Frugal Friday - free entertainment!

Give your ducklings their first bath  lol  They loved it - this is the tiny one,Clive, getting warmed up afterwards

Half a pig................

...........   is better than no pig!  I had half of a wid boar pig delivered on Wednesday - this is what it looks like in the box: All the joints are neatly labelled, so I can see eactly what's what; the only bits I didn't get were the head, trotters and liver, as the box was a bit smaller than my friend thought. No matter, he can put them in with the next one.  I'm cooking leg of pork for tonight (not being a creature of habit, will make a welcome change from the Friday curry), and have kept out the boned and skinned loin to make some bacon, and a shoulder joint to make up into sausagemeat - going to be busy in a bit!  My friend is a farmer in Wales, I've been to his farm and seen his standards, etc, met his pigs and tasted the meat - it really is the way to buy meat if you have the cash up front and the room to store it. I'm well off for good meat now, with quite q bit of the Ayrshire beef left, and only one joint of the half mutton used. Freezers are good and full :) I saly lost another wee chicken overnight, so they have been brought back indoors; I am getting the octagonal greenhouse ready for them though - plenty of room, and a thick metal frame on thick concrete, will be closely inspected for them and made sure it's secure. Losing any anial is hard, but hwen you've watched the wee scrap of feather hatching, they really do become part of you. Today will hopefully be the first swim for the ducklings later too - that should be a load of wet fun, am sure they will love it! I hurt my arm badly on Monday, knocking it hard just below the elbow - it soon swoll up like a ballon and I got  nice bruise too; was out of actio all week really - no lifting, leaning, no knitting even as Icouldn;t hold the needles for long enough. Am on the mend now though, but I have a lot to catch up on - amazing what you realise you get through when you see it not done! I've a load of food stuff to catch up on and tidying and cleaning the kitchen, hopefully all before Sunday and the start of a new week. I shall put the kettle on first though :) Have a good weekend everyone

Devastated

One of my wee Scots Dumpy chickens was killed  today - evidence looks like a cat got into the house somehow. Am down to 6 now. It's a chance you take on keeping poultry, I know, but when you watch them hatch on your dining room table and take care of them from little feathered scraps to good strong and healthy 6 week old chickens it hurts. There's a bit more to the story that I'm not going to divulge here, suffice to say that from now on I will stand my ground and trust my instincts - every time. Hardest lesson to learn this time, but this was the final straw.

Tablecloth imminent!

I couldn't resist this lovely cheerful fabric, so it's destined to soon become a tablecloth, and because I'm fairly sure I bought too much, I hope to get some matching napkins too :)

Sunday afternoon tea

It's been a long time since I did something like this for myself, so with a quiet and almost empty house this afternoon I did! Made a big mug of tea to go with  it, and thoroughly enjoyed it all :)