By Special Request

Thank you to my lovely brother, Graham, for the most appropriate card for our anniversary. Could anyone else beat my brothers wacky sense of humour....I think not.

Card photographed by special request of my Mum!!

Jessie , Joan, our Mums, Lovely Hubby....Alan, Me and Syd, my Dad.

Thanks to everyone who has sent us lovely anniversary cards, and good wishes.

A very special thank you to all the guests that came to our wedding and all acted as witnesses to the best decision we ever made.

(And no....they aren't dressed in their gladrags....they didn't know they were going to a wedding until twenty minutes beforehand!!)

Alan.....

....I love You

Happy Anniversary Babe.

Sue xx

A Misty Morning

This morning is so different from yesterday. Today we have woken to a world shrouded in mist.

It rose from the puddle quickly......

...and then slowly the polytunnel appeared.

Looking out from the patio towards the fields the mist sits heavily...

and around the Near Pond the rushes suddenly appear skeletal and damp.

Around Far Pond the bare branches of the trees reach over the water...

and the barn rises majestically in the background.

Through the gateway to the fields I walk with the dogs and the Brown Girls are in the distance...

.... they rush to greet us, as though they hadn't seen us for ages (in fact they were fed just fifteen minutes earlier).

We walk through the fields, looking towards the motorway the field is starting to clear.

Mist clings around the edge of our orchard where the pigs are......

...swooshing away as the sun gets brighter.

We turn and head back for home, the sun is now shining brightly, daring the mist to stay and the barn glows in the warmth of the morning.

A glimpse of our world today.....enjoy yours.

Sue xx

December...............woohoo...it's here!!

Setting off down the drive to our farm for the first time last year.

December never used to be a brilliant month for me, cold, damp, windy, muddy, frosty, crowds of people clogging the supermarkets and shops, no money to buy the things I really wanted to buy for the people I loved.

I left my first husband just after Christmas in 2002 after 24 years of marriage. The realisation that he had changed into a man I didn't know was heart-breaking. I spent two years building a life for me and my younger son (he was 15 at the time). He went on to Sixth Form and University and made me SO proud. He was there during two years of transition, we had fun together and we both turned our lives around. 

At the end of this period I met and fell head over heels in love with my darling LH, we moved in together at Christmas a year later and we got engaged at Christmas the next year and then married on 4th December two years ago.

Last year for the very first time we drove onto this farm for a viewing just before Christmas and we spent the whole of Christmas organising our move and camping at one house or the other. So now I see December as a glorious end to each year, always with the promise of a fresh year to follow with more adventures and more to learn about our lives and each other.

My son is away again at University doing a Masters Degree (proud Mum once again) and will be home for a couple of weeks at Christmas, we have family birthdays to look forward to, but first we have an anniversary to celebrate. And yes, I brave the shops now, listen to the cheesy, lovely Christmas songs blaring away on the speakers, patiently wait with my basket of shopping while the people in front with their three trolleys of mostly unnecessary food argue and bicker over who they have not got presents for yet and their children wail and screech over what they want and what their friends have.

But now I do it patiently for the best Christmas present I ever got will be with me always, and his love makes December the best month of the year, truly OUR month, closely followed by January, February, March, April....oh you get the picture!!

Wishing each and every one of my lovely readers a wonderful December, enjoy the build up to Christmas, but remember always the ones you love and put them first, not the size of your turkey or the amount of food you can fit in your supermarket trolley!!

Oh and in February next year we will be getting our very own turkeys to grow slowly and happily here on our farm for next Christmas.

Normal farming chit chat will resume tomorrow.

Sue xx

The Best of Days and the Worst of Days

Saturday saw me in Tetsworth Village Hall for my Willow Weaving Course. Just one day of willow weaving, lovely food and most importantly lots of fun.

Caroline one of the girls from the Farmers Markets that I do, runs a nursery/gardening business and had been on a course to weave willow wreaths in time for Christmas last year and so she imparted her knowledge to us in time for us to do something similar this year.

Obviously I can't compete with my teacher at the Farmers Markets so all my lovely creations are for personal use at the moment. First we learnt how to make the willow more supple so it bends rather than snaps, very hard on your thumbs that one! Then she showed us how to bend and weave our wreaths into shape, building up layer after layer of willow.

We were allowed free rein to decorate our creations with any of the lovely ribbons, baubles and natural greenery and berries that were on show. And boy did we all go to town. I like things rustic and simple, some liked them glittery and sparkly, some liked to completey cover the wreath, but I love twigs and wood so I always left some on show. No two creations were even similar but all were just as we wanted them.

Then she showed us stars, some got this and some didn't, I didn't and preferred to go off on a tangent and switched to hearts instead. I have a thing about hearts as our house will testify, they are everywhere!!

Finally I made a twiggy bundle to go on our mantlepiece to replace the hops that usually reside there. Shown here on the sofa.

It was a brilliant day and as I loaded the car with my creations I felt the first stirrings of Christmas, this will be our first Christmas here on the farm and I hope in some small way my home made decorations will set the scene for a homely, warm and cosy Christmas. Christmas decorations are going up at the end of this week as we have something rather special to celebrate!

And the worst of days? Yesterday was spent at Henley Farmers Christmas Market in the worst of weather. Gale force winds and driving rain on and off all day. In the few bright spells there were lots of folks buying and if the weather had been on our side it would have been a brilliant day financially. As it was, we got wet, the poor dog got wet and worst for me the stock got wet. We spent a large part of the afternoon holding down the gazebo (or catching it as it made a bid for freedom).

And here is the stock now, drying on the bed in the spare room. Yuk, yuk, yuk is the only way to describe the day. I will be busy this afternoon seeing what I can salvage and sorting it all out. I hate packing away in a rush everything is higgledy, piggledy and gets squished.

So a busy, but (mostly) enjoyable weekend and now it's time to start planning next weekend. I am at a Craft Fair in the village of Wheatley. It's indoors, warm and dry, and with as many cups of free coffee as you can drink....now that's more like it!!

Sue xx

Betty's Better

Thank you for all the lovely comments about Betty. She has now (fingers crossed) made a full recovery. She has been jabbed everyday by Lovely Hubby and taken it in very good spirit. As long as she's eating seems you can do almost anything to her!!

LH has been a brilliant Doctor and I have backed him up with lots of moral support. The main thing is our biggest animal is now up and about and ready, (hopefully soon) to meet her new boyfriend. We hope to have the pitter patter of tiny trotters by April of next year. So from Betty to you - THANK YOU for the good wishes and concern shown. Blogging is a lovely way to meet the nicest and most caring of people. I'm off now to my Willow Wreath Weaving Course to see what masterpieces I can create for Christmas. Sue xx

Poorly Piggy

When I went to feed the pigs this morning only two little piggies ran to greet me, whilst Maud and Martha ate their breakfast of pig nuts and apples, Betty was still in her bed.

I went to see her and she was on her side with laboured breathing and seemingly unable to get up. Never has someone been on the phone so fast. The vet was called, the lovely Carron was called for Betty knowledge (Carron was Bettys former Mum until I came along), she gave good advice but obviously the arrival of the vet was the only way I could get an idea of what was wrong with Betty.

My hero arrived just 30 minutes later, and strode manfully through the mud (well limped pathetically really, he had a squash injury!) and gave Betty a throrough looking over, an antibiotic shot and an anti inflamatory shot too for good measure, and described her as a 'very poorly pig'.........well that's what I already knew!!

Seemingly she most likely has a bacterial virus that just needs antibiotics and bed rest, alternatively and more worrying is that it could be a twisted gut caused by a slip. After her second injection Betty with our help had struggled to her feet and made an effort to get out of her ark, but, sorry Betty, she is confined to quarters for a couple of days to make sure it's not a pulled muscle or a twisted gut that knocked her off her feet.

Bed rest and TLC with a shot of antibiotic every day is the order of the vet. If Betty does the bed rest and I provide the TLC, that only leaves the injection for Lovely Hubby to administer each day, lucky him. (Don't worry he has been trained to do this!!)

Sue xx

The Busiest Part of the Farm

The busiest part of the farm at the moment, especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night is the area around our many bird feeders. We have two peanut feeders, one normal sized and one really long one, two wild bird seed holders, an apple holder and an extra large fatball holder (it holds 15 fatballs).

Between all these, the birds have a veritable feast. Plus of course they have the remains of any food that has been thrown around for the chickens, so all in all we have a very welcome stream of feathered friends calling on a daily basis.

Indeed the other day I was busy doing something in the house and all I could hear was a veritable cacophony of bird shrieks....'what is going on out there' I shouted to Lovely Hubby, he went to the window and said 'they are just complaining because all the peanuts and fatballs have gone' I'd only filled them two days before!!

A new and very welcome visitor is our friend the Greater Spotted Woodpecker. At first we couldn't identify him and had to refer to my lovely little book 'Graves Garden Birds' from where this picture was taken. Everytime we spot him I make a mad dash for the camera and try to get him in my sights and ALWAYS at the very last minute, as I click he flies away leaving me a photograph of a bird empty peanut feeder.

He seems to love the peanuts, he discovered the holder when we had accidently left it empty for a couple of days and the last couple of peanuts were stuck in the middle where the tits and finches couldn't quite reach them, he of course, with his lovely long beak could, and since that day he comes and feeds on a regular basis.

According to my book, he is the butterflies enemy and the vegetable gardeners friend, so we will encourage him to stay around by keeping our feeders topped up, even if it is costing rather a lot of money!!

Sue xx