This is not exactly a "Christmassy" picture but it's nice anyway and we saw this ram at Louise and Al's farm on New Years Eve. Our travels continued throughout December, actually. We spent Christmas at John's sisters, came home for a couple of days to welcome Pete and Shirley Robinson who were over from North Carolina, and then went up to Barry and Sheila's for New Year.
While in Lancashire we headed off to the farm which is really out in the wilds on the edge of the Pennines. Louise and Al have been slowly building up an organic farm, renovating a very rundown set of farm buildings and at the same time keeping up their regular jobs. Louise is a high flying academic and Al is a plumber. I don't know where they find the energy to do all this. None of it's easy and most of us only tackle one or two of the above! At one point the farmhouse was unihabitable and they spent at least one winter sleeping in a hayloft in a barn with no heating. I gather their bedside water was often frozen in the morning. I've seen the place and although I have slept in a barn while on a hiking holiday, there's no way I would have stayed there for more than a few nights in summer!
We had a good evening with B&S on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day saw Barry and John head off for some birding while Sheila and I stayed at home. I played at making felt with some of Sheila's fleeces while she busied herself making a fantastic vegetarian feast. B&S are co-owners of "Hank" a small motorhome (with his own blog!) and the other owners came over for the night. They are vegetarians, hence the wonderful meal. It really set me off thinking about vegetarian food. Although I have no intentions of giving up meat, I do enjoy veggies and there are some wonderful ways to prepare them. I realised I needed to learn how ..........
Things settled down for us in January, but we were on the move again in February and that's another story!
