Happy New Year

My first post in 2014 and there's so much going on.

I hope you enjoyed the festive season as much as I did. I love Christmas and the lead up to Christmas and Christmas music, oh how I love the music. My favourite carol of all time is O Holy Night, I listen to just about every version every artist has put out and Andrea Bocelli is still the winner in my opinion although Josh Groban and Celine Dion do pretty good versions also. So with the Christmas music blasting the kitchen goodies that Sam and I made this year were Lemon Curd, Apple and Plum Jelly and Ginger, Pistachio & Cranberry Biscotti to give away to friends and family. We used up our stockpiled free-range eggs, picked a tree of lemons bare and scoured the many aisles of fruit markets to find our ingredients. Then we scrubbed, zested, peeled, chopped, juiced, stirred, boiled, re-boiled and bottled our creations. We bought our jars from Arthur Holmes Ltd and dressed up the final product with cute coloured hessian fabric and stickers. It was a great bonding time for Sam and I and a chance to slow down from the busy-ness, you have to go slow and be patient when doing these things, I found out the hard way by burning a batch of lemon honey...not that Sam complained as he ate the yellow (with black freckles) goop every day for the next two weeks! The lemon curd made many a lemon meringue pie, pavlova, toast and biscuit topping and has now become my memorable taste of Christmas 2013.

Next Christmas I'll have a go at candied peel and fruit cakes I think. I now have a fabulous biscotti recipe that I'll definitely use again and probably adapt to be just a plain almond biscotti which is my favourite.

On the animal front I managed to get Ella and Tarka's hooves trimmed just before Christmas, thank goodness. Their waistlines are looking great, they have free run of the place at the moment although I do lock them up overnight sometimes especially after they've spent a day out the front on the grassy-grass verge. The chooks are good, the babies are growing and there are still a few broodies sitting diligently on egg so we'll have some more additions in the weeks to come. Nigel attacked me again, while I was wearing shorts and gave me another hole in my knee. This time I washed it out straight away and dosed it with anti-biotic ointment (that the doctor gave me after the last injury) and covered it with a plaster. That exercise helped as I didn't get the major swelling or pain like I had with the others.

Sheamus and Tallulah are the best of mates, they go for a mid-morning and an afternoon siesta every day, side by side in Sheamus's bed, Tallulah's purpose built house will be donated to the chooks now as she never uses it.

Mabel and Lucifer have been the real show-stoppers lately, their bravery astounds me. They are very interactive little critters now. Every evening we spend time with the animals, piggy tummy rubs, games of fetch with Hoby, horsey cuddles, being a human-jungle-gym fer the chickens and all this with the goats looking on from a distance. But now they join in. Mabel loves having the base of her horns scratched and her tummy tickled and will even let me wrap my arms around her in a bear hug, Lucifer likes to stand on his hind legs, put his front hooves on my tummy and chew on my index finger but he won't allow me to lay that chewed index finger on him. He's the instigator of all the attention but pushes Mabel up to me for cuddles and watches on fascinated. When I lay down in the grass he always comes over to sniff my elbow or put his little black velvet muzzle millimetres from my face. He's interested in me but lacks the courage to let me scratch him behind the horns. When I put them to bed I take cabbage leaves from my garden and we cluster around the cable reels, I sit on the low one and they jump up onto the tall one, they love this time. They frolic and chase each other and torment the other animals, poor Tallulah cops a few butts to the side when Lucifer is in a playful mood, she squeals loudly but that's about the extent of her objections. Ella on the other hand got a nudge in the guts the other evening and in true Ella style squealed in disgust and in a rolling thunderous canter chased Mabel and Lucifer down the hill and out onto the driveway, and then stopped and snorted as if to say 'get out and stay out!' then she turned and wandered back up the hill to resume grazing. Lucifer's eyes were gleaming with mischief as he mulled over his options of who would be his next victim.

Tallulah has become, unfortunately, a human-house dweller. Not intentionally nor a welcomed house dweller I might add. The famous line of the day on Christmas Day was "why is there a piglet in the kitchen?" Yep, she'd wandered in through the front door and was tucking into the bag of apples I'd designated for the Christmas treat for the animals. She just didn't want to miss out I guess. But since then any time we're airing out the house or if we come in armed with a bag of groceries and put them on the floor she's hot on our heels and has her little piggy snout in the bag before you can say "what's this pig doing in the house?" usually in a loud, high pitched voice. She's also become a master tummy-cuddler, in the sense that when I'm laying in the grass she'll climb onto my tummy, lay down and snore in my face, protesting with squeals every time I move to get up. A ten minute tummy-cuddle usually suffices. One day it was pouring with rain so we didn't get up to spend out evening time with the animals and Tallulah didn't get her tummy cuddle for the day,  that night at 10.30pm she turned up at the French doors to my bedroom and pushed her nose up against the glass. We tried ushering her back up to the sty but she kept coming back, squeezing through every gap in the fence she could find. In the end I gave in, wrapped her in a towel and lay on my bed cuddling her for 10 minutes with grassy burps and piggy snores coming from her. After that she put herself to bed with Sheamus. I suppose I have to remind myself that she's still just a baby and mummy cuddles are a precious thing at that age.