potbellied arrivals

here they are, sunbathing in the January sun - before the winter we were promised for today. Couldn't get any nearer to them, they are a bit suspicious of me for some reason...

of goats and boxes

... yes, they are grazing, it does not look like January, does it...
We do hope for 4 (goat)kids... it doesn't show really, they have big bellies to start with. And they are not mature and wise… Specially clover, mad as a hatter if you ask me.
"New" house is getting comfy, now we have to get "the other" ready for kind US visitor who for 6+ weeks will contribute to its being kept dry... so we better get cleaning and making it hospitable - after taking quite a lot of stuff to the "new" abode... We are doing up (well, ok, Alan is) some old bedding-boxes we found, one of them is already in the bedroom. Also, village english language course with english tea get-togethers start in february in the library - no I won't get rich, only nominal fees are paid for heating and stationary. Let's hope it'll add colour to village life and will make more mixing for the dutch/english/german new-comers. (Eva)
ps!! We are expecting our own and some loaned vietnamese potbellied piglets.
We are considering the traditional Hungarian mangalica, too.

2007 in earnest... (Alan for a change)

This being a New year I thought I'd break with tradition and actually write something in this blog. For those of you interested there will be a number of things I'll try and do through the year. Apart from growing the usual, (and hopefully as plentiful vegetables as last year), I should be raising a couple of Vietnamese pot bellied pigs. You can't beat sweet and sour pork. As well as this we'll be getting some replacement chickens to make up for the ones that we ate and the few the dogs hunted down. There will be new dog control systems this year involving keeping chickens and dogs strictly apart unless our friend Lois comes again at which point the dogs behave much better, (must be us at fault).
I will be starting a very small scale fish breeding system with Carp instead of the Tilapia that I have worked with before. As part of this I will be looking into building a Stirling solar powered water pump. There's also going to be at least one solar shower and I'm going to look into building a grey water recycling set up. We have an extra field this year so I will be growing Maize Sunflowers and Lucerne (clover), as well as extending the grazing area.
The house renovation is nearing completion and we hope to be able to rent one of the houses out to holiday makers. I've put an advert on one of theses holiday web sites but its hard to know how to reach the right people, basically people who are interested in organic growing etc. and being in a very rural setting.
I'm going to try and make this a habit as it helps when things seem too much to be able to look back and see how much you have achieved.