A wintry Easter weekend

It was to be expected I suppose, given that Easter is so early this year, that we would have snow in between fleeting visits of the sunshine. We've just had the most horrendous blast of wind, hail and snow all mixed together, and now the sun is out in it's full glory, Spring showers in their truest form I think.

The above cherry blossom tree hasn't quite come out yet this year, when it does it puts on a beautiful show of tiny delicate pink flowers. I've brought some branches in and hung the Easter decorations from them, the stove is lit so hopefully the warmth will bring the buds out fairly soon.

The dining room also looks a bit like a florists shop at the moment, jugs and jugs of daffodils and masses of branches of flowering currant. Gregg will come home and complain that it smells of cat pee, but I quite like the smell, I think it's almost earthy, a real spring smell. I've volunteered to do the flowers in Church tomorrow for Sundays service, so hopefully the daffodils will come out in the warmth of the stove too. One of the joys of living in the sticks is that there is still a lot of "by the gatepost" selling. The daffodils came from a local farm, they leave a couple of crates with bunches made up and an honesty box, 25p a bunch and locally grown, so a dozen bunches were bought for the church.

Our little enterprise of selling by the gate is also doing well, we now have 20 chickens and a bunch of regular customers that either collect their eggs or I deliver them on a Friday when I'm down in the village. It was Easter last year that we put the sign up, it still amazes me that we get so many people popping in, especially walkers with a little room in their rucksack to squeeze in a half dozen eggs!

Some of you might remember that we hatched our first lots of chicks last year, 9 in total, 3 hens and 6 cockerels. The three hens are doing great, one of them is a real little madam, she jumps up and pecks me on the leg every morning, although I am getting wise to her now! I'm obviously not quick enough in giving them their grain! Anyway, your probably thinking, what did we do with the six cockerels? Well, one of them went to a small holding up the road and as far as I'm aware he's still doing well. We ate the other 5. They were delicious. I'm now thinking we should hatch some free ranging table birds and then start to breed them for ourselves to eat all year round. We shall see, we need a bit more land and I'm still working on that one, hence the reason we have no pigs as yet :(

We also had to despatch our much loved cockerel William, he was very ill with an infection that hadn't cleared up, so he's now buried in the garden. I cried when we had to do that but it didn't bother me at all when we had to kill the others that we ate. I quite happily plucked them and got them ready to roast for Sunday night supper. So, we now have William II, he's another Welsummer cockerel and is enjoying strutting his stuff in front of the ladies and crows away quite the thing on top of the fence post.

I also mentioned the other day that I had to try and catch one of our drakes, we currently have 2 drakes and 3 ducks, all Indian Runners, as our little call ducks got eaten by something when they decided to sit on eggs and we couldn't find them to bring them in at night. Anyway, as you can imagine, with it being Spring and all, the drakes are rather randy at the moment and have decided that three ladies is just not enough for them, so our two chinese white geese, Florence and Felicity, have been getting chased to the point where they dissappear down the burn and don't know how to find their way back! One of the drakes has to go, we could eat him, but I'm going to give him back to Diana (pottery friend!) as she's just lost her drake to the fox. He has been given a reprieve at the moment as I've not had time to go up to the pottery, maybe this weekend, then hopefully peace will be regained in the hen house!

So, I hope you all have a lovely Easter weekend, we'll be dodging the snow showers, hopefully getting some more studio building done and a bit of gardening. We might even go and roll some eggs!

Love,

L x

Loving this life

It's Friday, yet another week has flown in, and it's truely feeling like Autumn now.

I wasn't really prepared for the heart warming feeling you get when harvesting from the garden, it really is quite magical. We had our first carrots tonight, along with some peas (we've had a bumper crop of them this year) and some broccoli. It always amazes me how the simplest things in life can make you so happy.

I'm loving going for peaceful evening walks, enjoying the last of the sun low in the sky.

Lighting the fires, the smell of the wood.

It's our wedding anniversary this weekend, 7 years, where has that time gone? We're both happy and settled and enjoying the peace.

Have a good weekend.

L x

The chicks!

As promised more photos of the chicks! They ventured outside for the first time yesterday and are getting quite confident on their feet, they seem to be able to fly from one end of the run to the other in a flash! I've been spending far too much time just watching them tottering around and jumping on their mums back, so very cute! Two of the chicks are black with little tufts of yellow, they are Maran cross Welsummers and the other seven are pure Welsummers. Hopefully not too many of them will be cockerels!

It's raining today so I'm getting on with work and watching them from my workroom window and the study window.I told a little fib the other day when I wrote I'd come back empty handed from the market, I didn't bring back anything of the feathered variety, but I did manage to spend some pennies in the "Bygone Era" auction. I was amazed at the amount of really interesting bits and bobs that were for sale, I could have spent a small fortune but I didn't! Everything from old glass butter churns to ploughs! Even a rusty old post box! There were a few things that I lost out on but I did manage to get some really nice galvanised buckets and baths for planting up in the garden and some old tattie baskets. I managed to get something in the sewing line too, a really special find at an absolute steal of a price, but I'll save that for another day!

I just have to decide whether I'm going to plant them up with flowers or veg now!

The wonders of nature

Don't you just think that nature is a wonderful thing? Yesterday was the big day, 21 days ago we'd sat our broody maran on a selection of 10 eggs in the hope that they would hatch in to little chicks. She has sat on those eggs religiously turning them and keeping them warm.

Gregg had popped out first thing to check but could hear no cheeps, I went out at 11am, lifted the chicken up and there facing me, cheep, cheeping away was a pile of fluffy chicks! 9 out of the 10 eggs hatched, the 10th chick had made it half way out of the shell but unfortunately had been squashed, survival of the fittest as they say. Today they are running around inside the little hen house, they've been shown by their mother to eat the chick crumbs and drink water so fingers crossed they will all grow into healthy chickens ( or possibly cockerels!). Maybe tomorrow they will venture out on the grass, lots of photos to follow I think!!!

Our day at the Rare Breeds sale on Saturday was enjoyable although the chickens were going for ridiculous amounts of money, I was outbid on everything so came home empty handed. Chicken keeping seems to be quite fashionable at the moment, certain breeds were reaching £45 per chicken?!!! One breed in particular, the cream legbar, was proving to be very popular, all because they lay a blue egg! They were actually the chickens that I was after, but luckily my uncle keeps them so we'll be trying to hatch some of our own this summer.

We also watched the livestock auction, cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Seeing the piglets was interesting, there were Gloucestershire Old Spots, Great Blacks and Tamworths, all tiny little things squealing away. Gregg did pose the question " so if we do get a couple of weaners are you going to be able to take them to the slaughter house then?", there was a slight hesitation in my answer, but I'm pretty sure I could.

I came away feeling quite sad as some of the sheep weren't even getting as good a price as the chickens, one going for as little as 4 gn (4 guineas = £4.20). An animal that could provide the wool to put clothes on your back and feed a family for at least a couple of weeks was being sold for less than a bird that provides approx. 200 eggs in a year and probably wouldn't feed a family for one night, where is the sense in that?

Anyway, I shall leave you with photos of our proud mum and her chicks and some photos from the market. I really should be getting on with work but I just know I'll have to go and check on the chicks again!

Catching up

Well it's the 1st of May already, where did April go? I forgot to get up and wash my face in the dew this morning, although to be honest it was more frosty here than dewy.

So, as I said in my last post, the inspiring Tash over at Vintage Pretty has nominated me for a "thinking Blogger" award. I'm pretty stunned as I see my blog as a bit of a rambling thing, me blethering on about life in the sticks and running my wee business from home, but hey, I'm not going to complain, it's lovely to know that there are some people out there that seem to enjoy it.

The hardest part is having to choose my 5 favourite blogs, there are so many out there, people who do truly inspire and make me think, compared to others who just moan and have a jibe at others, they tend to be the blogs that make you roll your eyes, move on to the next one and put you off blogging........! But don't worry I'm not put off that easily ;O)

The first blog that I love to read every day is Tash over at Vintage Pretty, I know that seems mad as she put me up to this, but I just have to return the favour. From the stunning photography to her heartwarming posts, it just all makes fantastic reading and I can tell we would be great friends if we lived close by.

Secondly it has to be my cyber twin, Rach over at Oh, the glamour, her blog is a hilarious read about the daily goings on in her life and has lately included some of her amazing patchwork, now there's a talented girl. I'm lucky enough to have met Rach and I think we'll end up being pretty good buddies.

Thirdly, one of the first blogs I started reading is The Accidental Smallholder, it's been inspiring to read up on Rosemary and Dans' progress with their small holding, in fact I'm hoping to chat pig keeping with Rosemary this weekend at the Rare Breeds Sale in Inverurie.

Another one of my daily reads is Cherry over at Tales from Pixie Wood, Cherry has proved to be a real star in more ways than one, many an e-mail has gone flying through cyberspace between us! She is such an inspiration to me, I adore the fact that she is just so organised in every aspect of her life and is a real home maker at heart. If I could have just an ounce of those organisational skills I know my life would be a lot easier!

And lastly, a blog I've just recently started reading is Kelly over at Nesty. Her blog is beautifully put together, always has fantastic photography and I love being a part of all her crafty projects.

There are loads more that I could mention but I'd end up boring you all to tears!

I shall be back tomorrow with more news, I'll leave you with a picture from the garden.

Nite nite,


L x

Spring showers

At last some rain has arrived in our neck of the woods, in the form of spring showers, little bursts of really heavy rain, on and off all morning. It always amazes me the weather and peoples reaction to it. We have a spell of beautiful Spring sunshine, perfectly timed with the Easter holidays, but we still manage to complain, everyone talking about how dry the ground is, having to water spring plants and the like, and how they wished it would rain! Why is it that sometimes we are never a happy nation?

Anyway, amidst the glorious sunshine of last weekend we managed to have our first BBQ's, both Saturday and Sunday night, sitting outside enjoying the last of the days rays, how fab is that for mid April?

I also got stuck into the seed planting in a big way, probably a little bit late, but still early enough not to be too worried that I'll be harvesting my peas in September! I got the pasting table set up and had a little production line going, while dancing away to a digital radio station we've just discovered, Life, they play lots of oldies mixed in with some new stuff. Gregg and I spent the whole weekend saying to each other "ooh listen to this one, I haven't heard that in ages......." boogy, boogy, boogy!

It was actually mostly flower seeds that I was planting, 17 varieties in all, so no excuses for empty beds this year! The last of the veggie seeds will be planted tomorrow hopefully, if I get my finger out of my (slightly bruised) bottom and get all my work finished today, nothing like a deadline to get you going and the thought of a day off spent in the garden!

Photos are of the quickly filling up greenhouse and some Rocket that has germinated already.

On the chicken front, the duck came off the nest yesterday so no ducklings from her I'm afraid. Bit of a shame but I had my doubts after we'd disturbed her, I'd rather she was safe than foxy loxys supper though. Plenty of time yet for little ducklings though, we have to live and learn from our mistakes!

Falling from grace

Well, the chickens had a good old laugh at me this morning! I'd let them out and was changing their water, we're lucky enough to have not one but two burns (streams!) running through our property, both of which border the chicken run. I was on my way round to fill up a bucket of water from the burn when one minute I was striding along, the next I was flat on my arse, caked in mud! I swear it was a chicken poo that I slid on. Little b*ggers. It's my own fault, I have been blessed with rather long legs, which means that I never walk anywhere slowly as I have quite a long stride, anyone walking alongside me tends to trot rather than walk. Maybe I should slow down, they do say "less haste, more speed" or is it the other way round?

Anyway, my rather cold and caked in mud bottom is slowly recovering and my jeans are in the wash. I have a feeling it's going to be one of those days.

Here's a picture of our French Cuckoo Maran sitting on a clutch of 10 eggs, they should hopefully hatch around the 6th or 7th of May, although she did decide to come off them for a little while yesterday, hopefully no damage has been done.

Crafty swapperoony!

I had planned to post about other things today but when the posty arrived with a rather large parcel for moi I just had to tell you all about it!

You'll recall from previous posts that I have a cyber twin, Rach, over at Oh the glamour...... From being days appart in age to lots of other things that we're both experiencing in life, it's just way too freaky how similar our lives actually are, but I won't go into all of that. We met at the Country Living Fair, I'm not sure if there was a crack of lighting outside the hall when we clapped eyes on each other, but I'm pretty sure a firm friendship has been found.

Last week Rach suggested that we do a little crafty swap, and true to her word a huge parcel arrived today, here's what was in it..........

beautiful hand dipped candles......

really groovy knicker discs........

a huge selection of gorgeous handmade cards......

and a fab covered notebook .

All handmade by the lovely Rach herself and available to buy in her on-line shop. What better way to start a boring old Tuesday! So all that's left for me to say is a HUGE THANK YOU to Rach, your parcel from me will be winging it's way over to you this week!

On the home front, Mrs. Duck decided to sit on her 12 eggs on Sunday so when we went to shut everybody in she was sat tightly guarding her nest. We put an old wooden fruit crate over the top of her with a large stone on top, thankfully she managed to survive the night out on her own. After getting lots of advice from the Practical Poultry Forum, we were advised not to leave her outside as a fox would stop at nothing to have her for a snack. So last night we managed to lift her off the nest, move her beautiful blue eggs and most of the nesting into a little coop for her to stay in. We're not sure whether this will work but we can only try. She has been out in the little run this morning making lots of noise, having a bath and some food. I had to coax her back into the coop where she has now returned to sitting on the eggs. I am a bit concerned that she is coming off the eggs for too long, up to two hours at a time, but I'm sure she knows what she's doing. We've got the whole summer ahead of us to try and hatch ducklings and I'd rather try doing it the natural way this time round.

Nature notes

Today has been one of those days that makes me realise just how much I love living in the countryside. It was such a glorious morning, sun shining, not a breath of wind and the birds twittering away. I took Chrissie out for her usual early morning walk, along the burnside, up the farm road. I've noticed over the last couple of days that the fish are visible again up at the little bridge, I spend hours in the summer just watching them dart about in the pool under the bridge. There are little dippers darting around from stones to banking, just a flash of white breast as they disappear, and yellow pied wagtails bobbing about too.

I often hear woodpeckers both pecking away in the surrounding trees and making the distinctive chitting noise that is their call. As I was wondering back along to the cottage this morning I could hear a real birdie ding-dong going on in the trees, I thought as soon as I get close it'll fly away. But to my amazement here were two beautiful Great Spotted woodpeckers flitting about in the tree up above me, totally unaware of me and an audience of finches, blue tits, coal tits and others spectating! Wether it was a male and a female flirting or two males fighting over a tree I'm not sure but it was certainly entertaining!

Living the life we lead now constantly takes me back to my childhood, I was a real little nature boffin, always out pottering in the garden, bringing in poorly birds and animals to try and nurse them back to health. I was always in my element when we had pet lambs to feed, I often got up in the morning to find a lamb in the bottom oven of the Rayburn thawing out! Today I went back to being about eight years old again, I had come across a drying up puddle of tadpoles, a writhing mass of black jelly about to bake in the sun. So I returned with my bucket to rescue the tadpoles, putting some into our neighbours pond and some into my makeshift pond, a big blue plastic trug with rocks in the bottom and some pond weed will be gathered tomorrow for them to feed on. Fingers crossed they all turn into little frogs, but they'll need to stay out of the way of the chickens as they have a bit of a liking for fresh frog! Why is it that a supposedly grown up 30 year old can turn into a child for the day so easily? hmmmm......

I'm also going to let you into a little secret I have with my ducks, although I don't think they know that I know...............

One of the female apricot call ducks has gone off and made herself a little nest just up from the ford at the bottom of our garden. As of tonight there are 9 eggs in the nest and she has started to line it with feathers! It's close enough to the water so she can go and wet her feathers to keep the eggs moist while incubating them. The only problem is we don't want to leave her out overnight or she'll end up fox fodder. So, the plan is, once she starts to sit on them we will try moving her and the nest into our little broody coop, but to be honest I'm really not sure if she'll like us disturbing her and it may well put her off. If this is the case we've got a couple of broody hens waiting in the wings to take over, one of the French Cuckoo Marans and a Blue Laced Wyandotte. Hatching little duckings would be superb so watch this space........

I ended the evening planting some more seeds in the greenhouse, lettuce and rocket into some old guttering that we found behind the stables, another one of Sarah Ravens ideas!

Ooh, we also had our first customer today, a lovely lady who lives up the road from us on the next estate, she came and bought two dozen eggs! I managed to contain my excitement and refrained from asking if I could take a photo of her for on the blog, I am thankful for having a little bit of sanity every now and then.......................

L xx

The Easter Weekend

Easter has come and gone in a bit of a whirl wind in our house this weekend, but a very enjoyable one! From the first visitors arriving on Friday morning until yesterday afternoon, the kettle was working overtime! It was lovely to see all our friends and family over the weekend, so thank you all for taking the time to come and visit.

Hasn't the weather just been superb, I can't remember the last Spring we had that has been this glorious, and by all means it's to last for the rest of the week, fingers crossed! We've even had to start watering the pots!

We managed to get a few things done outside, Gregg and Allan felled a tree on Friday morning, don't boys just love playing with chain saws and making lots of noise!

In between visitors I managed to get this made.....

........I have been looking forward to this moment for sooooooooooooooo long! This time last year we started off with 5 chickens, a cockerel and 2 geese. We now have a bit of a menagerie, producing loads of eggs and hopefully some little chicks soon. We have a couple of broody chooks so we're planning on setting them on some eggs this weekend, very exciting, as our attempts last year were a bit late in the day and didn't produce anything. We also have more interesting news on the poultry front but I'll keep that for tomorrow.

At last I have passed the "planning" stage of the veggie garden and have progressed to the "just get on with it" stage! I got my first lot of potatoes in yesterday, early Duke of Yorks, and planted sweetpea seeds, varieties "Matucana" and "Painted Lady". I also got a tub of basil seeds planted so that'll be interesting to see how they come along. Only about another 20 packets of seeds to go now..............

Hope you all enjoyed your Easter break too.

L x

The wild flower garden

As you all know, when we moved up here to what we now refer to as "the shack", it was a bit of a tip. Certain parts of the house needed gutting as the smell of dogs and other nasties was pretty horrendous. The outside of the cottage was just as bad, if not worse. The garden had been left unattanded for probably 6 weeks or more in the height of the summer, this left us to tackle a rather rampant wilderness as well as getting the inside of the cottage livable - not a task for the feint hearted! Dealing with 7 ft high nettles and dockings meant that Gregg would go armed with strimmer into areas of the garden and not be seen for a few hours!

We battled on enjoying the fact that we were very clearly stamping our mark onto our little piece of the Perthshire countryside but soon realised that an acre of land is not something that you turn around in a few months (timescales have never been my strong point!)! I had a huge list of jobs to be done over that first summer, we're still knocking them off the list! Our neighbours continually comment on how we've imporved the place so much but we only feel as if we've scratched the surface!

I have always been a keen gardener, very much influenced by my grandmother, she had me weeding at a very early age! Both her and my grandfather were and still are great gardeners, but more about that in another post. It's only really now that I feel as if I'm getting to grips with the scale of our garden and that for once I seem to be organised in my seed planting! I sat last night and planned the veggie plot and read up on each vegetable that I'm intending to grow this year, at last I felt as if I was actually doing what I came here to do.

Gregg and I also got discussing another area of the garden last night, the wild flower garden. I shouted up to him to do a search for a company called Scotia Seeds. Diane at our local Organic Hut had recommended them to me last summer when I was talking to her about growing wild flowers. They are based not far from us and produce native wild flowers to Scotland. It has always been a dream of mine to grow a wild flower garden and at last we are ready to plant some seeds and see where it goes...........

We are planning on sowing the wet meadow mix along the burnside,

the woodland mix on the banking over the burn,

and the short mix around the edge of the paddock.

So we'll have hopefully have turned an area that looked like this......

into something a bit more eyecatching and appealing to nature.

I read this post today and felt truely heartened to see that there are others out there who understand exactly how I feel, sadly, there are so many people out there that just don't get it.........

New job & CL Fair London

Just a quick post today about a couple of things. For all our friends and family that read the blog Gregg got on fine in his new job yesterday. It was quite surreal sending him off with his packed lunch (made by me I hasten to add!) all suited and booted, looking very smart! They all seem like a nice bunch in the office so he'll hopefully settle in quite quickly. It has certainly got me into a far better routine as it gets me out of my pit in the morning! Well so far so good, we are only on day two I suppose!

Sorry to go on about the Country Living Fair again, in a couple of weeks time it will all be over for another year! Two of my blog friends are heading down to the London Fair today, Samantha over at Plump Pudding is heading down from Wales, you can go and visit her on stand H17 on the mezzanine floor. Caroline over at Twice is travelling all the way down from up my neck of the woods, you can find her at stand G1. Do go along and say hello to the girls, I'm sure they'll give you a very warm welcome! The fair is on from tomorrow through until Sunday at the Business Design Centre in London.

At last the geese have started to lay again this year, they lay the most wonderful, huge white eggs, great for baking with. I've had to rescue one of the geese twice from the nesting box as she gets so excited whenever I go into the run she gets herself all stuck inside it, stupid bird!

Thank you all for your encouraging comments about the new pottery range, fingers crossed it goes down well next week!

Off to get on with yet more sewing and tagging, a week to go until we head down to Glasgow, I hope all the Scottish bloggers have it in their diary!

L x

Vintage buttons and Country Living

I've just come in from walking Chrissie, windswept and rosie cheeked, it's wild and dreich out there. "Dreich", such a great Scottish word, don't you think? At last, my March Country Living has arrived, it's normally here long before it hits the shelf of our local newagents, was not impressed when I popped in yesterday to see it sitting there and I STILL didn't have mine, humf! Anyway, I'm so pleased, my friend Caroline who has the Twice shop, has a little feature in it this month, her sewing roll has been featured in Emporium. We met last year when we both had stalls at the Travelling Souk and at Perth Mart Christmas Fair. Her products are gorgeous, real vintage beauties made into a lovely selection of gifts and goodies for the home.

This lovely little lot arrived in the post this morning too.............

Just over 100 real mother of pearl vintage buttons, some of them are really gorgeous, I have a real thing for mother of pearl buttons and use them on so many of our products. I'm also waiting on another lot arriving, this time 600! Yes, 600! I'll maybe have to part with some of them and sell them in the shop............. hmmmm, we'll see!

We're also waiting on another arrival, but of a different sort, the geese are apparently due to start laying on Valentines Day, but so far no eggs from them. I went out and spoke to them today, I told them that if they didn't start laying soon they'd go in the pot, that normally works with them! Their eggs are fab, they are huge with really tough shells, great for baking with and Gregg loves them for breakfast, they make HUGE fried eggs! Fingers crossed they'll start laying soon.

Thank you all for telling me what you got up to on Valentines Day, it's nice to know there are still some romantics out there! The chocolate cake was yummy, I was worried it wouldn't be very nice as it was a bit hard when I put the chocolate ganache over it, but as Julia over at Chrystal Mountain said, 20 seconds in the microwave with lashings of cream and it was dish delish! Left overs for pud tonight, guess who's going to be a few pounds heavier by the end of this week!

ooh, ooh, must tell......

I don't think I have ever posted twice in one day, but this afternoon there was much excitement in the hen house. Our hens are starting to come back into lay now, the most eggs we've had in one day is 5 so far. You can generally tell which ones are either laying or about to come into lay as their combs go really red. I've been keeping an eye on them all, the light sussex are laying, one of the rhode Island reds is laying and a couple of the little wyandottes, probably the red ones, but some of the others are starting to go really red too.

So, this afternoon when I went into collect the eggs, I found 2 in the little corner where some of them seem to be laying and there were 2 in the nesting box closest to the door, a nesting box that hardly ever gets used (we have 5, but they generally only lay in 2 or 3 of them). To my delight, both the eggs are a gorgeous blue colour, a complete surprise as I didn't think any of our hens laid blue eggs. So, I am now left wondering are these eggs from 2 of the three blue laced wyandottes that we have (2 of them are very red in the comb) or are they from the apricot call ducks? As far as I'm aware, the ducks will only lay about 10 eggs in the year and are more likely to go off and build a nest somewhere, lay their eggs and then come back with ducklings (or am I being completely naive in thinking this - they'll probably all get eaten by the mink?). So only time will tell, I really hope that it's the little wyandottes that have laid them as then we'd have lovely blue eggs to add to the deep brown and white eggs we get from the others. Here's a picture of todays eggs.

Will keep you posted, it's no wonder I never get any work done!

Do not read if you're a vegetarian.............

The other night there was a knock at the door at about 9pm, I was in alone and thought "who on earth is it at this time of night?" Well, when I opened the door (with Chrissie at my feet incase it was someone dodgy!!) I got a bit of a shock. It was our neighbour with a brace of duck for me, shot that day. Hmm, what do I do with these was my intial thought, but being the thankful neighbour that I am, I gratefully received them and accepted the instructions as to how to "deal" with them. "Don't bother plucking them, too many feathers, just slice them open and cut out the breast!" was the instruction - boy could I have done with Hugh F-W! I left them hanging at the front door overnight while I deliberated over my dilemma. Gregg wasn't home until this morning, so do I deal with them myself or be a wimp and leave them for him? I very pathetically opted for the latter!

So, Gregg got to it this afternoon, with me watching, he's skinned a mink before so kind of knew what he was doing! After a bit I got bored and decided that I was probably never going to have to do this kind of thing so I didn't really need to know, a bit pathetic, eh! I didn't think you'd really appreciate photos of him skinning the duck, so I'll spare you the gory details.

It has brought us back to a conversation we have constantly, one of our main reasons for moving to the sticks and having some land was so that we could be more self sufficient. We have just over an acre at the moment, enough to keep the chickens, geese and ducks, a large veggie plot and lots of room for growing flowers. We'd love to have a bit more land, ideally the field across the burn from us would be perfect. My dream is to Keep Tamworth pigs, breed them, some for selling and some for the freezer. I'd also like to keep sheep, again to sell, for the freezer and for their wool, ideally a rare breed too as we would then at least feel as if we were contributing to the preservation of our rare breeds. I quite fancy an Anglo Nubian goat too, but that's more for a pet and just for the fun of having a mad goat, she would of course have to be called Gertie!

So, we were sat at the table this evening enjoying our duck, although I have to say I did find it a bit weird eating meat that still had feathers and a head attached to it a few hours ago? Gregg asked me the question that he asks me all the time whenever I'm whittering on about this menagerie of animals that we're going to acquire "so, do you think you'd be able to take one of your little piggies or lambs down to the abatoir for slaughter and then enjoy a nice Sunday roast?". Hmm, I think I could, I would love to think that we will one day, but how will I actually feel when it comes to eating it? Only time will tell, I know for a fact though that if we do get all these animals I won't be able to use the excuse "but they're our pets", from the outset they will always be destined for the freezer, maybe that will help me get my head around it.

I'll leave you with a picture of our supper, pan fried duck breast on mashed potato, veg and a good dollop of leftover home made cranberry sauce! It was rather tasty...........