Cake Man, Cow whisperer and is it half way through the year already?!!!*

I cannot believe it is half way through the year already! The only saving grace is that everything else seems to be behind on its shedule as well, so I don’t feel quite so bad! The grass has been slow in growing, the peahen hasn’t hatched her chicks yet, the carrots are through….but only just!

Since getting back from Australia, it has been hectic – like one of those anxiety dreams where you are on stage and forget the lines (am I the only one who has those??!) Today I’ve decided to stop, take stock, and update the blog.

Our chickens have been laying wonderfully well, and this has had the knock on effect that Keith has developed an alter ego – cake man! He’ll come in at 11pm and start a baking frenzy….the result being we’ve been extremely well fed with treats and delights for the last few months.

So it was Jess’s Birthday this last weekend, and Keith baked his traditional birthday cake for Jess, but the first one was a bit of a disaster….so we came up with a plan to play a prank…….we had the prank birthday cake ( a kind of strawberry shaped cake which looked pretty ropey) and a star studded proper cake with all the trimmings! Here’s what happened….

All the calves have been born now, and the cows, calves and the new bull are out the hill enjoying their summer grazing on heather and hill grass. Because the farm isn’t yet fenced, we’ve had to herd the cows a lot! But they’re starting to understand where they are meant to be!

As well as being cake man, Keith is amazing with the cows……He just has to look at them, and they seem to know what it is he wants them to do! I can run around like an idiot, beg them, try to reason with them…..but I just ain’t no cow whisperer! We’ve been busy this last month planting all the veg out too – 300kg of seed potatoes and 250,000 carrot seeds……they’re all doing well, and I can’t wait until harvest time! It’s our first producers market in Portree this week on Thursday – we’ll be selling venison and pork. We’ve highland beef to process next week, and I’ll be posting our highland beef boxes back online on the Skye Food Company website towards the end of next week.

Well, after a brief pause, I’d better get back to it! Happy midsummer all 😉