ovens, sprouts & cold turkey

Yippee, survived, Christmas has come [and gone]. Have fed the 5 thousand, or so it would seem. Sprouts, sprouts and yet more sprouts. What may l ask is so marvelous about them? The very thought of eating one of those small green mini-cabbage-wind-inducing-things makes me feel positively nauseous. I ought to have a medal for preparing that vegetable!

This year, we have replaced the old kitchen with a new, second hand, ebay version which came complete with ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES. l am now the proud owner of an electric oven. WOW. You see, being a proper farmer's wife l have cooked only using an aga. For non-aga aficionados, this means that your turkey needs to be cooked slowly, very slowly in fact, in the bottom oven over night, leaving you room to burn the roast veggies in the top oven, whilst trying not to loose to much heat from the hot plates, phew... well this year, l cooked the turkey in the... electric oven. Do you know it tasted ok, moist, juicy & not falling off the bones aga style?

The tiles surrounding the aga have been designed & hand painted by a very talented fellow blogger residing in France, and her web site can be visited by a mere click just here!

The entertaining bit is still going on, tonight SIL & husband are here for a spot of tea, beef in ginger wine with clementines being top of the menu this evening! Christmas presents for them this year was a doddle, so to speak. Donations to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. Duly done!

So, what with mild weather, an unhealthy amount of food, which l am pleased to say has been sourced locally where possible, [smug grin], it has been a fairly quite Christmas; the dogs have enjoyed tasty gravy on their food, Lucy-Piglet has been taking all her medicine without too much fuss, plus the added bonus / bribe of 6 small feeds a day, actually l have turned this in to 3 feeds a day but don't tell the vets! Oh, and did l mention that the oesophagus stretching appears to have more or less cleared / improved her eating ability?

**Happy Christmas / Birthday [Boxing Day] / New Year to TF [ a Canadian] & KS [a local] in Australia! Enjoy the surf dude!**

noel

l know that it is the month of December but l hadn't quite realized that Christmas was only 2 weeks away. Help, l am not organized. No cards written, no turkey ordered, no christmas puddings made.

The TV advertising is set to feeding frenzy point, trying to get the last ounce of 'suckerabilty' out of us,. You must but this toy or that, then these mince pies are so much better than those, plus have you got all your electrical things ordered? who in their right minds wants a blurdey dishwasher or washing machine for Christmas?

Oh well never mind, it will soon be Easter!

At least the temperature has dropped. Last night saw our first, white frost of the winter. Ice everywhere. It is at this time of year that wellingtons are not the ideal choice of foot wear unless you have at least 3 pairs of socks on! Gordon has discovered that ice & him just don't get on. You see, in the morning he LEAPS out, spinning about, bending this way and that, but on ice, well, he just ends up sliding across the farm drive, arms & legs akimbo! Poor dog. He thinks he is the ONLY dog. That he can have choice morsels and total attention. Wrong. Lucy-Piglet with any luck should be returning home on Saturday after her awfully big adventure.

Poor Gordon!

spring tides and missing cliffs

The past few weeks have seen mammoth changes to the beach at Withow Gap. Normally at this time of year, sand on the upper beach is scrapped back revealing the smooth, slippery grey clay, however, this year we seem to have a reverse of all things normal. And so it is that now, in December, the sand has never been so high. Ten feet of vertical, peaty cliff have been buried under tons of fine sand. Now, today, instead of a scramble down into Withow Gap, clutching wildly for anything to stop you ending up slipping ignominiously in the peaty morass & looking to all intents and purposes as though you have been mud wrestling, it is a case of a gentle, elegant hop, down on to the soft sand, maintaining ones decorum! l feel quite sorry for the summer visitors, clad in light summer shoes totally unsuitable for mud paddling, blame the ancient lake god's!

The Sand Dumping might be good news for walkers but it does bring other problems, the drain is now blocked and water is back tracking up the dyke, causing the water table to rise in the low part of the field, turning it once more into the kettlehole lake of days gone past. Great for wading birds. Flocks of redshanks, lapwing & greenshanks plus loads of small waders prodding the peaty soil for a meal! So far that makes 2 interesting results of the high sandy bit, now for the down side.... each spring tide has seen the sea come up over the 'cliff' top strewing flotsam & jetsam ever where and of course hastening coastal erosion.

Finally, the dog. Lucy-Piglet. We have a positive diagnosis. It is a post esophageal stricture. L-P is currently residing at the Animal Health Trust clinic near Newmarket under going treatment and with any luck she will be back here in a week. Gordon is bereft