A Word from Westyard

Selecting the photos for this entry, it appears they are all about animals...excepting one Yuletide celebration - a Christmas cake made with love by Grannie, and iced and decorated entirely - and very carefully - by a small girl.  Delicious - and the joy for us is that we are still enjoying it. The festive season has been a bit of a blur for me...for a start the Ologist was away - he returns tomoro, YAY - so there was very little happening on the social front.  That is apart from one event we were invited to just before Christmas. The Elderly Dependant decided he would 'chaperone' me and having kick started himself with three large glasses of red wine before leaving the house rather stumbled around gaily meeting locals and had to be shoe-horned into the car to go home well before the cinderella hour.  Due to his aged years he totally got away with it.  All I can say is I hope I can still manage that when I'm 85. Talking of the small girl, she has a new playmate...

It has been a great start to the month.  A few gloriously wintery sunny days and the soup pot became redundant. Instead we opted for a tasty salad with some very local ingredients and the lowest food miles I can achieve.  One of our hens is laying enormous eggs, and after last weeks lunch we found out why.  Two words:- Ouch , and Thank You .  It must be good luck to have a double yolker like that! Lower East:- before After the excitement of the hedgeman last week, it was almost matched a few days later by the arrival of another enormous beast of a tractor with a mulching topper attached.   When we bought the property one of our most productive fields was in a dreadful state.  The brambles and nettles were nearly over my head and it was almost impenetrable on foot.  The field lies to the east of the property and is divided across the centre.  The top half (Upper East) is fine and that is where our ponies currently graz...

horseradish - sinus clearing stuff felling of a large coniferous tree  a rainbow fairy great way to check the sheep another large conifer gets the chop me and my girl - and Mandarin