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The weather has been quite kind for the past few days which makes life a lot more pleasant.

We have had quite a few visitors to the shop but mostly buying stocking fillers. Plenty of demand for gloves, hats and socks.

Sadly as everywhere else, Woolworths in Chard are closing down. We went in there when we went shopping today and many of the shelves were bare and the prices were through the floor. 40-50% off in a lot of cases. They are also selling off their shop fittings so we bought two really big shelf units and twelve shelves. Mike is going in with the horsebox after Christmas to pick them up. We felt really sorry for the staff. The manager dealt with the sale of the shop fittings and as he said, it is bad, but even worse that it has happened at this time of year.

We have just taken the Mums away from five cria who were born in July. Ideally we would have preferred to delay weaning them a bit longer but the females are starting to look a little thin and with the rest of the winter to contend with we felt it better for them to only have to feed themselves. We will be checking the newly weaned cria every other day for a while to make sure they do not lose condition.

The chickens are still laying well. They are very amusing. Today they met the kittens. The hens were not worried but the kittens were a little shocked I think.

I was a bit concerned because I fed the kittens a little meat to get them in from the field and they immediately went to sleep in their pen in the porch. Later I put the rest of their dinner in their bowl and they did not bother to eat it. Mike looked at them later in the evening and they had eaten it, so we are assuming that they were just exhausted. They have been running free more and more and today they were out for quite a few hours including going into the field with the dogs and chickens.

Having finished wrapping all the Christmas presents this evening, we are going to put our feet up for half an hour.