From time to time I receive emails or comments about our blog, normally people who are as concerned as we are about commercial food, my advice will always be the same, dont use supermarkets if you want real food. Most countries have farmers markets and most countries have organic veg box schemes, you may not be able to grow all your own food, but it should be possible to buy food that you dont have to read labels on. Although it might take time to prepare a whole meal from scratch rather than opening a can or a packet of frozen 'food' the end result is worth the effort, and in fact it is only the preparation that takes the time, the cooker does the rest.

We now have two new arrivals, a male kid born on Tuesday and as yet unnamed, chops doesn't sound quite right, and a gosling has hatched in the incubator, we are waiting to see if anymore hatch, it was a bit of a surprise to us as we had had two power cuts lasting three hours each within the first ten days of setting the eggs.
Now the Billy goat has proven ability the next job is to build a separate stable for him, we dont want too large a number of goats, and one in milk at a time is sufficient. It all makes for extra work and less time that we can spend on the renovation, or even getting a whole day out without feeling guilty.
We have been involved in environmental issues for a number of years and recently saw the film Food,Inc. For anyone who care where their food comes from and how it is produced this film is essential viewing, although an American film it applies to where ever you live, it has been very well received in the US[ surprisingly] and has now been nominated for an Oscar, oh how companies like Monsanto must hate it, the truth, finally out for all to see. On the same subject, well nearly, we have been aware that there are many test sites of GM crops in Galicia, whilst visiting friends last Sunday we noticed two fields that had been growing a certain type of GM maize last year had been planted with winter crops, winter cereal and a fodder crop, these crops look sick! with yellowing and some white leaves and distorted growth, as we knew which variety of GM maize had been in these fields we googled it, and it appears, according to Reuters that there was a EU meeting on July 23rd last year where permission was denied for growing of this variety, it is clear that regulations mean nothing to these companies, this maize would have been planted last May in the full knowledge that it had not been approved. Living in a strange country has many disavantages, not least when you see that EU laws are being broken.

A few weeks ago the spout once again broke off our teapot, this to us is a disaster as we drink a lot of tea, I had mended it on several occasions, the last time using epoxy resin which did the job for a few months, however as this had now failed I considered it time to buy a new teapot. Not a problem if you live in Ireland or the UK, but try finding a teapot in Spain, that does more than two cups, plus I wanted a red one! So online I went, first to M&S no luck then B&H same story and then Argos who did have teapots but only small ones, so I thought lets be really silly and try Amazon, the selection was endless, but all I wanted was a large teapot in red, and I found one, ordered it and it arrived safe and sound, thank goodness for Amazon. I had not mentioned the old pots demise to anyone, so imagine my surprise when I unpacked my birthday present a couple of weeks later, from a friend in Ireland to find .... A large teapot, and yes it is red, and this one is BIG.

The weather is still mild but now it's damp, but it did stay dry enough to get the first veg beds prepared for early planting, and the rhubarb is through and hopefully we will have our first pickings in a couple of weeks.

Our poor lemon tree has an infestation of sooty mould, normally caused by aphids so it will have to be dosed with stinging nettle spray, this will also feed the tree, so double benefits.

The storks have now arrived back from their winter vacation so it feels as though spring in on it's way.

From snow to rain and now the temperatures are up to 10c during the day, none of this seems quite right. We had very strong winds two nights ago, up 125k an hour, we had no damage but other people have not been so lucky, one friend lost his chimney! A lot of trees are down, and advertising hoardings broken in half. So far we have had very little snow, but we have another two months of winter to get through yet, and we can see it in the distance on the Cantabrican mountains. A lot of people are still without electricity, but we have been lucky, I guess if we didn't have a generator on stand by we would have been amongst those who have lost power.
We had already planted blackcurrant bushes when we first moved here and they do very well here ,so now we have bought two redcurrants and a blueberry bush in the hope that they too will like it here. The only thing we dont have is gooseberries but as I have never had any success with them in the past we will give them a miss and just live with the memory of them.

Happy New Year to one and all.

With the new year comes new life, we now have twin female kids born a week ago. Unfortunately the mother is one of our older goats and she had no milk for them so we have two wee things which we are bottle feeding, so much for having kid meat to eat!. The father is a young billy and young billy's seem to sire females. Our youngest cat rather had her nose put out of joint with these things demanding time from us, but she quickly got over it and now pretends they aren't here.

We feel as though spring is not far away despite the snow on the ground and have at last placed our seed order, a bit experimental this year, we are having a go at celeriac and Florance fennel, we have never seen these seeds on sale here, or the veg themselves so we will see what happens.

All the onions and garlic are planted in a tunnel, the onions last year did particularly well in the tunnel so we are hoping the garlic will as well.

For years we have wanted to skip Christmas, this year we nearly managed it.

Although it's good to have a celebration in the middle of winter it's all the commercialisation that comes with Xmas, although in Spain it's not quite so bad as in Ireland or the UK, it's fast getting that way.

The first Christmas lights were up in the shopping centres at the beginning of Nov.

Christmas eve we made a concession with some holly and ivy to decorate a small area in the dining room.

Christmas day we went for a Chinese meal with some friends, and St Stevens day we had a nice meal followed by a Xmas pud I had made last year, and of course a bottle of wine, on the 27th we had some friends over for a meal. That was our skipping Xmas, maybe we can manage to really skip it next year, like a school report, we could do better. Maybe we will just celebrate Yule Tide on the solstice.

The downstairs loo has taken two months to complete, although it's the smallest room in the house it posed some problems not least that it was below the septic tank level so we had to install a macerator, however it was finished in time for Xmas

[ All I want for Xmas is a downstairs loo] and the overall effect is great, no traipsing upstairs during the evening or trampling mud through the house to wash your hands when working in the garden, we also now have a very nearly completed pantry, so we have good storage space for all our bottled fruit.

The next project is to complete the stairs to the kitchen, as these are going to be of wood I might live to regret this if mud gets trampled in! Once this is done come the big job, converting the old kitchen and attached barn into independent accommodation.