Hello Rain

Well finally we had a little rain last night and this morning. Not enough to do any damage thankfully but enough to lay the dust, soak into the ground and hopefully start the journey towards some grass growing ready to put the boys and girls in the right frame of mind and condition for some lamb making. As you can see from the picture the market was packed at 8.30am. 
We are usually quite busy and this week was no exception. Gavin has been madly moving sheep around the fields to try and break the fly cycle that seems to have been bothering us at the house this year. I had thought that with such a dry summer the flies would be less enthusiastic, but it seems to me that they hang around the house and water troughs more, as I suppose that is where they can find food and water since it is so scarce further into the forests due, of course, to the dry conditions. Need to have more chickens probably to do the cleaning up necessary to eliminate the fly egg production. However if I said that out loud it would mean Old McDonald (alias, Gavin) would have more excuses/reasons to purchase more animals.

Designed a new sausage this week. Hungarian flavours so it lends itself to a cassoulet or lentil based stew neither of which I had time to make on returning from the market. So here is a quick version to serve with rice. Number 3 thought it was delicious.
1/ Brown your sausages only use oil if you really need to. Remove from pan.
2/ Chop an onion and a green pepper fry them in the oil left by the sausages. Add a tin of tomatoes and half a can of water and a teaspoonish of thyme. Put the sausages back in the pan either whole or chopped. Put a lid on simmer for 20ish minutes. Get the water ready for the rice.
3/ Chop some spinach/swiss chard or something similar put on top of sausage mixture replace lid. Cook the rice.
4/ Serve and eat.
Note: Do not add extra spice, salt or pepper until the end after checking, and only if you really need it ;)...... just trying to look after your health folks.

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Lunch at the butchery on Thursday. Yummy bacon butty.

And playing with Border Collie puppies on Monday, not ours I hasten to add. It's a tough life but hey someone has to do it.
See you all soon
​Helen