Phew, Hot Work and Tiring

The last couple of days have been half spent trying to get first of the year's crop of lucerne lifted from the field, it's an awful job lifting and stacking it, dirty, hot and sweaty. Yesterday afternoon we managed almost 3 hours and got a third of the way across our designated patch. Today we went at 8.30am and worked until noon before deciding it was simply too hot to be standing in the middle of an open field in full sun while the temperature climbed to over 30 degrees C.

Tomorrow we'll have to get it finished and transported back home before the predicted storms appear over the weekend, plus another 1000sqm's of lucerne that has been cut this morning will need turned first thing tomorrow and then moved into the barn at tea time. So all in all a busy time, but it needs to be done otherwise we'd have to pay extortionate prices later in the year to buy winter animal feed in. No rest for the wicked as they say, and once it's done there's only 4-8 weeks until the next cut so we'll have to go through it all again!

Meanwhile in the garden my polish clematis has flowered and looks stunning, the beans I planted a week or so ago are coming through nicely and the okra is starting to sprout too. The cabbage seedlings seem to be doubling in size every day but my lettuces are starting to bolt and go to seed - I'd like to save seeds from one of the lollo rosso's so will leave a couple and let nature take it's course. The radishes are almost done now, I've lost the onions amongst the weeds so really need to tidy up that area and all of the squash plants seem to be doing well. The sunflowers are flying through now and getting taller each day, I'm hoping some of the seeds I saved last year are the variety I grew last year that you can see in the photo below.

Well that's it for today, past my bedtime as I need to be up early and off to sort out more lucerne, so I'll be giving the weekly market a miss tomorrow and getting on with things.

My First Award

Michael Rivera, fellow blogger and author of  The Psyche of Mikey has kindly nominated me for my first ever bloggers award.

Along with the award comes a set of rules that I should follow. These are:

• Express gratitude to the blogger who bestowed the award unto you. (check)
• Display the picture on your blog proudly. (check)
• Be nice and provide a link to the person who gave it to you. (check)
• Tell up to six outrageous lies about yourself, and at least one outrageous truth, or switch it around and tell six outrageous truths and one outrageous lie.(hmmmm not sure about this one)
• Nominate seven creative writers who might be into doing this.(ok I can probably do that)
• Post links to the seven blogs you nominate and let the owners of those blogs know.(no probs)

So here goes, these are my lies or truths, you decide which is which! Admittedly I'm struggling to think of seven so let's see how many I can do.


I have never kissed a person without first at least knowing their name.

I am not addicted to the internet.

I was once a professional dominatrix.

I love flying in an aeroplane.

If I won the lottery I'd give it all away to worthy causes.

I'd never lie for my friends.

I love celery.

So now it's up to you to decide which are the lies and which could be truths. And I would like to nominate these others for the Creative Writer Blogger Award, here's hoping they will see it as the compliment it's meant to be :)

Adam, at No Going Back
Deb, at Carrots and Kids
Melissa, at Adventures in Free-Fall Parenting
Max, at Rural Idiocy?
Jenny, at Inky Paws
Mrs Icarus, at Hardup Hester's Stretching the Penny's Blog

So I've nominated 6 people and done my little bit for fun. Now I'm off to chill out in the garden for a while before the evenings chores need to be done.

Inactivity Makes Me Tired

This morning I was up early, dressed, topped up my caffeine system and got the horses out by 7am. On my final trip to the stable yard to put our donkey out to graze the rain started, and boy did it lash down for a few minutes or so. The kids are off school today as it's a national holiday, details of which can be found HERE

We had a lovely tea last night with fresh, home reared pork, Lollo Rosso lettuce and radishes from the garden formed part of the salad. I'm so looking forward to being able to step outside and pick peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers to say the least and also finding out what some of the mystery squash plants are! Now that the temperatures here have risen again their seems to be a few more poking through the soil (and muck heap).

I'm still finding interesting things in the garden to take photo's of and enjoying my time out with the camera. Hopefully my photography skills (or lack of them) are actually improving. It's something I've never really taken the time to explore until now. In years to come I'll have something to look back on and browse through the winter months. What do you get up to when the weather isn't great?

Summer is Official

Yesterday was the official start to summer here in Bulgaria, the locals will start shedding layers soon and I'll be spending my evenings watering the garden. Last night there was no need to water the garden as we had an almighty storm and loads of rain, but it's made everything seem fresher this morning.

My lovely clematis is about to start flowering and I've been looking forward to seeing the wonderful deep purple blooms for a while. I remember my mum trying to grow clematis in the UK and never having much luck, mine must be a hardier variety as it has managed to survive through our cold winter fantastically and is double the size it was last year.

Our fruit trees seem to be doing quite well so far, with plenty of small apples, pears and plums forming, although the peach trees aren't looking very good. Soon I'll have to stock up on sugar for my yearly jam sessions.

I'm also hoping to try my hand at making some more liqueur's as the sloe gin we made last year was out of this world.....I've found a recipe for walnut liqueur so hopefully will find the time to make some. Well that's my lunch break over so I best go find something to do for the afternoon, we may be having fresh pork for tea, which I'm looking forward to.

A Bad Day Gets Worse

There are times when I really feel like screaming here, frustration and anger are not a normal part of my daily life but every now and again something throws me over the edge. I'm a woman, I can be hormonal but for the best part am in control of myself. I make no excuses for having the odd off day and don't feel I need to.

Today has been an awful day........not only did I have hangover to contend with but the Beech Marten has been back overnight and slaughtered another turkey hen despite our efforts to try and stop it getting in, find out where it was getting in and staying awake until dawn in case we heard anything outside. A neighbour came round with a load of traps yesterday, and I've got to say that I hate them and won't have one used. They're barbaric and cruel, and even though I know we need to stop the critter killing any more of our birds I won't have the traps used.

We've made the decision to stop rearing turkeys and also cut down on the amount of chickens we currently have and calmly discussed which ones are staying and which ones need to go. A more secure turkey house has been made for the time being until the birds are dispatched humanely.

The kids have been playing happily in the garden, pigs cleaned out etc and we've had a mainly quiet day, until one of the kids found our cat Buster with his leg hanging off! This ensued immediate panic and screams of "Mum, Buster needs a vet NOW!" to be honest I though they were joking at first, out I run and it's true.....cold reality sets in and after picking the cat up I know he's got a huge infection by how hot he is, maggots in the wound, which isn't fresh, is very dehydrated and in a lot of pain, has lost a load of weight and is covered in ticks. We decide the best thing is to quickly and quietly put him out of his misery and although it's something I hate I know it has to be done. He's now buried in our garden and we will miss him lots. The kids are very upset but understand why we did what we had to do and I'm thankful that they're old enough to chat to calmly about it.......they still need a hug from their mum though.

So all in all we're having a crap day, to top matters off we're again in the midst of a huge thunderstorm, it's cold, raining and the chances of any of our first cut of lucerne being salvageable are slipping away fast. Sometimes life can be hard, but I'm sure days like this are sent to teach us something :(

A Bit of an Odd Day

The weather today has been better, still windy and cold but at least it's stayed dry. The horses and donkey have been doing a wonderful job of clearing the lovely, lush grass that is growing where my vegetables should be by now. And while bringing them in tonight I've noticed that the spring which appeared in the middle of the garden after the snow melted, has actually stopped flowing! Yeeha - maybe the garden will start to dry out properly now.

This time last year all of the tomatoes, peppers, chillies and many other vegetables were in the ground and doing ok, with the exception of potatoes and root veg which don't seem to do much here to be honest. I get so little crop from them that I haven't grown any this year.

Our egg hatching is not going to plan at all this year. I've had to remove 2 turkey hens from their eggs as they were long overdue and have a bantam hen that's been sitting on her clutch for far too long, unfortunately I can't reach to get her out of the way and take the eggs from her! Today, sadly, I found our oldest turkey hen dead, from the looks of her she'd been attacked by a Beech Marten Click HERE for more info on this animal. Two more of our bantam hens are also missing, presumed dead and probably taken by this polecat like predator. So now we're left with 2 bantam hens and 4 young cockerels from the 19 we were given late last year.

The piglets are no longer small and cute, they're big, boisterous, hilariously funny at times and still cute, although the kids would say differently. Charlotte their mum is in pig again and starting to put on weight rapidly. I've just been outside to do a late night check on everything and all I can hear is Charlotte snoring away contentedly! She's certainly not missing her babies now and is back in her old routine. It has been amazing keeping the pigs and piglets here and something I'm really glad we did. Hopefully the next litter will be just as satisfying and fun.

Well that's it for today, no philosophical rants, moans about rain or kids not behaving themselves. Not much gardening either.....but I enjoyed wandering around with the camera, taking pics of my everyday life and hoping that someone will appreciate the things that keep me happy, healthy and sane!

Garden 1 - Suzy 0

I have come across the phrase "The Gentle Art of Gardening" a few times and after heading outside this morning I can confirm there is absolutely nothing gentle going on in my garden. In fact some of the weeds are as aggressive as a rottweiler on steroids and the artistic side of me is most likely to be described as abstract.

This mornings foray into the garden lasted around 45 minutes, in which time I'd weeded my flower garden, attempted to weed the pumpkin/squash patch, looked at the garden shovel waiting patiently for me to use it again, shook my head, downed tools and plodged my sorry backside into the house for another coffee. I say plodged because the sheer weight of mud attached to my wellies meant I kind of shuffled, shifted and wobbled my way across the garden trying to miss the wettest parts and stay on  my feet.

The horses and donkey have been given day ticket passes to the top of my vegetable plot and are happily munching their way through the abundance of grass that has managed to grow there in the last 2 months - saves me getting the strimmer out and keeps them close to home in case the weather should worsen and I need to get them into the stables quickly.

Hubby is at home today and by the amount of machinery noise coming from the workshop he's busy with a project......frequent coffee top ups will be appreciated by him I'm sure as it's a little chilly today although I draw the line at lighting the wood burner, it is, after all May and the sunshine will be back where it belongs sometime in the near future :)