Holiday : )

We've been away for a few days and we are back now.  My older granddaughter wanted to go and stay on the farm in Wales where we've been before.  She wanted to help with the animals and her parents didn't really want to stay for a week so they took her down, stayed for a weekend and then we went down and took over and then brought her home.  Not that there is very much work involved - it is more a case of being around and then providing meals. My son and his family went down on the Sunday and stayed one night so their children got to see the animals too.  They love being there.

We managed to go for a walk on the moors on three of the days and we loved that. There are a lot of areas of moorland around there and I love a quiet walk with just a few sheep to talk to. I am not surprised at the lack of people in February when we last went, but I had expected to see a few walkers in July/August.  I suppose because we work in a school and are always coping with teenagers that I really value the times when we can get away and be a bit antisocial : )

One of the oldest goats is losing her teeth and can't chew hay any more so we were asked to save any veg and fruit peel/cores to supplement her diet.  That goat is very knowing (and very friendly and gentle) and when she sees anybody coming her way with a tub in their hand, she is suddenly very interested.  It was fun! I could cope with a small goat in the garden if the council weren't so dead set again anybody keeping cloven hoofed animals...

In the last week of the term, my hens just about went on strike and I had hardly any eggs.  Lots of my work customers were asking for extra eggs to start them off for the school holidays and I hadn't enough to give some of them their normal ration let alone extras. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw how many they had laid when we were away.  Perverse creatures!  Let's just say that omelettes won't be off the menu for some time yet.

We went down to the allotment yesterday.  The warm weather and the rain we've had recently meant that we couldn't see the crops for the weeds. There is plenty of work there to keep us out of mischief! However, the autumn raspberries are showing signs of flowering and it looks like there will be a reasonable crop of little purple damson-y plums, so I reckon I will be making jam and maybe some plum chutney. One of my summer jobs is to increase our stock of marmalade which is getting low. I haven't got my hands on any fruit for jam yet this summer but the blackberries are ripening nicely in the hedgerows...

Today we went to a house not far from us where a kind lady had said that we could have her shed as she wanted rid of it.  Not having seen it, we thought it would end up as firewood with maybe some of it being used to make another shelter to keep wood dry.  Now, however, as it was in pretty good condition, we are thinking of swapping it for the old shed up the garden.  We had to take this shed to pieces and that took some time.  Lifting the two halves of the roof off the walls proved to be a problem.  The second half slipped and I ended up briefly with the full weight of it and banged my shoulder rather so I'm a bit stiff now.  After that, I knew that I would not be able to help get the sections of shed up on to the roof rack so I sent for reinforcements.  Fortunately my son-in-law was at home and although he was in the middle of some DIY himself, he came and helped load the car roof rack and then came to our house to help unload again.  They need to do two trips so I was very grateful to him for dropping what he was doing and coming to our rescue.  The next job will be to put the shed together (after we've decided how to shift things around to fit it in because it is bigger than our current old one) and I think we will be calling on his help again, bless him.