For the last year the hens have been working hard laying an average five or six eggs a week each. The surplus are in great demand from friends and neighbours which proves useful as it helps to cover the cost of the organic feed. We have just increased our flock to 6 with 3 new hens, after some initial squabbling all are doing well. The 15 Cornish Giant chicks we hatched in Feb are now in the freezer ,weights ranging between 86- 8 lbs so much improved on last year.

The bees have now arrived after months of waiting we have two nucleus of been ( about 6-10 k in each hive) they spent most of today making orientating flights and late this pm started making foraging flights,so we are hoping we may have some honey in the late summer,if the bees can spare it. Cheese making is on hold until the autumn as it is too hot in the summer to mature it in the workshop. Sausage making is going well the beef ale and herb and beef and garlic are great. Mussel collecting will commence again in September as you should only collect them if there is an R in the month. Elderflower champagne is really worth making but very difficult to keep in the bottle, lively on opening too! We dug up the front garden this year and planted potatoes which have done really well, we are just eating the first earlies planted in mid February. In May we went fishing for mackerel early morning on a very high tide and landed 62lbs of fish, we have smoked them, made roll mops and frozen the rest which we will turn into fish cakes, pasties and curry which if somewhat unusual are wonderful. We are still getting to grips with fishing from the boat, trying to find the right place to fish has proved elusive.

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