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.

Goat tales + who had the last laugh me or Tesco?

After mentioning that I'm thinking about keeping goats again there were lots of comments. Dreamer and Stacey W want me to keep goats so they can read about them on the blog.
That would be an expensive way of finding something to write about!
Gill will be jealous and might stop reading! and Kev asked why we gave up keeping them.

There were several reasons. We were thinking about moving to Wales, our neighbour who milked for us when we were on holiday had started to get arthritis in her hands and with the children moved out we didn't need as much milk. The first person who planned to buy our goats then backed out, we gave up the moving plan when we searched for a house and found that everyone selling was English, moving back to England, had bought when prices were high, and wanted daft amounts for their houses,  and then to cap it all I wasn't well for a while. By the time I was better and the house move was cancelled a new enthusiastic buyer had appeared on the scene. So we sold the girls and didn't regret it. Goats are a real tie, it's easy to ask someone to feed chickens and collect eggs but not so simple to find a goat milker. Even a long day out needed someone to come and check them.
You can't keep one goat on it's own and they need mating at least every other year to keep producing milk. That's not easy now as there are all sorts of movement restrictions.
( Only totally insane people keep a Billy goat !!)
But they are such gorgeous animals to keep, loads of character and it's lovely having fresh milk everyday without needing to go the the shop. The smallholding just doesn't seem right without them.
Another BUT - The price of a good milking goat is now around £200! They were around £50 for years and when you want to buy goats it's always hard to find any for sale.

Here are a couple of photos of the goats we had at various times - can you see why I loved them!

On the plus side - I kept my stainless steel milking bucket!
So we shall think about it. Or I will think about it and let Him Outside know what I decide!

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And now a question   --  Who had the last laugh me or Tesco?

Last week I did my main monthly shopping at Tesco and at the till I was given a £4 off £30 spend ( to use before tomorrow) and a £2.56 voucher because my shopping was more expensive than elsewhere, I also had several through-the-post vouchers for things I buy.
Now today I needed to shop for a few things, milk, celery, fruit and  three  things missed off the list last week. That would probably have come to about £10. So my dilemma was :-
 1. Do I just get what I need and not use the vouchers
2. Or do I spend extra on some store cupboard stuff, make the most of the voucher which is after all more than10% off.
Have I got £30 pounds available - YES

So YES I did use the vouchers and I counted up as I went round and got £32.24 of things I needed today and things for the store cupboard for £24.18p.

So did I win by saving  £8 on food or did they win by making me spend more than I would have done today?