Mulled wine

 

12 years ago we made a huge amount of red and white wine. We still have lots of it to use up. As we are in the Christmas period, we've been making mulled wine. Very pleasant!

First Christmas trees of the season

 

Christmas Day has now passed but on Boxing Day we took delivery of our first discarded Christmas tree of the season. Clearly someone was in a hurry to get rid of it. Ant and Florence are currently chomping their way through it. Since then a couple more trees have arrived. Great for feeding the goats and heating my house!

Windfall

 

We had a storm recently. A few trees and large branches were brought down in the nearby village.. Unfortunately the Council beat me to a rowan tree that was still covered in berries. Fortunately we found branches just waiting to be collected and fed to the goats. They particularly liked the ash branches.

Late arrivals

 

Ethel, one of our oldest sheep (she's 7) had three lambs last year and she successfully raised all of them. This year, the Texels all lambed in April, all except Ethel. Our conclusion was that she was somewhat exhausted after raising triplets which resulted in her failure to conceive. Last week, we rounded up all the sheep and while checking them we spotted that Ethel was enormous and her udders had bagged up. Not only was she pregnant, she was very pregnant.

Sure enough, this morning to gave birth to a boy and a girl. The lambs are a good size and all are doing well.

Florence has twins

 

Florence, one of our nanny goats, gave birth to twins last week. We had been expecting triplets. Florence was enormous around the waist and she had previously had two sets of triplets. This time the babies were twins and they were enormous. Mother and babies are doing well.

More free goat food

 

One of my near neighbours trimmed the ivy on the back of his house recently. When he saw me in the street, he flagged me down and asked if I wanted the trimmings for the goats. Of course I did! 2 dumpy bags filled with fresh leaves - it took the goats two days to munch their way through them.

Stocking up

 

At last, the weather forecast is predicting rain. This coming Tuesday, storm Floris is expected to bring gales (not welcome) and rain (very welcome). Some rain is also expected tonight. After months of near drought conditions, hopefully we will get plenty of the wet stuff. It has meant however that I have been out to gather in a huge quantity of willowherb, which grows in abundance but which the goats love. I have no desire to get a soaking so best pick it before the rain arrives.