Posts have been rather few and far between recently, not because we have been too busy sipping G and Ts on the manicured lawns of Casa Azul but simply because we have been too busy doing other things. One of them, for me was going back to the UK for a couple of weeks. This meant Jackie had to shoulder the burden at home on her own. And now I’m back, my list of things to do has grown exponentially.

So what’s been happening? Well after the wettest winter on record, we’ve had no rain at all in April. This has meant the watering system had to be dusted off, repaired and put back in action. We seem to have bought more trees and shrubs over winter so this means even more watering. The previous rain and the present sun has meant the grass has also taken off, which of course means strim, strim, strim.

Most of the fruit blossom has come and gone but I’m not sure how much fruit we will get. The plum blossom came in the middle of a lot of rain, so I’m not hopeful about that, however the last of the blossom, the apples and pears, was only in the last few weeks during a hot dry spell so hopefully the bees have done their job and fertilised all the flowers. Not our bees of course as they had disappeared (again). However, before they left, they had been very busy, even in winter, and had left loads of honey stores for us. I took the empty hives and left them in the barn over the winter with the honey still in the capped frames. I took the frames back out recently and the honey seemed to be fine so I made use of the hot weather to extract it. We haven’t got any more bees this year but we are hoping to try them again but in a very different place next year to see what happens.

Of course we are still gorging on our home grown pork. We’re going to have a rest from pig rearing this year but I’ve modified the pig house and field for more roasties. As you can see from the before and after pictures below, I needed to rescue the house from the elephant grass first.

We got 11 chicks from the market and they will be ready for the chop in a couple of months. Interestingly the brown ones are supposed to be tastier but the white ones grow huge and fat quicker.

And talking of chickens, what about the title of this blog post? Well last week I heard a load of squawking and clucking from the hen run with the three of them running hither and thither in a frenzy of feathers. One had got a mouse and they were tearing it to pieces!!! Not satisfied with the the occasional snail, they seem to have developed a taste for bigger prey. Jackie is already a bit nervous about entering the run because of the attentions of the well-named ‘Pecky’. What next?