smallholderwannabe

This blog is mainly a rambling kind of diary of the transition from smallholderwannabe to smallholder.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Last day of March

Already we are at the last day of March and the clocks have changed making the amount of daylight in the evenings feel wrong until I get used to it.  The weather has been practising for April showers and has been very windy.  In the pockets of sunshine, it has been nice and warm but out of them - brrrrr.

We went out to our minister's farm at the weekend to see the lambs and calves. Being a minister, he no longer has the time to spend on the farm that he had when he was a full time farmer.  They have 9 ewes and 3 cows.  The cows are mother, daughter and granddaughter with this year's calves and last year's calves.  One cow has yet to calve so there are 8 in total in the herd.  Because they are very much a family group, one cow will babysit the young calves while the other mums get five minutes to themselves elsewhere in the field.  The calves are just lovely.  They are Dexters so they are fairly small animals - just over a metre high at the shoulder.  The lambs are mainly white but there are some black ones too because they had some Zwartbles ewes a while back and still have one black ewe left. they are pretty sheep with white blazes and usually white socks too.  On an adult, the fleece fades to chocolate brown with the sun but when shorn, is still black at the root.  The other sheep are Suffolk crosses.  The lambs are just old enough to do that stiff legged springing movement that is so typical of young lambs.  Very cute!


Dexter Cattle
Redgate Zwartbles Flock 252's photo.

I've pinched the photos from the internet but they are both very typical of what I was looking at.

The visit to the farm was a church outing so I wanted to take some form of cake with me to share, preferably a tray bake that would cut up into lots of pieces.  I looked at my online file of recipes that I've saved and chose one that I've not made before.  It will definitely be on the list of ones to make again because it was so easy and tasted really good. I got it from Elaine's blog at MortgageFreein3.

Here's the link for Buttery Oaty Bites:

http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/2013/09/buttery-oaty-bites/#more-8593

I didn't have any smooth peanut butter so I used the crunchy that I had in the cupboard and it added a nice bit of "chew". I was a bit unsure because they are not actually cooked other than melting the marg and sugar together but they were lovely and I had lots of compliments.  Definitely a keeper!

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