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...!  :)