Insulation and frost

Some frosty mornings have let us see a bit of the effect of the insulation in the roof. It isn't really clear in the photo, but you can see that the top left corner is not frosty and the rest of the roof is. That corner is the only bit waiting to be insulate!

You can also see on the extension roof that the frost has melted on the bit in the shade against the house. The fire is against that wall inside, so presumably it gets quite warm.

Rug has gone to the abattoir

You can see him here resting his head on his mum's back. She is called Mrs Suffolk as she is some kind of Suffolk cross. Her horn was broken when she came to us. He is called rug because he is the first white male lamb we have had and we are hoping to make a nice white rug from his skin!

We are looking forward to roast lamb on Friday. 

The pigs are booked in for the 1st week in February. V exciting!

Happy New Year!

Ok not the best photo, but an amazing Christmas present which is making the cold weather bearable, and it seemed kind of festive. Doug has one in blue, how sad are we :)

Skiing

Since it snowed it has been lovely skiing up at La Mongie. The depth of snow isn't amazing, but considering it comes from two falls it is not bad. It has been very cold which has kept it nice and fresh too.
We have been up every day this week. On our own and with various other people. We are going up again tomorrow at the crack of dawn (on the 1st of January!)

Change in the weather

As you can see from my Christmas message it was really sunny and lovely over Christmas. More like summer than the end of December. Boxing day was not as bad in the uk, but Saturday we had the same storm as the UK had come through and then it got reeeaaaaallly cold -5 or -6 maybe. Bit horrible while it is raining, but we were comforted by the fact that that meant lots of snow in the ski area!

Merry Christmas!

As usual we have been rubbish, and not sent Christmas cards. I was so close this year, but then didn't quite make it! At least this year we have the excuse of being busy with me working. Not a very good excuse I admit.

We tried to get Poppy to model for a Chirtmas photo, but she wasn't keen...

Anyway, sorry for not sending a card and we wish you all A Merry Christmas!

Holiday!

I have two weeks off work. Obviously I love work (thanks for giving me a job Mr Boss and getting me out of having to lay concrete!) but it is nice to spend a longer chunk of time at home too. We have lots of things we want to do including doing some skiing. 

Today we had a very useful day

I iced the Christmas cake - not sure quite how it will come out as I used some caster sugar not just icing sugar in the royal icing and not sure it was a good idea! It is a bit granually still. I have made mayonaise from the egg yolks too, to go with potatoes for dinner. Both icing and mayonaise were easier this year with the kitchen aid.

Boiled up two small pigs heads (our friend just took them to th abattoir and couldn't face processing th heads along with everything else) to make pork pies -

and pulled all the meat and some of the skin (the dog will eat the rest - which is bits with hair still on, eye lids, eyes etc) off and put it in the fridge to be minced up tomorrow.

They also gave us the guts so I made liver pate and I have put the rest in to the haggis mentioned below.

Rendered some pork fat (it will be white when cool). We are going to make soap with it. I have just ordered the caustic soda. One day we will try making our own (it is also called lye) from the wood ash from the fire, but for the first attempt we thought we would use something with a known strength.

Took some wet cured pork (the leg has been in the freezer for nearly 2 years) out of the giant pot it has been in for the last week with the brine solution and shrink wrapped most of it and put it back in the freezer. We kept one bit out to eat sometime this holiday. It is pretty huge but I am sure we can get through it somehow. Each leg weighed in the region o 10kgs. Two of them we dry cured in to ham (we still have some of one left) one was cut up in to quite small joints by the butcher and this final one I boned most of it and cut it in to five joints to wet cure and have as roast ham.

Brought a load of wood over from the wood pile to the end of the house in the trailer. Doug did an impressive job of driving the Navara, it is tricky over to the wood pile, and even more so with the trailer.

Wormed the pigs and the cows.

As well as the normal things of feeding all the animals and pickig something from th garden for dinner - kale to have with pork chips and boiled potatos

I have also started making a batch of haggis by putting various bits of entrails in a pan on the fire to boil away all evening. Finishing that off and actually making the pork pies from the boiled up pigs head is a job for another day, along with processing some plums I have just taken out of the freezer too. I think plum jelly. 

The reason for al lot of this activity is that we are trying to empty the freezers a bit so we can fit this years pigs in sometime soon. Perhaps February.

Bread Oven Room

We call the little room attached to the outdoor kitchen the bread oven room, because it has a bread oven in it. We may try to fire it up one day but probably not as we want to use the room for storage and we will need to have the top of the chimney blocked to make that useful - otherwise everything will be soaked.

Last week the guys rendered it. We didn't bother leaving artistic stones visible as it is not so on display as the wall in the outdoor kitchen outside.

We need to put a door on it - which should be interesting given the shape of the doorway. Eventually it needs a new window as well, but for not we are just going to get some shutters.

Lots of people have joked that we could live in here while we do the rest of the house. It may come to that!

The outside of the door surround is in the process of being repointed too. It had been done with rathr ugly concrete so that has been a bit hacked off and topped with lime cement to match the rest of the wall.

Finished

In progress - it was even uglier before the old stuff was hacked out a bit.

Ski resort has opened

The Grand Tourmalet ski area opened on Saturday. We went up on Friday as well and skinned up the pistes a little bit so the dog could enjoy the snow and run around a bit ahead of having to be locked in the car when we go skiing for real.

There is not a giant amount of snow. The resort was scheduled to open a couple of weeks ago but could not because there was no snow! There has basically been one good fall of about 40 cm and they have done a good job of getting the pistes covered from that and the snow machines. Hopefully more will fall soon! Fun anyway though.

Of course the dog's not allowed in the bed!

Wall in the outdoor kitchen

Originally we were planning on repointing it, but then we decided to do it as we plan on doing the rest of the house, which is rendered with a few stones showing.

When it dries it will be a pale grey. There is one final thin coat still to go on.

Quick trip to San Sabastian

I have a couple of days holiday I have to use. So I took Friday off and we did a quick trip to San Sebastián in Spain. It is a bit over two hours away, we have been meaning to go for ages.

It is a lovely place with lots of excellent food and drink.

It is in the Basque Country, so they have Pintxos not tapas. Similar though.

The variety is amazing and there are hundreds of tiny little bars that vie with each other to be the best. The idea is to have a drink and a couple of Pintxos at each place, and then move on. You can't see from this photo how amazing they look, at this place we had a nido de bolete, which was a penny bun mushroom, fried in butter and served in a crispy potato nest with a quails egg on top. Was DELICIOUS! We also had a cheese cake at Las Vina which was sooooo amazing, on the whole I prefer savory, but this was the best desert EVER!

They have a local wine called Txacoli which is very lightly fizzy. Delicious also.

The Atlantic surf was very cold looking, quite a few surfers out despite that.

This is in the patisserie, yes these seem to be fish made out of sweet pastry there on the bottom!

The sea air is bracing for a hangover! It wears the dog out really well, and we had a great couple of days! The hotel was lovely too (yes they officially allow dogs!).

We left the dog alone in the hotel room while we went out eating Pintxos and drinking Txacoli, Rioja, and beer. Bit stressful as she had spent some time chewing everything she could lay her teeth on before we went out. But luckily she seems to deactivate when we go out and leave her. The room survived!