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Written by Nigel
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Saturday, 11 April 2009 |
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Happy Easter everyone, it’s been a good week here at Alledal. Steph has been on leave, which has been a good thing since I have now officially left the dark side of windows and moved over to a Mac. This will be my first i-mac blog entry. It hasn’t been a painless experience, but it has been a lot easier than a thought and now after almost a week I feel I’m getting to grips with the new PC. Most of the little dramas have been to do with a new install, losing templates etc. I’m a little particular about the way my PC should look and behave.
 The new i-mac though is great and the decision to move was in all honesty not a difficult one to make. My old HP was getting unreliable with strange errors cropping up. A new windows machine would have meant using Vista not a prospect I was greatly looking forward to. I was unimpressed with Vista way back in the day when I was sent from work to preview Microsoft’s new offering, though back then it was known as Longhorn and things haven’t improved really. I don’t think I know anyone using Vista let alone that really mythical beastie, a happy Vista user. This new Apple has some great software with it including i-movie so I may yet at some point in the future try a video entry a la YouTube.
The weather has been great for Steph’s week off it has been a perfect spring week. Light morning frost with just a touch of mist, followed by cloudless crystal blue skies. All this has been good for Troy as we’ve taken advantage of the good weather to get out a give him so long walks. Dogs are a great excuse for getting out into the countryside. A new place added to our list of dog walking locations has been Odensjön [Lake Oden] just north of Röstånga in Nackarpsdale. It’s a curious place a roughly circular lake surrounded by cliffs looking for all the world like a sunken caldera. Local folklore has it, that it was dug by two giants/trolls to escape the sound of church bells. We’ve seen the migrating cranes most days this week. Though you can usually hear them well before you can see them. Now I’m just waiting for the swallows to return. For the last couple of years we’ve had some nesting in the barn and I’d love to see them again this year. They arrived the first week in May last year so I’m expecting them sometime over the next couple of weeks or so.
Another addition has been a cream separator, we decided to invest in one of these machines after seeing a reasonable priced Russian one for sale on German eBay – complicated isn’t it. This type of machine is essential to get cream out of goats’ milk as the fat globules are so small they don’t separate naturally as they do in cows’ milk. With its addition as well as cream we’ll be able to make butter, cream cheese and crème fraîche as well. All items we use a great deal. Butter made from goats’ milk is pure white as goats can metabolise beta-carotene and so it doesn’t tint the milk. Now using a machine with German instructions badly translated from Russian, probably using something like WorldLingo was a little daunting, but using knowledge of basic science, common sense and just a little intuition it works just fine and we’re managing to extract cream quite easily. We’ve already tested on batch, which we made into ice-cream and there’s more in the fridge. I foresee this machine getting a lot of use.
The eggs in the incubators are looking promising with a good level of fertility, which is a relief after the problems with had with both the Yellow Duck and the Skania Goose hatches last year. I remain optimistic about increasing our flocks. The bees are also doing very well and building up numbers rather quickly. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to split the hive that survived the winter using and artificial swarm technique, probably sometime around May. It will reduce the honey yield a little, but it’s a short-term loss for a long-term gain so I think it’s worth it.
 I’ve finished reading a great vampire book this week, it’s by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist called “Let the Right One In”. Now I know some of you are probably sighing and thinking not another vampire novel. Ever since Buffy there has been a proliferation of them appearing, but this one is worth searching out. Yes it’s a sort of love story, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s just like Twilight it isn’t. It’s also been made into a movie that is now out on DVD and has definitely been added to my wish list. The title I think is a play on some Morrissey lyrics and the idea that vampires must be invited to enter your home. It has a coldness and a bleakness that is very appealing and that I find very appropriate for a vampire horror novel. It has several subplots and in a curious way leaves some of them unresolved leaving the reader with questions. This is something I would normally find quite frustrating, but here as a device it really works. Life isn’t neatly packaged and Linquvist reflects this. If you want a new take on the vampire novel give this one a read. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 11 April 2009 )
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