No blog for awhile but not a lot to report really. Alice has a new lamb, borrowed for calf club this year from a local farmer. He wouldn't let us buy it so we get to feed it for 4 months and then return it after Alice has trained it (!) and shown it at Ag. Day, or calf club as it is more commonly known. This photo was taken today.
I did take some the day it arrived but they did not come out well. You may recognise Meg from the Hukajet photo's. Fiona and Steve, Meg and Amber, came up from Taupo today for Sunday roast and we have had a nice day. Fiona is disgustingly fit (said as I tinge green with envy) and cycled the first 20km here ("only 20km, not enough to break out in a sweat"!!) and was collected en route by Steve. I had planned to eat around 2.30 - 3pm. You know I'm going to say we didn't aren't you! Well you'd be right. I seem to loose an hour this morning. I was busy baking and cooking and was just thinking it must be about 11am and I should put the meat in, when I looked at the clock and saw it was 12.15pm!!!!!!!! Bugger. I resigned myself to a 3-4pm meal. Now dinner was a little unusual as Eric decided to try Hugh F.W.'s lamb cooked in hay. Well the hay was retrieved from the barn and Eric had prepared it all before popping into town to feed the dogs in the pound and collect pig food from the veg shop. When I took it out, at the end of normal lamb cooking time Eric said it did not feel very hot, and what temperature did I have it on. The normal 180 degrees. Well no. It was supposed to be on 220. Oppps. So it when back in, on a high temperature - and we ate at 5pm.
Unfortunately it was not one of my 'everything from the garden type of meals' (the chickens have decimated the cabbages and bloody Saddle, he is overdue for removal, got in the veg plot last week, tramped on everything and ate all my silverbeet. I won't say who left the electric fence off but he's sitting not 3 feet away!!!!!) but I think they appreciated it nonetheless. The meal was topped off with apple crumble, chocolate cheesecake, chocolate fudge cake and ice cream. no-one had room for coffee afterwards!!! As to the verdict on the lamb in hay, I wouldn't bother with it again, it tasted of all hay and no lamb. I can get that from just standing in the haybarn and breathing deeply through my nose.
We have bought a DVD player. I know, I know, we don't watch TV. Well we do, and we don't. We now have 2 TV's, an English one to watch videos on once in a blue moon, and a NZ one given to us prior to the World Cup, to watch rugby on. Apart from rugby Eric and the girls watch about 5 episodes of Antiques Roadshow a year, but that's it - honest. Now we all know that before long videos will stop being made so any films we want now have to be in DVD format, and all we would buy is the Harry Potter movies. Well I bit the bullet and used my Flybuy's points for a DVD player. So, despite not watching TV, in principle......Well the girls bought the HP3 DVD between them from their birthday money. I got it home, from the Warehouse in Hamilton, and the woman had put the wrong DVD's in the box. Matamata Warehouse would not change them so I decided to buy another copy and take the other one back when I was next in Hamilton. According to their computer they had 8 copies in stock. Between helpful lady in shop, H, A and I we turned the store upsidedown but could not find them. We left and headed for the video store to hire the movie. Now while there I sucumbed and also rented 'In My Father's Den'. What a fabulous movie. I must admit it took awhile to get into the story, chopping around all over the place and for awhile I was thinking 'what is this about?' but when it came together it was worth the wait. A fabulous movie, brilliant plot, excellent acting and superb photography. Set in NZ by the way. Oh and Mathew MacFadden is definately thinking woman's crumpet! Carol you'd love it. (I wrote that before adding the bit about Mathew MacFadden by the way!)And the music is great, Patti Smith and Canteloube's Bailerio. The latter I have played over and over since watching the movie.
We have had some fabulous weather - and some rain, of late. What a mild winter it has been. Signs of spring are definately in the air with rhododendron trees and daffodils in flower. The white arum lilies were sadly lacking through the winter though, maybe it wasn't cold enough for them.
Weather talk means I've run out of things to say. Night. Night.
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