At 10.00 am today I had 10,000 hits - wow thanks everybody - weird huh at 10 am.

Eggs - Total to date: 270 - Day 119

KoKKo 90 (86grms) 29.11.2005 Personal best weight
Adelaide 90 (80grms) 26.02.2006 Personal best weight
Ginger 90 (78grms) 22.2.2006 Personal best weight

Today we have frost on frost on frost. Each day I think that the ground is as hard as I have known it - but we might even have permafrost (joking, it just feels that way)

Very slippery and dodgy going out to feed the chooks. I haven't been able to rake their enclosure for a few days now as it has been frozen - so it is pitted with deep frozen craters and balancing a large bowl of warm water and a big double heavy feeder of warm layers mash whilst negotiating the holes was rather fun!

My pork order from the rare breed farmer came last night, some had gone off to be frozen, and half a pig gone to be smoked, so I will have more to come in a couple of weeks time or so. But I did get 4kg of minced pork for sausages amongst the other things.

So last night I made pork burgers - instead of sausages. I made 38 burgers, 9 different seasoning and spice mixes.

In hindsight, in fact I wish I had foresight some times, as I make things difficult for myself. What I really should have done was make just a couple of batches using only 2 spice mixes. Then I could have whizzed through them in no time. Ditto when I did the sausages the other day.. But you learn your back aches don't you!

My tiny kitchen looked like a production line. Pat wrote on all the bags, kept me supplied with the bowls I had the mixed mince pork in so that I could add the spices etc and then weigh and make and pack them. Then he added the bag twists and did all the washing up.

It only took us an hour (plus washing up time), and I was extremely well organised, but having spent most of the day on my feet baking it seemed like a lot longer.

I left them overnight in the cold conservatory to bloom, and when I opened the door this morning they smelt divine. Even though they were packed 2 to a bag, and tied up with a twist tie, they still smelt wonderful.

Popped in the freezer now, but they might have frozen quicker on our lawn! (Joke)

So next time - I will have to judge it better and just do one or two mixes.

It was nice to meet the farmer when he delivered them, and he explained all about his farm and his animals etc. and I am looking forward to trying his beef in a month or so’s time when it is ready. It was great to hear how they live, how his two little children go with him to feed the bulls, and the pigs and chickens, The time that he spends with them, and all his plans.

We are having a couple of burgers today for lunch – the taste test! I know that the spices mixtures are lovely as I have used them in sausage making.

Pat is still snuggled up asleep in bed, despite falling asleep before me - men always can sleep for England can't they, I am so jealous!

Not sure what today has in store - will just see how it pans out. No outside work that's for sure. Except if the pen defrosts then I will be out with a rake - but the chooks soon put it back to how they want it in a short while!

Will be back later to update.

One egg so far this morning – newly laid and warm – just what I needed in my cold hands.

I am off to the beekeeper today to get some more beeswax. I mentioned it on a forum I am a member of, and it is something you can't often get easily or at a reasonable price.

When I got some for me, is was a fraction of the price that you can buy it off the internet - so thought I would share my good fortune by letting some of the 'girls' that make soap and creams and lotions and polish benefit from it.

So if it is not too slippery out and about I will take a stroll around part of the village and maybe up to my allotment.

Well it is 4.30pm and I never did get to the allotment! As usual I got side tracked.

I made a couple of loaves, one large and one small, with a new recipe which is rather tasty, and I threw in a couple of big handfuls of sesame and sunflower seeds - not in the recipe, but just because I fancied doing it.

I have a surplus of eggs, so as we finished up the lemon curd, I made some lime and lemon curd - recipe in the RC Cookbook - now there's a surprise. It is the same as the lemon curd recipe I used before but you just use one lemon and two limes instead of all lemons.

I actually like the zing that the limes give it - makes is taste sort of - well hard to explain. Not so sweet? Just different. Refreshing, tangy. Why not make some and see for yourself.

The Gloucestshire Old Spot pork that we got - well, you should have tasted it. We had a couple of those pork burgers for lunch. The texture was great, and so too the flavour. Nothing greasy or fatty about them, although there was fat in the mincemeat - which you need, but was not runny or anything - not of that splattering about then you cook them.

I can highly recommend them.

I had fun and games trying to cut up a block of bees wax to share with some forum friends. (This is where Sandie or someone leaves me a comment telling how to do it for next time!). I broke my cheese cutter, used three knives and they got stuck so Pat had to pull them out of the block, and they had beeswax all over them, and he had a real job trying to get it off.

I spent ages surfing the net looking up how to do it, and you are supposed to melt it in a double boiler!! it was about the length of a brick so couldn't get it in a bowl the longest way melt it - it would have taken from here to next week! Still it was a good exercise, and a learning curve.

I am feeling pretty worn out, as I have yet again spent most of the day on my feet. Fine if you are walking in proper boots, but not so good otherwise.

The girls spent so much sun bathing in their polytunnel of a run this morning that they didn't even come out when I closed the garage door.

They were laying stretched out, lying on their sides, legs crossed over eyes closed, half closed or lazily half and half - looking like a picture of sheer bliss soaking up the rays in happy dozy state and nothing or no one was going to move them. So I tiptoed out and left them too it. I think that is the first time they have been like that - they usually rush up to see what I am doing or what I have got.

After our lunch and their siesta, they were full of energy so I gave them their treat of the cabbage cage of leaves. I want to go up the allotment - hopefully tomorrow to see if the purple sprouting broccoli is ready for picking, and to get them some new leaves and some chick weed if any is growing.

I gave their run a rake over, but just below the surface it was a frozen tundra of ice crytals, frost or snow. But they jumped at the rake as usual putting their lives at risk in an attempt to be the first at any insects of titbits the raked turned up.

Snow flurries this afternoon, but I think that it will not settle.

Off for a sit down and a read - looking to something different for Sunday lunch so will have a browse in my new cookbook and see if anything inspires me.

At the minute the only thing that will do that is a doze in front of the fire, but I'll not sleep tonight if I do.