Thank you 153 times - a new daily hit record!

Eggs - Total to date: 252 - Day 112

KoKKo 84 (86grms) 29.11.2005 Personal best
Adelaide 84 (77grms) 13.02.2006 Personal best
Ginger 84 (78grms) 22.2.2006 Personal best



Firstly a huge thank you for all those that logged onto my blog yesterday. I had 153 hits – no one out clubbing last night then? Or was it just one person with nothing
to do so kept clicking on to see the counter spinning? I was rather shocked when I saw the number and double checked from the day before and it definitely was 153. Actually Pat keeps a record, he started asking me every night how many hits and it has now become a habit. (You can tell he worked in material planning and logistics can't you?)

It takes me hours to do – but if someone is out there reading it apart from me then it is all worth while.

So back to earth – well literally today – despite the plummeting temperatures, the sun decided to shine so I just had to be outside – well you do don’t you. You are a long time in a box so have to make the most of it!

I started off the day by making a nice mixture for the triplets – that hard vacuumed packed loaf with all the air sucked out of it, made a nice porridge on it was mixed with warm milk and the cores from last night’s pears. The chooks just loved it, and I didn’t even get a cluck out of them and it was petticoats up, heads down, and peck as fast as you can to get the most!

Pat offered to come up the lottie with me to dig out one edge of the path. I had been along it with my edging tool a couple of weeks ago, but when I had a spare hour or two the weather was awful so it never got done.

Here are a series of pictures to show you what I did – easier than lots of words – especially if you feel as sore as I do!



Pat did this long edge





And this one too.






I did all these




And these - three beds 28 ft long and 6ft, 8ft, and 10ft wide. (I didn't do the front edge that is piled up - Pat did that and buried my first row of strawberries - but didn't complain - I will rescue them next time I am up there!)

And the nearest bed is 28ft by about 50ft. And the rhubarb, and other fruit bed which you can't see which is 25ft x 8ft. All with my little lady spade - it was hard work I can tell you. I wanted to put the onions and shallots in but the soil is too wet.





Here is a picture showing the bird scaring canes in action - you can see the broad beans in the foreground that got pecked and those further back that I protected with cloches.




Here is the posh compost bin on Mike’s plot next to mine. Now that it has been rained on, I see that it is made out of the top and end panels of a lovely old bed – nice isn’t it compared to mine……………………




In my defence – size matters in this case and I had to use what was available to me and which was physically possible for me to make! The wind was truly gale force up there and had almost flattened my big bin so I made some hasty repairs.

I also picked a huge sack of broccolli leaves for the chooks, and a January King cabbage for us, and a row of leeks too! There are still some healthy parsnips left - two rows, spread out though, about 25 roots? And the broccolli plants are just sprouting - yipee - I am so thrilled and I have 2 lovely great romanesco heads to pick too, and they all look so healthy - my friends remarked upon that last week when they visited. They flipping well should be shouldn't they - all the hours I have spent fighting off all the pests!


We spent two freezing hours up there in all, and I was glad that I had an organic beef casserole in the oven cooking gently and all the home grown frozen veggie were now defrosted in the steamer. So whilst that was doing we had time for a quick shower, and relaxed.

Not for long though – a phone call from my friend needing my manuals for some of my machines he was servicing, meant a hunt around the house and a return trip up the allotment to get the rest from my shed.

It was even colder up there this afternoon, as the sun had gone in. You should have seen me, dressed once more in my ‘lady’ clothes, but wearing my gardening clogs to walk up the tracks to get to my allotment. I met Geoff on the way back, and he looked a bit bemused until I explained! My shoes were in the car, as we had to drop the books off at the village shop so my T (my friends daughter) could take them home. She ferries things back and forth between her mother and father and me.

I looked for some almost out of date cheap cream and there was none, but apparently there is some in the freezer ‘with my name on it’ so I shall be heading back again on Monday to get it. I also got a small animal box, a nice plastic one that I can use for flower pots and T also gave me a pile of bigger trays. She had a pile of plastic sacks that came back to me from her mum (the ones that went filled with chrysanthemums,) and three rabbits in her boot too if I wanted them.

Have you known me to say ‘no’? She obviously has Pat down to a ‘T’, as she mimicked exactly his reaction when he saw us laden with these black trays and opened his boot. And when I re-appeared with the rabbits – it was word for word what ‘T’ had said – which made me laugh.

I think that I shall turn these into rabbit sausages. I have put a posting on a forum for a recipe.




These were humanely trapped and dispatched by the way.