In years gone by, February used to be the gloomiest month, hard to work through.  Last year, and the year before, the spring drought gave us bright and dry beginnings to the cycle of the year  . . . . .  Not this year.  It's all grey and dreary.  The brightest spot is the arrival of all those lovely new lambs!



 This is the first one.  And even with the lambs, there is a
major problem. They were supposed to be born from mid-
April (according to the date I put the ewes with the rams) - and their mid-February arrival tells me that the ewes have been impregnated by one of their 2012 sons, whose rubber band evidently didn't do the work I expected of it. So my beautiful and friendly (except when I have a feed bucket in my hand) Hebridean rams have had a dull and pointless winter. And instead of more 1/2-primitive sheep for next year, I have sheep that are still 3/4 Ryeland.

Well  . . . . .  next year I will do better; like check the ram lambs for untoward lumps at the end of July  . . . . .

The pig saga ended well though.  The picture here shows the sides of bacon and one of the hams salting on the draining boards in the pantry.  (I thought I wouldn't harrow you with pictures of the in-between stages). The blue bag in the sink is the bulk organic sea salt.  All the rest of the pigmeat is in the freezer. It seems a lot; but more than average is fat (good for cooking with, but it doesn't make a meal), and it is so delicious that it's hard to save enough of a joint for more than one day's cold dinner.

Little Mill Farm could support a large family, or even two or three smaller ones. (By support, I mean feed well year-round, and give most of the inhabitants a healthy productive open-air life.)  I'd like to think that's how it will end up, after my time here.  Meanwhile, I try to keep the options open for that next stage; and it's hard work for one person on her own. If you have ambitions to live like that, you could do worse than learn how, here!