Wooly Guests

We're providing a temporary home to a neighbour's Texel ewes to escape the worst of the winter before/while lambing; its very exciting having them here - the children are expecting lambs to appear daily, all being well the first should arrive in a few weeks. The texel breed is well regarded and originates from Texel island off the north coast of the Netherlands. They have very strong features and quite large faces, they look tough. Its great having them here - all the fun of watching them with none of the responsibility of looking after them!

Raised Beds Under Construction

A mixed bag of weather this weekend but we have made progress on the veggie garden. On Friday (in sunshine) the ground was levelled and cleared of its rubble and general debris and then on Saturday the general preparation of the timbers for the edge of the beds was done. We are using the joists from the demolished house to create the frames; most of these are 5.5-6metres in length which works a treat for the space we have available for the raised beds. The joists themselves are 10inches in depth which is fine for the beds and once they were de-nailed have been placed approximately in position while we 'fine tune' the layout. The first phase should create 5 rectangular beds of approx 1.5m by 5.5m.

We've got lots of well rotted horse muck to fill the beds with - a job for another weekend!

Frosty Days

Its sunny and (relatively) mild today but we've had some great frosts, clear skies and low temps recently. When it sunny and dry its so nice to wrap up and get out for some fresh air. Its pretty good coming back to a warm house too! This time last year we were in the caravan and I now look at it and feel like crying, it was quite hard at times but you just soldier on. This weekend we're going to move the caravan out of the way into one of the barns and then in the Spring we'll make a good effort to sell it. The second caravan will be free to anyone who wants to collect it.

Now that we're back to the normal routines after the wonderful frenzy of Christmas, Hogmanay and school holiday fun I'm very keen to get at least one of the veggie beds in place. We are just about to finish the last of our potato crop from last season and the prospect of becoming really productive with our own food this year is very exciting. In the house we're also just finishing the last of the elderflower cordial we created last summer and we had the last of the frozen rhubarb in a fool at New Year. This weekend I'm going to cover a few of the emerging rhubarb crowns so we can force some early pickings.

We've had lots of folks staying over Christmas and New Year including Kerri and Russell from Hervey Bay, Oz. They followed our blog last year and were pleased to be able to see the house for real.