I feel now that I have discovered my destiny in life. I'm going all out to be a party monster and stretch our occasional weekend gatherings into an all year round rolling party. Our latest event kicked off with the first guests arriving on 2nd October and the last ones leaving on the 11th. With the extra labour on site, and Dave wanting to learn about hedge laying, we knocked out another 25m of hedging. Although it was a smaller event than normal, we peaked on Saturday night with 27 people helping to consume chicken and duck paella. My new recipe went well but still needs a small amount of tweaking to reach the same brilliance of the sea food version.
We had a couple of a deaths over the weekend, one suicide by a young chick who decided to swim with the ducks and one brutal murder of a toad. Lucy had put her welly on and wandered around for 10 minutes before deciding there was something in her boot. On removing her boot and screaming like a girl as the dead toad landed on the floor in front of her she exclaimed "I thought it was a plum". Now if you had a plum in your boot, would you wander around for a while before dealing with it?
We managed 2 games of softball for the weekend, a new record I believe. Next time we might see if we can get down to 1. We also invented a new game of softball using a frizbee which was excellent and far more demanding on the players.
The usual night hikes took place and we managed not to lose anyone. We also christened the new tarmac at the top of the hill, lying down for half an hour and star gazing. Big kirsty, not to be mistaken with little Kirsty, also christened the new tarmac but that's a whole different story.
Jane and I loosened the reins for this event allowing others to do the cooking. We were honoured with Dave and Kirstys crispy duck starter, beef wellington followed by chocolate orange pudding, Russels chicken pie and chilli, Lucys array of apple based puddings right up to her toffee apples at which she tried dipping her finger in the toffee rather than the apple, finishing off with Sues upside down cakes on numerous occasions. All in all a great and filling feast.
I can only apologise for the long delay between blogs. Due to a miner glitch and potentially a dead laptop, we were off line for a little while. Fortunately we managed to revive the beast from the dark side and have now backed up 4 years of photos that we thought we may have lost.
Anyhow, since my last post, not a lot has gone on here as I decended into post party depression. I've brewed up 40 pints of dark ale that will be ready to drink in a few weeks and I have also harvested and pressed all the grapes which has left us with 15 litres of juice fermenting away in the kitchen at the moment.
My mum, Hollie and Adam have come over to celebrate my birthday with me and, as always, good fun has been had all round.
The goats are due to leave us soon, just waiting for their new owner to finish the fencing and then there'll be 5 less mouths to feed this winter. We will still have the Billy but he will be officially retired as a baby producing maniac and will spend his days playing with the donkey and stinking out the valley.
My olives have started to change colour but I think the weather may have chilled too much for them to ripen out properley this year. Hopefully next years crop will be more successful. We have a few more apples to harvest and the kiwi fruit and that will then be the end of our season for 2010 and work can then start prepping the ground for 2011.
