life's little ironies

The Royal Vet College Year of 1986 25 year reunion was held this year in Nottingham- that would have been very handy 5 years ago but surprisingly I did not manage to attend. However I now have the Year Book with updates on what my fellow graduates are doing which makes interesting reading. One vet has undergone open heart surgery after contracting MRSA endocarditis secondary to a venomous snake bite. One may expect this risk if working in the Amazon or Outback Australia, but it seems rather unfortunate that the reptile incident happened in deepest Surrey.

Signs of spring are here now after a cold winter, the first sign being the birth of the next batch of lambs. Last year we had 2 lots of twins but Clarrie, Lilian & Peggy have concluded that twins are way too much effort and producing a single lamb is sufficient to book them another year at the Protea Country Resort so to date we have had 3 single lambs with only Woolly left to drop ( all male of course- we can sell the females for a good price so the tally over last 2 seasons 8 males and 1 ewe lamb ).

The pleasure of sitting down to a meal consisting of only food produced from the property leaves a warm fuzzy glow, with all the food miles, food provenance and flavour boxes ticked. Throw in a couple of bottles of wine from the vineyard next door and local cheeses and the 'Good Life' is complete.

From 2011-08-26

Kevin & Kylie the ducks remain romantically involved, but have left the maternal bantam hens to do the hard yards when it comes to child-rearing. We now have a Japanese bantam who is the proud ( albeit rather confused ) mother of 1 chick and 3 ducklings.

From 2011-08-26

Yesterday Ness let the family unit out to stretch their legs and Mum tried to teach the kids how to scratch in the soil and forage for insects. This resulted in the ducklings shovelling up soil in their little beaks until they glued them together, all very bewildering.

We decided that we may have to teach them the rudimentary art of swimming. Now we know where the expression 'ducks to water' comes from. The bantam chick chose to pass on basic water survival lessons.

As the ducks are a meat bird I feel the choice of a roasting pan as their starter pool was a little unkind.

From 2011-08-26

From 2011-08-26

Still very busy with the accommodation side of things. we have 8 children staying this weekend ( why did we take that booking?) so all creatures safely locked away as the feral mob tear through the place like wrecking machines. Must remember to take more bookings by the over 50's who are content to potter about and talk about vegetables.