Happy Birthday to me!

Had a nice relaxing day, tea with friends, walked the dog and had a picnic lunch. I couldn’t decide whether to have roast pork or roast wild boar for dinner, so we had both! With Champagne Yum!
That’s it for another 4 years!
Doug made me some very nice holder for pot plants from wood and a candle holder. I will have to add photos later as computer won't cooperate with uploading them!

Cow Blood Test Day

When this comes around now we are soooo thankful not to have the highlands any more as they were a nightmare with the vet. The jerseys are soooo good, it is a great relief.
We had a bit of a long cold wait for the vet, but everyone had snacks and behaved very well

Nathalie having some cow nuts

Myrtle

The three 'calves': Nathalie, Wellington and Dorne

Venus

Pancake Day

Pancakes!

Tree Cutting

In every storm we have been worrying that the large trees near the house might fall and crush the house or barn. They were too big for us to cut and too close to the house, so we had some experts in to do it. They were very efficient and cut down or pollarded five huge trees in one day. A cherry picker certainly made it easier, but one of them had to climb several of the trees to get tricky bits off. Scary stuff, high in a tree with a chain saw!

Before

Pine has gone

Ash has been pollarded too

They also cut down two more ash that you can't see clearly in the picture and a dead oak on the drive. The cows decided to rush towards that just as they nearly finished cutting, but we managed to avoid any of them being squashed! One of them was in heat, so they were all acting crazy.

It was expensive to have them clean up all the mess and would have cost more again than just the cutting, so we are now left with a huge mess to clean up!
But that is ok as at least the house and barn are safe.

What a plank!

As we have sooooo much wood now from trees that fell in storms and from the great tree cutting day, Doug has been looking at what to do with some of it that isn't just firewood.
This is a plank he made freehand with a chainsaw! We are thinking of getting and Alaskan saw mill that takes a chain saw and guides it straight so we could make more precision planks and posts for use about the place. It would be satisfying to use our own wood for something other than firewood...

Lawn Mower fix attempt

Someone gave us a lawnmower. They said it had some problems running, but had been serviced recently. It wouldn't start at all, so I took it apart.

The filter sponge is a bit melted

I took it apart and feel this can't be normal in the carb float cup

This is the carb float needle it was kind of welded in to the hole it blocks and opens with black gunk like in the carb cup. I cleaned it up, but it seems a bit deformed at the end.

I put it all back together having cleaned it, it worked better but still not right. It would start but only run for a few seconds and then stop. The petrol also slowly leaked out - not ideal.

I have ordered a new carburettor (ideally I just needed the needle, but you can't buy just that)

Marmalade

There was nearly a marmalade CRISIS this year when the place I normally get them from had run out by the time I waited until we were back from skiing. Fortunately someone else sourced some and the day was saved.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Heart pizza! Tricky to shape..

Happy Valentine's Day!

Pancetta is ready

The pancetta and the lamb lamb are ready! Yum!

Lamb ham ready for slicing

Pancetta ready for slicing

Pizza with the dried meat and chickpea shoots

Dinner out in La Mongie

Cafe Gourmand. Always the best desert and the one at La Mesa was great! The burgers were good too.

We popped in to a new bar at La Mandia for a quick drink. Very nice!

Strange Winter Weather

We had a warm winter last winter with almost no snow until late January, after that we had loads and it was great skiing. This year has also been very warm and similar except we had a cold spell at the end of November with enormous amounts of snow which, with a few small top ups, has been keeping us going since. We have had spells of torrential rain and a lot of sun, the resort is now really beginning to struggle, today we had more rain, and yesterday was 21 degrees in the valley!
The school holidays are our peak rental period and it is a setback if they don't go smoothly and leave good reviews, so for them, and for us, fingers crossed for SNOW!

Sourdough bread

With all the excitement of the bread lesson, and having made a lot of bread recently, I have started a new sourdough. I have had them before and they normally go well for a little while but I struggle with getting the bread to rise properly and end up neglecting them and going back to yeast. The bread does taste great, maybe now with so much practice of 'normal' bread the sourdough bread will go better...
This is the first bread (roll) from it which was very tasty and had risen well. Now I just need to keep it alive and well!

 It is a rye starter which is why the bread is a bit brown. The rye flour is extra nutritious for the yeast, and it adds a nice flavour. I am trying a bit of a different technique to previous ones, where you keep and feed a lot less starter and build it up just before baking. Part of the stress I have had with previous ones is that it takes a lot of flour feeding them and the two of us couldn't eat enough to stop there being wasted starter that we didn't use - which seemed to defeat some of the point of making your own bread... so then I didn't feed it enough to avoid waste and it wasn't v healthy...

Decorating Frenzy

While Doug was doing a lot of work on the kitchen in La Mongie and at various other points I have been busy making curtains and cushions as well as art for the walls in the flat in St.Andrews

Poppy finds sewing very boring and likes to take up residence on the material in protest. These are curtains for St.A

New cushions for La Mongie.

Three of these printed on aluminium above one of the beds in St.A

Cushions for St.A

In the living room at St.A - printed a meter tall

One of these above the other bed in St.A

I wanted to use this somewhere but could not squeeze it in. Maybe on a mug sometime!

Trying to entertain Poppy with a bone so she leaves us alone to get on with our work!

Shoal of wooden fish for the bunk room in St.A, the tartan one was printed and the white ones spray painted, this is not all of them.

Boats and lighthouse I created for the hallway in St.A

Doing the stuff for St.A has been a bit stressful as it is difficult from far away to imagine what things will look like and to get sizes right. It should be available to rent any moment now!

Bees are busy

To steal Doug's line... 'Un-bee-lievable weather!'. It has been so warm recently that the bees have been out and about despite it only being the start of February.

I am sure there is a bee in the picture somewhere...

Bread Baking Lesson

We have a friend who used to be a chef and then teach cooking, he very kindly came round and gave us a bread baking lesson. I learnt lots, it is really good to have someone show you how something should look and feel that isn't possible to get from reading. I learnt to shape rolls and a big loaf much better than before as well as getting a feel for when the dough is risen enough, and getting encouraged to make a leaven before making the dough.

Failed to get photos during the making as was concentrating so hard!