Christmas is coming, soonish.

Well it will be for these birdies.
They belong to a friend of mine who is a bit of a smallholder, they have a couple of pigs, about 7 sheep, hens, ducks and these, oh yes and a pony but I dont think she is destined for the pot.
They live by the village hall carpark, where we all park while dropping off and picking up from school, and since turkeys are quite good at flying and like to roam around and forage, they are regularly terrorising both children and parents.
My children are very taken with them, they look kind of prehistoric, and are suggesting that we could rear a couple next year to eat. It would be fun especially if they nip next door to the National Trust to supplement their diet with a spot of picnic foraging.

I have made some Damson Vodka this year, mostly because the damson harvest was good and the local Tescos had a good deal on Vodka, its just sugar, damsons and vodka, left to infuse for 6 weeks or so, then strain out the fruit and bottle the now flavoured vodka. I'm not sure if I will keep it in the freezer or treat it as a liqueur, what do you think?

This morning was frosty and clear, my favourite kind of morning, and here it is easy for me to start the car early and leave it running for 10 mins to defrost before the school run.
We have a min/max thermometer outside which said that it was -3 overnight which feels wintery to me. Being parsimonious we dont run our central heating (lpg) unless we have visitors or the daytime temp is below freezing, but rely on the Rayburn in the kitchen and a wood burner in the living room, this means that the bedrooms are never very warm.
The children dont seem to notice, but last week they mentioned that they were cold in bed and I realised that they still had summer duvets on their beds. I dragged out the sorry pile of winter duvets and realised that some of them were very old, one was mine at boarding school.
So now they all have new 12tog winter duvets, and it is even harder to get them up in the mornings. Tom has been telling his sisters not to lie on his bed as they will squash all the togs and it wont be as warm!
The new duvets came from a company that supplies soft furnishings to the trade, hotels and suchlike and I have had sheets from them before. They are hollowfill rather than feather as machine washable has a lot going for it with children.
The best thing about the new duvets as far as the children are concerned is the BOX, which is huge and has stood up remarkably well to being worn by my three. I dont know at what age children grow out of wanting to play with the box, but not yet.

We have our Organic Annual Inspection tomorrow, so R has been doing his homework and making sure all the records are up to date, We also have our Farm Assurance inspection so he and our student are sweeping the cobwebs off the parlour ceiling and polishing the bulk tank.
The tank is doing its part by the thermometer choosing now to fail, there are 2,an internal one to regulate the fridge unit and an external one to show temperature of the milk, its the outside one that has croaked, last night it reckoned the milk temp was -5 and this morning it was reading 40 c, both wrong as the milk was actually about 4c which is where it should be. R has spoken to the refridgeration engineers and they are coming to replace it........ more expense.
Hopefully all will go well tomorrow and R can stop worrying about his paperwork, as a treat we are going out to see Red with Helen Mirren and Bruce Willis, who just gets better as he gets older.
On wednesday I am going down to London for the day to meet up with my lovely sister and have some quality child free time, its only 1 1/2 hrs from Crewe to Euston and R is in sole charge of the offspring, I will be back by 10pm and I am leaving supper ready to heat up. Its a carefully chosen date to have no after school commitments for either of us and has been planned for about 6 weeks now.