Sunrise over the smallholding

We've been doing some early starts this week to check on the sheep and, especially on one in particular (Ethel) who was unwell last week but is now well on the way to full recovery. The early start meant we experienced this great sunrise at 7.45am on Tuesday.

Frozen pond

 

We are going through a rather cold snap at the moment. All water has turned to ice. The duck pond is frozen solid. I'm not sure what the ducks are making of it but they are unable to bathe and keep themselves fully clean. Hopefully a thaw is on its way.

Veggie curry fry up

 We never allow waste in our house so leftovers are used to make more meals. It can produce some interesting breakfasts - fried up leftover veggie curry, for example. Alas, with this curry, though the vegetables were all locally produced, we had to make a trip to the supermarket for the rice.

Honey and raspberry beer

 
We've been trying out our honey and raspberry beer over Christmas. It has worked rather well. Only 8 bottles to go. It may take me some weeks before I can report that the beer has all been drunk.

Using up the quail eggs

 

We still have quail eggs to use up so I used a few boxes of them to make a potato salad. We used our pink fur apple potatoes as they are great in salads. I have to confess we cheated with the mayonnaise. That came from the local Coop.

Mud!

Our weather has been alternating between cold and wet. We can get the land rover around the smallholding when it is cold but we very nearly got stuck when we drove over our main field to move a load of manure recently. The ground was wet and not frozen. The land rover was redecorated and then had to have a clean up!