An Overdue Update – What’s Been Going On at Nantymeillion?

Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. After I promised faithfully to blog more I promptly dropped off the face of the Internet. Partly this is due to connection problems at the Meddwl Coed house which have since been resolved, and partly because I’ve been just too darn tired with all the fresh air and exercise! So, what’s been going on with us?

Ed is settling in well, and he will be joined by some more hairy tractors in the very near future – stay tuned for reports on Ed’s friends. He’s been working hard and making friends with the more glamorous horses on the farm next door, and this morning he hauled a tree we had felled across three fields. He’s making life a lot easier despite his propensity for playfully shoving people (and by people I mean me) into the nearest ditch…

We also have a couple of new arrivals, from the nearby town of Salem. Their names are Amy and Anya.

Amy and Anya (they look interchangeable on the photos but Amy has stripey wing flashes and Anya has blue ones) are sisters. They are Khaki Campbell / Cayuga hybrids and they will hopefully be providing us with eggs in a few weeks. They are already making short work of some of the slugs. They make a lovely little singing noise, and I’m hoping to get some video of them, but they’re a little bit shy at the moment.

It doesn’t help that Charley has decided that his job is to put the ducks to bed. Even if it’s 10am and they’ve only just got up. Poor ducks 😦 And Lyra has a dislocated toe and is spending a lot of time confined to the caravan.

Veg beds are proceeding well, it looks like we’ve started a small graveyard in which to bury the early settlers 😉 We’ve had a few strawberries and some creature has been eating the leaves of my second early potatoes, so we’ve had to pull up some of those earlier than planned, which is frustrating. It’s interesting that the second earlies have been firmly munched, while the first earlies, which are a different variety, haven’t been touched. Something to bear in mind for next year!

The weather has been glorious and sometimes it’s nice just to kick back with a cup of tea and watch the kites wheeling low over the field. What we’re doing is somewhere between farming and gardening, leaving room for nature, like this little fearless little chap we found rootling along near the mint the other day…