Willow “returned” which means that she wasn’t “in kid” and needed to be mated again. This time we took the goat to the billy and Willow and I travelled together in the back of the Land Rover to a nearby smallholding.
But then along came Archie and it was love at first sight
The sheep are in the barn
We had hoped that Willow was “in kid” but she is showing all the signs of having “returned” so she might want to meet up with Billy goat Harry again.
Before the announcement the day started well
At The Gables we try to reuse and recycle as much as we can. All vegetable peelings and left over food goes into compost bins. The ash from the wood burner is collected in a bucket and spread around the fruit trees and this was done early this morning.
We are gradually using the food that is in the freezers. Today I am defrosting summer fruit compote and also pears poached in wine.
Unexpectedly early, 200 strawberry plants arrived late morning. We weren’t expecting them until after the holidays so it’s a race to prepare the grow bags in the poly tunnel. For now the plants are rehydrating in buckets
J drove the tractor and trailer (loaded with bags of compost) down the garden and stacked them outside the polytunnel.
Then it was time to collect eggs and feed the sheep with concentrates – it’s just six weeks until lambing and we need to give the expectant ewes extra nutrition.
Now I’m on a zoom call regarding the roll out of the vaccine for care home residents. I’m all ears.
Started with sunshine and the Wednesday walking group. We met up with C and her two dogs all dressed in matching jackets.
Got home to a scene of chaos in the kitchen with a washing machine delivered but unable to be plumbed in (don’t ask it’s a long story). Lovely engineers who say they are used to problems and this isn’t a big problem! They went away happy with a dozen free range eggs and will return when our local plumber has been over to fix the problem. Here’s hoping. J had some clients arrive just as we were mopping up the kitchen and we didn’t manage to keep the cats out of the meeting room. As I went in to say hello I found Nigel on one of the tables being egged on by Mabel
I kid you not, Nigel looked up at the ceiling and before we could stop him he had jumped onto the light fitting and was hanging in mid air.
That cat should be a mountaineer! Yesterday the other cat (Miss Mabel who likes to pretend that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth) was found on the windowsill licking olive oil out of the chanukiah.
The cats seem to be in charge in this house and running rings around their “masters”. While all this was going on I was trying to find time to read daughter’s article in today’s Spectator.
Then it was off to Tai Chi at The Riverside park in the cold and damp. Yet, in spite of the weather, a good number of us turn up each week and try to ignore the amused stares of passers by and the nosy attentions of digs who yap around our feet. Came home in the rain after shopping in town and after having to return to my car half way to the shops. Why? I’d forgotten to take my mask out of the car. Aaargh! Glad to be home in front of a warm fire with Mabel at my feet.
Starting off before dawn it was an early visit to
By 10 am I was chatting with mum through the care home window
Then it was a doorstep delivery to daughter of an Arsenal video swopped with a book, Hillbilly Elegy, and a hadassah plant (left for us at Daughter’s home by a London friend). Back on the road and a quick pit stop for petrol at Apple Green service station where, for some unknown reason, they sell my favourite Snyder snacks
The straw barn Silkies and Bantams are laying well in their hand crafted nest box
In the raised beds peas are popping up under glass frames made of old windows
It may be winter but the sun is shining, the plants are growing and my spirits are soaring – even though it will be dark before 5 pm!
The Banties and Silkies have settled into their new quarters. Jeremy built them a wooden perch and a deluxe nest box. Last week they ignored the box but this morning there was a happy discovery
The Bantie and Silkie cockerels have stopped fighting. All the adult birds pick on the Silkie chicks, but just to put them in their place and not to hurt them.
The last butternut squash was stored in the onion barn. We brought it to the house to make it into soup. It’s so enormous that I have only used a third of the squash so far.
Jeremy noticed that the bag in which we had hung the butternut squash came from a farm in Devon, very close to where we lived on a 2 acre small holding over forty years ago.
A string bag brought back many happy memories.
That’s the name that mum gave to her neighbour in the Care Home when Dame Barbara Windsor moved there in July. Our family had crossed paths with her before.
My brother and I grew up on a diet of cowboy movies and also saucy “Carry On” films with their quintessential British humour of double entendres, nods and winks. Seaside postcard humour transposed to the big screen. Barbara Windsor was one of the stars and, dare I say, we all loved her.
When my children were at primary school we were eating in a restaurant with my parents and a foreign visitor. Barbara Windsor was at a nearby table and the children (at our instigation) went to talk with her. She was lovely to them, although they probably didn’t really know who she was. That all changed when she joined the cast of the soap opera, East Enders, playing the landlady of the Queen Vic. In the serial one of Jeremy’s clients, Daniella Westbrook, played Sam Mitchell the daughter of landlady Peggy Mitchell (Dame Barbara). One day Jeremy had to go and visit his client on the set of the “soap” in Borehamwood.
He asked if he could bring his children and their cousins to the studios and it was agreed. The teenagers wanted to meet the main characters and Jeremy was keen to meet the blonde Barbara. She was gracious and friendly and gave Jeremy a signed photograph that sat on our mantelpiece in London for many years. Dame Barbara was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014 and left East Enders, living quietly with her third husband and helping to publicise the need for help with research and care for her progressive disease. In July Barbara Windsor became a resident in the same Care Home as mum. Mum said she always looked lovely and was tiny (she was only four foot ten inches tall). Mum called her, “the little lady”. I had to tell mum, this morning, that the “little lady” had passed away. Mum was sad and told me that she hadn’t seen her in the lounge in recent weeks. “But when I saw her”, mum said, “she always spoke to me and said “hello darling”!”. As Daniella said to the press, “today we lost a legend, a national treasure and I lost a friend”.
An outbreak of Avian flu has led Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to order that all poultry and turkeys must be kept under cover until further notice. We have moved all the large birds into the green poly tunnel in the chicken run.
The Silkies and the bantams are living in the old quail barn. All seems fine except that the grey Bantam cockerel and one of the Silkie cockerels are fighting and both are a bit “bloody” this morning.
