Christmas 2009 Wrap

December 25, 2009, 1:28 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

A merry Christmas to all of my readers. Thank you both for all of the kind words of support, and especially thanks to Emily for getting me started and hassling me when there were no new posts.

A summary of where we are at here at the cottage. My beautiful wife is doing fantastically well with the baby making, the novelty of getting kicked by the baby has worn off, but everything is well on track and I am looking forward to being a dad in February.

The garden is doing ok despite the neglect, I pulled up a garlic the other day seeing as we have just had the longest day. It looked great so it won’t be long before we harvest the rest of it. Watched u tube today to discover how to braid garlic. Everything is ticking along and having to battle it out with the weeds. We planted a passionfruit vine recently so it will be interesting to see how that goes. A bit of frost protection will be required I’m sure. I am concerned about our fruit trees. My apple tree mentioned in an earlier post does not have many apples on it, maybe due to my pruning? The other trees in the orchard all have fruit but none are looking fantastic. They are all pretty old but we’ll see how we go. Even the walnut tree that we got about 190kg of walnuts off last year looks as if it has a very light crop. The only thing that is looking good is the quince trees. It won’t be much of a strawberry crop due to a certain labrador having a taste for them.

Speaking of animals, I thought a run down of the family was in order. The sheep are all doing ok, Wally the Wether had a sore foot the other day so we had a look and after a trim and a wash it seems to be coming right. The flock all got crutched this week in order to reduce the chance of fly strike. I’m sure they are all enjoying the feeling after a nice trim.

Sheep before crutching

Sheep after crutching

The bees are all settled in. The top honey super (box) is finally starting to fill up. They had to draw out the comb on the frames as they were all new which means that I won’t get as much honey as I would have because it takes them a while to do the drawing out. All go now and they are all being busy bees. I finally got to see my queen the other day which was good.

Toby is doing well, most of the time he is great but he just has the odd time when his ears switch off and he does his own thing. He is certainly been a fantastic addition to our family.

The chickens have had another great year, I estimate that they have given us 320 eggs each so far this year. I wouldn’t be without them and am looking forward to expanding their run next year.

Ceilidh and Angus the cats are also doing well. They get on much better now, Angus used to beat Ceilidh up a bit but it is becoming a bit rarer now. Unfortunately it would seem they won’t become great friends of Toby.

Ceilidh

Angus

So that is where we are at. I love living on our wee bit of land in our cottage. We have achieved lots this year but the to do list is still pretty strong. We have started some redecorating inside, one stippled ceiling is gone, our next step will involve learning how to hang wallpaper. Obviously some big changes in store next year but it will be an exciting time and I am looking forward to continuing our adventure.

Merry Christmas, stay safe and look after each other.