So what happened to 2010?

Well last time I looked it was around the beginning of October, we were busy fattening our two pigs, there were 23 geese on the paddock along with 5 of Keith's lambs and the hockey girls were settled and producing 28 fresh eggs every week.
Suddenly Christmas and Hogmanay are past and I am sitting opposite Linda on the Stena HSS ferry from Belfast to Stranraer as we begin 10 days of family visits in the UK before we head off for 7 weeks in Thailand and Laos.
Raising the pigs was definitely one of my successes for the year. By the time they went to the butcher at the beginning of November they had grown from 20-25 kg each to 85-90kg. As a result we ended up with nearly 120kg of meat in various forms (including 17kg of sausages) and 18 kg of Black pudding. Too much for our new freezer but thankfully our landlord took nearly 30 kg and paid a generous price for it – fair play to ye, Eugene! The meat has been very tasty with just the right layer of very sweet fat – not good for the cholesterol level but too good to avoid. Not sure if we will have pigs again next year – we will still be eating Billy and Bruce for most of the year – but it would be fun to try again.
The large flock of geese is definitely not to be repeated -too much effort and very little return – by Christmas time they were only selling for about 70% of their cost. They did reach a good weight – around 4.5kg when oven ready – and tasted really good but next time I think I would only raise a couple for ourselves.
The Hockey Girls were a great success for Linda - lost track of the number of eggs over the 6 months but there were never less than 24 per week. They were the only survivors as we packed up to leave – they are on their holidays too staying with Keith in a brand new “Celtic Tiger” henhouse – I may return to this later.
We had a great Christmas with friends visiting from the UK – more on this later too – it was so good to be able to share so much of our own produce with them!
So we packed up everything at Moyhill over the last weekend and are off on our travels again – sorry to all those regular readers who have commented on my indolence – there are lots of stories to tell so I will try to do better!!