New month, weather change

Last month we had perfect weather, apart from the lack of rain, it was warmer here than in Teneriffe, this month it seems as though winter might have arrived.


We had a weekend away in the UK to celebrate Simon's uncle's ninetieth birthday, the weather was just right on Saturday for a visit to Hever Castle, in Kent. Hever was the home of Anne Boleyn second unlucky wife of Henry the eighth. The castle itself is very beautiful even though little of the Tudor interior remains, having been restored in 1905 by an American (Lord Astor] as to how he thought a castle should look.The grounds are superb and it was certainly worth a visit.
We had time to visit a lovely old Manor house, the chimneys are a work of art, and of course we had to force ourselves to drop into several of the old English pubs and sample the real ales, it was a hard job, but I guess if you are on holiday it is a thing you must do. All the pubs that we reluctantly had to visit sold real ale, a total delight, although we can buy it here in Ireland in bottles it does not seem the same without the atmosphere of an English pub.


There are many beautiful places to visit in the UK, and some lovely architecture, especially the very old places, it is not however a country either of us would ever wish to live again. All the roads seem totally crowded, and wherever you are you can hear traffic, even way out in the country side you can still hear the noise and night-time light pollution seems to be impossible to get away from, it makes us realise how lucky we are to live where we do

We arrived back to Ireland to light drizzle, the first rain we had seen for weeks.
Today we have had several showers of sleet, so the new potatoes are now covered with crop cover, just in case. The rest of the plants will just have to take their chances.


The rabbit, Flopsie has had a litter of fourteen kittens, unfortunately she has lost one, maybe it is just as well as she is an eating machine at the moment and her run needs to be moved twice a day, this is on top of her normal feed and leafy greens, she doesn't seem to have any preference and eats spinach with as much gusto as dandelions.


Our older chicks are all doing well, it seems as though the cross between Light Sussex and Buff Orpington has produced a fairly fast growing bird. They are now ready to go onto growers feed but here we have hit a slight problem, we can't source any Organic growers or GM free, so it is back to mixing our own , we are sprouting both wheat and barley and I have on order Organic soya beans to sprout, these should be here later this week, it will all be a bit hit and miss regarding the protein content of how much to feed of what, but given the fact that spouting increases the protein content by a third I'm sure we will be able to arrive at more of less the right mix.