Today you can see the sea from the kitchen window...

Farm weather today: Sunny with a cold breeze, 61 degrees.

Tasks for the day: We were supposed to take the car to Cardigan today to repair a tire, but it’s Barley Saturday, when they race stallions down the main street! So, Cardigan is to be avoided at all costs unless you’re keen to get run over, by people and horses both…

We were then going to spend the day pottering around doing jobs - I need Rich to build me a table on which I can feed the doves (out of cat reach) and a way to keep the chick-shed (where the two bigger Buff Orpington chicks are housed) closed from the inside, when I’m in with them.

Mr. Incredible and Monroe are getting huge!

But then Joli came in from feeding the lambs to announce that Rosie, the smallest and sickliest of the lambs that she’s bottle feeding, was bloated. Rich went out to look and came in carrying Rosie, looking grim. He thinks she has bloat and wet-mouth, something mysterious and horrible that happens to sheep, apparently…It would be heart-breaking if Rosie died now, so close to weaning. Joli has been so faithful and tender in her feeding of the lambs.

Joli and her lambs

He and Joli went rushing off the the vet, so that’s a hole put in our day!

In the meantime, I have to sort out something to do with all these lemons:I went a bit mad at the farmers’ market yesterday - they looked so beautiful, forty of them for five pounds! So I paid the man and hauled them home, and now have to sort out something to do with them. I’m thinking lemon curd…so, have to haul out the farm wives’ cook book and find a good recipe. 

Another problem to be solved today is the problem of Mr. Mean, the latest hatch of Buff Orpington chicks. (Two chicks out of ten eggs, how pathetic is that!) Here’s Mr. Mean, and don’t be fooled by appearances:

Mr. Mean

He’s the toughest, nastiest thing going! Only days out of his shell, and he’s pecked his sister chick so badly that she has a bloody nose and a swollen-shut eye. If you put your hand in, he’ll run at it and peck it! Never seen anything so small and fluffy with such a mean streak. 

So, I’ve got to separate the two chicks - which seems ridiculous, since there’s only two of them to start with. And since they’re separated, they’re cheeping madly, which is driving everyone crazy. So, have to solve that problem as well…

And then, there’s the question of what to do with all this milk!

Too much milk!

The goats are producing about eight pints of milk a day - that’s a gallon! And even though there are eight of us in the house, we don’t drink that much. The lambs are having some at the moment, but they’ll be weaned soon. 

George asked us if there was any cow’s milk left in the house, and Rich told him that there hadn’t been cow’s milk for weeks. George laughed and said that he’s been drinking it all the while without knowing, and thought it was delicious! So, that bridge has been crossed…

We’ve been online this morning and ordered a cheese making kit - apparently it takes a gallon of milk to make a pound of cheese, so that will absorb some of the surplus - if I make cheese every day! But can we eat a pound of goat’s cheese every day? We’ll see…

I saw George’s mum, Lynn, in town yesterday and asked her to come over with her cheese making equipment and show me how - she says you can do all kinds of fancy things, put in chopped apricots or berries, roll it in cracked black pepper, etc. I can’t wait for our cheese-making afternoon! She’s lovely, George’s mum…

In the meantime, I guess we need to put a sign up on the road for farm eggs and goat’s milk (we can’t sell it for human consumption, as we’re not licensed, but we can sell it for people to give to their lambs and puppies) and see if we can shift some of the extra! 

Not the land of milk and honey, but definitely the land of milk and eggs…