Birds, birds, birds and bread.

It's all about the birds at the moment. Last night, as we were literally walking out the door to go to Joy and Robin's Christmas dinner and drinks, we found that Macky mother duck had hatched 4 of her eggs and the little ducklings (who look suspiciously un-peking) following her around cheeping frantically.

So, since her last effort at raising ducklings was so dismal, we had to catch her and the young uns and put them into the wood basket until we came home and could set up an enclosure in the aviary so she can't drag her babies all over the farm. She had another 9 eggs in the nest and we yoinked them out and now Doris is happily taking care of them in the chicken coop. It is a bit ridiculous though because the eggs are enormous for such a little chicken to be sitting on.

Also there are lots of baby birds up in the trees. They are starting their flying lessons at the moment. A while ago there was a nest in the horse cabinet up in the sheds....

They have since feathered up and spread their wings. They're still there but not for long, I think.

Rex, the pheasant, has taken a particular liking to Blanche, the grey chicken. He may think that she is a pheasant as well and keeps trying to woo her. She is unimpressed by his advances....

But since then Rex has somehow lost all his tail feathers (they look very pretty above our blackboard) so is even less impressive!

Marty has taken Mike's bread making to heart and has been baking sourdough regularly....

We haven't yet made anymore for the market because our weekends have been pretty jam-packed recently. We went to the Sanctuary Sounds Music Festival last weekend and tended the bar for a few hours at the end. It was a good night with a lot of people there and good bands from all over the place. But by Sunday morning we were in no mood to be in the kitchen making bread seeing as we hadn't had much sleep and decided to go to Hastings to the Warehouse to buy clothes at 8.30am before heading to the market.

This weekend I have been preparing for my first horse show in 12 years. Dino has been amazingly well behaved in the last few weeks so I'm hoping for it to continue until at least tomorrow. It's a really low key Western Have-A-Go day up in Flaxmere but I'm nervous nonetheless. It's mainly games and obstacle courses etc in a big arena. Hopefully I'll get some photos of us up there. We went on a big ride today with Alison and Sally up in Waipawa. We went along the river through the trees and came back through the river for a cool down and a splash (Dino loves the water... sometimes too much so and I think he's going to sit down in it!). I had been telling Alison about what a nightmare he can be sometimes and she doesn't believe me now seeing as he was so good. I am so proud of him! But we'll see how it goes tomorrow!

Anyway, almost dinner time but will post pics of tomorrow.

Ciao!

K :)