes 5-6 hours to cook a pig and I've never done a whole one before, but there's a first time for everything and I've got time to read up on the subject. It's at the end of May and could be another string to our bow, especially as this hog roasting machine doubles as a whacking great big griddle.

Well, there you are, February over and life feels good over here. We hope it's treating you well too.