Mae hi'n bwrw glaw...

It has been raining miserably all day. I am wet and the chickens are wet, but the ducks don't seem to mind!

It's June, but it feels like October, so I am making Mrs Beeton's boiled breast of mutton for dinner...

Y gwynt

It's been very windy here -- so windy that we lost the top of this tree yesterday...

Mae'n flin 'da fi...

Sorry -- I have had the camera back since last Friday -- nearly a whole week -- and I haven't posted any pictures yet! What can I say -- my only excuse is that I have been too busy taking photos to post them...

The first big event was that we sheared the sheep:



Afterwards Greg realised that he should have made a film of me doing it, but you will have to wait until next year for that now!

Before and after: What a difference a fleece makes!

Now I just need to find the time to learn how to spin and then I can make all this lovely stuff into yarn and knit myself a jumper!

The sheep are very happy now that they have been shorn and aren't so hot any more.


Here are all the lambs (plus last year's ram lamb and one of the ewes):

This lamb, lamb number one, I have high hopes for. Check out his adorable little horns!

And the photo you've all been waiting for: Lamb number 5! Look at how much white he has!

We killed two chickens the other day, one of ours and one belonging to our neighbour, and they were both hens in lay, so I got the unborn eggs:

My mother tells me that when she was a little girl her mother would cook the unborn eggs for her and she considered them to be a great delicacy -- but all she can remember about how Grandma cooked them was that she thinks she just put them in the pot with the chicken. So I did that, and I got this:

I put them in a salad and they were quite nice -- like hard boiled eggs cooked in chicken stock instead of water -- but I am surprised that my mother has such fond memories of them so many years later. Perhaps I am doing something wrong? Has anybody else cooked unborn eggs?

The strawberries in the greenhouse are coming along nicely and we are getting frequent if small harvests. The outdoor strawberry plants are covered in strawberries, but they are all still green!

We recently bought a rotary dryer -- for ages I'd been saying I wanted to line dry clothes but had nowhere to string a line -- and then I spotted this in the store -- so now you have no excuse! All you need is something like 3 square yards of space and you can dry your clothes outdoors and save electricity and money...

Somebody's found the warmest spot in the place to lie in!

And last but not least I leave you with this slightly gory image -- I didn't plan this, I was just taking the bits of chicken out of the pot and my tongs grabbed the feet and they startled me!

Lluniau o Bridget

When Bridget was here the other day teaching me all I ever wanted to know about electric fencing, she took a couple of pictures that she's just sent over to me, so I am putting them up here to give you a bit of an interlude from the picture lull -- although I did speak to the camera shop this morning and they have promised my camera will be ready by Friday, so fingers crossed!

Firstly we have the sheep -- you will notice there are only 10 of them in this picture -- it's before lamb number five was born -- so you'll have to wait a bit longer to see a picture of him...

And this is the pond where the ducks are now living (but sadly no duckies in this photo...)

So fy ngheiliog yn cysgu!

The past couple nights I have not been sleeping well and consequently was awake in the early hours of the morning and can report that the cockerel crows precisely at 2:45 in the morning. Doesn't he want any sleep???

In other news, I need to ring the camera shop this morning and find out what is going on already, but hopefully the camera will be back in my hands tomorrow as I have loads of things to photograph and share! Sorry for the delay...

Dim cywion...

As of day 27, the broody hen had eaten one of the eggs and pushed the other three out of the nest, so last night we finally opened them up and one of them was just an egg, but the other two did have the beginnings of chicks in them -- why she decided she didn't want to hatch them in the end I've no idea... Hopefully we will get another broody hen soon and give it another go.

Mae wyna wedi gorffen!

We have just had our fifth lamb about an hour ago, so that's it, all done, no more lambs to come! Nearly 10 weeks lambing for just five little lambs! :) Five painless births with no assistance from me and no deaths... Couldn't ask for anything more...

Anifeiliaid

Dai and Del love their new home on the pond! They were so ecstatic Sunday morning when we let them out and they were straight into the water. Unfortunately we are now unable to lock them up at night as they won't come out of the pond when we want them to, but hopefully they will be safe behind the electric fence.

New Girl is still sitting on four eggs -- perhaps there will be chicks tomorrow morning? Fingers crossed!

Am starting to get annoyed about not having the camera back yet -- will give the shop a call shortly and find out what is going on...

Wyn

So Bridget was up here yesterday helping me set up the electric fence for Dai & Del (more about this later) and she said that she thought that my one remaining ewe who hasn't had a lamb yet will have a lamb -- and today when I was feeding the sheep I saw her udder, so I agree that there will probably be a fifth lamb! Yikes!

Hopefully the camera will be fixed next week as there is lots to take pictures of...