It's come!

The piano accordion has arrived, and I can lift it up out of its box (just), and it does sit (awkwardly) on my bosoms as I thought it would, but somehow I managed to get a tune out it, but only with my right hand, not my left which has to push buttons, the effort of pushing the bellows in and out while playing the keyboard part taking sufficient energy to leave me breathless after a few minutes.

Lester's mandolin arrived in the same package, and he knows how to play it, so was jigging away for the rest of the day. To make music is great fun. We think we might get a band together eventually, of like minded souls who like to make music. Perhaps. I have got to learn how to use two hands at the same time as pumping the air in and out. It may take a while.

That was yesterday.
 

Today has been a ' where the hell has our energy gone' day. Both of us. Zonked out. By mid day we were back in bed. Two hours we slept. And we are still zonked out. Perhaps it has been the shock to our systems of having had several days of 20 C sunshine. Or perhaps we might have picked up a Chinese bug (our instruments came from China by way of the UK so perhaps the makers of the instruments might have had a cough or cold, etc) Whatever, nothing much happening with us today.

But we have just a ride out to get some grain, and we did visit a local chateau (not a posh one, just a very lived in pile of stones) and the owners keep Nubian goats. "And so", we said to each other, " that is what the udder of a milking goat looks like!" Which is nothing like the pimples of udders that our girls have. We are now rethinking goats......

But Blackie has been milked today, although Billy Goat is still in residence with the girls so the pigs will have to have the milk, which they will slurp up with much enjoyment. And the reason why Blackie had to be milked was that her kid was found dead this morning. Not only that, but it had been half eaten by rats. Quelle horreur!! We were not surprised that her youngster had died though because it was very weak when it was born. As for the rats.... crikey but that is an ongoing battle.

Hopefully Lester and me will find our energies for tomorrow, meanwhile I think the best thing to do is go do some practising of the piano accordion, which should just about keep me going until bed time!

Oh, and I am not doing any seeds this year. In fact I have handed all veggie production over to Lester, and with relief too. And I am soooo looking forward to a time when the infrastructure of the smallholding is in place so all we have to do is get on with the running of it. Patience, Vera, patience! Anyway, there I was the other day, on the internet, making a list of seeds to buy for the coming growing season, but instead of pushing the shopping basket button, I deleted the lot. Our mini tractor has still not arrived, the veg plot needs its fencing finished, and then it needs ploughing and rotovating, and I think a better idea this year is to go and buy ready made plants from the shop. We plan to buy a polytunnel from the UK (by post) this autumn, and we are thinking that we also need another polytunnel for hay and straw. I think that this year we must concentrate on getting everything ready for proper seed sowing and planting next year. In effect, I think we need to be more organised!

But we have bought potatoes and wild flower seeds! At least something will be going into the veg plot this year!


Vx