It's a jungle out there

I managed to get stung by bees twice on the one ear on Saturday. I spent the weekend with one giant ear and one normal ear – very uncomfortable. Worse thing is now I’m down two bees.

We’ve hatched a nice brood of chicks this week. I don’t recall how many there are now, but they are all looking good and healthy. The Wellsummer and the Arcona chicks I picked up the other day are looking good as well. They are getting a good covering of feathers and should be ready for the out side soon. Unfortunately we lost a duck last night to the foxes, just one is unusual, I’ll have to have a look around with the spotlight tonight.

We’ve had a lot of rain, over two hundred millimetres to date in the past couple of weeks. The poor old pigs houses are flooded out and they are sleeping under the stars at the moment – I need to get in and scrape out the mud. We’ve sold a few as well, which is good and usual for this time of year.

The bees have been keeping my busy. I had to make up some frames for the hives and then discovered a new swarm had occupied one of the boxes in the shed – that’s how I got stung. The Cook never told me about them, she knew, and I walk across their flight path twice, she did ask if I was allergic.

My lawn mower is dead and the lawn is shoulder high at the moment – it’s got way past being scythed. I do the paths and around the taps still with the scythe – but I think I heard a Hoop Snake last night so we’d better be careful. There’s a big bunch of piglets keeping the dog occupied as well, she just loves following them around and making sure they don’t get too far away from mum.

We’ve also invested in a Solar Farm for the property. It’ll be erected in February and be producing electricity for both us and the grid. It’ll combat future price rises in electricity for the time being, but nobody knows what’s happening there.

The Cook has been making some great bread rolls lately and Sunday lunch was a true testament to her talents. We had beautiful bread rolls made from freshly milled organic wheat, fresh ham from the farm and garden salads. All this followed by her now famous rhubarb cake – just delicious, wouldn’t swap her for a tractor!

Last week also saw the last of this year’s pigs go off to the abattoir, I thought we would have trouble hitting 60kg dressed on them but the biggest came in at 73kg which was excellent and of the five they averaged 58kg which was perfect. One is destined for the spit roast which is why the average is a little below 60kg, my spit roaster can only handle a 40kg pig.

I had a chance to visit Mrs D during the week and was lucky enough to try a selection of her Mulberries – very yummy!! I’ve never had a white mulberry before, they were very nice. The Cooks berries are going well to, we went down the garden last night and tried some red currents and ‘a’ logan berry I think. She was so proud of it, it was very big and very juicy – it fell of the bush whilst she was showing me and Ben nearly snapped it out of her fingers, she managed to get half!