down on the farm....

Country 'Em' here, a bloggin. Sun today after rain and mist and clouds lying low on the hills. Made you want to run around hugging everything! So, not a day for making - to be outdoors after being cooped up over the long winter is fantastic, even though it is very cold. First lambs in the fields nearby, tiny weee black one - tried to get a close up but Mum was very suspicious, it is lovely to see the ewes so protective.

Happy chickens too today, out pecking slugs in the sunshine, they are such characters, could watch 'em for hours, and they lay beautiful brown eggs, all shapes and sizes - no EEC regulations here! Some of their eggs are rather large and would put you off being a chicken in the next life.....You wouldn't realise that the 2 brown hens (Emily and Victoria) were barn rescues from last year, they were so scrawny, knew nothing of life outside, of grass, sun, rain, soil and yet they knew how to be henny.

I can thoroughly recommend getting barn rescue hens, loads of families were there with lots of exited children, with boxes of all sizes and shapes, to take home some very sad looking 'chooks' for some loving. Having hens was my daughter's idea (they are all hers and she looks after them really well, mucking out the hen house and everything) and I can't imagine life without them now.



Introducing Basil the cat: hobbies include taking over all the chairs in the kitchen by sitting on them one after another, jumping on your head or shoulders when you are outside weeding or planting, and sitting on whatever you are trying to plant or weed.....he just wants to help!

Garlic planting - good day for this I discovered after I'd started and then thought to look in the Moon diary - Root day yippee. Of course I waited till it was late afternoon and the sun disappearing so it was really cold in the icy wind. I only ordered them last week from the Garlic Farm ( they do amazing garlic chutney and we have bought some garlic beer to try too this time!) and here I am planting them - how very efficient! They need cold to make the bulbs grow properly so they like the cold, unlike me! I was out in as many unglamorous layers as I could cram on....(no pic how sad!). The hard graft put in by my other half on making raised beds makes planting out a dream (tho' the one behind Basil needs a leetle weeding methinks).

Thank goodness for my lovely shed, acquired last year, put up my talented husband  and painted by moi in delicious linseed oil paint on the one hot dry day last summer... it's MY SHED and I love it!

Autumn 'Still Life' in my shed....

Afraid I've blown 'Country Living Shed Goddess' status.... sadly it no longer looks like this after lobbing all manner of wet and muddy things in things in before the winter.....