'Ere We Go!

Hello!

Well, I've finally done it and set up a blog. I am a complete newby to this stuff and also losing my marbles a bit due to old age and decrepitness, so you will have to bear with me as I learn how all this stuff works.

Anyway, we moved to Suffolk from Hampshire in 2002 to run a pub. That was too much like hard work so we packed it in and moved into a little bungalow nearby which came with an additional acre of land. Very nice it is, too. This will be our third Spring here, and this time we are almost ready for it!



Virtually every windowsill has seed trays, little newspaper pots and seedlings on. We have germinated Squash (Crown Prince, Butternut, Sunburst and Big Max) in the airing cupboard, Broad Beans are about 6" high in the greenhouse, with a second load on the way. We have Lemon Basil, Galia Melon, Capsicum, two rows of early peas now about 9" high, two rows of late peas, chives and loads of baby tomato plants! And now the weather forecast is for blinkin' SNOW!



The more interesting feature, as far as I am concerned, is the Livestock. We have three Soay ewes; Big Mum, Shaggy and Twothree (who was unfortunate enough to get two ear-tags in the cerfuffle of tagging SEVEN Soays when we bought them, which meant that one of them had no ear-tags at all), only seven chickens (of these, more later), four saddleback pigs; Winston, Lilly, Violet and little Daisy, two polecats; Sharon and Tracey and a 7lb dog called Rosie.



Most days my entire life is concerned with feeding something! For a start, there's me; diabetic, a-bit-dodgy-all-round and, ahem, a touch on the rounded side. I have to eat regularly in order to feed my insulin habit. Good heavens! I'm the world's most boring junkie! Then there's the Hubby who has become obsessed with the amount of salt in his food of late and regularly reads food labels to me. Then it really gets heavy! We collect waste food from some of the kind shopkeepers in the town and I stand, for what seems like hours, and chop up various vegetation which is fed to the piggies, this they enjoy greatly. Then there are the chickens and, although the flock was reduced considerably (from 25 to 7) when there was a Avian Influenza panic at the local Turkey Processing Factory, these remain another few hungry mouths. Their food is in sacks of 25Kg which I can't lift so has to be kept in a shed on the field so I can transport it a little at a time or talk The Hubby into doing for me. They also eat cooked kitchen scraps - apart from meat, which the dog has.

Polecats like little meaty biscuits, thank goodness, and apart from a propensity to make me root around in the neighbour's shed on a recapture mission, are hardly any work at all. They use a litter tray and are nice, friendly, clean, fascinating little girls who, actually, smell quite nice (in an animally kind of way).

So, you see, I've become fairly obsessive over food.