More privet for the goats

Someone had cut the privet hedge around the bowling green in Marley Hill, the next village up from ours, but left the trimmings on the ground. I had planned to cut the hedge myself but, having been freed of that job, I was at least able to recover the trimmings over the weekend for the goats. It is one of the few greens left to them at this time of year.

Winter greens (and reds)

I had not been to Dad's small allotment in Marley Hill for a few weeks but recently I paid it a visit to check it out. The cabbages are doing well. This is useful as it means we will continue to have a supply of greens over the winter. We have some red cabbage as well. I make pickle some of it in coming weeks. Watch this space.

Storm damage to quail house

This is one of the corners of the quail house roof. As you can see there is a bit of a hole in it, caused by recent gales. It is unlikely the quails could fly through the hole though I did cover it over with a plastic sack and duck tape. Tonight we are suffering from another strong gale and my fear is that the wind could rip the whole roof panel off. So, I have put the quail into their hutches which are in the quail house. The hutches are usually kept open so that the quail can come and go. Not tonight. The hutches are closed up with the 14 birds inside them.

Marrow and apple pie

Marrow easily picks up the flavour of other foods cooked with it. We still have lots of them to use up from last year so on Sunday we made an apple and marrow pie. Admittedly we added in a few not-so-self-sufficient raisins and a cinnamon stick. Very nice!

Roast duck

In March one of our drakes was injured in a fox attack. We had to put it out of its misery. It wasn't going to be wasted. I plucked and gutted the bird and then froze it. We had him roasted for dinner on Sunday.

Egg laying

We had expected the number of eggs from our hens to drop to one or two a day. However, some of the chicks that we hatched in the late spring are maturing and it seems have started laying. We were expecting them to go into production in March. In the above photo, the white eggs were laid by the white leghorns we bought in July. The green egg however is from one of the young cream legbars. She started laying last month.



We think this brown egg was laid by one of the wellsummers which hatched at the end of June. Inconveniently, it was laid under the shed. I had to use a long cane to extract it from its resting place.

Bangers and mash

We still have sausages from our last pig to use up so on Saturday we had bangers and mash for dinner. The sausages were actually made by the abattoir but are excellent quality. We do however want to learn how to make sausages ourselves and will be trying various recipes over the coming months. I'll be making the first in a few days' time - more about that later this month as it is linked to a big project we are carrying out this year. Again, more about the project later.