Wednesday 26 February 2014

A Warmer Wednesday

Sunshine again and without the strong wind it felt much warmer.
But the front flower garden is STILL to sticky to weed easily, I thought I'd start at the other end hoping that perhaps it had dried out better, but no, each weed still coming out attached to a bit clod of wet soil. I did about 20 minutes , sometime I'll get to the end.
Vegetable curry sorted for dinner, with home made onion bhajis - YUM
A box of kindling chopped.
Letter to penfriend finished.
Him Outside has finally got to the end of the hedge cutting at our neighbours, and has had the fun of a bonfire to burn the prunings, so that's another job done.

The Suffolk Smallholders Society March Newsletter arrived this morning. Someone we know has some Boer ( meat breed)/ Dairy cross-breed goats for sale = £180 each !!  Not really the best for milking although we know these people invested a lot of money building a proper diary and getting through all the rules and regulations needed to sell milk. They've now found that milking is a bit of a tie and are giving up after  6 years.
A few weeks ago I was debating going back to goat keeping and I would only consider "proper" milking goats never the silly pygmy goats that are kept for pets. But you can see that cost wise it would be extremely foolish. A good milking goat would be about £200, you can't keep one on its own so either another full grown goat or a younger one needed as well, so between £100 and £200. Then food per month say 2 bags at roughly £10 each. Then hay which we produce ourselves but each bale used here is one less to sell so £2.50 a bale with 2 needed a month. Then there are vet/health costs, regulation compliance costs( ear tags etc) and breeding costs ( no mating = no milk).

Our milk expenditure per month? Less than £15. Conclusion - we would be nuts to keep goats again!

Driving home from our trip out on Sunday we saw Daffodils  in some sheltered gardens, it will still be weeks before they are ready to sell here but we have got primroses by the Horse Chestnut tree.


Welcome to Ann James and Lindjemp in the google friends pictures, hope you enjoy reading about our quiet life here.

Back tomorrow, rushing towards the end of the month.


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