91热爆

Look...no Wooly Ladies.

I'm quite depressed. Erlend decided that the Wooly Ladies needed to be transferred up to the other farm far away. After all those months of taming and feeding - and then helping lamb! - my Wooly Ladies and now he wanted to take them away!! Who am I going to visit in the middle of the afternoon when I have a few moments before serving dinner??

After some wheedling, and expert brown-eye batting, I did manage to keep Mathilda, Elsie, Ten and Blue-Butt in our Peedie Park so I could have some Wooly Ladies to dote on and enjoy.

**Sigh** Now when I look outside it's so empty. I have four sheep but it's just not the same as having an entire flock running to greet me with happy meys! Bambi Sheep was always the first one at the gate with her hilarious Walt Disney character baah. And how I loved to overturn the empty grain bucket and sit on it and watch the pack of lambs racing up and down the fence line!

I'll get used to it. **Sniffle** But I sure do miss my Wooly Ladies!

(Mathilda is wearing a really cool bell that Dag sent over from Norway! He even wrote her name on the orange collar! She's a styling sheep!)

Doesn't he look ever so sweet and innocent? The ol' BRAT!!

I have a huge swollen knot on my thigh thanks to Magnus the Evil Beast (that's his official name now) - our Texel ram. I was up at the other farm feeding the Wooly Ladies and KAPOW!! Out of nowhere I felt something crash into the back of my thigh so hard my teeth clacked! (The impact aggrivated the nerve damage in my jaw and the right side of my tounge has returned to buzzing again. I'm impressed!) I can't sit here long and type - my thigh is killing me thanks to the wooly beast. **Sigh** Males.

I can't wait to see the Priest's face when I tell him in confession, "...and then, I chased my ram around the field while screeching choice phrases that I learned in the Navy..."

Magnus was wise to run for his pathetic little life - his Shepherdess was hot on his heels! I gave him enough of a chase that he began to wonder if I was Satan himself. I now take a crop into the field and if he comes after me he gets a spank across the muzzle. Just enough to make him back off and think I'm also a ram. I know he's just defending his flock which is good! But this boy obviously needs to learn that I am Boss Ram! (er...Boss Yow?) He is only allowed to have ear scratches when there's a GATE between us now!!

I still think he's cute as anything. But this Shepherdess was not happy!

Bonnie bluebells in the garden

"Get it right - WE own this dog basket!"

The sun is blazing and the wind is rippling through the emerald green fields of oats, grass and barley. The barn cats are basking in the sun on the exposed rafters of the byre while Erlend and Zeb are busy fixing fences and feeding the cattle. The flock of sheep dots the fields as they too bask in the warmth of spring. Their many lambs race back and forth across the grass as they play a multitude of silly games. We are miles and miles from any city. Several miles of sea and even more miles of rugged Highlands separate us from congested highways and the fast-paced life. All around are bonnie stone hooses, hills of heather waiting to bloom and endless fields of shimmering green.

I am sorely tempted to abandon the kitchen in favor of sitting on my garden bench next to the bluebells and sweet apple blossoms for a cup of tea and a read in the dappled sunlight under the Sycamore trees. Yesterday I was in this very spot when out of nowhere a big bovine head popped over the dyke (stone wall) and mooed in my ear! Three of our stots (steers) had managed to get loose and they were dancing and having loads of fun all the way down the driveway!! I managed to race into the house and call Erlend on his mobile because the stots ran back into the steading away from the road. As Erlend arrived with the tractor he caught a flash of me racing across the driveway and through the midden (dung compost area) in an effort to stop the stots from reaching the road. They are a tame bunch and were easy to heard back into the byre! Now most of the kye are oot so we shouldn't have many escapes from the byre noo.

We have our biggest meal at 1pm and today I've prepared broccoli-and-leek soup: fresh crisp broccoli, sliced leeks, garden peas, parsley, thyme, fresh butter and a dash of olive oil. (Every time I use olive oil I am filled with sweet memories of my rented villa in Sicily where I would gaze down the fields at the Ionian Sea whilst preparing my meals...*sigh*) All of these ingredients are then simmered until cooked, blended smooth and mixed with plain yogurt and sour cream. They are served up with a sprinkle of grated smoked cheese on a yellow gingham-check tablecloth in the sunny kitchen. The tomato plants now fill the kitchen window as they just now begin to fruit. I wish I could send you a bowl of soup and a good long sniff of the fresh sweet air...

Having a hungry farmer-man to feed makes cooking so much fun! With the soup we will have toasted bacon sandwiches: rashers of British bacon, sliced bigger and thicker then American bacon, grilled and spread on lightly buttered slices of whole-grain toast and then covered in crisp lettuce and plump red tomatoes...ahhhh! To die for! And deffinately filling for a hard working farmer and his shepherdess wife.

On the side I'll serve small white neeps (turnips) and boiled tatties (potatoes) and if we have room for desert I'll serve up some home-grown, home-made rubarb pie! (I have to get cracking on making that...so goodbye for noo! Yikes...I forgot to preheat the oven!!)

AFTERWARD:

The pie came out great! When I first moved here I couldn't even boil water - this cooking stuff is SO MUCH FUN! And it's soooo artistic. I walked out to the rubarb patch to cut me some fixins' for the pie, all the while hoping I wouldn't meet the Posty (post man) while hauling a carving knife down the driveway hehe! Brodgar stalked me as I cut a pie's worth o' fresh rubarb and then I came inside and baked away. With local fiddle music playing on the radio I rubbed cinnamon intae the dough, the rubarb softened with a wee bit o' pineapple in a pot, mixed with butter and unrefined sugar. Then baked to perfection and causing my farmer-man to drool all through dinner! (I had seen him in the byre with the boggling cattle as I walked back tae the hoose and I yelled to him whilst holding up the rubarb, "I hope thoo aire good and hungry, buey!" You should o' seen his face!)

On May 30th I'll celebrate my first year in Orkney. On July 21st I'll celebrate my first year as Erlend's happy farm wife! I've been here long enough to have built up some nice memories and images of Orkney. And I have to confess: every time I think of Orkney I think of the colors blue and green!! Here's why:


Isle o' Rousay

Buckraking silage

Stanes o' Stenness

Outside Dounby, West Mainland

Brough o' Birsay

Aboot hands in Birsay