In the kitchen again...  

Yet again, somebody on the island had more oranges than they could use, so now that we were down to the last three jars of marmalade from last year, I made enough to hopefully get us through another year!

Fresh out of the oven this morning -- spice cake -- haven't tasted it yet as it's still cooling, but if it tastes as good as it smells....

Earlier in the week I made some chocolate pepper nuts...

The weather has been much better than last February -- I've managed to get another few swims in -- weekend before last I had three swims in four days -- so the count for 2025 is now up to 8 -- ahead of my target of a swim a week.

Today was swim number 5 for the year -- not quite as sunny as the forecast promised, but a nice swim nonetheless.

The snowdrops are out in full force so fingers crossed this means that springtime has got the memo that it needs to be getting here soon.  Plus, I've had enough of the mud!  :)

Not long after we first came here, I realised that I needed a hat with ear-flaps and strings to tie under my chin as I spend too much time trying to do things one-handed while holding onto my hat with my other hand (this is particularly difficult when I'm riding my bicycle...) -- and I finally knitted one!

I actually started this hat way back in December 2023 and I knitted about a third of it -- and then I proceeded to have a mental block about knitting for a number of months.  In August, when Heidi was here, she had socks with her that she was knitting -- which helpfully spurred me on to picking up my knitting again, and I finished this on Sunday.  I think there is a bit of a cosmonaut look about it with the flaps down and tied, but it is beyond nice to be able to have warm ears without holding on to my hat!  :)

In the kitchen, we've had a yummy Greylag goose, barley, and mushroom casserole...

...and some beremeal ginger nuts...

And let's not forget the highlight of every alternate month -- it's Booky McBookface day with lots of new reading material for me!  :)

Weather has been wintry of late, so have been spending lots of time in the kitchen.

Things that I have realised that I never post about -- the bread...  I bake all our own bread -- two different loaves -- every single week.

This is the yeast risen loaf -- 75% white and 25% wholemeal.  4 hours start to finish but only about 15 minutes of my time.  Incredibly easy, the kneading bit is great if you are mad about something and need to get your aggression out, and totally delicious...

And this is the sourdough -- 50% white and 50% wholemeal.  Yes, it's in a tin.  I know.  I eat most of my bread toasted, and tin-shaped loaves just are easier for making toast.  If sourdough in a tin offends you, deal with it...  :)

On the pie front, now that the hens are laying again, yesterday I made this yummy pear custard pie -- and clearly Danny really likes it because when I got up this morning I found that MORE THAN HALF of the pie had been eaten!  :)

And because this is the UK and pies here can be savoury as well as sweet, I also made a fish pie -- yum yum yum!

We did have one nice day in all the bad weather -- so of course I went swimming -- swim #4 of 2025....

Now off to try to get warm before I go out to feed the sheep in the wind!  :)

We've suddenly got some unexpected good weather!  Temperatures around 8 degrees (that's 45 in American money), calm, and sunshine!  I went swimming Saturday AND today -- possibility I might make it in tomorrow morning as well -- if I do, that will be a miracle to have three consecutive swimming days in January!

Danny and I went for a walk at Cata Sands yesterday afternoon -- these photos show just how calm the wind is -- you would never normally get reflections this clear!

This hen has started hanging out on the windowsills -- she's startled me quite a few times now!

And here's Cookie's latest snoozing spot!

Finally made it in to the sea yesterday for my first swim of 2025 -- boy was it cold!  The car said the the air temperature was 2C, maybe the sea was 5C or 6C?  But the sun was shining!

The reason it's taken me so long to get in for my first swim is that the weather has been horrible.  We've had snow and hail for nearly a week -- you can't really see it in the photo, but there was snow on the beach when we swam!  Not enough snow that the sheep needed hay, but it's still thoroughly unpleasant being outside with hail hitting your face all the time...  

It's warming up now and nearly all the snow is gone except for this little patch in the back garden which gets no sunlight in the winter at all...

We harvested the last two boys from last summer...

...so now there are 15 hens and 1 cockerel to lay eggs and make chicks for us this year.  Here are some of the hens (and our very muddy drive!)...

Tupping is also over, so the girls are just chilling now while their babies cook...

And speaking of cooking, remember that batch of mincemeat I made back in 2007?  Turns out I had one jar left, and it's still good, so I made an apple mincemeat pie!  Yum!

I managed to make it to 65 swims for 2024 on the 27th of December!

Haven't been in this year yet -- aiming to go tomorrow morning when it looks like the weather might be a bit better -- after an unseasonably mild end to the year, 2025 has started with snow and ice and frozen drinking troughs for the sheep!

(Yes, that's little Cookie completely not bothered about the snow!)

The boys (Horatio & Raymond) came out on the 30th so fingers crossed that I now have 10 ewes in lamb -- we will see what happens in April! 

The plan for Xmas dinner had been for Danny to get us a goose, but the weather has just been too bad to go out shooting so instead I channelled Laura Ingalls Wilder and we harvested ourselves a young cockerel.  He killed out at a very respectable 3 lb 14 oz and is now resting in the fridge awaiting his date with the oven on Wednesday...

In other news, I finally got around to altering a lovely pair of heavy wool trousers that I picked up at a charity shop in Kirkwall probably over a year ago.  Whoever invented wide leg trousers -- no clue what they were thinking -- all this extra fabric flapping around your leg making it difficult to get your foot in your boot -- really!  So I tapered the legs and took in the waistband a bit as well.  It's such a shame that everything is synthetic nowadays -- these are made of a lovely thick wool which is warm and hard wearing and I expect them to last me quite a long time now.

The trousers have got a tag in them from the original tailor -- and surprise surprise -- they still exist!

I've done all my alterations in contrasting thread (the original stitching that I had to unpick -- black thread on black wool in the middle of winter when there is no light -- I ended up having to go to the Reuse Centre where I was lucky to find a task lamp so I could see what I was doing), so if somebody else ever gets their hands on these in the future, the history of the trousers will be visible via the stitching!  :)

In VERY exciting news, the chickens laid their first egg of the season on Thursday -- perhaps they didn't get the memo that the days don't actually start lengthening until today?!  :)

We celebrated with fried eggs on toast!  Yum yum yum!

Few photos from my trip to town on Thursday to see the dentist:

Here's a curlew -- clearly they are tamer in town as I can never get this close to them here!

The boards across the windows are going up in preparation for the Ba..

And even the recycling centre in town is getting into the festive spirit!  :)

No fire for solstice last night as 90mph winds made me think a fire would not be a good idea, so I'll just leave you with this photo of Cookie hanging out in the paper recycling bin!  :)

Highlight of the week was going to the pizza place for Xmas lunch with book club -- this is the Xmas pizza with turkey, pigs in blankets, Brussels sprouts, and cranberry sauce -- yum yum yum!

Got another swim on Saturday so that is 64 for the year thus far -- should be able to make 65 I think although weather for the next week is looking not swim-able (and also like we may not be able to have a fire for solstice...)

Collected some more surplus windows from various people on the island for the future poly-tunnel project -- if anybody on Sanday is reading this and has any old windows/glass that you want rid of, LMK and we will come fetch...

And of course various cooking/baking -- I've made a goose stew (from a wild Greylag goose, shot by somebody else and gifted to us) and a lemon drizzle cake (practising for next summer's show!)

My boring life... :)

 ...just the way I like it...  :)

And herein lies the problem with doing more frequent blog posts -- is that I have nothing of note to report...

It's winter, so not much is going on outdoors.  I've been doing plenty of cooking & baking & endless cleaning in a futile attempt to keep the mud out of the house.  (Never mind summer, autumn, etc -- we have two seasons here -- the mud season and the dry season...  The mud is everywhere and it's totally unavoidable.  The car skids on the mud when you drive down the driveway now...)

And that's all my news for now!  :)

Tupping time

Weather here has been appalling for days now -- windy from the North which brings the arctic air, interspersed with snow and hail showers/downpours...  Just as well then that Shetlands are more likely to come into season when it's colder because the boys went in on Monday!  :)

Here's Horatio with his girls -- just goes to show the difference between breeds -- he is not even a year old yet and already he's bigger than my three year old girls!

And here's Raymond with his lot.  Yes, the boys ALWAYS have their head in the feed bucket -- they seem even greedier than the girls -- then again, all that sex is hard work!  :)

And here's Eyebrows, photo-bombing my attempt at photographing Raymond nicely!

The boys will stay in until 30th December, and then we wait with bated breath for April and little lambs!

New from Old

Now that the nights are drawing in, there's more time to do inside tasks.  

This is a dresser that was in the house when we came (can't find a before photo) -- it was covered in many many layers of paint and the legs were held together with baling twine.  

I found a great product called Home Strip which is a non-toxic paint remover -- and it actually works amazingly well!  Then there was the sanding, by hand at first, and then aided by an electric sander I picked up second hand at Restart.  And then I refinished it in Hard Wax Oil. 

The original handles were destroyed in the process of removing them, so these new handles were handmade by Danny from scrap bits of wood!

And just like that, I have a brand new dresser for my office!

I had this LL Bean Boat & Tote bag new for the start of 8th grade (1985!!!!).  It's still going strong and I use it regularly for my grocery shopping.

The handles had started to fray quite badly (again, no before photo), so using some trim that I saved from an old bath towel and a bit of old flannel bed sheet, I've made myself new handles -- I think there's easily another 39 years of life left in this bag now!

Lesson learned: shopping & buying new stuff is totally overrated...!  :)

Cockerel Update

On Tuesday we harvested one of the new big black cockerels as well as our older white one.  The black one was dead-weight of 6 lbs 1 oz (2.75kg) -- this is the biggest by far!  Looking back through the blog, I see that the last time I went on about how amazingly big a cockerel was, it was one that was only 1.6kg -- not even on the same planet really!  

Just to give you a better sense of scale as no bananas here, here's the brother of the one we harvested along with some hens -- truly massive...

The white one was pretty impressive as well at 4 lbs 8 oz (2kg).  Fingers crossed for giant chicks next year!

And of course, the thing that makes all the horribleness of harvesting chickens worthwhile -- the most yummy chicken dinner ever!

1.  Again, for scale, this is a normal sized dinner plate -- about 10 inches in diameter -- and that drumstick barely fits on it!

2.  I am particularly pleased with this dinner as nearly everything on the plate is something that we had a hand in producing.  Bought in items involved in dinner prep: salt & pepper, butter, garlic, white wine.  Everything else is ours!

Animals update

Tons going on here lately it seems, and I realised it's been a while since I photographed the animals, so time for an update....

The main thing that's keeping me busy at the moment is putting up the new fence so that we've got a field for Raymond (more about him later) and his girls and another field for Horatio and his girls...

This is Lucky duckie (the big one, right centre) who seems to have recovered fully from Danny's emergency superglue surgery its neck.  The one just behind Lucky was given to us by a neighbour so Lucky wouldn't be alone, and the other three are eggs we hatched under this hen (also from the same neighbour -- the eggs that is, not the hen).  We've tried to get the hen to stop hanging out with them but even though the ducks get locked up separately at night and she is back in the big house with the rest of the hens, she still hangs around with them in the day...

These are most of the ewes that we will be breeding from this year -- have you ever tried photographing sheep?  Either they run away from me or they all come towards me -- but getting them to stand still at a reasonable distance from me doesn't happen!  :)  

These are some more ducklings (and their Mummy) -- from the same neighbour -- who just has too many...  We will give them Mummy back when the ducklings are bigger...

This is Raymond, our other new tup lamb.  He's a Shetland, and he'll be mated with the four ewe lambs we had last year -- Doggie, Eyebrows, Shy Lamb, and Dolly (formerly No Name).  He's got some really lovely colouring so watch this space to see what colours his lambs are in the spring!

In non-animal related news -- I've seen plenty of photos of wonky veg, but I've never seen a Siamese cucumber before!  :)

This is all 24 of our existing chickens -- 13 older ones and 11 that are this year's.  Oldest once are 5 months old now, and the others not far behind -- and none of them have shown signs of being male yet.  Seems pretty unlikely that we've had 11 hens from 11 chicks, but then again, stranger things have happened...  :)

White hen may be dead, but it seems like we managed to hatch an egg from her before she died and we now have a very close replica!

These two cockerels were given to us yesterday by somebody who has too many (common thing with male animals...) so we will be eating one and the other will be next year's breeding cockerel.  Hard to tell in this photo, but they are HUGE.  Will take another photo of the remaining one once he's with the rest of the flock so you can see just how big.  Will make for quite a few chicken dinners!  :)

This is the one of the biggest of the chicks -- but still not showing any signs of being male -- which in a way, I am sort of happy about, because I think the colouring is quite pretty, so it would be nice if it was a girl and we kept her...

And to finish up, this year's ewe lambs.  Titchy is the black one -- she's recovered from being poorly, but she's just not putting on weight like the other four.  She eats, she seems happy enough -- but it's like she's off in a little world of her own.  Have I got a brain-damaged sheep?  Possibly...